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Welcome to Cloudbait Observatory, located under the dark skies of the central Colorado Rocky Mountains.
Here
you will find details about the observatory
itself, its history (and my own as an amateur
astronomer), the science I conduct here, and
a collection of images I've made. Details of
the instrumentation I use
and some of the tricks I've developed to make it work well are given.
I am very interested in instrumentation, and much of what I design is freely available to anyone interested. Details about some of these projects are posted on this site.
I also enjoy both history and travel, and seek out places of special astronomical significance. The section on archaeoastronomy details some of the places I've been, and the historical astronomical sites I've explored.
This year saw a fairly nice Lyrid meteor shower display. This is a low activity shower, but the lack of interference from the Moon made it possible to see quite a few events. See my report about this shower, featuring a composite image and several fireball videos.
A beautiful conjunction of the Moon and Venus occurred on the evening of February 27. I captured several photos of the striking pair, including this one through the trees, and this one with them setting behind John Sisko's bronze sculpture Taurus, a man with his arms behind his neck, looking up at the stars. Conjunctions like this can easily be seen in daylight; this image was shot while the Sun was still well above the horizon. This last picture also shows a hint of Venus's crescent shape, similar to the Moon's. Finally, to provide a sense of scale, check this image from the Cloudbait allsky camera, which shows the pair setting in the west, and appearing very tiny compared with the entire sky.
The first meteor shower of 2009! The brief but intense Quadrantid shower happened on the morning of January 3. Although Cloudbait was covered with thin clouds, I still recorded 130 meteors. Read my report for images and videos.
The 2008 Geminid meteor shower has now passed. This is usually the year's best shower, because it produces many fireballs and is visible all night. This year, however, a full Moon interfered, so fewer meteors than usual were visible. Cloudbait had snow on the peak night, so not many meteors were recorded. Nevertheless, I caught 60 on the pre-peak evening of December 12/13. Read about it here.
A massive fireball occurred over Colorado on the morning of December 6. At 1:06 AM MST a huge meteor exploded south of Colorado Springs. I estimate its brightness at magnitude -18, about 100 times brighter than the full Moon. Learn about this remarkable fireball here. Stay tuned for more details as I continue to investigate this unusual event. If you saw it, please file a witness report here.
A bright fireball was witnessed from Colorado and the surrounding states at about 8:43 PM MST on December 4. Weather conditions prevented the meteor from being caught on any cameras, but the large number of witness reports make it possible to estimate the flight path over southeast Colorado. Read my report, and if you saw this fireball please file a witness report.
The annual Leonid meteor shower peaked on the morning of November 17. Although there was a bright Moon interfering, the Cloudbait camera captured 141 meteors over four nights. See my 2008 Leonids page for details.
There was a bright fireball over central Colorado at 7:29 pm MDT, October 28. It was recorded by several allsky cameras. I have received hundreds of witness reports from all over Colorado. Images and videos are available here. If you saw this fireball, please report it so your information gets included in the analysis.
The annual Orionid meteor shower peaked on the morning of October 21. In spite of thin clouds and a bright Moon, the Cloudbait allsky camera captured 107 meteors (228 meteors over four nights). See my 2008 Orionids page for details.
Comet 17P/Holmes has faded from naked eye visibility. The comet increased in brightness a million times over just a few hours on October 24, 2007. See my page about this curious object.
On September 1, 2007, the annual Aurigid meteor shower displayed a rare burst of activity. Read my report, with several fireball videos and frequency and radiant calculations.
On the morning of March 18, 2007, Pluto passed in front of a dim star, casting the shadow of the planet across North America. Examine the data collected from Cloudbait.
Looking for Colorado meteors? Check the new online
database of events recorded by the allsky camera network since late
2001.
There have been 4 fireballs recorded in the last seven days:
Meteor and fireball activity is high during the second half of the year. See how activity changes over the year.
If you live in Colorado or the surrounding states, and have recently seen a very bright meteor, please report it here. We continue to investigate bright fireballs, and now have an extensive network of allsky cameras in place to supplement witness reports. If you just witnessed a meteor and are curious if it was recorded from central Colorado, try the new real-time meteor log which lists all events captured by the Cloudbait camera as they occur. These events are normally processed into the main database each morning.
Read my discussion about an image by an Australian photographer purporting to show a meteorite impact.
Today's Sun and Moon, 3 Jul 2009
My first priority in designing these pages has been the conveyance of the information they contain. I don't use unnecessary extensions that might limit certain browsers. There is a tiny bit of javascript that serves only cosmetic purposes; if you have scripting disabled it won't interfere with your visit here. As a matter of principle, you will find no Java on this site. The only use of Flash is for viewing some videos. I test all pages with the Windows versions of Internet Explorer 6, Mozilla Firefox 3, Safari 3, and Opera 9. I spot check pages with Internet Explorer 7. If you are using another browser, and something looks wrong, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
The material here is necessarily graphics intensive, but I've done my best to optimize the images so that download times should be reasonable even with slow network connections.
I'm happy to respond to emails with questions or comments. To avoid your mail being misidentified as spam, please make sure it has a subject line and no HTML content. If you are an AOL customer, I may not be able to respond. AOL regularly blocks vast amounts of legitimate email, including mine. I can't determine why, because the organization foolishly blocks mail to its own postmaster! My best advice is to dump AOL and sign up with a real Internet provider. You won't regret it. If your email server implements SPF filtering, I may not be able to respond. SPF is a protocol designed to control spam, but it also blocks a lot of legitimate email. I would suggest you contact your ISP or mail administrator and have SPF disabled. In spite of its good intentions, it is a badly flawed system.
