Jet Plane Transit

I was very casually looking at the moon tonight. I just sort of opened the curtains on our East-facing window... I didn't feel like going outside... too cold... too much effort. There's a fair amount of ugliness to the images through two panes of glass but the moon doesn't seem as sensitive to that as Jupiter does. So I was just looking... taking it all in... enjoying the moon... then all of the sudden I thought there was a spec or something on my EP. And then it was moving and some microseconds into this my brain recognized what was happening. A jet was flying in front of the moon (of course it looked upside down too). It made it from one side of the moon to the other in short order. Perhaps a second or two. First time that's ever happened to me and I thought it was pretty cool. The wife and daughter didn't seem as impressed. Anyone ever had that happen? I suppose the plane was on its way to Boston which is 50mi or so East.

"And then it was moving and in microseconds my mind realized what was happening" This is not truly related but your post brought it to mind. A few years ago I sleepily went out to my school bus to start and pre-trip it in the winter dark. Started it and ideling I began paperwork when all of a sudden I realized the bus was moving backward. I slammed the brakes as hard as I could.- nothing- I slammed the shift lever all the way down and shattered the plastic handle into pieces that went flying everywhere.It went faster!, I hit every button,handle and anything I could reach to stop it. Broke the knobs on the radio in my panic. After 20-30 seconds, NOT MICROSECONDS, - My mind said "Jesus-Thomas you should have hit the trees and fence behind you by now, they are 4-6 feet away. THEN I REALIZED, the bus had not moved an inch. It was the bus to my left, - pulling out of his space. One of the planets was in "retrograde motion" at the time, so later I decided to take it as a down to earth lesson from above on the deceiving nature of retrograde motion to the observer. The mechanics laughed their a--es off. Thomas



t

My son got a nice plane transit of the moon with my hand-held snapshot cam at "10X." He's also a great shot with rifle, shotgun, machine gun. May take similar skills. I can't find that one but attached is a transit of the sun that I just stumbled across when I was imaging with a 4-inch scope. Tom Dey

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