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Saturday, January 12, 2008

 
10:15 PM: first star i see tonight [#] [0]

i want to start an astronomy blog, but i'm afraid i won't be able to keep it up. part of it's the portland weather: how many times can you write, "i really wanted to go outside tonight but it's raining"? even in good weather my shallow knowledge of the sky would make my entries similar: "hey, i saw orion again tonight."

i really love the night sky but i am surprised by really dumb stuff: hey, look, cassiopeia is in the nw instead of the ne tonight! i can recognize a lot of constellations now, but there's a big section past sagittarius that's a complete mystery to me. i ran into that issue tonight: i was looking for comet tuttle which is in cetus, but i can't recognize cetus, nor pices which is its closest zodiac neighbor. i had to fire up stellarium and determine it was on the same plane as sirius but in the sw instead of the se. and even then i couldn't find it. nor could i spot comet holmes, which i know is dimmer now than when we last saw it in november, but i thought we'd still be able to see its fluffy spot by algol.

plus, i only have a pair of binoculars rather than a serious rig w/ a camera (admittedly, a rather nice set as a present from sven some years back), so what images could i share? would anyone read a text-only blog by a very amateur astronomer?

i want to write an astronomy blog that's poetic w/ beautiful pictures, knowledgeable despite my ignorance, and frequently updated despite the rain. perhaps i would call it "the frustrated astronomer" or "the optomistic astronomer" or sven's choice, "the unrequited astronomer." but then, i need another blog to write like i need a hole in my hand.