Sunday Celebration

We had a fun day at the International Bible Church yesterday.  Music was provided by Brandon Neal and the Francees Four.
A more talented group of guys you won't find anywhere.







A sizable group of students from the Community Bible Church in Nashville, TN was present too.  They are doing some volunteer work, like painting the youth center and the classroom roof.  They are conducting a kids Bible club in Nikiboko each afternoon this week too.

Jared, from the Nashville team gave the sermon.











Then we had a big church picnic at the beach that afternoon.  Great fun and food was had by all.

A Blast from the Past

We are starting to brainstorm about special events to commemorate TWR's 50th anniversary here on Bonaire in 2014.  So it was a particularly nice surprise when Efraim Angela dropped in to say hi.

Efraim came to faith in Jesus Christ at the Steve Green concert during TWR's 25th anniversary celebrations.  He went on to study at Word of Life and then returned to the ABC islands.  Among other things, Ephraim managed Radio Victoria, in Aruba, for like 10 years.

He is still in radio, doing a two hour daily morning show on Mega 88 FM, a commercial station in Aruba.  Ephraim's show is called Mainta Tempran ku Dios, and it is on from 6am to 8am Monday to Friday.  He also hosts a Tuesday Gospel Magazine at 8:10 PM on Tuesday evenings. 

You can hear Ephraim at www.mega88fm.com because the station is also streaming its audio online.  You can also find him on Facebook.

Meteor

I noticed two meteors in the star trails image that I posted recently.  I found one of the individual frames that has a meteor in it.
If you look at the full size image, you'll see the meteor's streak towards the left side of the picture.  I drew in some lines for the big dipper and little dipper.  The stars of Draco the Dragon weave up between the two dippers, down to the right of the little dipper, and his head is kind of to the upper left of the right most windmill.

Windmill Star Trails

We had clear dark skies here on Bonaire Tuesday night.  There were a fair number of clouds passing by, but I was able to get 65 or so shots without cloud activity.  I combined them into this picture of the stars circling the north star and the Bonaire wind farm.  You'll probably need to click on this image and see it larger to get the full effect.

I also made a time lapse video which shows the clouds and stars zooming along, which I may post in the near future.

Venus Transit and Green Flash Video

When the Sun got near the horizon, I took off the solar filter and made a video of the sunset.  Venus is the dark spot near the upper right edge of the Sun.  There is some green action along the top rim of the Sun, and then a small green flash as the last part of the Sun's disk disappears from view.
I uploaded this in 1080p HD, so if you have a 1080p TV or computer monitor, head to YouTube and you can see it full size.  I recently saw the time lapse Milky Way video on a friend's HD TV and it looked way better than it looks on my computer screen.
The sharp dark spot to the left of the center of the Sun is dirt on the lens, or something.  There are some sunspots visible, but they are not as distinct.

Venus Transits the Sun

The skies were clear enough Tuesday evening for us to get a great look at Venus passing in front of the Sun, just before the Sun set.

If you look closely at the above image, (you might need to click on it to see the full size version) you'll see a teeny tiny dent on the top right edge of the Sun's disk.  That is Venus starting to pass in front of the Sun.  Those other black spots on the Sun's disk are Sunspots.

In this second shot, above, Venus has almost completely entered the Sun's disk

This third shot is a crop of the second one.  The black area between the round edge of Venus and the edge of the Sun is known as the teardrop effect, I think.

As the Sun got nearer the horizon, some clouds passed by, and there was a bit of haze.  The Sun was still too bright to look at without a special solar filter.

The Sun was pretty near the horizon at this point and was into the haze.  The camera auto selected ISO 5000 to get this shot, still through the solar filter.  After this, I removed the filter and shot a video of the Sun dropping to and below the horizon.  That video is uploading to YouTube as I type this.  I'll post that later tonight I hope.