I Saw the Nova, Whoo Whoo

The Bonaire sky was super clear last night, so when I happened to awaken at 05:30 this morning, I went outside to look for "Nova Sagittarii 2015 No. 2."

It was super clear this morning too.  I could just see the nova with my naked eye.  Nova hunter John Seach discovered it on March 15, and it is still brightening.

Here are two pictures from my back yard this morning.  I've highlighted the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius in this shot and also drawn an arrow pointing to the nova.

The second picture is a 30 second exposure that shows some more of the Milky Way and background stars in the area.  One can also see a couple open clusters, globular clusters, the Lagoon Nebula, etc. in the second photo.  Can you still see the teapot?  Alternating between the larger versions of the two pictures will help.

Moon and Mars

The super skinny Moon was right next to Mars tonight.  Mars is just to the upper right of the Moon.  As you can see, earth-shine was lighting up the whole moon quite nicely, even though the crescent was only one day past new.

The Moon will be near Venus Sunday night.  Venus is visible towards the upper right corner of the image.

Spring has Sprung

Happy Spring everybody.  When Bill Early sent us the English news headlines today, he mentioned that is is snowing in eastern Pennsylvania today.  But Spring really does start at 6:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Tomorrow, Saturday, will find a super slender crescent Moon slightly to the left of Mars.  You might need binoculars for this one.

And Sunday night, the moon will be to the left of Venus.  That pairing should be easy to spot.

Oh Noooo... another Planetary Pairing

Yup, Uranus, which not too long ago, was right next to Venus, in the evening sky, has dropped down in the sky and is right next to Mars tonight.
In the first shot, which is cropped to the actual pixels, you can see the light blue color of Uranus and the red color of Mars.  You might also be able to just tell that you are seeing a planetary disk, as opposed to a star, especially if you click on these images to look at the larger versions of the images.

Below is the same shot, but not cropped as much.  Take note of the location of the planets relative to the palm tree in the bottom right corner of the frame.  You'll need this information to find Uranus and Mars in the final shot.

Here is a wide angle shot showing Venus, as well as Uranus and Mars.  I'm not going to label the planets this time.  Look just to the left of the top of the lower palm tree to find Mars and Uranus.

A Couple of Kibrahachas

We had quite a bit of rain last week here on Bonaire. A lot of the Brazilwood trees are blooming and I even spotted a few Kibrahacha trees with flowers on my bike ride this afternoon.

Volunteers are Here

We had a full house at the TWR - Bonaire morning devotions today.  There are eight visitors helping us with a couple projects this week.

Planetary Pairing

Venus and Uranus are quite close together tonight.  It was hard to see Uranus, because of the full moon and because Venus is so bright.  I could see it in my 10x50 binoculars, but it helped to know right where to look.  Higher magnification would darken the sky and would have helped tonight.
Venus has been moving up each evening, relative to Uranus and the stars.

Venus approaches Uranus

We got to observe Mars, Venus and Uranus in between some large clouds this evening.  Venus appears to be zooming upwards, compared to Uranus and the various stars in the area.  See if you can recognize any of the star patterns, once you realize that Venus has moved up compared to the picture from last night.

More Planetary Action

Mars has moved below Venus in the evening sky.  And Uranus is closing in on Venus from the top.

Mars and Venus are pretty easy to see here on Bonaire, around 7:30 or so, but one needs binoculars to spot Uranus.

Tomorrow night Uranus will be much closer to Venus than it was tonight, and the word is that

Uranus will actually be a teeny tiny bit below Venus on Wednesday.

Here is where the planets were tonight. When i zoom in on my computer, i can see the aqua blueish tint of Uranus.  It might or might not show up here.

Moon, Planets and Stars

Here is a shot of Venus, Mars and the Moon, from later in the evening.  You can see a number of stars now.  And the lights from the traffic circle are lighting up the foreground trees nicely.

Moon and Planets

Venus, Mars and the Moon  were awesome this evening.  The further west you are, compared to Bonaire, the closer the Moon will be to the two planets.

