Kibrahacha Trees in Washington Park

I brought a small camera along on my weekly bike ride through Washington Park, in case I saw some Kibrahacha trees in bloom.  Ha Ha.   There were zillions of them!  And I took gobs of pictures.  The park rangers know about how long it usually takes me to ride through the park and they were wondering why I took so long.  Lots of stops for snapping photos.  A fringe benefit of all the stops wasw that my legs were feeling quite fresh for the ride back to Rincon and up "death hill" to the radio towers on my way back home.

Here is another shot of Brandaris to add to my collection.  If you do a search on Brandaris, you'll probably find quite a few shots over the years.  Click on the thumbnail 'cause this one looks good full size.

Here is a view of the back side of Brandaris as seen from Wayaka.  Yes, it was pretty hazy today.  It was quite clear on Thursday, when I took a lot of Kibrahacha pix.  Friday was probably the peak for the blooms, but is was getting hazy.  The trees still looked surprisingly good today as well.

Here is a view from the parking lot at Yuwa Pass. This is just a minute fraction of the trees that I could see from this vantage point.

More Kibrahacha pix

Here are some more views from Washington Park.

I'm going to leave these thumbnails fairly small in size.  You can click on one of them and page through the images at their normal size.

This year is the first time I've seen most of these inside the park Kibrahacha trees.  I was surprised at how many of them there are.

Most but not all Kibrahacha trees are found on the westward facing slopes of a hill.

Foto Frenzy

Sandra and I zoomed around Bonaire yesterday looking for Kibrahacha trees in bloom.  I know where most of them are, but we saw a few that I hadn't noticed before.

Here is one  of our old favorites.  It used to be on a dirt road, but now it is a paved road.  Some houses on the hills of Sabadeco have Kibrahacha trees right in the yard.









I shot 348 pictures of Kibrahacha trees yesterday.  Good thing I wasn't using film!  So I can just about post one Kibrahacha picture per day for a year.  Ha ha.  Here is another one.

Kibrahachas are blooming

A few Kibrahacha trees flowered the other week, but they are ALL going off right now.  We had a really heavy rain on Sunday, almost two inches in one hour here in Hato.  Sandra and I went on a Kibrahacha tree observing trip this morning.

Washington Park Roads back to Normal

We had some rain last week and the roads in Washington Park are bumpy again.  They are still much better than they were back in March after the rainy season, but they are not billiard table smooth any  more.

The places that usually have mud puddles and ruts have them again, and there are bumps and lumps on the uphill sections from pickup truck rear tires slipping and gripping.

But the packed down mud makes for easy peddling on a bike, even if the ride is no longer super smooth.

I spotted a couple pelicans drying their wings in the early morning sunshine at Boca Bartol.

Astro Time Lapse Looking North

Here is a short time lapse video of the night sky, looking to the north from the 1000 Steps area on Bonaire.  The constellation Auriga is on the left side of the frame and the Big Dipper is upside down at the right side of the frame.  The stars all seem to revolve around the north star, which can be see to the upper right of the tip of the small tower  a little to the right of the middle of the frame.  I think the video looks better if you click the link to view it on the YouTube site itself.

Star Trails

Here are a couple star trail photos.  The first one is using some of the images that made up the time lapse video I posted recently.  The second photo uses some of the images that make up the time lapse video I'll post in a few minutes.  I could only use a small fraction of the images I shot because most of them had clouds in them, which really messed up the resulting picture.

In the image above, we are looking towards the south west over the Radio Nederlands radio station.  You can still identify the southern cross in the lower left corner.  The south pole is below the horizon, here on Bonaire, but you can get a feel for where it is from the way the star trails curve around it.

This one is looking towards the north from the 1000 steps area.  The north star is just above the horizon a little to the right of the middle.

Time Lapse Asto Video

I've assembled 477 pictures like the one I posted recently into a video clip.  The Southern Cross is at the lower left and moves to the right.  Orion begins on the right edge of the screen and moves off-screen.
You can see a number of airplanes fly by and there are a few ships that cruise along the horizon.
I'm not sure how much you'll be able to see in this embedded video.   But you can always go to YouTube and see it larger.

