Driveway Astronomy

I've been experimenting with controlling my camera using my Android tablet. I've tried it a few nights but It hasn't been working like it is supposed to. BUT, I think I've finally figured it out.

I set up in our driveway and kept changing things around until I stumbled on the cause of  the problem, I think. I'll head out to a dark site first chance I get and see if I'm good to go. I shot about 500 exposures tonight as i was experimenting with different settings, but will throw most all of them out.

Here is a stack of the last ten images from the driveway tonight. Each of them is a six second long exposure, so the result is sort of like as if I had kept the shutter open for a minute, but without the stars becoming blurred by the earth's rotation. What amazes me is that we couldn't see the Milky Way at all with the naked eye here in Hato, but the camera picked it out quite nicely.

View from an Antenna Tower

"We" recently finished upgrading the ends of all the guy wires on our four antenna towers.  Here is a picture of the corona rings and insulator that they installed on each guy wire, 48 in all.



Below is a view of one of the cool double reef dive sites, as seen from one of the towers.  Interestingly enough, I recently noticed that one can detect the double reef structure in the satellite images on Google Earth!

Here is a view looking towards the Cargil solar salt pans and the ship loading pier.  There is a ship at the pier, which can provide a sense of scale.

Here is the view looking back towards town. 

A big thank you to Bob, pictured here, for the photos.

Regatta Week

Today is the Friday of the 49th annual Regatta Week here on Bonaire. It is a holiday for TWR, the schools, and apparently lots of other people. Check out all the cars in these two panoramas shot from the roof of the TWR offices.   You can see them larger if you click on one of them.