If you’ve read any of the other blogs on this website, you will know that I stare up at the night sky constantly. Every chance I get, as long as I can. Today my wife and I were watching a movie, and the dog needed an outside break in the early evening, maybe 7:00PM.
I looked up, like I always do, and saw the ¾ moon with a round halo around it. I signaled my wife to come see it as well, and I took some photos. We both thought it was pretty cool. But the halo was just the clouds seemingly in a circle around the moon. We went back to our movie. An hour or so later, after the movie I took the dog out for her final bed time potty break. The moon and its halo were still there, more pronounced. I mentioned it to my wife again.
I spent another chunk of time watching it that night, relaxing in the hot tub. Studying it. Taking lots of photos, a few of which I’ll post on this page. My explanation is that there is a very thin veil of clouds overhead, in front of the moon. But instead of blocking the moon, the moon’s intensity is cutting through the clouds. But that brightness only extends so far – it is eventually too weak to pierce through the clouds. The moon dominates a portion of the sky, but the clouds always win. The halo was still there several hours later.
And, while writing this, I have the HST image of the Pleaides as my desktop image, which you also see as this page’s background image. Actually, I was surprised they are not one of the 88 constellations recognized by the IAU. I think it should be a constellation. It is definitely very recognizable in the night sky. When I point it out to someone, I laughingly say you’ve got the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the Micro Dipper 🙂. Anyway, those 6 stars provide an amazing perspective of the universe. The entire “micro dipper” would fit between the closest two stars in the Big Dipper, from our perspective on Earth, it’s a tiny cluster of 6 bright stars. If you use this as a sense of scale, you see in that beautiful blue zoomed-in image those same 6 stars, plus a closeup of a tiny piece of the universe all around them, in the background. And you see thousands of dots in that image, but only 6 are visible to the naked eye.
I also thought about the HST images showing thousands of galaxies. Surely some of those dots in Pleaides image must be galaxies and not stars? What percentage? I think the answer is important; meaning that if 95% of the dots in this blue image are stars and not galaxies, you can see that there are a LOT of stars out there because there are so many in this tiny portion of the sky. But suppose it’s the other way around, maybe that 40% of the dots are galaxies. It means that in that direction, there are no other visible stars in the Milky Way; you see them all, in that image. Because we’re seeing such a large percentage of galaxies which are much further away. And then this helps us understand the immense number of galaxies around us; approximately 400 galaxies in that photo alone.
Anyway, I wanted to share my experience tonight with those that follow me and read my blogs. I also wanted to mention that these images, the blue HST close up of Pleiades, a few HST multi-galaxy images are all available, in Virtual Reality. As you can see on the left, you are able to point at one of the interesting points of the night sky, and see the HST image of each of those areas, such as the Orion Nebula. This is one of the many interesting features of PlanetVRium, the Virtual Reality planetarium. You can interact with the stars all around you. Rotate, zoom, or display the constellations. And so many other exciting features.
There are many Visual Experiences which describe my thoughts on cosmological phenomena. You are immersed in a narrated virtual reality “movie”, for example one about gravity. Like watching a show from Carl Sagan on TV years ago*. It’s all available on SteamVR, for only $2. But it requires a VR-capable (powerful
graphics card) PC running Windows. Which was difficult for some people, years ago; but maybe not so much any more? Plus VR goggles, which are still a niche
market. Maybe you know someone who has VR, and might be interested in the universe. If so, please mention this app to them. Or maybe your local astronomy club.
I hadn’t intended this blog to turn into a blatant advertisement. It just sort of came out of me as I wrote. And I figured it couldn’t hurt, so here we
are. This passion of mine is doing OK, but it definitely could always be better.
In the photo below on the left, you see Orion’s belt in the lower left corner, with Betelgeuse nearly touching the ring of clouds. And to the right of Orion are Jupiter and Arcturus in the constellation of Taurus. Immediately above the moon, on the left, you see 3 bright dots, two are of Gemini, the twins, and the third dot, on the right, is Mars.
And I wanted to mention another observation I had about this moon halo. The clouds in front of the moon were not visible to me; it seemed like a clear night sky where I could easily see the stars around the moon, and clouds surrounding the moon. That is, there was a large dark circle around the moon, and then the ring of clouds illuminated by the moon’s light. But the camera picked up that very thin layer of clouds covering the moon, which my eyes didn’t see. So the photos don’t do “justice” to what I saw; I was using my iPhone camera, nothing fancy, so I guess I shouldn’t expect too much.
For me, it was a giant eyeball in the sky. A large black pupil, with white dot in the middle, and the ring of clouds forming the iris. The Eye of God, watching over me.
* But obviously nowhere near that quality 🙂