Bill's Sky

 19 March 2026 I walked outside at about 22:05 MDT just to see what the sky was like and if it might be worth taking the binoculars out. There had been a severe wind warning a few days ago so I had pulled the OTA off of the mount on the pier and put it away in the garage. Earlier in the day the sky conditions had been cloudy enough that I didn't expect much, but I was pleasantly surprised at how clear it had become. Just as I walked out to the driveway there was a bright orange meteor that tracked across a good part of the southern sky.It almost had the appearance of a fireball. The color was very striking. The track was angled toward the southeast. Because of that color it makes me wonder if I was actually seeing space debris burning up. Needless to say, I decided to go ahead and bring out the binoculars. These are 12x50 Nikons. In order to be stable and comfortable I brought out one of our "zero g" lounge chairs. Just today I had put the wrap that will be under the sidi...

  Full Moon 2 Mar 2026 Lunar Eclipse, 3 Mar 2026 Totality for the Lunar Eclipse was supposed to be about 04:38 MST on the morning of 3 March. I wasn't sure if I would be able to stay up to see it, or get up in time. From the altitude for the time, it looked like it would be touch and go for it being above the trees on the hill to the west. I did decide ahead of time that if I did watch it I would try to get some images with our DSLR, a Canon T7. We have a 75-300mm zoom lens for it. I went out early to try it out by taking pictures of the full moon. I initially accidentally took several images in JPEG format before I realized it, and reset the camera to RAW. Lens set at 300mm, F5.6, ISO 100, shutter speed to 1/250. The camera was on a tripod, and had it set for a 4 second delay since I was having to press the release on the camera. I decided to go ahead and go to bed, but the dogs woke me up about 03:30, so I decided to get up and watch the eclipse.  The Moon was further above ...