Some Kibrahacha Trees Are Blooming

Although it has been very cloudy here, it has also been dry.  But we had a nice downpour the other morning and today I noticed that some of the Kibrhacha trees in the hills to the east of Mentor and North Salina are starting to blossom.
I think they will be looking nice by tomorrow and should still look great on Saturday.  If I do a before-work bike ride tomorrow, I'll check out the trees to the east of Sabadeco and further north to see if they are starting to blossom too.  My guess is that only some of the trees will pop and the rest will wait for the next big rain storm at some time in the future.

New Old Sunset

We saw a mind bogglingly beautiful sunset the other evening, here on Bonaire.  I snapped a few pictures.  I haven't looked at them yet on the computer, but I doubt that they will be able to capture the glory of the event.

I've been experimenting with the free beta release of Photoshop 13.  You can go to Adobe and download it too, if you'd like to try out Photoshop (for a limited time) without plunking down the big bucks.  I've also watched a bunch of instructional videos about the new software.  One thing that caught my attention was a demo of the new version of camera raw.  The instructor commented that it seemed to cause fewer gnarly edge artifacts than the previous versions.

Well, I just happened to have a nice picture of the sun setting behind some cacti, that has awful edge artifacts.  Last night I hooked up one of the trusty E-SATA hard drives that I use for archiving my old stuff and found the original image file from the camera.  And, yes! the new camera raw let me make all sorts of adjustments without getting any nasty artifacts.

Here is a link to a few images from 2010, when I was out by Washikimba and took lots of pictures of the sun setting behind some cacti.  And below is a new improved image.  If you click it to see a larger version, you can probably see a little green along the top edge.

Starscape

We had a few pretty clear nights lately.  I'm still waiting for an epic clear night, but we only get a few of those a year, and this has been a cloudy year.

Here is a shot from the dirt road between Sabadeco and Rincon.  You are looking towards the southwest, over the Radio Nederlands transmitting site.
BelNem and the TWR towers can be seen at the lower left side.  Bopec is just out of the frame to the right.
The bright lights along the horizon towards the right side of the radio station are ships.  One tanker was super bright.  You can see the trail an airplane made, low on the horizon, during the 20 seconds the shutter was open.


I have a few hundred images like this that I hope to make into a time lapse movie in the near future.
You can click on these images to see them in a larger form.  The second picture includes a few constellation lines and names to help you orient yourself in the sky.  The eta Carina nebula complex can be seen half way between the Southern Cross and the false cross.  The false cross always looks larger than the real cross.  I'm not sure why they look the same here... might be lens distortion.  I'm pretty sure that I've marked the false cross correctly, because there is a star cluster to the right of the right hand star and below the bottom star.

Stranger than Fiction

Would you believe that many of the dirt roads in Washington Park are smoother than the roads in town?  It could be true.  They just graded all the park roads, but the roads in town are all really torn up from the new sewer system project.
I can't remember the last time I've ridden my road race bicycle here on Bonaire, but my trusty mtn. bike gets daily use.

Here is a shot of the lighthouse in the park.  They are renovating all the lighthouses on Bonaire, so this one will probably be looking and operating at its best real soon.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from Bonaire.  The IBC held its annual sunrise serviced up on Seru Largu at 6 am today.



We started with a time of contemplation as music played on the PA and the sky brightened.

The lights of town were twinkling nicely.  Made up for the lack of stars, heh-heh.

The almost full moon was shining in the West.

Besides singing some Easter songs, and short message from Pastor Baran, we also had an Easter themed dramatic reading.

Dark Sky Astrophoto

Remember the picture,from December, of the constellation Orion rising over the TWR offices?  Here it is again.  ha-ha

Well, a couple weeks later I went out to the east coast of Bonaire, not far from the land sailing track, and shot another image of almost exactly the same section of sky.  The super dark skies allowed me to do a much longer exposure.  You can see the Milky Way, as well as a bunch of fainter stars and Nebulae.

I've labeled some of the points of interest in the picture below.  If you click on one of these small images, you can cycle through larger versions of all three of the pictures to better see the details and to be able to read the labels.

Check out the bright orange color of the "red giant" stars Aldebaran and Betelgeuse.  The star Sirius is blue white, and the star, Capella, is sort of in between.  All those glowing red areas are glowing ionized Hydrogen gas.  They are known as emission nebulae.  There is a hint of the blue reflection nebula around the Pleiades star cluster.  The constellation names are in Italics.  Star names and nebulae are in normal type.  These images were all shot with a Samyang 14mm lens, on my Canon T1i, that has been modified by Brent Oliver, to make it more sensitive to the red emission nebulae.