Star Trails Creation

Here is a short video clip that show my recent star trails picture being built frame by frame.
Actually this is an un-cropped version of the images.
You can follow the link to YouTube to see it full screen in HD.

twr360 Update

"twr360" is TWR's online media portal.  One can browse, in 31 languages,  for stuff (mostly audio) by topic, by Scripture reference, or by ministry name.  You can also read the Bible, watch the JESUS film and listen to worship music.  The site will pop up in whatever language you have your browser set to, or so I'm told.  I browse in English, so that isn't much of a test.

One can also access all this content from both Apple and Android apps.  There have been about 15,000 app downloads so far, and there were about 9,000 mobile sessions on twr360 in January.  All told, there were 364,024 visitors to twr360 from 223 countries or territories last month.  The top five countries visiting the site, in descending order, were:  Indonesia, Brazil, India, Ukraine and the USA. Rounding out the top 10 were Russia, South Korea, Bangladesh, Romania and Turkey.

More to see in the Bonaire Sky Park

There's lots going on in the Bonaire Sky Park right now.  (I think George DeSalvo coined that term.  I like it.)


Anyway, if you head outside after sunset each evening and look to the West, you can watch Venus and Mars getting closer and closer together.  They'll be closest on February 21.  BUT, the real show will be on February 20, when Venus, Mars and a teeny tiny crescent Moon will be clustered together.  I hope we have clear skies that evening, because I really want to see that.


Also, now that the moon is rising later each night, we can get some good views of comet Lovejoy again.  It seems to be dimming more slowly than predicted, which is good.  But you'll probably need binoculars to spot it.  You can find a detailed finder chart online at Sky and Telescope.  There is a link on that page to a printable black and white chart that you can take outside with you.

Moon and Jupiter

The Moon and Jupiter were pretty close together Tuesday night.  They were even closer on Wednesday morning.  Here is a shot from "White Slave."

It was a striking pairing as seen from our house in Hato around 6am.  But by the time we got to White Slave, clouds had rolled in with the result that when Jupiter was visible, the Moon was hidden, and vice versa.  So this is a composite of two shots.

Jupiter is to the right of the moon and a teeny bit higher in the sky. 

And a cruise ship can be seen heading towards Kralendijk for the day.

Star Trails

The Bonaire skies were very clear last night, so I went to a "secret spot" that I'd scouted out and shot a load of wide field images of the sky.

This picture uses the first 80 of the 177 exposures I made between 8pm and 11:30pm.  It will probably help to click on it to see it in a larger size.

I actually kept shooting 'till midnight, but clouds started rolling in, so I didn't keep the last batch of images.

As I type this, my computer is churning out a version with all 177 exposures in it.  And I'll try making a time lapse movie from these images as well.

Moon and Planets

The Moon and Venus were STUNNING in the sky this evening, Jan. 21.
And, if you knew where to look, you could see Mercury too. 

This picture was taken where Hotel Bonaire used to be at Playa Lechi.  Venus is the brightest object towards the upper left, with some stars of Capricornus visible as well.  The Moon is pretty obvious on the right side.  Mercury is at the middle of the bottom edge.  The trio just barely fit in the field of view of my lens at 70mm.  Phew!

Because Mercury was so close to the edge of the frame, it isn't that round, which makes it easier to see in the image, which is cool by me.

Comet Lovejoy on Jan. 12

Comet Lovejoy formed a nice equilateral triangle with the Pleiades and the Hyades (the horns of Taurus the bull) on Monday evening. 

Here is a picture that is a combination of 26 two minute long exposures from our back yard, here on Bonaire.  The stars came out nice and round, but the comet is a bit blurry, because it moved during the course of the imaging run.
the Pleiades are 2/3 of the way up on the left side of the picture.  The blue glow around the Pleiades is a reflection nebula.  The Hyades are an upside V shape centered near the bottom of the frame, and the comet is the greenish thing 3/4 of the way up on the right side.
The X shows where the comet was due to be on Tuesday evening.  I'm happy to report that it did not disappoint.









