Tuesday 22 April 2014

A picture of Mars, from the Dodecahedron Books Observatory

A picture of Mars, from the Dodecahedron Books Observatory


It's also known as the back yard.  There was a little post-processing done as well, in GIMP.

Telescope is a  6 inch Maksutov-Cassegrain reflector.  I think I had a 25 mm eyepiece in.  It was taken Sunday April 20, 2014, about 10:30 p.m.

Mars is fascinating.  No wonder so much SF has been written about it.

P.S. I know this isn't the most amazing amateur photo of Mars out there, ok.  :)  But I still like it, and I think it doesn't hurt to show non-specialists that they can enjoy the activity, too.  It's like breaking 100 in golf - no big deal to good players, but pretty cool for us duffers.



 Mars is great, but why not read about a trip to see a total solar eclipse in the U.S., during the summer of 2017?  
 

The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017


Total solar eclipses are spectacular events, so much so that some people get hooked on them. They become eclipse addicts, who pursue these celestial events around the planet, from country to country as the predicted eclipses come and go. Of course, for most people, eclipse viewing is conditioned by the constraints of available vacation time and spare money. So, an eclipse through the heart of United States, during the height of the 2017 summer, brought the experience home for a lot more people than is usually the case.

This is an account of one such set of eclipse observers, journeying from Calgary, Canada to Idaho Falls, USA to take in the 2017 solar eclipse on a beautiful cloudless August day. It includes a description of the trip itself, through the coulees and mountain ranges of Alberta, Montana and Idaho, culminating in an unforgettable eclipse day in Idaho Falls. It also contains a reasonable amount of scientific and literary background on the eclipse phenomenon, and how it has been experienced by people through the years.

The story is about 12000 words, about 60 to 90 minutes at typical reading speeds and costs 99 cents.



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