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Welcome to #CheckIn for TUESDAY 2025-12-16


Muse here,
I have to run out the door in ten minutes. We are having a family emergency, and poor Moki needs to be at the Vet soon. Finger-crossed!

Currently, we have the Geminids showering on our part of the world. I am told we can see these shooting stars at night...if there weren't any clouds. I need to stop living in temperate areas if I want to see cool astronomical events. What cool astronomical events have you seen?

meteors

Today’s topic is suggested by @Muse but there’s always an element of randomness. Grab your beverage preference (pixel or not), follow Wheaton’s Law and enjoy the space. If you are seeing this, please wish Moki well!

Program note: Please comment, and feel free to Like this post, but please resist the urge to Share or Repost it. Doing that creates an additional instance of a #Checkin post for a given day, and tends to fragment or dilute the conversations.

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Wolfgang Strobl
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Wolfgang Strobl
• •
We visited Italy in March 1997 with our two children, staying just outside and above Castellabate. Every evening, on our way to dinner, we had a magnificent view of Hale-Bopp, as it was quite dark there.
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((( David "Kahomono" Frier )))
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((( David "Kahomono" Frier )))
• •

We planned a whole production for the April 2024 eclipse in Rochester, NY. Path of totality coming RIGHT OVER THE CITY

Day of...

100% cloud cover.

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Joyce Donahue
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Joyce Donahue
• •
We had a good view of that eclipse here and a nice sunny day. I had a pair of eclipse glasses leftover from the last time we had one of these a few years ago. I was able to share my glasses and a pinhole camera box out in our front yard with some of the young neighbor kids, who thought this was all so cool.
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Jodi
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Jodi
• •

I saw an eclipse some years back (went to the Museum of Natural History, where they had a whole program and were blasting "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Hope kitty is OK!!!!

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Jay Bryant
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Jay Bryant
• •
The eclipse went right over me a couple years ago. My neighbors and I stood out in the street to watch it. I caught one in college, too. I've seen the northern lights several times. They're always fun. I love pretty much anything associated with space.
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Muse
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Muse
• •
@Kenny Chaffin We are now waiting to hear about the results of Moki's blood tests. They suspect it's something manageable, but may require ongoing medication for such an old girl. But, we don't know yet.
@Kenny Chaffin
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Karl Auerbach
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Karl Auerbach
• •

I try to catch the daily total eclipse of the sun - that happens when the earth comes between me and the sun. Some people call it "night".

One of the cool things to watch is a launch from Vandenberg. Even though it is a couple of hundred miles south from here we can watch the rocket motors burning and staging. Then there is a very colorful afterglow that can last for hours.

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Samuel Smith
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Samuel Smith
• •
One weekend, we went with some friends to watch the meteor shower out in the desert. We drove out to Tortilla flats to get away from the city glow from Phoenix...
And lit a fire! (Silly, I know)
I was trying out an old SLR film camera. Changing settings and trying this and that... no way to know ahead of time what would turn out because I am no photographer.
One of the shots did turn out nicely: the sky was mostly dark and full of stars, while the landscape looked like it was lit up like noon-day. The flickering campfire provided the light, and the long exposure melded the fire's light into seeming daytime.
One of these days, I'd like to recreate that shot in digital, only do it a bit better.
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Cass
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Cass
• •
We've lived in small towns for a few decades ago we see a lot of stuff. We've seen most of the comets visible in the northern hemisphere, a meteorite and most recently lots of aurora borealis. Fred got a new telescope so he's seeing lots of stuff.
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stefani banerian
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stefani banerian
• •
TBH, the most significant _astronomical_ things I've seen are galaxies, those systems _outside_ the Milky Way, such that are perhaps millions of light years away. ponder seeing stuff as it was millions of years ago.
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Mark Wollschlager
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Mark Wollschlager
• •

I've seen a couple lunar eclipses, A transit of Mercury across the Sun. And a transit of the Moon, but I don't remember which planet. All fun watch parties. Some meteor showers too. Those were mostly in the 70's. A couple of the comets, remember Kohoutek ?

Muse, hope kitty is okay.

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Mark Wollschlager
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Mark Wollschlager
• •
Had an 'interesting' experience while getting my hair cut. The Korean woman run barber shop has a cacophony of sound. A radio playing pop tunes, a TV with daytime local talk, and the barber shop noise. It's the season for Christmas music and the familiar sound of Feliz Navidad came on. Except that it was sung by a young woman in English, with the lyrics changed around. She was chanting Merry Christmas over and over, and instead of "from the bottom of my heart", it was "from the bottom of my soul" and other word substitutions. Very strange.
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Muse
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Muse
• •
@Mark Wollschlager She was low on electrolytes, no doubt from sleeping in sunbeams and sweating. Because of the symptoms we will be giving her an antibiotic for awhile and feeding her bland food: chicken and rice in broth.
@Mark Wollschlager
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Lisa Stranger
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Lisa Stranger
• •

Glad to hear kitty is ok-ish, hope the "chicken soup" does the trick!

We missed the Northern Lights when they ventured this far south 😒 (I don't remember this being a thing when we lived in MD... climate change??)

One year when my parents were headed back to one of their birthplaces for vacation (probably WV, but either trip was fairly rural at the time), I fell asleep in the back of the car and woke to a view not unlike today's cover pic out the rear window! The Perseids. Something like half a century later, despite multiple attempts, I've never seen such a spectacle again.

We used to be able to watch launches from my parents' back porch north of Orlando. We're theoretically closer now (I think?), but have mostly failed to spot the myriad launches going up from the Cape lately. I think we saw one, not long after we moved here.

@Rod Mesa I'm even later!

@Rod Mesa
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Carsten Raddatz
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Carsten Raddatz
•

Went to Munich 1999 to see the total eclipse. It was a treat, but the place we picked the Hill right near the Olympic Stadium - the sky was was overcast. Anyhow, the Hill was high enough to get a good view of the surroundings.

Seeing everything in sight darken as the 100% totality approached was quite something, shadow everywhere except on the far horizon where the sky looked as normal, blue. The sun was easy enough to see through the cloud cover though, i.e. it wasn't and at the same time in sync with when birds had stopped chirping and all traffic had stopped for a couple minutes. Kinda quiet and surreal.

Except I had Pink Floyd playing in my head the whole time, the tone of Eclipse matched the exhilaration we felt.

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you loved
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
...

The song lasts around 2:13 or so, around the time the phenomenon lasts and a dense time of everything condensed.

Funnily, or not, the blokes that sat in a beer garden in the middle of the city had the best view for the few minutes it lasted. Cloudless sky, 3km from where we were, lucky b*stards.

Hope Moki is fine again! #maltethedog went through handful of days of something, but is back to his cheerful and sneaky self, giving love and wanting you to be friends.

#maltethedog
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