Here are the same 26 frames, but combined by indexing on the comet and not the stars.  So the stars show up as streaks, but there is more detail in the comet.  Click through to the larger image and check out the cool tail on the comet.

Spot Comet Lovejoy Monday evening

Comet Lovejoy will be easy to spot Monday evening, because the V shaped horns of
Taurus the Bull will point right at it.  You'll need binoculars though.

Here is an image from the other night.  Be sure to click on it to make it bigger. The lower arrow shows where Lovejoy was, and the upper arrow shows where it will be tonight, Jan. 12.
I drew lines around Orion and over the stars that make the horns of Taurus.
You can spot the Pleiades to the upper left of Taurus.  It looks to me like the comet will make an equilateral triangle with the point of the horns, and the Pleiades.

Comet Lovejoy

It was super clear tonight, and dark too, until the moon came up.  I could easily spot comet Lovejoy with the naked eye.
Here is a picture of the comet.  It is the whole frame as taken with an 85mm lens on a Canon T1i.

Venus and Mercury

Happy 2015.  The skies here on Bonaire are either super cloudy or super clear in January.  We've been watching comet Lovejoy for a few weeks now.  I hope I can get a picture of it this week.

Venus and Mercury make a nice pair after shortly after sunset this week.  They will be closest together on Saturday evening.
Here's what I saw this evening between 6:40 and 7pm,  at Playa Lechi, across the street from the TWR offices.  You'll need to click on the image to see it full size probably.  Venus is pretty obvious between the two palm trees.  Mercury is dimmer and is a little to the lower left of Venus.

 

The planets became easier to see as the sky grew darker.

Live Broadcast of The Messiah this Saturday

Duke University Chapel’s beloved annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah is going international this year in a broadcast and live-stream collaboration with TWR.
We'll be broadcasting the Saturday concert here on Bonaire, on The Voice of Hope, 89.5 FM.
Pre-concert music and interviews will begin at 2:30pm Bonaire time, and the live event will run until 6pm.

This concert, as well as the Friday evening performance will also be streaming live on the Internet at www.TWR360.org
You can find out how to listen to it here.

Chocolate

We recently visited Hershey's Chocolate World with Richard and Nancy.

It was great being there in the off season.  We did chocolate tasting and created our own candy bars and wrappers.  Yum!

And we checked the yummy smelling, just completed, chocolate house, made for the Christmas season.

So you can imagine my reaction this morning, when i came across an article from the Washington Post on MSN dot com, about the looming world chocolate shortage.  Yikes!

Bonaire Photo Print Sale

In connection with the 50th anniversary of Trans World Radio, Bonaire, I made a series of 13x19 prints of Bonaire scenes, that we've been offering at the TWR Office here on Bonaire for $20.  Half the proceeds go to TWR and half to my printer and ink fund. :)

We've had the prints on our BradSandra.Swanson Facebook page for a while, but I think you can now see them in one of my Picassa albums as well.  Try the link below.

13"x19" Bonaire Prints

Flamingo Fun

From time to time, as we travel in the States, we see the fabulous Bonaire Flamingoes' plastic front yard cousins.

Last week we were amazed to see an apparently new species of tree dwelling flamingoes.

Retirement Recreation

Our first stop during our two months in the States was with my parents at Willow Valley, in Lancaster, PA.  When we weren't stuffing ourselves silly in the dining hall, we visited the brand new recreation center.


There is a golf simulator that looked pretty cool to our untrained eye.
















There are a bunch of vintage 1950s and 1960s pinball machines, ski-ball, and the baseball game that I loved to play as a kid.

One does not need to insert coins or tokens to play any of these.















There is also a swimming pool, a couple eating areas, meeting rooms, a large gymnasium set up for volleyball and some indoor racket sports.  A basketball hoop is coming soon.  There's also a modern exercise center, and a bowling alley.

