Planetary Update

Yikes, it's been so long since I've done a post that I almost forgot my login informaton!

A few days after I saw Mars, Saturn and the star Spica making a small triangle in the sky, the moon joined the grouping.  I ran out in the backyard and snapped a few pictures.  Never got around to posting until now though.

Compare the position of Mars with its position in the pictures in the post just below this one.
It was fun to see the configuration change from night to night.  Or maybe it is just fun if you live on a desert island...

Planetary Pair

The planet Saturn has been lurking near the star, Spica, for months now.  Recently, Mars zoomed over to join in the fun.                              In this shot, from last Friday, you can see Spica, Mars, and Saturn forming a small triangle towards the right hand edge of the picture.  They are a little below the middle of the picture from top to bottom.

Here is a close up shot of the planets. In this view, the triangle is rotated a bit clockwise compared to the shot above.  Spica is at the bottom left, Mars is to the right, and Saturn is at the top.

In this shot, taken Tuesday, you can see that Mars has moved to the upper left and is now in line with Spica (bottom) and Saturn (top.)
You can click on these pictures to see the larger versions.

What's in that Astrophoto

There is a Web site called Astrometry dot net that automatically identifies objects in one's astro photos.  Here is what the site found in my recent shot of Scorpius.  There is so much stuff in this part of the sky, that the labels overlap.  I'll try it again soon with a more zoomed in shot.

Church Group Visits

Last week we were visited by a great ministry team from the Midway Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. 

Besides enjoying the beauty and diversity of Bonaire, they helped with some construction projects and held a very successful a ladies night at the International Bible Church.

Another view of Scorpius

Just for fun, here is another shot from last night.
Besides the four minute long Scorpius astro photo that you can see in my previous post, I did get one full five minute long exposure.  The clouds obscured the bottom part, but I'm encouraged by the additional information in this longer exposure.  If I can ever get a whole bunch of five minute exposures, I think I'll be able to tease out more of the red around Antares.  There is also a huge area of faint red nebula in the upper left corner of the frame.  I can just barely detect it in this image, but not at all in the 4 minute image.

Semi Starry Night

The sky was a nice deep blue color yesterday afternoon, and there wasn't thaaat much haze on the horizon.  So, after getting home from work and feeding the dogs, I packed up my gear and headed out to a new spot out in the back boondocks of Bonaire, to try to get a good image of the Scorpius part of the summer Milky Way.

Well, the skies were indeed dark and transparent, but there were also tons of clouds floating by.  I stayed out 'till around 11pm and managed to get one good four minute long exposure.  My goal had been 20+ five minute exposures so I could combine them and get a nice clean picture.  But this one shot will have to do, for now.

In the image to the left, I've drawn in some lines showing the main stars in Scorpius and Sagittarius. This area is chock full of interesting things to look at with binoculars or a telescope.  A number of them are visible in this picture, if you view the larger size version.  I didn't label them so you'll have to get out your handy dandy star atlas if you want to identify them.

Planets on Parade part 2

Well, Jupiter, Venus and the Moon wrapped up their three day show this morning.  It was cloudy at 4:30, so I went back to sleep.  But at 5:30, I could see moon and planets.  They looked mighty fine up there.
Tried to go back to sleep, but gave up and got ready for my before-work bike ride.  I usually get up at 6 for that anyway.  The sky clouded up and I got rained on a little bit in Rincon, but I didn't care, 'cause I had already seen the moon and planets.

I shot the picture yesterday with an 85mm lens.  The wider shot today was with a 24mm lens, and gives a good feel for the scale and separation of the planets and moon.

Early Bird catches the Planets

If you happened to look to the East at 4:30 this morning, you would have seen Venus, Jupiter and the Moon forming a compact triangle in the sky.  If you missed it, try looking Monday morning when they will make sort of a straight-ish line in the sky.

Oh, I just checked and these picture look much better if you click on one of them to see the full size versions.

