Thursday, April 23, 2009

Occultation

On Wednesday morning Joyce and I wandered outside before dawn to see the conjunction of Venus and the Moon. We took a few low-grade pictures, but before the Moon eclipsed Venus at 7:22, I had to head to work, so I missed the actual eclipse. If you missed it too, don't worry, your next opportunity will come around soon --- on Oct. 11, 2029. Now you may be thinking, "That's a long time to wait." But I assure you it's not. A twilight occultation of Venus by the Moon happened just once during the 20th century --- on Jan. 13, 1923. So see, you won't have to wait anywhere near as long as we had to wait for this last one.

As I said, Joyce and I took a few low-grade snapshots of the Moon's approach to Venus, but a guy named John McNair of Monument, Colorado captured the whole thing and sent his time-lapse video to SpaceWeather.com where they feature it in today's lead article.

7 comments:

joyce said...

Cool! You embed good!

Ha--I made a funny. Now you might think I was talking dirty.

Gladys said...

You are actually my brother Buck in disguise aren't you?

Bob said...

Gladys--
That wouldn't be the Portales Buck would it?

Joyce--
Yeah, it's about time. "C'mon Baby, embed me."

Bag Blog said...

Cool video. Joyce, you crack me up.

Buck said...

Bob: Answer... two different Bucks. Unless Mom had some sort of secret life. ;-)

And that vid? Waaay cool!

Bob said...

Buck--
Can the world handle two Bucks?

Lou--
She cracks me up, too.

Buck said...

"Can the world handle two Bucks?"

I could handle a few more, myself. A LOT more, actually. But I'd have to go back to work... so, Nah. I'll make do. :-)