Showing posts with label Felton Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Felton Davis. Show all posts

Saturday, July 5, 2014

See the conjunction of the Moon and Mars from the East Village tonight


[Photo by Felton Davis from June 6]


Local astronomy buff Felton Davis passed along the following …


If it stays clear I will set up at my usual location of East 3rd Street and 2nd Avenue at 8 tonight for the conjunction of the Moon and Mars. I'll try to bring an eyepiece that allows us to see both of them in one view.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Saturn Night outside the former Mars Bar tonight


[Photo from April via EVG reader Spike]

Local astronomy buff Felton Davis passed along the following …

If it stays clear I will set up on the southwest corner of Second Avenue and East First Street tonight at 8:30, and try to focus in on the rings of Saturn.

Saturn

1) Saturn is the sixth planet out from the Sun, after Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter.

2) Saturn is the second largest planet, after Jupiter.

3) Saturn is 75,000 miles in diameter, with its rings bringing the total diameter to at least 150,000 miles.

4) Saturn is approximately 890 million miles from the Sun, about nine times as far from the Sun as Earth.

5) Saturn emits no light of its own. We're able to see it because sunlight bounces off it and is reflected back to Earth, taking about 45 minutes to reach us at the speed of light.

6) Saturn takes almost 30 Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun, and therefore will be looping back and forth in the constellations Libra, Scorpius, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius and Capricornus during the next 10 years. It will not be high in the night sky like Jupiter until the late 2020s.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Searching for Comet ISON with East Village resident Felton Davis

Comet spotting with East Village resident Felton Davis

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

[Updated] How you can see the passage of the Moon across the Hyades from East 3rd Street



Via EVG regular Spike… looks as if Felton Davis has his rig setup on East Third Street at Second Avenue …



Not sure what we're looking at this evening… but if you head over that way, you'll find out…

Maybe this… from EarthSky:

As darkness falls in early April 2014, the waxing crescent moon is passing in front of the constellation Taurus the Bull. Taurus the Bull’s most prominent signposts include the dipper-shaped Pleiades star cluster and bright red star Aldebaran, which depicts the Bull’s fiery eye.

And from Universe Today (for tomorrow):

On the evening of Thursday, April 3rd headed into the morning of the 4th, the waxing crescent Moon crosses in front of the Hyades open star cluster. This is the V-shaped asterism that marks the head on Taurus the Bull, highlighted by the brilliant foreground star Aldebaran as the bull’s “eye”. Viewers across North America will have a ring-side seat to this “bull-fight” as the 20% illuminated Moon stampedes over several members of the Hyades in its path.

Updated 9:44 p.m.

Felton writes in with more information… and details on some upcoming sky shows!

Rim craters Furnerius, Petavius, Langrenus, Cleomedes, Geminus, Endymion, and the Mare Crisium put on a dazzling show tonight, as the three-day old crescent moon passed through Taurus about ten degrees below the Pleiades. When the light of the sun is shining across the craters it accentuates their shape, and left many people speechless, never having seen the moon in such detail, especially after a winter of non-stop clouds, rain and snow. Keep a lookout on Monday, April 14th for an eclipse of the moon, beginning just after midnight, and fully darkening the moon at 3 am Tuesday April 15th.





Previously on EV Grieve:
Searching for Comet ISON with East Village resident Felton Davis

Comet spotting with East Village resident Felton Davis

Friday, March 7, 2014

A view of the East Village (and more) from atop the World Trade Center in 1978

Earlier this morning, we posted the photo (via Time magazine) of the neighborhood from atop of the One World Trade Center ...



East Village resident Felton Davis just shared this ... a scan from one of several hundred Kodachome slides from the World Trade Center Observation Deck from the 1970s (this particular shot is circa 1978)... showing the neighborhood (and more) from a similar angle...



Also, as a bonus, here's a photo at sunset showing the shadow of the Twin Towers extending all the way across the East River and into Williamsburg...

Monday, December 2, 2013

Searching for Comet ISON with East Village resident Felton Davis

East Village resident Felton Davis is well-known for his stargazing around the neighborhood, particularly on Second Avenue and East Third Street.

He shared some photos and a recap about his vigil for Comet ISON — once touted as the "comet of the century." (He did not get any takers to join him, seeing as he would need to search the skies starting around 4:30 a.m. in some freezing weather this past week.)


[Click to enlarge]

In the first photo (above) — from 1st Avenue and East 4th Street — Arcturus and Spica are hanging high, and in the second — outside the playground — there is a big swath of empty sky between Spica and the planet Mercury, just where Comet ISON was plunging toward its rendezvous with the Sun.



How something only a mile or so in diameter was supposed to be visible, and also supposed to survive a close brush with our star, I could never explain. And ISON has confounded the scientific world with its complex and unpredictable demise.

It disappeared on Thanksgiving Day, and then reappeared that evening, and now is said to be fading out. It did not "go gentle into that good night," but kept flaring up, its fatal burns a surprising display, just not one that we could get into position to share in the neighborhood.

Updated: Here's a feature on Davis The Wall Street Journal.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Comet spotting with East Village resident Felton Davis



You can often find East Village resident Felton Davis stargazing on Second Avenue and East Third Street. However, he had to travel down to Battery Park last Wednesday to see the comet C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS.

He shared some photos and his story with us.

"It was a cold night, with a strong wind coming down over the Hudson, that made long-exposure photos very difficult. Comet Panstarrs 2011 last appeared about 100 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs. As it came around the sun last week, it was visible first in Buenos Aires and New Zealand, but took its time arriving in the northern hemisphere."



"As an amateur photographer, I have to confess that I was not able to get everything into one good photo. I could take a picture of the sunset with the Statue of Liberty on the left, and the crescent moon in the center. I could take a pretty good close-up of the moon. And of course every time the seagulls swooped over, I thought they must have sighted it. After all, birds live in the sky, and so must know whenever something unusual is about to appear!"

The comet is stil not visible here...





The comet is above the clouds... (That is Felton using the arrow!)



And at last.

"The comet finally appeared below the moon, with a tail extending up and slightly to the left. Only timed exposures of at least three seconds revealed the tail. It will rise higher in the days to come, but also grow fainter as it recedes from us on its long journey to the edge of the solar system."