The night before last, Werona saw a Facebook post from Don McCrady showing us that you could easily see Venus and Jupiter in the night sky at this time of year. After some running around and peering into the dark – we were forced to conclude that either we could not see them from our house, or that it was simply too late and that they had settled below the horizon.
Tonight, after going out for coffee, we spotted the two planets on the drive home.
When we got home, we got both our eldest children out of bed (they had been reading quietly – waiting for us to come and say goodnight) so that they could come and see. After a bit of pointing and talking we started searching for equipment that would allow us to get a better view. Eventually – we managed to get a small telescope out of storage and get it setup.
Unfortunately, there was no good view point from our house to look at the planets using a telescope. To make matters worse – the planets were rapidly setting below the horizon. With time running out; Werona, I, Isaac and Lizzy (the latter two being in their pajamas) started wondering the neighborhood streets (at 10pm at night!) looking for the perfect place to setup a telescope.
We ended up doing so at the top of our street, about 5 houses away from our home.
While we were busy getting setup – some neighbors who we know came out to see what was happening. At first they assumed we were looking for one of our cats. But after some explaining – they decided to come out and join us. After a short time I had the telescope trained on Venus and everyone (including the neighbors three boys) had a chance to have a look at it.
Fast forward to about 2 hours ago – I was up late tinkering with computers when a power flicker took out two of my main servers, and fried the power supply for my Internet modem. Bleah. I started working on putting everything back together – but there was little for me to actually do while I waited for systems to boot and repair themselves.
After a bit of boredom I grabbed my smartphone and the telescope and started wondering the streets again. A little bit later I managed to grab this:
Not the best picture of the moon that I have ever seen – but pretty darned cool all the same.
Anyway; all my servers are back up and running now – and I am tired. But it has been a good night.
Cheers,
Ben
Benjamin Armstrong's Personal Blog 