Nice pictures...

Every time the earth is in a specific location of its orbit around the sun, people start making lists.
End of year lists they call it.

Mostly an annoying phenomenon, but not when they list the top astronomy pictures of 2007!

If you're looking to brighten up your computer desktop with some astronomy related wallpaper, this is the top 12 from the famous Astronomy Picture of the Day website (worthy of a daily visit!):
Astronomy pictures of the year 2007

Another list of a well-known astronomy blogger:
Top ten list of the Bad Astronomy blogger

If you know of any other astronomy/space related end of year lists, post them in the comments!

Night of the Geminids

Of course it was cloudy during one of the best meteor storms of the year. Using the word 'best' for an event which is guaranteed to freeze various bodily parts is maybe a bit masochistic, but that's how we amateur astronomers are.

Seeing the cloudwatch chart above immediately tells you I will try to plug the website and yes indeed, this shows the cloud chart during the night of the Geminids. Small clearing just before midnight, and then all clear skies around 5:00 in the morning. This happens a lot, clouds dissipating around 4:00 to 5:00 in the morning. A fellow amateur astronomer and mailman (who has to get up alot around this hour) says that indeed he has noticed this as well.

For the brave: leave your PC on and configure the alarm to sound between 4:00 and 5:00 if it's clear. Try not to anger the spouse though :)

clear skies,
Mike

New version deployed

I just deployed a new version of the website.

Changes:

• updated hardware page: goes into much more detail on how to setup your own webcam
  
• link to this blog so people can find it!

Meanwhile the clouds cleared for a little while, but not enough to enjoy the Geminids meteor shower which is peaking tonight. Ah well, at least I got some work done on the website :)

Starting to blog...

This blog was mostly started out of a desire to communicate with the visitors/contributors of my cloudwatch.net site. So in the beginning most posts will be about that, unless I get the blogging virus and start blabbing about other things!

Good news from the cloudwatching front, the first non-Belgian webcam contributor (to be honest the first one besides myself) has been added to the map. Check it out! We're still testing to make sure it really detects clouds, but things are looking good. Not coincidently, the guy is also called Mike. This is a challenge to all non-Mike people, please consider to contribute your webcam images/cloud sensor numbers to the site!

What is currently on my todo list developmentwise?

• write a new page explaining how to bring a new webcam online (done)
• the division line between sky/treeline is now hardcoded, I'll get this from the database (it's already foreseen there)
• investigate login/register features. Not sure this is what's most needed at the moment
• change icons on front page according to the cloud status.

That's it for the first post, leave a comment if you liked it. Maybe even if you didn't.