Hey Diddle Diddle, The Moon Jumps Over The Bull

Once again, Bob Johnson at Blackholes and Astrostuff clued me in to a way cool celestial event. Tonight the moon was due for a conjunction and even an occultation with/of the Pleiades. Woot! Thank you, Bob! I'd be oblivious without you! I don't know if there was an occultation or not, I don't know the Pleiades well enough to know if some of them were eclipsed by the moon as it, um, conjuncted with them. Bob will know. Check his blog soon, if he had no clouds he'll have blogged the heck out of this event.

And, unless I am mistaken, I got it! And I might be mistaken. I'm hoping Bob comments here and says, "Oh, yes, Genie, that's the Pleiades there next to the moon. You got it."

Hey, Dad, look what I did! Cool, huh? Too bad you can't see it in Leander. Oh, well, at least you have take-out.



I loved EarthSky.Org's description of this event, "The Moon Jumps Over The Bull." You can read all about that play on an old nursery rhyme at EarthSky.Org. To really see the stars of the Pleiades, you should enlarge these images by clicking on them. Otherwise, well, they aren't so impressive.













YOU try picking a favorite one or two! I couldn't, not considering how excited I was to have caught a group of stars AND the moon together in one shot! Well, in 175 shots, that is to say. I am amazed that my camera could see the Pleiades at all next to the bright bright moon. I couldn't even see them near the moon through my nocs tonight. Once again, my camera's new tele-converter lens surprised me by not being able to focus on the stars at full zoom. Perhaps I should try it out of town where the stars are much brighter--maybe the lens will have an easier time with them then.

Since I couldn't pick just one or two, I decided to put a bunch of them in a slideshow. These are unedited. I hope, providing you even care to, that you can see them well enough.



You can fast forward through the slideshow by clicking the far right button underneath it. Just click to see the next image without having to wait for the widget to take you through it.

My conjunction pix are viewable on the CNN iReport page.