This picture, above shows what I saw with my naked eye this morning from about 4:30 'till 5, when I went back to sleep.  That is Jupiter at the top, the Moon in the middle and Venus to the lower right.  You might also be able to spot Aldebaran slightly below half way up on the right side of the frame.  This was a quarter second exposure.

When I shot a half second exposure, I also caught the rest of the stars that make up the V shape of the horns of the bull, Taurus.

The point of the V shape is near the upper right corner of the frame, Aldebaran is at the end of one of the horns, and the other horn points right at the moon. Aldebaran is known as a "red giant" star and you can see it has a different coloration than the planets and other stars.

There was a slight amount of haze in the sky this morning.  If it is clear tomorrow am, and if I get to bed early enough tonight, I'll take another picture so you can see where the moon moves to.  Speaking of moving, I do a picture in my files from a week ago, which shows Venus much closer to Aldebaran.  It is fun to watch the planets wander among the fixed stars.

Sorobon Reef

I did a snorkel at Sorobon yesterday with Sandra's cousin, Bud Gillan.  Some sections of the barrier reef out there are really nice.  Probably my favorite snorkel these days.

We saw a couple Scorpion fish.  Can you see the fish in this photo?

There are lots of interesting channels to swim in and out of. 

We saw some sea urchins making a comeback, which is great.  They all but disappeared a number of years ago.

Saw some nice trunk fish, and loads of other fish, in a whole range of ages and sizes.  Bud saw a big tarpon, but I missed it.

Sunday Celebration

We had a fun day at the International Bible Church yesterday.  Music was provided by Brandon Neal and the Francees Four.
A more talented group of guys you won't find anywhere.







A sizable group of students from the Community Bible Church in Nashville, TN was present too.  They are doing some volunteer work, like painting the youth center and the classroom roof.  They are conducting a kids Bible club in Nikiboko each afternoon this week too.

Jared, from the Nashville team gave the sermon.











Then we had a big church picnic at the beach that afternoon.  Great fun and food was had by all.

A Blast from the Past

We are starting to brainstorm about special events to commemorate TWR's 50th anniversary here on Bonaire in 2014.  So it was a particularly nice surprise when Efraim Angela dropped in to say hi.

Efraim came to faith in Jesus Christ at the Steve Green concert during TWR's 25th anniversary celebrations.  He went on to study at Word of Life and then returned to the ABC islands.  Among other things, Ephraim managed Radio Victoria, in Aruba, for like 10 years.

He is still in radio, doing a two hour daily morning show on Mega 88 FM, a commercial station in Aruba.  Ephraim's show is called Mainta Tempran ku Dios, and it is on from 6am to 8am Monday to Friday.  He also hosts a Tuesday Gospel Magazine at 8:10 PM on Tuesday evenings. 

You can hear Ephraim at www.mega88fm.com because the station is also streaming its audio online.  You can also find him on Facebook.

Meteor

I noticed two meteors in the star trails image that I posted recently.  I found one of the individual frames that has a meteor in it.
If you look at the full size image, you'll see the meteor's streak towards the left side of the picture.  I drew in some lines for the big dipper and little dipper.  The stars of Draco the Dragon weave up between the two dippers, down to the right of the little dipper, and his head is kind of to the upper left of the right most windmill.

Windmill Star Trails

We had clear dark skies here on Bonaire Tuesday night.  There were a fair number of clouds passing by, but I was able to get 65 or so shots without cloud activity.  I combined them into this picture of the stars circling the north star and the Bonaire wind farm.  You'll probably need to click on this image and see it larger to get the full effect.

I also made a time lapse video which shows the clouds and stars zooming along, which I may post in the near future.

