Mercury Transit 2006

Ms. Linda Boyer, Program Director of North Carolina Estuarium, views the planet Mercury through a telescope provided by members of Carolina Skies Astronomy Club on the patio of the Estuarium on Wednesday, November 8, 2006. This relatively rare event will not occur again until May of 2016. Ms. Boyer, as did all other visitors, received a certificate from the club offering congratulations on viewing the Mercury Transit.

Mercury Transit 2006

On Wednesday, November 8, 2006, the planet Mercury made a rare transit across the face of the Sun. Members of Carolina Skies Astronomy Club and I set up telescopes at the North Carolina estuarium, Washington NC, to provide views of Mercury crossing the Sun to members of the public. Skies were partly to mostly cloudy during the event, but we did get enough breaks in the clouds to view the transit from time to time.

Comet P73 Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

This my initial effort at photographing periodic comet P73 Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 from ouside of Greenville NC on April 18, 2006. This is a 30 second exposure at F10 taken through a Celestron NexStar 11 telescope with a Nikon D70 camera. For reference the 3 bright stars near the bottom of the photo are manitude 11 and the comet is in the upper center.

First "SnowStorm" of 2006 in Eastern NC

The first "snowstorm" of 2006 yielded a mere dusting of snow on grass and vehicles. I took this photo then emailed it to WITN-TV's meteorologist Jamie Arnold. The photo appeared on the 6 o'clock news.

Observing Beneath a February Moon

Weather conditions this winter have been so bad that even a nearly full moon did not stop me from getting a few hours of observing.