MPJ

Moon travels around the Earth in elliptical orbit and logically there are two points in its path where it is closest and farthest from us. Today it was in "perigee-syzygy" of the Earth-Moon-Sun system or simply called "supermoon". Coincidentally, it happens that today it has the power to fully block the sunlight in northern Europe and made the biggest shadow one can do on Earth. In Serbia it only made partial eclipse covering somewhat less than 50% of the Solar disk. These are 12 photos I took in intervals of approximately 10 minutes from eclipse start at 9:40 until it went away around 11:58. The biggest shade was at 10:48. We were pretty lucky today since the nature gave us clear sky with just one stubborn cloud that covered the Sun-Moon kiss around 11AM. Above image is the composition of those 12 photos which I took through our Sky-Watcher telescope with solar filter. I still don't have proper camera or adapter for taking astronomical photos so I used

Once, long, loong, loooooong ago in the days of Late Jurassic period in the world of Pterodactylus, famous flying dinosaur, mother Earth was pretty busy with the works of creating continents, large mountains, seas and oceans like we know today. At the time the place we know as Europe was mostly covered by large sea by the name of Paratethys. About hundred millions of years later, dramatic tectonic changes started producing large mountain formations today well known as Alps and Carpathians, which made Paratethys to loose connection with Mediterranean to the south and to form separate large inland sea in today's central Europe. Millions of years later, there are two remnant seas that still exist with names of Black and Caspian Seas. But there was one more in nowadays Pannonain basin, that lasted almost 9 millions years and finally disappeared in the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, about 600,000 years ago with remnant lakes here and there especially in Hungary today. During its long

In the past couple of years, every now and again I was uploading video clips to the YouTube that I made either for the blog intentionally or for some other "publishing" reasons and I've just realized that they piled up to the number big enough I can safely pronounce almost two dozens of them today to their public status and officially publish them. It's not really that big "contribution" to the video community but still here they are. Hopefully some of you would find them inspirational and interesting. If you do, following is the home page of the official channel where you can subscribe for the future or contribute with new YouTube community social features. Milan's Public Journal YouTube Channel Similar to the blog's threads and for better classification of all videos within the channel I created several playlists and filled them with videos of mutual theme or place or event. One of latest video files, the short movie Viktor and I made this su

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45C (113F) degrees and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car and go to one of four nearby seas for couple of weeks to cool and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries which are always seriously depleted when summers come). Due to the shortest distance and good roads Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of drive. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those " gastarbeiter " people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long river of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way thi

Long ago I started to experience that one extremely memorable dream. One of those that doesn't fade out with first morning sunshine. Instead, it was regularly popping the surface of my mind making me wondering if these vivid images, haunting me every now and again, were just product of my imagination or perhaps there was something more hidden beneath. In the dream I wander the narrow streets of an unknown city one after another and after a while I stumble to the big square with large monumental building decorated with dark reddish bricks with no signs or any familiar markings I can recognize. I was always wondering where all these colorful images originated from and somehow always had that feeling that I am probably missing an important link to fully understand the whole picture. Recently this final link suddenly appeared and during our vacation last week I accidentally found my dream site and all missing pieces finally placed together forming a memory almost 40 years old. Someh