Patrick

The Great Conjunction

Posted on by Patrick
Jupiter and Saturn at conjunction

Sat­urn met up with Jupiter tonight, in case you had­n’t heard about it on the news.

It was cloudy here, but only part­ly cloudy, so I decid­ed I’d take a quick run out of town with my cam­era equip­ment, to see if I could get any photos.

I stepped out­side and dis­cov­ered I did­n’t need to go anywhere—it was vis­i­ble from my dri­ve­way. So I set up there, and snapped some pho­tos of Jupiter + Sat­urn in between the clouds.

  • Jupiter and Saturn at conjunction
    Jupiter and Sat­urn at conjunction
  • Jupiter and Sat­urn at con­junc­tion (unprocessed)
Jupiter and Saturn at conjunction
Jupiter and Sat­urn at conjunction

In the box­es, top-left to bot­tom-right, are Cal­lis­to, Io, and Europa. Ganymede is too close to Jupiter for my lens to sep­a­rate it.

The half-moon looked love­ly, too, so I got some of the sun­shine reflect­ed off it, too.

  • The Moon
    The Moon, with Earth­shine visible
  • The Moon
    The Moon
The half-moon, with and with­out Earth­shine visible

All the pho­tos were tak­en with my 55–250mm lens, at 250mm, f/5.6, vary­ing times and ISOs.

Geminids 2020

Posted on by Patrick
A meteor streaks over the horizon

The Gem­i­nids peak tonight. I went out in the coun­try­side for about half an hour. I saw a few mete­ors with the naked eye, and I man­aged to catch a few on cam­era. This is the bright­est one, by far, a green­ish streak just above the north­east­ern horizon.

View full size.

It was so cold my cam­era battery—fully charged when I left the house—lasted only 20 min­utes. This par­tic­u­lar shot was about 10 frames (2½ min­utes) before the bat­tery died.

Frosty

Posted on by Patrick
Frost on my windshield

My dar­ling wife called me on her way to work this morn­ing to say I should go out and take pic­tures of my car before the sun came out. I did­n’t get the mes­sage till 3½ hours lat­er, but for­tu­nate­ly the sky had been cloudy all morn­ing and the nifty frost pat­terns she’d noticed were still there.

  • Frost on my windshield
  • Frost on my windshield
  • Frost on my car's hood

December writing goals

Posted on by Patrick
Writer's Tears Irish Whiskey

It’s been a while since I did a “writ­ing goals” post, but this month I have a very con­crete goal, so here goes:

  • Fin­ish 1st and 2nd drafts of a short sto­ry for Dere­licts;
  • Route said sto­ry around for beta readers;
  • Pol­ish said sto­ry; and
  • Sub­mit said story.

(I keep call­ing it “said sto­ry” because I don’t have a title yet.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writin’ to do.