LTO Cambodia: astronomy

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Red Moon

There was a total lunar eclipse here this evening in Cambodia (and across much of this part of the world.). The sky over Phnom Penh was clear and the eclipse readily apparent.

I was busy this evening and didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to see it, but carried my camera just in case. I stepped outside at about 9:35PM. The eclipse seemed just a bit lopsided, one side of the moon slightly darker than the other. The whole surface was in deep shadow and distinctly pinkish red with a touch of orange.

I aimed my camera skyward and took a couple of snaps. I noticed the Vietnamese woman standing near me, staring at me. I pointed up and said, “eclipse of the moon, shadow on the moon.”

She said, “I know, no good.”

I smiled and said (admittedly somewhat insensitively,) “What? Dragon eating the moon or something?”

She snapped back, “You think this is funny?”

I said nothing.

“Bad luck,” she said. “Bad luck, next year the Dragon comes. Bad luck last time this happened. Bad luck this year and next.”

I didn’t smile this time. Just went back to taking photos. She walked away.

The photo above was the best I could do hand-held. Taken at about 9:52PM with a D5100, 18-200mm lens, f5, 1/30, ISO 6400.

According to the Phuket News:

...the entire eclipse should be visible from Asia and Australia. However, North America and Canada will witness only the start of totality as the moon dips below the horizon.

The partial eclipse begins at 7:45pm when the Moon reaches the umbra, Earth’s inner dark shadow. Totality will be achieved by by 9:06pm as the entire Moon is covered by the Earth’s shadow.

The eclipse will reach its zenith at 9:31pm, with the Moon starting to move out of shadow at 9:57pm.

The total eclipse will last 51 minutes.

From start to finish, the partial and total eclipse phases will take 3 hours 32 minutes, with the final penumbra ending at 12:30am...

Eclipse location:

From: All About The Total Lunar Eclipse On 10th December, 2011

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Hot Season Triangle

It was 35ºC in Phnom Penh today. After 3 months of blessedly cool, dry weather, the season is changing. Temperatures are beginning to rise. Standing on the roof for a smoke last night I noticed the ‘Hot-Season Triangle’ almost straight up - a landmark of the hot season nighttime sky. The Hot Season Triangle (also known as the 'Winter Triangle' and the 'Summer Triangle' in other parts of the world) is a group of three bright stars (Betelgeuse in the shoulder of Orion, Sirius and Procyon) forming a equilateral triangle. In February and March the Triangle can be seen high in the sky in the early evening, almost straight up about 2-3 hours after sunset here in Cambodia. It is particularly apparent when the moon is full as the moonlight washes out the dimmer stars, leaving the bright stars of the Triangle standing alone. When the Hot Season Triangle sits high in the sky in the early evening it bodes the coming of the heat and the imminent beginning of the ‘mango showers’ - light afternoon rains in the months before the monsoons, so known as they help ripen the mangoes, making the hot season the mango season as well.

Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.