No Sidewalk Astronomy on Sep 22

Pretty clouds as the sun sets tonight, which, unfortunately, means no sidewalk astronomy tonight. We'll try again next month.

Endeavour Flyby from Mt. Hollywood Trail

Some of the shots I took today of the Endeavour flyby. It made three reasonably close passes of the Griffith Observatory area, including one practically right over it.

From my perspective, about 1/2 mile northeast of the Observatory, I had the downtown skyline as a backdrop.

The tricky part was going to be framing this and tracking the flying shuttle at the same time. Turned out I only got a few shots sort of like I wanted.

Most of the shots are "as-is." No crop, nothing but occasional adjustments of exposure. I should probably fiddle with the photo software some to try to get better contrast.

By the way: Sidewalk astronomy in Monrovia tomorrow (Saturday, September 22). Probably just the moon, and maybe a few double stars or star clusters. Saturn is setting really early, Mars is quite distant, and Jupiter is at least another month (probably two months) from evening visibility. Figure telescopes will be set up from a bit before 7pm on until about 9pm.

Endeavour is Coming!

Via a round-about flight, the space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Thursday, September 20. I've already scheduled a day off for myself, and plan to be at the Griffith Observatory, for the anticipated flyby of the observatory and Hollywood sign. Of course, if NASA releases more detailed flight plans between now and then, this may change.