Darkoshi

Artemis II mission

2026-04-06T19:11:06Z

Now that my taxes are done, I'm finally able to feel some real excitement about this.

NASA's Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast) (YouTube)

Artemis II tracker (NASA) - lets you display the trajectory of the spacecraft in relation to the Earth and Moon. As of right now the moon isn't even yet within the loop part of the craft's projected trajectory; the moon's orbit will take it into the loop part within the next few hours, I am sure. It also shows some stats (distance from earth & moon, velocity). There's also an app - More Info.

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measuring the sky

2020-12-14T07:25:18Z

frith cued me in to the Geminid meteor showers which are peaking tonight. Here, clouds rolled in and we're getting light rain showers instead. But if any of you have clear skies, you might still be able to see them.

I found this very handy page that shows how you can estimate angular distances in the sky using your hands:
A Handy Guide to Measuring the Sky

Making a fist and twisting it left and right to count how many times it takes to span half the room around me, the guide does seem to estimate it pretty well. (half way around the room = 180 degrees = about 18 fist widths).

HOWEVER. The guide also says that the full moon is 30' wide, which if I'm reading it right means that the moon would be only half a pinky finger's width wide, when holding your hand out at arm's length. NO WAY. I know the full moon changes size as it moves through the sky, even though it doesn't. But still, only half a pinky's width?? Even at its smallest, I'd never think it was that small... Now I have to wait til the next full moon to see if that can possibly really be true.

astronomers measure the distance between celestial objects based on the angle they make with an observational point on Earth. Known as angular distances or angular separation, distances are expressed in terms of degrees (°), arc minutes ('), and arc seconds (").
...
There are 360° in a circle or sphere, each degree is divided into 60' and each arc minute is further divided into 60".
...
Your little finger at an arms length is about 1° wide.
...
The angular diameter of a full Moon is about 30'...

..

Hey, but, however:
The main reason I was reading about that was to see if my estimate of how far apart Jupiter and Saturn were tonight was correct.

According to theskylive.com's quick hilights for today: Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction with an apparent angular separation of 0° 50’ 21”, currently decreasing.

So if the moon is 30', then Jupiter and Saturn *are* between one and two full moon widths apart, and my estimate WAS spot on. Yay me.

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lunar missions

2019-08-03T18:57:02Z

While scrolling through these old newspaper images from the time of the first manned moon landing...
These 50-year-old front pages show how Apollo 11 captivated the country

(There are some headlines about Ted Kennedy leaving the scene of a car crash on Chappaquiddick Island.)

One also sees headlines mentioning Luna 15. It was an unmanned Soviet craft designed to land on the moon and bring back lunar samples to Earth. It orbited the moon at the same time as Apollo 11 - I don't remember hearing about that before! (Space race, indeed.) After the American moonwalk had finished, it attempted a landing but crashed into the moon.

Interesting to read:
Luna 15 Accompanied Apollo 11 to the Moon
Luna-15: Russia’s secret moonshot designed to beat Apollo 11

The first article mentions 2 medals the Soviets gave to the Americans "to leave on the Moon honoring two lost cosmonauts, Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov," but doesn't say whether the Americans actually took the medals to the moon. According to this article, they did:
What Have We Left on the Moon? (answer: half a million pounds of equipment, trash, and other items).

Jodrell Bank Lovell Telescope records Luna 15 crash:
(there's not really much one can hear in the video, but it is still interesting.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJthrJ5xpxk

gfish staged a Lego re-enactment of the Apollo 11 mission on Twitter:
https://gfish.dreamwidth.org/386990.html

This is an interesting video about the computer on the lunar landing module, and the 1202 alarm that happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4cn93H6sM0

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go, go, moon is rising

2018-10-25T03:50:39Z

Leaving work, turning onto this one road,
BOOM there is the ~MOON~
right above the trees at the end of road
towards which I drive,
the biggest Moon I've ever seen.
Orange tinted.
Big enough for my eyes to scan left, right
looking at its details,
thinking to myself, yes, this is surely larger
than usual. So much larger.

I wanted to stop in a parking lot to take a photo
of the Awesomeness.
But when I got there, the moon was gone.

So instead, I turned onto the other road,
glancing to my left again and again,
waiting for it to reappear.

Finally.
Still hovering near the tree-line,
but small now, and distant.

You will never convince me
that the moon does not change size
Logically, I know it doesn't.
But my eyes have SEEN.
They have swept across the face of the moon,
left and right.

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