Lost and Found

We were recently visited by a team of auditors from the USA.  I'm happy to report that the audit went well, but their car, the venerable wine colored Toyota Starlet, was stolen from in front of their hotel the last night they were here.  The police found it, about a week later, out in the back boondocks of Bonaire.  It was stripped clean, kind of like the cars we used to see at the side of the Long Island Expressway, while on our way to Shea Stadium as a kid.

 Here are the auditors, pictured meeting with Joe Barker and Donna Gassert, in the happier days before their car was stolen.

All Fired Up

TWR missionary, Brandon Neal's, father is a professional fire fighter.



So while Brandon's mom and dad were here seeing their grandson, oops, I mean visiting their son and daughter in law, Barry presented a training session to the TWR staff about the various types of fires, as well as how to use the new fire extinguishers we have strategically placed around the TWR facilities.



TWR just happened to have a whole batch of obsolete fire extinguishers on hand that needed to be discharged before they could be discarded, so we all actually got to practice putting out a simulated fire!

Happy Birthday

Cees and Clary Bijl love to visit Bonaire.  Cees worked in banking in Curacao for many years and more recently in Canada.  They always volunteer their help here at the TWR office and they are much appreciated.


Cees celebrated his 70th birthday while they were here last month.  He also did the 35km walk from the slave huts to Rincon, in support of the Bonaire special Olympics program.


Come back soon Cees and Clary.

Visitors from Nashville

We were recently blessed by a ministry team that came to Bonaire from the Community Bible Church in Nashville, Tennessee.
Dr. Rick Smith, below, spoke at the Sunday morning service and at two special meetings for the men.

The ladies in the team held special meetings for women on three evenings.  The women's meetings were well attended, and from what I hear, a great success. 

New Astrophoto Camera from Canon

If you browse through my blog, you'll see that one can take great astro photos with a modern DSLR.  Back in the day, Canon had a model especially for this purpose, the 20Da.  A friend of mine still uses that older camera to get great astro images.

I have a T1i that has been modified for astro photo use.  That mod instantly voided the warranty, of course.  So I'm really happy to see that Canon has decided to make it easier for all of us by coming out with a new camera optimised for astro photo use, the 60Da.
You can read about it at bhphotovideo.  My T1i is still working great, so no, I won't be lusting after a 60Da, but I'm really psyched to see that Canon is continuing to support the astronomy community.

It has been super cloudy this year, here on Bonaire.  I have one ok-ish image of the winter sky from January that I might post sometime, but Feb. and March were completely clouded out.  During the past couple evenings, Venus just went right by the Pleiades, which would have been cool, but we missed it due to overcast skies.  Grrrr.

I do have a whole list of images I want to get if and when the skies clear up here on Bonaire.

New Mystery Object

I wonder what it is and what it does.

Udo and Caleb both quickly identified the last mystery object that we uncovered in the shop.  Here is another one.  It is a well machined metal part with a nice look and feel to it.  We have a few of them here.

IBC Classrooms

The new classrooms at the International Bible Church are almost finished.  Here is now they looked this week.  Walt says that the floor space is about 1/4 that of the main meeting room.

Washington Park

They are fixing up the roads in Washington Park.  The roads are still pretty bumpy, but they are actually much improved.  Well, at least from the entrance as far as Slag Bai.  The road back out of the park is still full of ruts from the rainy season.

The cows were chowing down, not as close to the road as the last time I rode by.  A cute calf has been added to their number.  It was right in the road a few weeks ago.  I was worried that its mother would take exception to me as I rode by.  I saw a few teeny tiny baby goats this week too.

There were still a few Pelicans hanging out by Bisé Morto.  They've been there since mid Feb.

Slag Bai was looking nice.  You can see the road grader that's been cleaning up the roads at the left edge of the shot.

Moon and Planets

It has been amazingly cloudy for weeks and weeks.  That's great for working outdoors and for bike riding.  But not so good for stargazing.
We lucked out tonight and had a nice view of the moon right next to Venus, with Jupiter loitering below, right above the trees.

You can also just barely see the Pleiades a little to the upper right of the moon.

