Conjunctions and a Rough Week

I should start out this post stating how much of a pain switching from standard time to daylight savings time has been this year.  Even though I've (mostly) gone to bed between 9 PM and 10 PM, I've pretty much been bedridden until 7 AM all week.  I've also been tired, cranky, depressed, and filled with ennui, which Mark is blaming on the time change. It could also be other things, like new moon, and the Very Grey Weather we've had since about the 8th.

Thursday morning, I'd actually managed to haul myself out of bed at 5:50 AM, shower, hard boil eggs, get dressed, and pack for a day of working remotely in Corvallis.  As I reached into the closet for the car keys at 6:30, I saw that the nail I usually hang them from had fallen out and the keys were nowhere in sight.  I felt around the To Go Bag on the closet floor and found the nail, but no keys.  I moved shoes and bags out of the closet.  I got a flashlight and looked around the closet.  

Mark got in on the search.  There was a discussion of alternate places the keys might be, even though they should be living on their nail.  I went through all of the jackets and coats I had worn in the last week.  I checked under a table.  Mark looked behind the boot bench. I went through my day pack. The tracking device on the key wasn't showing up on either of our phones, and there was speculation that battery was dead. Mark went through the battery basket. I looked under the couch. Mark checked under an entryway chair. I looked under the kitchen table. I emptied out my day pack. I took a flashlight, because the flashlight can help me to consciously look at things instead of glossing over them, and shone it under the TV, and by the computer monitor, and under the couch again, and into the closet, and under the front door's lamp.  I took off the couch cover and looked under the couch cushions. Mark looked under the computer desk. I took off the cushions under the Stickly Chair.  Mark swept under the rolling cabinet of wicker baskets.   I looked in the mail basket, and the winter glove basket, and the dog toy basket. I looked at the guest room desk. Mark went through my day pack.  I wandered around the living room, checking the mantle for the third time.  After about forty minutes of turning the house upside down and still not finding the key, I cancelled the trip to Corvallis and remote-worked from home.

That evening, the search continued.  I went into the guest room to tear apart the bed.  I picked up my day pack, and saw the car keys, sitting just below the zipper along the top of the main compartment.  Mercury isn't retrograde, but I'm blaming other supernatural forces for hiding the keys.  Mark suggested that I get a hammer and pound the nail back into the closet wall.  Which I did. A lot.

The skies have cleared up around the 13th, just in time for a conjunction of the Moon with Jupiter, and then a very close pass of the Moon by the Pleiades the next day.  "I thought you said they were going to be next to each other," Mark said Thursday night.  

"Well, I thought they were," I said.  "I guess Earthsky led me on.  They're still about as close as they're going to be on this pass."

The next night the Moon was right next to the Pleiades, and I was lucky enough to get some images of them during twilight, when the sky was still bright enough to even out the washing-out effect of an almost-quarter moon.  "I thought you said you could see the Moon next to the Pleiades," Mark said when the sky was much darker.

"Well," I said, "it is.  If you put your thumb over the Moon, you can see the Pleiades right over it."  Mark likes to be a contrarian when I say that the Moon is next to Jupiter, and Thursday night we had a loud conversation on the deck about how apparently close planets and stars are to each other, how I think it's neat when celestial objects are in conjunction (because it looks cool and doesn't happen every day), and how Mark thinks this is like religion.  I suppose on one level it is like religion, in that photographing the sky makes me feel like I'm participating in something larger than myself.

The best thing about the conjunction was that I realized that since we're close enough to the Spring Equinox for me to easily compute the sun's and moon's position on my Portable Stonehenge, I could mark the Pleiades position on the Holes, which, unsurprisingly, is near Aldebaran's position.  So I did.

April Moon Near Taurus

The skies are clouding up again after a few days of relative clear.  Earlier this afternoon, I saw a half moon, but now the evening overcast has hidden it from view.  Possibly when the night becomes darker I'll be able to guess where the moon is by the glow of the clouds.  

The other night I managed to photograph the crescent moon as it sailed between the Pleiades and Aldebaran.   I looked at some similar photos from last year; I think those photos are a little better because I used a higher ISO, I was therefore able to take shorter exposures which resulted in less star streaking.  

