I N F I N I T Y…………becky ramotowski

Hope your Solstice is happy wherever you are!  And hope all the Dad’s in the world have a happy day too!

In light of our quest to return to the Moon…..

In early celebration of the 40 year anniversary of Apollo 11, and the impending launch of LRO on Thursday, June 18

I made this image at 9:30 AM today.

Nikon Coolpix 5000  ( a whole whopping 5 megapixels! )

ISO  100

1/60  @ f/2.8  on the basic capture mode with NR enabled

I hand held the camera up to my 3″ refractor, (an older model Japan made Celestron)

with a 15mm Celestron eyepiece

tweaked levels and converted to black/white in PS

Tonight the sky was clear, but not steady.  The image below is looking south at Scorpius through thin clouds. The color is kinda funky, but at this point I’m just happy to see stars!

Tonight and tomorrow night appear to be my best chances at getting caught up (if there is such a thing) making summer Milky Way photos.

I’ll be optimistic and think clear sky thoughts and hope it happens!  I also watched Iridium # 33 (what’s left of it) tonight!  Its flashes were bright enough to see naked eye.  Quite impressive!

Nikon D70 on Losmandy mount

just moments later the sky north of me looked like this.  There were reports of funnel clouds in Albuquerque.

If you Albuquerquians were wondering what it looked like from the outside, this is it.

we interrupt this program to bring you the following weather alert…

was watching Gladiator and the program was interrupted by the National Weather service to tell us that a severe thunderstorm was approaching with possible penny size hail and 60 mph winds!

I thought I left all this behind when I moved away from the coast!

Quick and dirty panorama of the clouds northwest of me causing the ruckus.