Friday, July 20, 2018

Space Station and Venus

The International Space Station was visible from Bonaire on Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week. On Wednesday, it passed quite close to Venus. In this video, Venus is the bright object to the right of the four palm trees. The ISS pops into view to the left of Venus at about 5 seconds into the video clip. The ISS gets quite close to Venus and then they both disappear behind clouds. The ISS emerges from the clouds first, and then finally Venus is visible again. The light down low on the left side among the tree trunks is an airplane headed to the Flamingo Airport.

Here is a link to the file on YouTube.


Monday, July 16, 2018

Moon and Planets Tuesday Evening





The sky was pretty clear tonight, so I zoomed to the beach and snapped the Moon, Venus, Regulus, and Mercury making a nice line in the sky.




The five stars to the right and upper right of Regulus form the Sickle, which is also the head of Leo the lion.


Moon and Venus on Monday night

The Moon was a little below Venus last night. It was a nice view. 
 
Tonight the Moon is to the upper left of Venus. If you start at the Moon, pass through Venus, that line will continue to the star Regulus and then on to Mercury.
 
Here is the view from last night.

 

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Moon, Planets and Milky Way

The super skinny Moon will be right next to Mercury tonight, at least as seen from Bonaire. (if the skies are clear) Mercury is to the left of the Moon. Venus shines up above the Mercury-Moon pair. The Moon will move up closer to Venus by Sunday night, July 15.
 
Here is a Milky Way panorama I shot last week after the rains cleared the dust out of the skies for a day or two.  Not sure how it will look downsized here.  The original file would print about four feet wide at 300 dots per inch. If I ever shoot this again, I'll try getting closer to the huts so they don't end up so teeny tiny in the image.
 
That's Mars coming up to the right of the red light on the horizon.  The red light at the top of a radar tower.  The Southern Cross is at the far right.  The Northern Cross is at the far left.
 

Saturday, July 07, 2018

Kibrahacha Trees 2018

I shot a zillion Kibrahacha tree photos over the last two days. I haven't even inspected them all yet. Here in no particular order, is a short selection of images so far.







Thursday, July 05, 2018

Kibrahachas Are on the Way

Following the big rains on Sunday, we've been eagerly anticipating the blooming of the Kibrahacha trees.

There is a lot of yellow on the hills of Sabadeco and the ones east of Antriol. I haven't been up north but hopefully those trees will all bloom too. I think tomorrow will be awesome.

Right now the flowers haven't quite popped yet.

Wednesday, July 04, 2018

Vesta July 2

We had 1.75 inches of rain on Sunday, the first real good rain in months. It may have washed some of the Sahara dust out of the sky because the sky was pretty clear Monday night, at least in the South where we wanted to see the Milky Way. Most of the rest of the sky was murky.  I never did see the North star for example.

But we were able to see, from west to east: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.

Here is a shot of the summer Milky Way showing where the asteroid Vesta has moved to. That is a cloud at the top left.  This is a much wider shot than the one I posted a week or so ago.