I am hoping that in a month's time the skies will be clear enough to catch a slender crescent near Taurus.  The timing will be tricky because the whole spectacle will be closer to the setting sun, so while the Moon should be visible, it might not be so easy to see the Pleiades.  

COVID-19 restrictions are easing up.  It's taking some getting used to.  I'm so used to wearing a mask when I go into work that not wearing one, and being in an inside open space with people who also aren't wearing makes feels weird.  I will have to keep a more consistent eye on the local COVID case count to see if a spike starts up.  

More Venus

I was fiddling around with my camera the other night taking photographs of leaves illuminated by streetlights and noticed Venus framed by some branches.  Since Venus is returning to the Sun's glare, it's going to become more difficult to see over the next few months.  Figuring that I should take advantage of a clear night with a still very bright Venus in it, I took a photo.

Later, when I going through the night's shots (mostly blurry, shadowy leaves), I discovered I'd also managed to catch the Pleiades as well.

Venus Leaving The Pleiades

Last Sunday night, Mark took the dog outside for her final play session and called back into the house, "I see Venus!"

I had given up any hope of seeing Venus anywhere near the Pleiades, especially as it had been raining a few hours before.  But I scurried around the house, assembled the camera and tripod, and managed to get some passible photos of Venus, uh, leaving the Pleiades star cluster.  The northwestern sky was relatively clear; a river of clouds hugged the southern sky, and the eastern sky was palled over with overcast and torn veils.   It would have been nice to have Venus in the cluster, but hey--two days after is what I was able to get.

I took several shots, then spun the camera around for some arty shots of the moon in the clouds.

Wildlife on a Sunday Evening

 Sunday evening, Mark and I went to Delta Ponds.  Mark really wanted to see some beavers.  We got there about 5:40 or so, a few minutes before sunset.  I was very glad I had listened to Mark when he said to wear the wool cloak over my already existing two layers.

In the distance, herons roosted in the trees; it's their nest-building season.  I did wish we had come in the morning, because the sunlight would have been shining on the birds instead of sinking behind them, and the light for photography would have improved during our visit.  

The ducks and the geese flew in to search for overnight spots along the shore.  We saw a lot of nutria.  There were many, many gnawed stumps of  trees where the beavers had been busy, but we only saw the new dam they've constructed.  

By 6:30 most of the daylight was gone, and we made our way home.

The sky was clear-ish, and I took photographs of the Moon, Taurus, and the Pleiades.  When the Moon is half-full, it's difficult to photograph it with stars because the Moon washes everything out.


Went to the Gym Monday for the aerobic routine.  I managed to do all of the sets, including the burpees at the end -- so, yay me!  This means that I'm a little sore all over today (I'm also going to blame hefting concrete pavers around Sunday).

Why I Like The Pleiades

Why I like the Pleiades

• They're really blue. They're the sort of blue I would like to wear. They're the sort of blue that belongs in diadems. They're the sort of blue that I would put into starship controls to let everyone know that the machinery is running optimally, making the starship skate along the stars like an Olympian Champion over the ice while Clara Rockmore plays Saint-Saëns' "The Swan".


• They look like a tiny Big Dipper. This tiny Big Dipper is in the back of Taurus, the Bull, and it used to be an archery test to see how many of the little stars one could make out (and therefore, presumably how well you could see a target).


• Their Japanese name is "Subaru" or "The Daughters of Industry," and you can see them on the hood of every Subaru car. Seeing them in the sky usually makes me say "Subaru" just because it's such a fun word and I wonder what the proper pronunciation should be.
  


• But I think the reason I like them the most is that they (along with Orion) used to let me know if I had stayed up way too late as I was walking home from campus back in the 1980's. Sort of like a mother or a cadre of older sisters. Their reproach was silent. You'd look up, and there they'd be, silently to the left of the front porch if it was still before midnight, and just as silently to the right of the porch if it was after -- and you knew that the farther to the right (west) they were, the harder the next day was going to be. They were beautiful to look at.