Second year in a row I’m clouded out for the Geminid meteor shower. No dark site within hundreds of miles was clear.  Bummer.

The days are getting shorter and the nights longer. The final month of the year features two great night sky events worth catching. Both are late in the night to early in the morning but worth staying up for.

First up is the Geminid meteor shower peaking the night of December 13th, morning of the 14th.  Perhaps the finest meteor shower of the year its only drawback is the winter temperatures. But those of us willing to stand the cold are rewarded with a steady stream of falling stars. This year the moon is first quarter and will set around midnight local time. Just as its fully dark the meteor shower will be ramping up to full strength, around 120 meteors/hour (ZHR). With a clear dark sky you should see more than one per minute.

The second big event is a total lunar eclipse on December 21. Interestingly the 21st is also the Winter solstice: the shortest day of the year and the start of winter. Its been 2 years since the Midwest last saw a total lunar eclipse and we won’t see another until 2014!. But this one we’re in the right place, the Midwest is perfectly situation to see all stages of the eclipse. For a neat animation of these eclipse stages check out Shadow and Substance website. What dark color will the moon be this eclipse? Perhaps with this years volcanic eruptions we’ll see a deeper red.

New image from Okie-Tex 2010: Comet Hartley and the Double Cluster. This picture from images collected Thursday night as the comet approached the cluster (click image for full size).

Visually observing the comet that night through binoculars and telescopes was nowhere near as interesting as the picture. My eyes were seeing a faint gray smudge lost in a sea of stars.  Unfortunately this comet never got as bright as they initially predicted.

Its been a struggle to get a reasonable picture out of the images I took that night. The comet moved very fast relative to the stars which led to smearing. This is easily seen looking at one of the raw images:

Click the image on the left for a full size crop of one single exposure, two and a half minutes in duration.  Note how the comet leaves a small streak rather than a sharp image.  For my skills this has presented a problem in combining the multiple exposures into one picture. So I ended up with a ill-defined and smeared comet. I’ll keep working on it though.

This year the Okie-Tex Star Party was held October 2 through October 9th and the weather was very good.  There were six consecutive nights of clear or mostly clear sky, this maybe a record for the Kenton site. The weather might not have been ideal for everyone, persistent gusty winds typically started at darkness and lasted until 2:00am in the morning. Temperatures were unusually mild during the night with lows around 54° F (Saturday morning was lowest at 44°F). I will post temp and SQM data later.

While I imaged many targets throughout the week I had two particular photographs in mind: Comet 103P/Hartley 2 and the morning Zodiacal light. The comet I shot every night and have a pile of imaging data to reduce.

My Zodiacal light plan almost became an epic failure. I needed all night energy as its best around the end of darkness (start of morning twilight) and petered out on several nights.  In fairness most of us had a tough time Wednesday night, it started out cloudy and we broke out the beer, then it cleared up! Friday morning arrived with decent skies,  I was fired up and ready to go. I ascended to my planned location to find I had miscalculated the relationship of the star party field and the Zodiacal light.  To say I was pissed at myself is an understatement. With little time remaining I descended and repositioned myself on top of a boulder further north. Anyone awake in that area probably thought a bull was stumbling down the hill and through the uncut field.  To make matters interesting I fell off the boulder my first attempt climbing it,  the entire journey would have made a comical movie. Perseverance paid off, thumbnail to the right is the best image taken at the very end of darkness (click for full size version).

More updates and images to come later.

Clearfield Observatory @ 21:44, mostly clear sky, 79% illuminated moon rising, clouds in east possibly suppress some light pollution, temp 17.7C, SQM: 20.16.

Be interesting to measure my sky with a truly dark night this week before OTSP.

Update: Tuesday 09/28, very good night sky during darkness window, best SQM: 20.88. Suspect it maybe possible I will see 21 readings late night in late fall, typically my best time of year.

There is one positive effect to the ongoing financial crisis: cities are turning off street lights. And its not just cities, states and businesses have downsized producing less light at night. This is happening to save money, both now and  long  term maintenance costs.

In my opinion this is having a profound effect on light pollution. For the first time in decades the rate of increasing light pollution has significantly changed.  It is possible the extent of light pollution has decreased slightly, even if just a small amount. For example, this year  Colorado Springs, CO is turning off 8,000 to 10,000 streetlights (1) . That is a significant reduction in light pollution around that city! I’d like to see this trend continue at ALL cities.

Perhaps things will be looked at differently now, do we really need so much wasteful lighting?  Every light costs money to operate, do we really need to waste this money?  Another way to reduce electricity usage and stimulate things a bit would be to replace outdated street lights with better designs. Not just streets but also parking lots where the photo on the right was taken. This light post is a good example of modern design with full light cutoff and high efficiency  bulbs. It will light the parking area well with a minimum of glare and waste.

This is really a win-win situation right now. Save the night sky,  save energy, and save money.