John Attewell

I’m off to Root River again tonight.  I still have Bob Fealey’s key for the streetlight so it will be nice and dark, especially since the moon won’t rise until 3:51 am!  Anyone is welcome to join me.  – John Attewell

I’m going to Root River tonight.  I’m hoping to snare some of the dim Messiers in Leo.  I have a key to turn the streetlight off.  The sky should be clear by sundown and the moon isn’t going to rise until 2:48 am.  Anyone is welcome to join me.  -John Attewell

Very nice pic of the comet but it looks like that poor thing didn’t have a chance because you don’t see it exit on the other side of the sun.  If you watch closely you can see it accellerate as it approaches the sun.

Big CMEs too!

Wow!  That’s a big one.

On March 8th Kathy and I and some friends were very close to a Falcon 9 rocket launch that carried a group 4-10 Starlink satellites into orbit. We were so close in fact, that the deafening rumble set off car alarms around us. The first stage is then reused. Sometimes it lands on a barge way out in the ocean. Then it is towed back to Port Canaveral…[Read more]

Yes, the SpaceX website that Bob references is fantastic.  It has real time coverage and really interesting commentary on the history, engineering, and current launch details – before, during, and after the launch.  Despite the plethora of information and nice photos, the NASA websites are not very well curated and are very tardy in posting c…[Read more]

Fifth time is a charm. Kathy, my friend Mike, and I have been driving 3 hours back and forth from Cape Kennedy to see a Space X Falcon 9 rocket launch, but the flight encountered a host of problems. The first day the launch was scrubbed because of torrential rain. The next day the launch was scrubbed due to upper atmosphere turbulence. The 3rd day…[Read more]

Kathy used a Sony a-350 DSLR 70-300 zoom telephoto.  I estimate the distance from our location to the launch pad was about 13 miles.  Get this, she shot those photos with no tripod; just hand-held.

Stay tuned because we are going to Cape Kennedy this Thursday to watch another Space-X launch carrying an Italian satellite.  This time we hope to be…[Read more]

I’m officially a rocket nerd.  On Tuesday evening, from the tennis court outside our condo in Kissimmee, my wife, Kathy, and I watched a Space-X depart from Cape Kennedy carrying dozens of StarLink satellites.  On Friday, we drove 60 miles to a Walmart parking lot in Titusville to watch the launch of a Space Force Atlas V carrying two sur…[Read more]

Drove to Kissimmee Florida. Our condo is 73 miles from Cape Kennedy, but I was still able to capture this image with my cell phone camera of the night launch of SpaceX carrying the StarLink G4-6 satellite group from our tennis court! The moon is the white object at the top center. The SpaceX rocket is the orange flash on the left just above the…[Read more]

I went to Root River Park after the astronomy club meeting to view the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi.  Check it out!  It will probably still be visible the next few nights.  I found it quite easily but it took me some time to verify that I was looking at the correct object from the bunch of printouts and star maps that I took with me.  After much mix…[Read more]

Thanks for the heads-up!