Starry Nights

 
 
We had some very nice clear skies Thursday and Friday nights.  I went down to the south end with different groups of people each night.  Besides just enjoying the starry beauty, I shot some pictures with a 14mm lens on Thursday and then many more with a 35mm lens on Friday night.

Here is a preliminary panorama made from the 35mm shots.  I've got some more images of the slave huts that I'll try compositing over the distorted huts in this picture.  There are enough pixels in the original file to print it at 39" by 21" at 300dpi.

The second picture is a cropped out section of the large image, to show some of the detail that is there.

Moon and Planetary Parade

The moon and planets put on a show last night.

Venus is between two palm trees towards the lower right. The moon is towards the middle with Mercury just to its upper right. And then Jupiter shines towards the upper left side of the frame.

It was quite a site, more dramatic in person than in the pictures, unlike the Milky Way.

You'll probably need to look at the large version of the image to see the Planets well.

Visits to TWR360 from 226 Countries / Territories in June

Many of the radio programs that we have on the air here at TWR Bonaire can also be found online at TWR360.  There is now audio and video content in 45 languages, and from 144 ministries and churches.

Three languages spoken on the Indian sub continent were added in June.  They are Punjabi, Gujarati and Tamil.

The International Bible Church of Bonaire is on TWR360  as well.

In June there were almost 581,000 visits to TWR360 using a browser.  The top five countries in descending order were:  Brazil, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and USA.

There were about 10,000 visits to TWR360 using Android and iOS apps last month.  New improved TWR360 apps should be in the app "stores" by mid to late August.

There are also 7,500 TWR360 followers on Facebook, 1,168 followers on Twitter and a little over 1,000 users coming to TWR360 from Roku devices, as well.

Larger Panorama

This is a panorama made up of more frames than the one I posted yesterday.  My laptop didn't have the horsepower to assemble this large scale pano.  But, my desktop was able to do it.

This pano is made up of 35 separate shots.  I filled in a couple gaps, so this isn't a scientifically accurate image.  But I'm happy with what I was able to do with just a camera, tripod and the two second timer on the shutter release.

You can click on this thumbnail to see it larger.
This would print at 27" by 21" at 300dpi. but I'm still hoping for a clearer night, maybe this year, maybe next...

Scorpius

Here is another picture from the other night.  Still a ten second exposure, but it is a stack of five of them, which helps reduce the noise.

This frame shows the level of detail contained in the panorama, if one were to print it in a large size.

The second image has the outline of Scorpius, as well as various Messier objects and NGC objects labeled.

You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

TWR 360 Update

Many of the radio programs that we have on the air here at TWR Bonaire can also be found online at TWR360.  There is audio and video content in 42 languages and from 133 ministries and churches.  The International Bible Church of Bonaire is on TWR360 now as well.

New improved TWR360 apps for iPhone and Android will be unveiled in June.  Most visitors currently use Web browsers though.

In April there were almost 600,000 visits to TWR360 using a browser.  The top five countries in descending order were:  Brazil, India, Indonesia, Ukraine, and USA.  There were about 10,000 visits to TWR360 using Apps last month. 

There are also almost 7,000 TWR360 followers on Facebook, and a little over 1,000 users coming from Roku, as well.

Southern Cross and Red Slave

I took a LOT of pictures both Thursday and Friday nights and then combined them into a five rows by three columns panorama.  I could have imaged the whole thing with a wide angle lens, but I wanted to catch as much detail as possible.

I used an 85mm lens on a Canon T1i (500D) crop sensor camera that has a modified IR filter.  This allows as more of the red nebula color to reach the imaging sensor.

If I were to print the original image at 300dpi, it would be around 25inches by 30 inches.  (63x76cm)
Here is a downsized version.  I'm still thinking of making a copy with the various clusters and nebulae labeled, but I won't get to it today.

Starry Nights

It has been very cloudy and hazy lately, which is great for bike riding and for working outdoors, but not good for stargazing.  Last night was quite clear.
I'm working on a picture similar to my recent Large Magellanic Cloud over the slave huts picture.  This new one will have the Southern Cross and Eta Carina Nebula over the slave huts.
The LMC picture was a single image.  This one will be a three row by three column panorama, which I hope I can print big.  I've got the top row stitched together, but haven't yet worked on the middle row or the bottom row.  So I still don't know if this is going to work or not.

The original pano is 8500 x 3500 pixels in size.  This image has been downsized to 1024 by 400-ish.  The Southern Cross is on the left side of the image.  It looks like a diamond shaped kite.  The bottom three stars are bluish and the one at the tip of the kite is yellowish.
The Eta Carina nebula is the large reddish blob towards the right side of the picture.  There are quite a few other nebulae and clusters visible in the image as well.
For example, IC2602, the open cluster at the bottom edge of the image, below the Eta Carina nebula, is commonly known as the Southern Pleiades.  There are also nice clusters to the upper left and lower right of the Eta Carina nebula.  There are a few small clusters in and around the Southern Cross.  And then there is the "Coal Sack" dark nebula to the lower left of the Southern Cross.