Once the word gets out, kids all over are going to be chomping at the bit to visit grandma and grandpa.

TWR 360

I just got this update from our TWR office in North Carolina.

twr360 now has more than 29 languages available. Last month, between 8,000-9,000 unique visitors per day from more than 225 countries/territories spent time on the twr360 site.

Check out the language of your choice online at twr360

TWR Global Quest Starts Today

Just a reminder that the TWR Global Quest online game starts up today.  No, i haven't signed up yet myself, :) but i'm planning to, so I can see what all the buzz is about.

TWR Global Quest online game

From September 9 through September 30, the USA office of Trans World Radio will be sponsoring an online game, TWR Global Quest.

Visit the site now and sign up so you will be ready to compete for weekly prizes, as well as a grand prize of a trip to a TWR broadcasting site.  If you live on Bonaire, you'd probably want to choose the Guam or the Swaziland option, not Bonaire!

You'll also learn how God has used ordinary people like you and me to reach every corner of the world with His Word over the past 60 years, and what is happening with TWR all over the world right now.

Ray Alary Reports from Bonaire

Ray Alary, president of  TWR Canada, was here on Bonaire a few weeks ago for the 50th anniversary event.  He wrote up an insightful behind the scenes look at the operations here.  Be sure to check it out and meet some of our unsung heroes.

Snorkeling Championships

As you might know, Bonaire offers world class snorkeling.  But not everyone is so blessed.


From the "if you have a lemon, make lemonade" department,  check out this video of the Bog Snorkeling Championships.

TWR Bonaire Office - Then and Now

I think I'll file this under "The more things change, the more they stay the same." 

Here's a shot of the first TWR Bonaire office at 139 JAA Blvd back in the day.  Looks like all the staff members had the same idea about what the hot setup for vehicles was, don't you think?

Here is a shot from a few weeks ago.  Looks like we still have the herd mentality going strong.

There are a couple more pickups that could have been in this shot, but they were out and about I guess.

TWR Bonaire Photo Archives

Carol Van Dyken created a PowerPoint presentation consisting of hundreds of old images from a variety of TWR archives.  We showed it at the open house on Aug. 11.
I've uploaded the pictures from this PowerPoint to a new Picasa album.  Hopefully this link will take you there.

TWR Bonaire 50th Anniversary

Trans World Radio just celebrated 50 years of gospel broadcasting from Bonaire.  We had a number of events last weekend, Aug. 8-11, and guests from near and far.
I took a bunch of pictures and have just put them on a new Picasa online album.  Hopefully this link will work for you.

The pictures can also be seen on Facebook, but the Picasa ones might show larger on your screen.
"TWR-Bonaire" is the name of the Facebook page.

You can read more about the 50th anniversary events in a article I wrote for The Bonaire Reporter.  It is on page 8 of the current issue.

Getting Here from There

If you've been wanting to visit Bonaire, but haven't been able to afford the airfare, have i got a deal for you. We recently booked some tickets at a great price by flying on the new Friday Atlanta to Bonaire Delta Airlines flight.

Now Delta is having a fare sale for Friday travelers.  You can do a round trip from Baltimore, or JFK in New York for $600.  Boston is $618.   (We're flying to Harrisburg, PA for not too much more than that.) The best prices are available online.

According to The Bonaire Insider, you have to purchase your tickets by August 12 and travel between Aug. 22 and December 12.  There are some blacked out dates around Thanksgiving.  You can read the details on the Bonaire Insider site.

Starry Nights

We had a couple clear cloudless nights this past week.  Really good nights are somewhat rare and I try to get out somewhere dark if at all possible.

Here are a couple shots with the Rokinon 14mm lens, looking southeast from the Trans World Radio antenna field.