Venus Transit and Green Flash Video

When the Sun got near the horizon, I took off the solar filter and made a video of the sunset.  Venus is the dark spot near the upper right edge of the Sun.  There is some green action along the top rim of the Sun, and then a small green flash as the last part of the Sun's disk disappears from view.
I uploaded this in 1080p HD, so if you have a 1080p TV or computer monitor, head to YouTube and you can see it full size.  I recently saw the time lapse Milky Way video on a friend's HD TV and it looked way better than it looks on my computer screen.
The sharp dark spot to the left of the center of the Sun is dirt on the lens, or something.  There are some sunspots visible, but they are not as distinct.

Venus Transits the Sun

The skies were clear enough Tuesday evening for us to get a great look at Venus passing in front of the Sun, just before the Sun set.

If you look closely at the above image, (you might need to click on it to see the full size version) you'll see a teeny tiny dent on the top right edge of the Sun's disk.  That is Venus starting to pass in front of the Sun.  Those other black spots on the Sun's disk are Sunspots.

In this second shot, above, Venus has almost completely entered the Sun's disk

This third shot is a crop of the second one.  The black area between the round edge of Venus and the edge of the Sun is known as the teardrop effect, I think.

As the Sun got nearer the horizon, some clouds passed by, and there was a bit of haze.  The Sun was still too bright to look at without a special solar filter.

The Sun was pretty near the horizon at this point and was into the haze.  The camera auto selected ISO 5000 to get this shot, still through the solar filter.  After this, I removed the filter and shot a video of the Sun dropping to and below the horizon.  That video is uploading to YouTube as I type this.  I'll post that later tonight I hope.

Summer Milky Way Time Lapse

We had a pretty clear night on May 20, so I journeyed out to a dark site and shot more than 900 exposures of the night sky.  Each shot was 30 seconds in length and there was about a second between shots.  I catnapped in the car while the camera did the heavy lifting.  Later my laptop had to do the really heavy work of processing all those shots.  Then actually assembling them into a video clip then went pretty quickly.

A satellite goes by during the first couple seconds.  Most of the other objects flashing by are airplanes.
At 10 seconds in, Saturn and Spica make a pair towards the top center of the frame.  Scorpius is rising halfway between the cacti and the left side of the frame.
At 16 seconds, the Southern Cross pops out on the right side of the cacti and the Eta Carina nebula and open clusters are setting towards the right side of the frame.
At 24 seconds, The Scutum star cloud is at the far left end of the Milky Way band of stars.
At 36 seconds, Altair and the other stars of Aquila enter from the top left side of the frame.
At 48 seconds, Delphinus the dolphin is at the top of the screen, half way between Aquila and the left side of the frame.
Around 56 seconds, it is getting pretty cloudy, but you can glimpse Piscis Austrinus and Grus rising to the left of the cacti.

I'm embedding the clip here at a fairly large size.  If it doesn't work for you, you can see it smaller (or even larger) on YouTube.

Papiamentu Radio Programs are Online

Project Hannah is a ministry of TWR, offering compassion, encouragement and hope to suffering women worldwide through prayer, awareness and radio programming.  I think that this ministry by women, for women, is coming up on its 15th anniversary soon.  Women's prayer groups have been established in over 120 countries, using a monthly prayer calendar produced in over 55 languages.  I did a quick check and it looks like the Project Hanna radio program, "Women of Hope" is on the air in over 60 languages, with programming in six more languages currently in development.

Some of these Women of Hope radio programs are available online.  And the Papiamentu version, "Muhe di Speransa," is one of them!  You can listen to 5 episodes here, or you can download the mp3s and listen to them later.  More episodes will be added on a regular basis, and if we can find the original radio scripts, they'll be made available too.

Oh Nooooo, More Kibrahacha Pix

Just when you thought it was safe to visit my blog,  I dug up some more pix from my photo phrenzy the other week.  This latest bunch of pix can be blamed on Ellen Muller, who commented on how many pix I took of the trees.  She was able to use that factoid to reassure her husband, Erwin, that her taking 90 photos of one Kibrahacha tree was perfectly normal behavior!