Antenna Tower Project Completed

On April 15, our guys finished up the first phase of a multi-year project replacing all the cross braces on all four of our antenna towers. Phase two will involve the double braces on the towers.

They've been working at this since 2009, as far as I can remember. The old cross braces were rusting out, so the new braces are thicker and have more galvanizing on them.

Here is a picture of some of the first batch of replacement parts and paint that were delivered in back in 2009, and of some of the old cross braces that were just replaced this year.




Each year, we received an additional shipment of parts and paint like the one pictured above.

New Version of the LMC

I just did some more work on my picture of the Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy as seen over Red Slave on January 30.  I tend to think of all of my astronomy images as "works in progress."  I frequently go back to the original raw files and try out new processing techniques.

 

There are a couple more things i want to do with this image, but it is cool enough now that i made a version to use as desktop wallpaper.  This version is somewhat smaller.

 

That night, with my naked eye, i could just barely barely detect that there was a slight glow in the sky where the LMC was supposed to be located.  A three minute exposure with the camera pulled in a lot more photons and made the LMC pop.

 

Here is a link to my original post, back on Jan. 30.

Did you know that even if you can't hear our gospel programs on the air from TWR Bonaire, you can probably find them online at TWR360! There is audio and video from 126 ministries, in 42 languages on TWR360. Check out www.twr360.com today. There are also twr360 apps for your Android or iOS devices.

A new improved version of the TWR360 Web site went live earlier this year. Be sure to check it out if you haven't visited lately. Updated apps are also in the works.

TWR360 Video Network is now on Roku! If you have a Roku device, TWR360 is now available to you as a streaming app on that platform. More than 1000 Roku users downloaded the TWR360 Roku app during the first month.

Here are the top 10 countries, in descending order, visiting TWR360 from a Web browser in March: Brazil, Russia, India, USA, Indonesia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Sudan, Kenya and Mexico.


Here are the top 10 countries, in descending order, visiting TWR360 in March, using one of the apps: USA, India, Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Russia.

Iggy Iguana Visits TWR

We beam programming in the Portuguese language to the Amazon region of Brazil each morning from 3am to 5am. These radio programs come to us in real time from the São Paulo office on Brasilsat.

Pictured behind Iggy is the Andrews 4.6m dish that we use to receive the Brazil feed. The tower in the background is a small piece of the original antenna tower that was erected at the transmitter site back in 1964. It now supports STL antennas that point South to the AM transmitter site, and North to the FM transmitter site.

Washington Park Scenes

I went on a bike ride in Washington Park a couple weeks ago.  The sky was super clear that day so I ended up taking a lot of pictures and not riding all that far.  It worked out fine since I'm still working at getting up to speed after my cycling crash in December and being off the bike in Jan. and Feb.

There are always some great views when first entering the park.  The roads were in good shape here, but more rugged in other places.

Here is a view of a quite different type of terrain that can be found along the coast.

Moon and Planets

When I was up on Seru Largu this past Sunday morning setting up for the annual Easter Sunrise Service, I noticed Mars hanging out near Antares at the head of Scorpius.  They both looked Orangey-Red.  Mars will be getting brighter over the next month or two.

This morning, the Moon arrived on the scene, and Saturn, the Moon and Mars made a triangle in the sky.  The moon was still pretty bright, but I could still pick out the main stars of Scorpius.

The first image is a wide shot of the moon, planets and a few stars.   You'll probably want to click on these images to see them full size.

 

Below is a cropped shot where the Moon is properly exposed and Saturn and Mars are by the edges of the frame.  Mars is down in the bottom right corner of the cropped photo and Saturn is towards the upper left side of the frame.

Not So Brainless Quadrupeds

The Bonaire drivers manual back in the day warned us to watch out for brainless quadrupeds on the roadway.  I guess they might have been referring to donkeys, goats, dogs and the like.  Ever since then we've had fun identifying the various types of brainless bipeds we encounter on the roads here.

Well, the donkeys aren't so brainless after all.  These spy photos, taken from the TWR parking lot in Hato, have found them out.  The donkeys mill around looking all forlorn and woebegone, until they lure in some unsuspecting tourist type.  Then they swarm around the car and pounce, as seen in this action sequence.

 

 

View from the Back Door

Here is the view today, from the TWR Bonaire office here on Bonaire.

 

It was inspiring to walk out the door and see the blue sky and the blue Caribbean.

Sunset with Tower, Cacti, and Birds

Some birds flew through the frame during the sunset video I recently posted.  They really zoom by at the 4X playback speed.  Maybe a half dozen frames had birds in them. 

Here is one of the frames with the birds in it.

Sunset Video

Here is a video of the Sun setting behind one of the towers at TWR Bonaire.  It is at 4X speed so it only takes a minute to play, instead of the four minutes it took to film it.

Mystery Object

 

We found this extender card while rummaging around at the TWR Bonaire studios.

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what device it might be used with?

Sunset Video

Here is a two minute clip of the sun setting over the ocean.  There is a teeny tiny green flash at the end.  It looks best at 1080P and full screen.