Kepler Telescope Launch on a Delta II Rocket

The Kepler Telescope launched on a Delta II rocket at 10:49 pm on March 7, 2009. Kepler sounds like a very interesting project, and lets hope it finds plenty of earth-like planets. You can read more about it on NASA's website.

I think I'll go turn on my SETI@home software now and leave you with these two fifteen second exposures of the launch:

Wolf Moon

January's Wolf Moon, which occurred on the 1/10/09, was the biggest and the brightest of all of 2009.

Lunar Eclipse: February 20, 2008

On February 20, 2008, in Florida as well as many other parts of the world there was a total lunar eclipse. The eclipse started at 8:43 pm and was initially covered by clouds where I was watching. By the time the moon was totally covered by the shadow of the earth at 10:01 pm, the sky was clear providing an excellent view. The moon turned a nice red color in the shadow, and soon enough the earth's shadow began to recede. A little after midnight, the full moon was free from shadow and back to it's normal self!

Here are some pictures I took of the eclipse:

I took some video of the eclipse by leaving my video camera on a tripod with it's full exposure open and auto-focus turned off. I took two segments of footage, one between 9:45 and 10:15 when the moon was approaching it's full eclipse and another segment between 11:45 and 12:15 as the moon returned to normal.

It's amazing how fast the earth and the moon move in relation to one another when you are trying to track the moon with a stationary object. Every time you see the moon drift off of the picture in the videos is not due to the camera moving. The videos were sped up to 3 times their original speed.

Feb 20, 2008- 9:45pm-10:15pm


Feb 20, 2008- 11:45pm-12:15pm


The next one comes in 2010!