The full moon and C5 spotting scope on tripod; Polar Vortex, notwithstanding, and the search for northern lights and shrinking Arctic Circle; Excellent Dark Matter/Energy Video

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well the super moon and lunar eclipse have come and gone, but let's break out the old C5 spotting scope and see if we can get a little more resolution than possible with the 300mm DSLR telephoto.

More details about observations made with SDSS plate #2727; Looking into astrophysics of eclipses; The blood moon of January 20 and cloudy skies

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well last week I did a show and tell of my very own SDSS Plate #2727 at the monthly OCA Astrophysics SIG and wanted to report back about some of the details of observations made using that plate.  The history of my acquisition of this plate is covered in the January 16, 2019 blog post.

Hooray, my SDSS fiber plug disk shipment arrived! Close to ruling out PBH as dark matter; Joseph Silk and philosphy of cosmology; National Parks and Astroimaging by Wally Pacholka; Star filters and diffraction spikes

Greetings from Palmia Observatory,

Well we are back from Seattle and have a few loose ends to clear up regarding the 233rd AAS meeting plus on observation using a new star filter

New books on Gravitational Lensing and Supernova Explosions; At 233rd AAS meeting J Silk and Alex Szalay talk about the future of cosmology and archived survey data

Greetings from Palmia Observatory


Well in the last post we had some discussion of gravitational lensing and supernova explosions so before going into some new presentations made at the 233rd AAS meeting, we offer some good reference texts and comments.

Weather in Seattle; More from 233rd AAS Meeting; Why X-rays; Chandra X-ray observatory celebrates 20 years of successful operation

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, here we are with another day done at the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle.  There were a lot of good sessions today and several great plenary presentations.  I'm going to pick on one of the plenary sessions today dealing with X-ray astronomy.

233rd AAS Meeting in Seattle; Wind Direction on rotating Earth; Naming of Oumuaamua and comparison with New Horizon's MU69; Black Hole formation rate; Obscured galaxy spectral measurement; Time out for a martini

Greetings from Palmia Observatory


Well this week we are in Seattle for the 233rd American Astronomical Society (AAS) Meeting.  It is about 10 degrees colder than southern California and it has a light rain periodically.  Luckily, it is just a 2 minute walk, only about 1/2 minute, outside in the weather from the hotel to the conference center.