Close Up images of the Moon

One question I often hear in connection with my public astronomy sessions or my astro photos is, "can you see the flag the astronauts left on the moon" or variations on that theme.   Well.. no ground based telescopes can see details that small on the moon, but the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite can.

NASA has just released some images taken from about 25km above the moon's surface that show the flag, the astronauts footprints, the lunar rover etc.

I did some searching around to see if I could find hi rez versions of the images and came across the University of Arizona's LROC Operations Center web site.  It has all sorts of interesting stuff.
Here is a link to a page with press release images.  Click on these helpfully labeled press release images to see them larger.  Click on March 5 and March 6 on the calendar to see Apollo landing sites.

This browse gallery page has larger images.  They are in long narrow strips that recorded the lunar surface as the orbiter passed over it.  You can zoom in on these images to see the details shown on the press release images.  And you can download these huge image files as well.  I'm going to try cropping some of these images to create hi-rez lunar desktop wallpaper for my computer.

Cutting Edge Communications

TWR Unveils New Digital System
Whether you call it a digital warehouse for the Kingdom, a tool for leveraging Christian media content or simply a game changer, LinguaDMS is all about revolutionizing the way ministries deliver their message to a global audience.

The cloud-based system is aimed at providing TWR partners and other ministries with a cost-effective tool for managing, archiving, re-purposing and enabling distribution of digital files, including videos, audio, images or text. Content can be stored, called up, and readied for presentation in formats compatible with any of the communication technologies already in use around the world – from websites and smartphones to Internet radio and terrestrial broadcast outlets – and new devices can be added to the mix as they are developed.

More formally described as a customizable digital-asset-management solution, LinguaDMS grew out of a desire to mine TWR’s vast store of media content – nearly 60 years of Christian broadcasts in more than 200 languages. Although TWR has increasingly broadened its outreach to incorporate the Internet in recent years, LDMS also enables TWR to assist other ministries with their digital asset management and in delivering their content to multiple media platforms.

You can learn more by visiting the LinguaDMS site.

This technology is already working in the background to supply the audio files and program scripts for the Project Hannah Website and iPhone app.
English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese content is up and running now.  The Project Hannah team is working on getting the Papiamentu version of the Women of Hope radio program online soon.

EOZ Official Opening

The EOZ works with students who need special tutoring and guidance before being slotted back in a standard classroom setting.
The EOZ have spruced up the former TWR office wing very nicely, and have been working with kids for some months now.
Today was the official opening, with speeches and presentations, and refreshments.

They also unveiled a couple of great flags.

You'll need to click on the pix to see the flags better.








A really talented group of kids provided music for the festivities.

The building in the background is the office wing where the EOZ is located.  The building on the left houses the TWR studios and offices.

Sleeping Dogs and Couch Potatoes

Our dogs love vegging out with their owners while we watch TV.

You may wonder, do they shed hair all over the place?  Yup.  But the tile floors are easy to clean.  Last year, Sandra brought a new puppy back from Florida as carry on baggage.  We then used the dog carrier as a dog crate, since he liked it so much.  Then he outgrew the carrier and Ethan built us a puppy pen.  The puppy kept growing.   So now we are on PuppyPen Mark II, and he's not a year old yet.  He still likes his personal space, and even goes in there to sleep on his own.  Notice the open door.

Speaking of watching TV.  Yesterday and today there was not One, not Two, but three International cycling races on our TV system here.  Whoo whoo.  It was a great feeling, Saturday, to be splatted out in classic couch potato fashion, chowing down on carbs and nuts, while watching the riders on TV peddling their legs off.  Didn't feel guilty at all, having already put in three and a half hours in the saddle myself, riding out to and around Washington Park, and then back home on the main East road.

The riding in the park was great, with overcast skies (no sunburn) and a cooling wind.  However, on the way out of the park it started pouring down rain. Between the park and Rincon, the rain was so fierce that it was stinging my face and arms.  I took the paved road home from Rincon because the rain soaked dirt roads would have been like peddling through mashed potatoes.  When I got home, Sandra reported that it hadn't rained a drop in Hato!

In addition to the great bike racing, a major TV highlight today was the "Serie A1" pro volleyball match from Italy.  The number one team, Trentino, started their 6 second string players against the number two team, Cuneo.  And they managed to win the match!  It was epic stuff.