 

 

This is a 58 second exposure at ISO 800 and f2.8.  (I shot a few at ISO1600 too, but haven't really messed with them yet.  The tower lights tend to get blown out at the higher ISOs.)  This picture is lightly processed, and then downsized a lot, but not cropped at all.
You can see quite a broad section of the Milky Way; from alpha and beta Centaurus on the right edge of the frame, past Scorpius (above and to the left of the second tower from the right), Sagittarius (pretty much in the middle), Scutum (sitting between the top of the second tower from the left and the left most tower), and on to Aquila (half way between the left most tower and the left edge of the frame.)  And if you look in the top left corner, you'll see the coat-hanger asterism (Brocchi's Cluster.)

The photo below is the same shot with some perspective correction to make the towers stand up straighter.  This makes the stars a little fuzzy, but I like the overall effect.

Moon and Venus

The Moon was near Venus before sunrise this morning.  Venus is to the lower left of the Moon.  You'll probably need to click on the picture to make it bigger in order to see Venus.

Planets on Parade

We've been watching each night as Mars has been moving towards the bright star, Spica.  They will be at their closest Sunday night.
The moon was right in there with them a few nights ago, but it was too hazy here to see much.  I could see the moon and just barely make out Mars.
Mars will continue to head East towards Saturn in the coming weeks.

TWR Transmitter Building

Here is a recent shot of the TWR Bonaire transmitter building, looking good, after a recent group of volunteers from Texas finished with it.

Note the guys on one of the towers in the background.  Note the graded area towards the foreground where the 2 Alco diesels used to be.

Awesome Aerial Views of Bonaire

Did you see the new video of the 4th of July fireworks on YouTube?  I really liked seeing the bursts whizzing right by the point of view of the quad copter mounted camera.


It reminded me that I have never mentioned some truly beautiful views of Bonaire shot with a DJI Phantom and a Go Pro Hero 3.  I shot some aerial views of Bonaire from a small plane back in the day, so when I first saw this new drone camera platform, I really wanted one.  But now I don't need one after all, 'cause I can just sit back and enjoy this amazing video on YouTube.

TWR is on Instagram

I just heard that TWR has begun posting pictures and video clips on Instagram.  There isn't much there yet, but that will change soon I bet.
Speaking of posting, I can't believe that I didn't post anything in June, arrrrg.

Captain Don Remembered

I just got back from a viewing downtown for Captain Don Stewart, who passed away this past Wednesday.  I joined with many many people, from all walks of life here on Bonaire, to say goodbye to Don and to express our condolences, love and heartfelt prayers to Janet.
Here is a brief obituary from the Bonaire Insider.

Sunset Hike

As part of the 45th anniversary happenings, Washington Park held a Sunset hike up Brandaris yesterday afternoon.  It was really fun.  I took loads of pictures, because the sun was in the West, instead of in the East, like it was every other time I've ever climbed Brandaris.

Here is one of the friendly Washington Park Iguanas that was hanging around the parking area at the start of the climb.

We went down the hill in two groups.  I went in the first group so I could stop and take pictures without falling behind.  The shot below is looking back towards the top of Brandaris from the ridge line below the peak.

I took zillions of pictures, so I might be posting more later this week.

Flying Disks

I hosted a couple of mini astronomy evenings during the past month.  We looked at the Moon, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn in a telescope.  Also looked at Omega Centari, during the second session.  It was quite awesome at about 100x.

By the way, the Moon was right next to Venus this morning at about 05:30.  It was a very nice pairing.

Whenever I have the telescope out, someone inevitably asks me if I've ever seen a UFO.  I have to say, no.  But we did witness a most amazing re-entry into the atmosphere of a Soviet satellite, one New Year's eve.  It was a UFO, until we found out what it was. :)

In an homage to The Wizard of Oz, and Independence Day, my colleague Dave Pedersen and I are pleased to present the following two images.  In the first shot, Dave encounters a UFO when it lands smack dab on him.  Miraculously, he survived the accident and veteran pilot that he is, was able to take the controls and put that baby through its paces, as seen in the second shot.

