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.

Storm Update - Friday Morning

It looks like the winds are starting to get back to normal. We had maybe a half inch of rain last night and winds that were not very strong by Bonaire standards. And the surf on the west side wasn’t too heavy either.

One of our staff was watching the infrared satellite images and saw a giant red blob bearing down on Bonaire. About 30 miles to the East of us, it just sort of shriveled up and dissipated. Curacao got a foot of rain over the course of a few hours last night so the storm was busy doing its thing, but Bonaire was spared.

Storm is North of Bonaire

The satellite image shows that the storm is pretty much north of Bonaire right now.  The sat image is from 16:30 and the picture I took from the roof of the office was shot around 17:15.  The rains and winds are expected tomorrow from the trailing edge of the storm.

More Volunteers in Action

Here are a few more shots of our current crop of volunteers in action.

Reverse Wind

We've been watching tropical storm Matthew.  As I write this, it is still to the northeast of Bonaire.  The trade winds here have stopped and there is a breeze coming from the west.

This shot is looking north from the back door of the TWR office.  The flag is flapping in the "wrong" direction.

September Projects

We have a team here working on the antenna towers and another team from Syracuse, NY helping with a couple other projects.  There are a couple of new couples here as volunteers too.  I'll post about them some time soon.
Here are some shots of the recent activity.  More pictures to come in the near future.

Star Party

We have a bunch of volunteers here at TWR right now helping with a variety of projects.  We all went out to the transmitter site parking lot Saturday night to look at Saturn, Mars and a bunch of clusters, nebulae and even the Andromeda galaxy, through the Meade LX50, as well as my 20x80 binoculars.

The sky was quite clear and the stars looked great.  I set up a camera at the back of the property, and it shot some 780 images while we were in front doing our thing.  Here is a time lapse view of the milky way moving past the TWR towers during the 2+ hours that we were out there.  This video still needs some more work on the colors, but it is still fun to see the stars move across the scene.

Tower Work Update

Work continues on the four TWR Bonaire antenna towers.  The halfway point has been passed now, with the 24 guy wires on two of the four towers upgraded and reinstalled. 

Thank you to the guys for their hard work and to the Lord for His protection.

Thanks go to Carol VanDyken for the photo.

South End Sunset

Before heading to the Willemstoren lighthouse yesterday evening for the Moon Shadow experiment, i stopped off by the salt piles and at Red Slave to see what sort of sunset colors there might be.  It turned out to be too hazy for a green flash, but too clear for awesome colors.

I shot the salt piles because there is so much salt right now.  We're starting to have a fairly normal fall rainy season this year, but the two years up 'till now were quite dry, even for Bonaire.  It looks like it was good for sea salt production!

I drove on south to Red Slave.  We shot the setting sun through a hut window back a while ago.  Here is a fishing boat framed by a hut.

Moon Shadow

Yes, I'm old enough to remember that Cat Stevens tune!

Bud Gillan and I hung out at the Willemstoren Lighthouse for a few hours last night.  The moonrise was awesome.  Then we waited for the moon to get bright enough to cast a shadow.  This lighthouse shaped shadow got noticeably shorter as the moon rose higher.


Here are a couple pictures of the shadow at different stages, and hopefully, a time-lapse video of the shrinking shadow.  The moon got both brighter and whiter as it rose in the East.  The view is looking West towards Red Slave. 

Bonaire Lighthouses

Here are a couple lighthouse pictures from August.

The first is made from a bunch of 5 second exposures at the Willemstoren lighthouse.

You can see that haze was building during the time between when I shot the frames on the left side of the picture and when I shot the frames on the right side of the picture.

The second image is of the Lighthouse and Lighthouse keeper's house at Spelonk.  It is a combination of frames shot both at Spelonk and at Red Slave.


By the way, today, Sept. 14 is astrophotography day at www.creativelive.com  There are free streaming lessons all day and they repeat throughout the whole night.

Antenna Tower Work

Jim and Connie Hulse, and two others from Towers for Jesus, are here on Bonaire for a few weeks.  The are upgrading the guy wires on out towers with new corona rings and insulators.

Pictures are Bob (upper left) from Towers for Jesus and Lionel (lower right) from TWR Bonaire up on a tower.  You can see the new components on the ends of the guy wires.

Cloudy Skies

It has been generally cloudy for the last week or so.  And not the usual fluffy fast moving Bonaire clouds, but big heavy duty rain and thunder type clouds.  Like the ones I saw at noon today.

Moon occults Venus Friday

If you are here on Bonaire, the Moon might occult Venus tonight from 7pm to 7:30.

According to the "Stellarium" software on my laptop, the dark side of the teeny tiny crescent moon will pass right in front of Venus tonight, beginning around 7pm. Looks like Venus will be completely hidden by 7:30pm.

If the skies are clear tonight, be sure to check it out, especially if you have binoculars.

Planet Update, September 1

1.  Be sure to look low in the West right after sunset on Friday to try to spot a teeny tiny crescent moon near Venus and Jupiter.

2.  Higher in the sky, Mars has continued to zoom to the left (East,) leaving Antares and Saturn behind. Tonight, they are supposed to form a perfect Isosceles triangle.  You can compare the planet's positions in this shot with ones I posted last week.

The picture below is a test panorama made up of nine shots. The final image will be made up from 42 shots, and I'll be able to print it poster size. It probably won't look much different here on the Internet through. There was a surprising amount of haze down low in the sky that night, so I'll always be hoping for clearer skies.

Venus and Jupiter Conjunction

We could see both Venus and Jupiter tonight with the naked eye, but they are quite close together. The photo on the right shows about how the planets looked visually from our back yard.

The bottom photo is through a telescope. Venus is to the upper right in both photos and Jupiter is to the lower left.




Jupiter's four main moons are lined up nicely to the upper left of Jupiter. The one waaaay to the upper left of Jupiter is Callisto. Europa (L) and Ganymede (R) are side by side much closer to Jupiter. And last but not least, Io is the one closest to Jupiter.

Planet Parade This Weekend

Venus and Jupiter are getting close together in the evening sky. Check them out Friday evening a little after sunset. Look again Saturday evening and try to see if you can spot both planets without the aid of binoculars! They should be super close together on Saturday evening.

This picture is a screen shot from Stellarium software and shows what you should see in the west on Friday evening shortly after sunset.

The picture below is the Scorpius region of the sky as seen from Spelonk last night. Mars has noticeably moved more to the left of that imaginary line between Antares and Saturn.

Mars Moved, Whoo Whoo!

 
 
Mars moved between last night and tonight!   Last night, Mars was just to the right of an imaginary line drawn between Antares and Saturn. Tonight Mars is just to the left of said imaginary line.

The shot to the right is from last night's session at Coco Beach (where Hotel Bonaire used to be.)

The shot below is from tonight, as seen from our back yard in Hato.


You'll probably need to look at the larger versions to see my labels.

Mars and Saturn in Scorpius

Mars and Saturn are close together near the head of Scorpius.

Antares, Mars, and Saturn made an almost straight line tonight, and will do so again tomorrow night.

Here is a shot from the beach across the street from the TWR offices, by the traffic circle in Hato.

Venus, Mercury and Jupiter

Venus, Mercury and Jupiter are pretty close together in the evening sky right now.

Venus is to the lower right. Jupiter is in the middle, and Mercury is to the left.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, Venus and Jupiter might be so close together that you'll need binoculars to tell them apart. That sounds like fun. I hope we have clear skies.

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.