Inspired by some tweeter friends, I came up with the idea of creating a relief image of the Moon. These were a lot of fun.

Comparing two Moon Jupiter Conjunctions from 2019. Just wait until 2020, Conjunctions and occultations galore!

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It is not about being reminded what a small part of the universe you are, a speck, not even dust, a cell of nothing that exists and then fades away.

It is about being reminded of the magnificence of the universe, and how you are an integral part of it, and you should not waste a moment, you should find time to savor its beauty while you have your time amongst its majesty.

The year my husband passed away, he made sure that I took my dream trip to Monument Valley. This is dedicated to my hero, thank you for the journey of a lifetime. – Quote by Kristen Ashley

Did you see us at the Mountain Heritage Festival?

Thank you for stopping in! You can find out more out Echo Ridge Astronomical Society here.

Echo Ridge meets the first Thursday of every month at the Independence library. In November we have a special NASA guest speaker and will be at the Galax library. Click on our website to keep up to date.

You don’t have to be a member to come visit a meeting, lecture or public Stargazing!

As an astronomer, one of my first big purchases was the light-saber-type green laser. I mean who doesn’t want to own a light saber. Naturally, I was warned not to shine it towards visible satellites and airplanes, and of course, never point at someone.

Turns out, that isn’t the even biggest concern! The concern lies in what you can’t see, infrared light. These lights are poorly regulated and usually don’t have an IR filter, and are leeching invisible infrared light. We are risking our precious eyesight for the convienence of being able to point to specific stars.

As a visual observer, this is big! My eyes are my most valuable tool. I need to keep them in top notch condition. Even 5 minutes of exposure to a bad green laser begins to change the proteins in your eyes.  I don’t know about you, but when that laser comes out, I talk about constellations for more than 5 minutes and it’s usually to a crowd of people. Not only am I damaging my eyes and other unsuspecting adults but the eyes of children.

As I said, momma was right, let’s put those lasers away, before we hurt ourselves or someone else.

From the Indian Journal of Opthamology, Eman Mohamed Aly and Eman Saad Mohamed did a study on the effects of infrared radiation on the eye, and this was their finding

The results indicated a change in the molecular weight of different lens crystalline accompanied with changes in protein backbone structure. These changes increased for the groups exposed to IR for 10 minutes. Moreover, the activity of Na+-K+ ATPase significantly decreased for all groups.

In addition, they found that

Exposure to IR radiation may cause the corneal opacity, burns on the retina, miosis, breakdown of blood–aqueous barrier and delayed cataract. The present study is an attempt to investigate the effect of IR radiation with different exposure times (5 and 10 minutes) on the molecular structure of the soluble lens proteins.

Source – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116568/

Another good article here

 

Sunbeams and mist, make for some cool picture. Either that or we have fairies in our forest.

 

The Milky Way has been a photo target for me this year. I’m trying to get more creative in my images, unfortunately the weather has been awful this year. I’ve only had a few chances to image the sky at all! I’m hoping Winter will play nice with me, even if the Milky Way isn’t prominent during the winter.

 

 

My space inspired pumpkin carving.

Idea from Dream a Little Bigger website.