Kibrahacha Tree II

Here is the same full moon nighttime shot of the Kibrahacha tree that I posted a week or so ago.  I boosted the contrast and didn't crop it.  It looks more like a late afternoon shot with the long shadows, and you can see the stars more easily, especially in the full size image.

Swanson Car Update

I recently wrote that we'd probably be selling the Buggy soon.  Well, I've had a change of heart, for now at least.  It is so peppy and fun to drive with the new exhaust system.

But we did sell our trusty 1991 Suzuki Samurai this week.  It is almost 23 years old and still going strong but there were a number of little issues that i didn't want to have to deal with.  The McGurks bought it, so we still see it at the TWR office every day.
We replaced the Samurai with a 2006 Brazilian Chevy S-10 pickup.  2006 seems pretty new compared to 1991.  There are loads of these Brazilian Chevys on the island, and they seem solid and durable.  This one began its life in a rental fleet, so it has loads of scuba diver induced rust to deal with.  I'll work on that over the next weeks and months.  It runs great and looks reasonably good, and the price was right. (you can't see the rust unless you look underneath the pickup)

I love being able to toss my bike in the back and zoom off somewhere.  It will also be much easier to haul all my telescope gear to dark sites with the pickup.  If feels huge and heavy compared to the little Samurai.

The other morning i had to zoom in to the office at 3 am to rescue the Portuguese feed from Brazil.  The transmitter kindly calls me on the phone when there is "dead air."  I hopped in the pickup and turned on the lights, hmmm, hi beams.  So i clicked the lever to get the low beams and got, total darkness!  Turns out both low beam bulbs were burned out.  It was an easy fix, but quite a surprise at 3 am.  The plastic covers over the headlights were so yellowed and cloudy, that even the high beams weren't very bright.  The previous owner probably just used them all the time.
When I was at our friendly NAPA store buying the headlight bulbs, I also bought a Turtle Wax brand headlight restoration kit, and spent a fun couple of hours hand polishing each headlight housing cover.  Here are before and after pictures of the passenger side headlight.


The difference when driving in the dark is like night and day, ha ha.

Kibrahacha Trees

We had some rain last weekend and a few of the colorful Kibrahacha trees popped on Thursday. 
The ones in the Sabadeco area and along the dirt road to Rincon, north of Sabadeco were at their peak all day yesterday.


The trees on the hills to the east of Antriol, and the trees around Goto Lake and in Washington park were still dormant.

Here is a shot where I tried to capture how dramatically the bright yellow Kebrahacha trees contrast with the gray rocks and dark olive cacti.









I'm always trying to figure out how to get a different kind of image of kibrahacha trees blooming, 'cause the same trees bloom every year.  I've got pictures from most every year since 2004.  You can do a search on this blog to see them.  Someone, maybe my nephew Dan, or maybe Doug Britton, once suggested doing a full moon Kibrahacha picture.  Well, the moon was just full on Wednesday afternoon, so i zoomed out about 10pm. Thursday night to have a try.  I lit the tree with our pickup's headlights, so i could focus, then killed the lights and took the shot.  Here is the result.

 

This is a 20 second exposure.  The clouds moved some during the exposure, as did some of the colorful kibrahacha branches.  If you click on the picture to see the larger size version, you should be able to see stars in the sky.  I used the daylight white balance setting in the camera and did not tweak the colors in Photoshop.  As Chuck Roswell once commented, moonlight is reflected sunlight, so it makes sense that the colors will come out pretty well.  The clouds are a teeny bit reddish, which could be reflected light from Bonaire.

I was browsing my picture folders on my photo archive hard drive and noticed that the Kibrahacha tree events, and hence the weather here on Bonaire, has some clear patterns.  Kibrahachas only bloom when there is a long dry spell, followed by a good rain.

Here are some dates, based on a quick search of my blog posts.

May 24 and Aug 28 2004

April 20 and June 12 2006

April 27 and June 17 2007

July 03 2008

July 13 2009

April 12 2010

April 19, 2011

April 19 and May 10 2012
May 01 and May 10 and Aug 02 2013
May 15 2014