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.

Sunset - Moonrise

 

Sandra and I journeyed  to the southernmost point of Bonaire Monday evening to watch the Sun set and the Moon rise within a few minutes of each other. 

 

Here are a some shots of the sunset.

 

Sunset - Moonrise II

The Sun set around 18:41 and the Moon rose at 18:44 on Monday evening.

Sandra and I went out to Red Slave to enjoy the show.  We both were also capturing the scene with cameras.

Here are a few pictures of the Moonrise by the Willemstoren lighthouse.

 

Sunset Through a Telescope

Tyler and Tim were at the TWR transmitter site again last night. They are working on a super duper sunset time lapse. I got them situated and then drove over to the Sorobon road and shot a picture of the sun setting behind a tower as seen through a Mead ETX 90 telescope. According to Google Maps, i was 1.28 miles from the tower. (2.07 km)

 

That green rim at the top of the sun is not chromatic aberration from the lens, because a mirror telescope doesn't produce chromatic aberration. The green rim at the top and red rim at the bottom is the atmosphere acting like a prism and refracting the sunlight. This is basically where the green flash comes from. The green part of the Sun's image sets last.

 

Evening at the TWR Bonaire TX Site

 

 

I was out at the TWR Bonaire transmitter site last night to check out the sunset.

Tyler Gates, from the TWR office in NC is here shooting video and hoping to get a sunset time lapse at the transmitter site. So was hanging out there too.

I came up with a crummy time lapse, but got a couple interesting photos.

One of the sun setting right next to a tower, and one of the moonlit scene after it got fully dark.

Aerial Views of Bonaire 2016

Back around 2006, before there were affordable drones, I had a wonderful time flying around the island  in the flying club's plane with TWR missionary Ernie Franke, and shooting a bunch of pictures from the air.  You can find some of the shots on the blog.

Then in 2013, Susan Davis, at InfoBonaire, alerted me to some new aerial views of Bonaire.  These images were actually serving as an innovative advertising tool, but I loved seeing Bonaire from the unique aerial perspectives.  You can see our house on the right side of the Hato-North image, for example.

Recently, Paul Donahue, the man behind the Aerial Views of Bonaire visited us at the TWR office.  He shared how he came up with the concept and tested it in his home stomping grounds on the Gulf Coast of Florida.  Back before the Internet, these aerial views were printed on big posters and displayed around town, so to speak.  His business, Resort Graphics International, has really taken off since then (yes that's a pun) with great aerial imagery of quite a number of resort areas around Florida and the Caribbean.

Besides providing a unique advertising portal for a limited number of paying customers, Paul also donates some links on the Aerial Views maps to non-profit organizations.  So if you browse through the Bonaire images, for example, you'll see the Donkey Sanctuary and Trans World Radio identified.
So thank you very much Paul Donahue, for creating these cool aerial views, and for your generous heart as well.

Be sure to check out these awesome aerial images of Bonaire.

Orion Nebulae

I shot a couple pictures of the constellation Orion the other night.  It wasn't as clear as the night I got the LMC pictures, but it was still pretty good.  Seeing these images has me wanting to get back out and try to frame the constellation better.  I took four 3 minute exposures and combined them into a panorama in Lightroom.

I drew some lines on the wide field shot so you can see the outline of Orion, the belt and the sword.  Betelgeuse is the orange star on the left side and Rigel is the blue white star on the right side.  All the red stuff swooping around the scene is nebulosity.  It is known as the Orion molecular cloud complex.
For the second image, I cropped in to the sword and belt area so you can see more detail, like the flame nebula, the horsehead nebula, the running man nebula, and M42 the Orion Nebula.

If I don't get back out to image Orion again this year, due to haze, the waxing moon, etc.  I'll probably have another go at processing these shots.  I usually come back to them after some time ahs passed and try different techniques.

Another TWR360 Update

We're starting to promote www.TWR360.org heavily on the air, here at TWR Bonaire. An all new and improved version of TWR360 will be rolling out in two stages later this month. Check it out now and come back later to see the changes.

There is audio and video in 42 languages online now. There is a twr360 app for your phone too.

TWR360 received a record number of visitors in January, 639,524 to be exact, from 224 Countries and Territories.

There was a new one day record of 21,568 visitors on January 26.

Brazil again lead the way in visits from Web browsers. The rest of the top 10 countries, in descending order, are: Russia, the USA, India, Kenya, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Ukraine, the Netherlands and Mexico.

The USA lead the way last month, among visitors using Android and iOS Apps to visit TWR360. The rest of the top 10 countries connecting by apps include: India, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.