Sunday, May 29, 2011

Milky Way Time Lapse

We had a very clear night last week, the first one since February. So I zoomed out to Red Slave to take pictures of the Milky Way rising over the huts.


At the start of the sequence, you can see the red Eta Carina nebula towards the lower right edge of the frame. The Southern Cross and Coal Sack nebula are to the upper left of the Eta Carina Nebula.


Scorpius looks like a giant fish hook on the left side of the frame. After a little while, the Sagitarius Teapot enters the frame from the lower left side.


A bunch of planes fly by, there is lightning on the horizon, and a car zooms by. And then after about three and a half hours, clouds start rolling in.


I drew some lines in the picture, above, to show what some of the constellations look like. You'll probably need to click on it to see it large enough to see the lines. This frame comes from the middle of the sequence so Eta Carina has already set and Sagitarius has already entered from the left.

Scroll down the page to see the video. If you select the 720p version, it looks reasonably good, even at full screen size.














Sunday, May 22, 2011

Braced for Action

Ivan is busy prepping new parts for our next round of tower rebuilding action, which will probably take place in early 2012. Notice the giant fan in the background. There was little to no wind last week, here on Bonaire, which made for great bike riding, but hot and nasty working conditions. The new cross brases are cleaned, taped, primed and painted. The braces have to make good metal to metal contact where they connect to each other and to the tower legs.

After all new parts are bolted onto the tower, the joints are all primed and painted in place.



Better Mousetrap

We've got guys up painting the towers again this year. Lately they have been painting in between the rain showers. I suspect that is why they are working down low, so they can escape the rain when it comes along. Lionel designed and built this trap and it is working great. They caught a number of rats last week.





Monday, May 09, 2011

Church Construction

Some of us stuck around after the monthly Saturday morning men's meeting at the new church site and did some work on the roof.

Walt hopes to get the last windows installed in the next day or two, which will make the building weather tight.

He also hopes to construct the platform/stage this week.

As you can see, there are lots of clouds these days, but we still felt pretty fried by 1pm.



Sunday, May 08, 2011

Morning Planetary Parade

Four planets are putting on a beautiful show in the pre-dawn skies here on Bonaire. It's been pretty cloudy here, so I've only seen three of the four planets so far, but I'll keep looking... The triangular pattern will change from morning to morning because the planets are on the move. The view is best here on Bonaire from around 05:15 t0 05:30. By 5:45am the sky is getting kind of bright. The further north you are the more difficult it will be to spot the planets. Sky and Telescope has a great animation that shows just how the planets are moving relative to each other right now. I highly recommend it.

Jupiter is at the lower left. Venus is at the top center and Mercury is to the lower right of Venus. Mars is to the lower left of Jupiter, but the clouds were in the way Sat. and Sun. mornings. I did spot Mars on one of my pictures from Saturday, but just barely.



Saturday, May 07, 2011

8th Annual Rincon Bike Ride

This past Sunday, the day after Rincon Day, the people of Rincon held their eighth annual community bike ride. Each year they honor one of their senior citizens who is still actively riding their bike. It is a fun family event with great support from the community and quite a few Bonaire businesses.

We swarmed up and down most of the streets of Rincon.



The reason they invite me each year can be seen at the far right side of the picture below. They have prizes for the oldest rider, the youngest rider, the best decorated bike, the most unusual bike, the oldest bike etc.










Church Building progress

We are having a work day at the new IBCB church building today. I'll see if I can get some action photos. Here is how the site looked earlier this week. We had a lot or rain yesterday so it is probably muddy this morning.