Moon, Planets and Stars

Here is a shot of Venus, Mars and the Moon, from later in the evening.  You can see a number of stars now.  And the lights from the traffic circle are lighting up the foreground trees nicely.

Moon and Planets

Venus, Mars and the Moon  were awesome this evening.  The further west you are, compared to Bonaire, the closer the Moon will be to the two planets.

Star Trails Creation

Here is a short video clip that show my recent star trails picture being built frame by frame.
Actually this is an un-cropped version of the images.
You can follow the link to YouTube to see it full screen in HD.

twr360 Update

"twr360" is TWR's online media portal.  One can browse, in 31 languages,  for stuff (mostly audio) by topic, by Scripture reference, or by ministry name.  You can also read the Bible, watch the JESUS film and listen to worship music.  The site will pop up in whatever language you have your browser set to, or so I'm told.  I browse in English, so that isn't much of a test.

One can also access all this content from both Apple and Android apps.  There have been about 15,000 app downloads so far, and there were about 9,000 mobile sessions on twr360 in January.  All told, there were 364,024 visitors to twr360 from 223 countries or territories last month.  The top five countries visiting the site, in descending order, were:  Indonesia, Brazil, India, Ukraine and the USA. Rounding out the top 10 were Russia, South Korea, Bangladesh, Romania and Turkey.

More to see in the Bonaire Sky Park

There's lots going on in the Bonaire Sky Park right now.  (I think George DeSalvo coined that term.  I like it.)


Anyway, if you head outside after sunset each evening and look to the West, you can watch Venus and Mars getting closer and closer together.  They'll be closest on February 21.  BUT, the real show will be on February 20, when Venus, Mars and a teeny tiny crescent Moon will be clustered together.  I hope we have clear skies that evening, because I really want to see that.


Also, now that the moon is rising later each night, we can get some good views of comet Lovejoy again.  It seems to be dimming more slowly than predicted, which is good.  But you'll probably need binoculars to spot it.  You can find a detailed finder chart online at Sky and Telescope.  There is a link on that page to a printable black and white chart that you can take outside with you.

Moon and Jupiter

The Moon and Jupiter were pretty close together Tuesday night.  They were even closer on Wednesday morning.  Here is a shot from "White Slave."

It was a striking pairing as seen from our house in Hato around 6am.  But by the time we got to White Slave, clouds had rolled in with the result that when Jupiter was visible, the Moon was hidden, and vice versa.  So this is a composite of two shots.

Jupiter is to the right of the moon and a teeny bit higher in the sky. 

And a cruise ship can be seen heading towards Kralendijk for the day.