Josef Chlachula

I am thinking about Root River Park tonight, I hope I’ll make it.

Light at Root River park early morning

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from the access road to the Root River park at 6:01 CDT. Comet was not visible in binocular, but there is a tiny spot on this and more images. Bonus is asteroid Vesta with magnitude 8.1.

It was a glorious night for astronomy at Eagle Bluff, how Dean used to say. What a night. There was a Chinese space station -0.7 mag, then ISS -3.4 mag. Low clouds above the South horizon dissolved, and we could see Sagittarius very well. Several random meteors. Very attentive, curious and actually knowledgeable audience, 30 maybe even 40 people.…[Read more]

I have a code to enter the building and I plan to attend tonight Friday 9/27.

Here is interesting reading, if applied it could help to limit light pollution.

Standards for state-funded outdoor lighting fixtures.
(a) An outdoor lighting fixture may be installed or replaced using state funds only if:

(1) the new or replacement outdoor lighting fixture is a cutoff luminaire if the rated output of the outdoor lighting fixture…[Read more]

Two videos about Orion / Meade / Coronado abruptly closed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjsx2T55PHc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VFVsz_sb8

OK, I see we should continue in topic  2024-observing.

Yes, indeed, it was a “Glorious Night for Astronomy” resulting to your great picture of the Milky Way. I planning be at Root River park today Fri 9/31, but just got call we’ll have a visitors. Maybe later at night. Light should be still off.

Duane, I’m planning on coming to the park Wednesday night to turn off the lights for the night. Josef

JUICE Live from the Moon now 8/19 from 4:30 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoodtR-46Ms

I had just stepped outside and through my eclipsed sunglasses saw for the first time in my life with my naked eyes two sunspots on the Sun. The sunspot on the bottom right is 3780 and on the top left is 3784. Each sunspot could be six times bigger than Earth.

I just went outside, put on my eclipse sunglasses and looked with the naked eye and checked a big sunspot. It rotated and one dot of the big sun spot it is still visible. Here is SDO image made smaller so it looks almost like by naked eye

Good news from Gameheaven. At the same time, we (Jeff, Mike Q and I) were able to observe round Venus low over the western horizon from Watson from about 8:40 to 9pm. In binoculars, Dobson and with the naked eye.

About 10 visitors came later. Also two astronomy and physics students, I think from MN State University Moorhead, Emily is from…[Read more]

Beautiful images of the northwest horizon with crepuscular rays! I added one of them with the crescent Moon to the article about Root River Park.

I just went outside, put on my eclipse sunglasses and looked with the naked eye at the big sunspot. Here is SDO image https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/browse/2024/08/07/20240807_170000_512_HMIIC.jpg:

Weather forecast for tonight Tue 8/6 looks promising. I plan to go to the Root River park to make sure the light is switched off.

Great, now we have darkness values. I included your  data plot into the article Root River Park 2024. Any suggestions for editing are welcome.

We could see this Friday 5/10 at Eagle Bluff also aurora. Aurora forecast around noon look promising.

Early evening we should be able to see comet 12P/Pons-Brooks under M31 Andromeda.