Well, Ellen's comment got me checking to see how many Kibrahacha pictures I really did take, when all was said and done.  I tallied up 356 with one camera, 28 with a second camera and telephoto lens, and 82 pix with a third camera during my Washington Park bike ride.  That comes to a grand total of 466 pictures. (not counting some total duds that didn't pass a first screening in Adobe Bridge)  In  my defense, I must point out that the most pictures I made of any one tree was a mere 20 images.

This week's Bonaire Reporter newspaper has a couple nice Kibrahacha pictures taken by Johan van Blerk. (that link will work until the next edition of the Reporter is posted online)  I spotted Johan's pickup truck out in the field (above) when I was on one of my photo expeditions.  I wonder how many images Johan shot?   An ad from the Green Label nursery is right below Johan's pictures.  They say that one can buy one's own Kibrahacha tree there.  Coincidence?  I think not.  I'll be there soon to see about adding a Kibrahacha to the Wayaka trees we have growing all over our yard. 

By the way, that Bonaire Reporter issue also has some other very interesting stories, including one celebrating Captain Don's 50 years on Bonaire.

I particularly like the contrast between the yellow Kibrahacha blooms and their more or less dead looking surroundings.  As seen in the photos above and below.

Drum roll, please.... that's the last of the Kibrahacha tree pictures for this year.  Probably.  I have a bunch of cool panoramic shots, but they won't work in the blog so you are spared for now.

Astro Time Lapse

The Milky Way is rising over the Spelonk lighthouse at the easternmost point of Bonaire. As the clip begins, the Southern Cross can be seen to the upper right of the lighthouse keepers house.  Alpha and Beta Centaurus can be seen right above the keeper's house.  Saturn and Spica make a nice pair at the top of the frame, a little to the right of the middle. Yellow white Saturn is to the upper left of blue white Spica. 
Part way into the video, the Sagittarius teapot rises along the left side of the light house towards the top of the lighthouse. 
Right at the very end, Altair rises from the lower left corner of the frame.
It was pretty cloudy and hazy, so a better video could no doubt be made at a future date.  But is was also windy and wet, with salt mist in the air.  It looks like my camera survived this time, but I  probably won't be back, unless there is no wind.

Spelonk outing

Last week, Sandra and I accompanied Brandon and Ben to the lighthouse and walk-in caves at the easternmost point of Bonaire.

I shot some hand held, available light, images in the cave with the 14mm wide angle lens that I use for astro-photos.  It turned out to be a good cave lens too!   Now I want to return some time with a tripod.  Then I could stop down the lens a bit for more depth of field, and lower the ISO from the 3200 I was using here, to hopefully reduce the "noise" a bit.  Oh, and there would be fewer "jiggles" with a tripod too.  In this instance I made a few exposures of each scene and picked the clearest one.

The intrepid explorers can be seen in the distance in this shot which provides a feel for the scale of this part of the cave.  That is probably an real Indian inscription at the top right corner.  We're pretty far in and it was actually quite dark.  It's amazing what a camera can eek out of the gloom these days.

Here is what the lighthouse looks like right now.  Brandon is telling Sandra all about how he bonked his head on the very sturdy scaffolding.  To my inexpert eye, the restoration looks like it is almost finished.  I studied the lighthouse at length the following evening (see below) and it really does seem to list slightly to the South.  The "Leaning Lighthouse of Bonaire" - cool.

Here is what the lighthouse looked like the next evening.  I shot almost 500 images over the course of 4 and a half hours, that I plan to assemble into a time lapse movie.  The Southern Cross can be seen to the upper right of the lighthouse keeper's house. Alpha and Beta Centaurus are right above that house.  The tail of Scorpius is right behind the lighthouse itself.  It was kind of hazy along the horizon, but you can see the Milky Way starting to appear just above the haze.  The MW will rise higher during the course of the movie.