26 December 2007

26 December 2007

Sounds travel far and wide,
A stormy day will betide.


I set the alarm to wake up early this morning to take a look at a Mag -5.7 flare from Iridium 81. But I was tired and shut the alarm off and went back to sleep. It is probably just as well since when I did wake up it was overcast. The weather history for Central Park says it has been clear since midnight though. That doesn't stack up with what I have been observing this morning. Switching to LaGuardia airport they reported overcast at 0551 EST, mostly cloudy at 0651 EST, and overcast thereafter. That is more in line with what I have been seeing. I don't think the Central Park weather station is very reliable.


I dropped my film off at DuaneReade to be developed and scanned and they only scanned 4 frames. They said that there is nothing on the first part of the roll and the images of the horizon Moon were blurred so their machine refused to scan them. I am having them try again since I have gotten blurry images of the Moon out of that machine before when I haven't asked for them. In the meantime I have crunched the numbers to find when the best time to make these pictures will be during the coming year. The Moon is highest above the horizon in December so that should make the size difference most dramatic at that time. The full Moon of Dec08 is also a perigean full moon and the largest full Moon of the year. So that will be the best time to get another set of pictures. The full Moons of Oct08 and Nov08 are also larger than any other moons between now and then.

posted by Charlie at 14:34

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