Monthly Archives: February 2018

Living in the Dark (but not so cold)

 in Blog  tagged Angelfish / Barnard's Loop / Borrego Springs / California / flame / horsehead / orion / Running Man / Witch Head

I’m back from a short vacation in southern California, most of which was unrelated to astronomy, but we spent a couple of days in Borrego Springs, which is a designated Dark Sky Community.  It’s also in the middle of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which recently became a Dark Sky Park.  Using what is called a Sky Quality Meter (I call it a “dark meter” – sort of the opposite of a light meter) I got readings of 21.1 to 21.3 around town.  That’s close to the darkness at most of the dark sky sites I go to in the […]

What’s Wrong with a Super Blue Blood Moon?

 in Blog  tagged blood moon / blue moon / lunar eclipse / Super Moon

It was cloudy here on the morning of Jan. 31st, so we didn’t get to see the lunar eclipse – or photograph it.  Fortunately, my friend Mike McKeag was in southern California and managed to get this great shot of the Moon with background stars. I did get a lot of questions about this much-hyped event, so thought I’d summarize the answers here: A “Super Moon” just means that the Moon is near the time in its orbit where it is closest to Earth (at perigee), so it appears bigger and brighter. Since no one pays much attention to it […]