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.

Washington Park Scenes

I went on a bike ride in Washington Park a couple weeks ago.  The sky was super clear that day so I ended up taking a lot of pictures and not riding all that far.  It worked out fine since I'm still working at getting up to speed after my cycling crash in December and being off the bike in Jan. and Feb.

There are always some great views when first entering the park.  The roads were in good shape here, but more rugged in other places.

Here is a view of a quite different type of terrain that can be found along the coast.

Moon and Planets

When I was up on Seru Largu this past Sunday morning setting up for the annual Easter Sunrise Service, I noticed Mars hanging out near Antares at the head of Scorpius.  They both looked Orangey-Red.  Mars will be getting brighter over the next month or two.

This morning, the Moon arrived on the scene, and Saturn, the Moon and Mars made a triangle in the sky.  The moon was still pretty bright, but I could still pick out the main stars of Scorpius.

The first image is a wide shot of the moon, planets and a few stars.   You'll probably want to click on these images to see them full size.

 

Below is a cropped shot where the Moon is properly exposed and Saturn and Mars are by the edges of the frame.  Mars is down in the bottom right corner of the cropped photo and Saturn is towards the upper left side of the frame.

Not So Brainless Quadrupeds

The Bonaire drivers manual back in the day warned us to watch out for brainless quadrupeds on the roadway.  I guess they might have been referring to donkeys, goats, dogs and the like.  Ever since then we've had fun identifying the various types of brainless bipeds we encounter on the roads here.

Well, the donkeys aren't so brainless after all.  These spy photos, taken from the TWR parking lot in Hato, have found them out.  The donkeys mill around looking all forlorn and woebegone, until they lure in some unsuspecting tourist type.  Then they swarm around the car and pounce, as seen in this action sequence.

 

 

View from the Back Door

Here is the view today, from the TWR Bonaire office here on Bonaire.

 

It was inspiring to walk out the door and see the blue sky and the blue Caribbean.

Sunset with Tower, Cacti, and Birds

Some birds flew through the frame during the sunset video I recently posted.  They really zoom by at the 4X playback speed.  Maybe a half dozen frames had birds in them. 

Here is one of the frames with the birds in it.

Sunset Video

Here is a video of the Sun setting behind one of the towers at TWR Bonaire.  It is at 4X speed so it only takes a minute to play, instead of the four minutes it took to film it.

Mystery Object

 

We found this extender card while rummaging around at the TWR Bonaire studios.

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what device it might be used with?

Sunset Video

Here is a two minute clip of the sun setting over the ocean.  There is a teeny tiny green flash at the end.  It looks best at 1080P and full screen.

Sunset - Moonrise

 

Sandra and I journeyed  to the southernmost point of Bonaire Monday evening to watch the Sun set and the Moon rise within a few minutes of each other. 

 

Here are a some shots of the sunset.

 

Sunset - Moonrise II

The Sun set around 18:41 and the Moon rose at 18:44 on Monday evening.

Sandra and I went out to Red Slave to enjoy the show.  We both were also capturing the scene with cameras.

Here are a few pictures of the Moonrise by the Willemstoren lighthouse.

 

Sunset Through a Telescope

Tyler and Tim were at the TWR transmitter site again last night. They are working on a super duper sunset time lapse. I got them situated and then drove over to the Sorobon road and shot a picture of the sun setting behind a tower as seen through a Mead ETX 90 telescope. According to Google Maps, i was 1.28 miles from the tower. (2.07 km)

 

That green rim at the top of the sun is not chromatic aberration from the lens, because a mirror telescope doesn't produce chromatic aberration. The green rim at the top and red rim at the bottom is the atmosphere acting like a prism and refracting the sunlight. This is basically where the green flash comes from. The green part of the Sun's image sets last.

 

Evening at the TWR Bonaire TX Site

 

 

I was out at the TWR Bonaire transmitter site last night to check out the sunset.

Tyler Gates, from the TWR office in NC is here shooting video and hoping to get a sunset time lapse at the transmitter site. So was hanging out there too.

I came up with a crummy time lapse, but got a couple interesting photos.

One of the sun setting right next to a tower, and one of the moonlit scene after it got fully dark.

Aerial Views of Bonaire 2016

Back around 2006, before there were affordable drones, I had a wonderful time flying around the island  in the flying club's plane with TWR missionary Ernie Franke, and shooting a bunch of pictures from the air.  You can find some of the shots on the blog.

Then in 2013, Susan Davis, at InfoBonaire, alerted me to some new aerial views of Bonaire.  These images were actually serving as an innovative advertising tool, but I loved seeing Bonaire from the unique aerial perspectives.  You can see our house on the right side of the Hato-North image, for example.

Recently, Paul Donahue, the man behind the Aerial Views of Bonaire visited us at the TWR office.  He shared how he came up with the concept and tested it in his home stomping grounds on the Gulf Coast of Florida.  Back before the Internet, these aerial views were printed on big posters and displayed around town, so to speak.  His business, Resort Graphics International, has really taken off since then (yes that's a pun) with great aerial imagery of quite a number of resort areas around Florida and the Caribbean.

Besides providing a unique advertising portal for a limited number of paying customers, Paul also donates some links on the Aerial Views maps to non-profit organizations.  So if you browse through the Bonaire images, for example, you'll see the Donkey Sanctuary and Trans World Radio identified.
So thank you very much Paul Donahue, for creating these cool aerial views, and for your generous heart as well.

Be sure to check out these awesome aerial images of Bonaire.

Orion Nebulae

I shot a couple pictures of the constellation Orion the other night.  It wasn't as clear as the night I got the LMC pictures, but it was still pretty good.  Seeing these images has me wanting to get back out and try to frame the constellation better.  I took four 3 minute exposures and combined them into a panorama in Lightroom.

I drew some lines on the wide field shot so you can see the outline of Orion, the belt and the sword.  Betelgeuse is the orange star on the left side and Rigel is the blue white star on the right side.  All the red stuff swooping around the scene is nebulosity.  It is known as the Orion molecular cloud complex.
For the second image, I cropped in to the sword and belt area so you can see more detail, like the flame nebula, the horsehead nebula, the running man nebula, and M42 the Orion Nebula.

If I don't get back out to image Orion again this year, due to haze, the waxing moon, etc.  I'll probably have another go at processing these shots.  I usually come back to them after some time ahs passed and try different techniques.

Another TWR360 Update

We're starting to promote www.TWR360.org heavily on the air, here at TWR Bonaire. An all new and improved version of TWR360 will be rolling out in two stages later this month. Check it out now and come back later to see the changes.

There is audio and video in 42 languages online now. There is a twr360 app for your phone too.

TWR360 received a record number of visitors in January, 639,524 to be exact, from 224 Countries and Territories.

There was a new one day record of 21,568 visitors on January 26.

Brazil again lead the way in visits from Web browsers. The rest of the top 10 countries, in descending order, are: Russia, the USA, India, Kenya, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Ukraine, the Netherlands and Mexico.

The USA lead the way last month, among visitors using Android and iOS Apps to visit TWR360. The rest of the top 10 countries connecting by apps include: India, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the United Kingdom.

Large Magellanic Cloud

I haven't seen the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy, since 2010.  But I've been hankering to try to get a better picture of it, with some foreground objects in there for scale.

 

The night sky looked pretty clear tonight, so I zoomed out to Red Slave to see if I could get a shot. The LMC is only about 6 or 7 degrees above the horizon at its highest, so the sky has to be very clear to be able to see it.

 

There was some light haze, but I was lucky enough to get a couple shots when the LMC was located in a hole in the haze. This is a three minute exposure with a 85mm lens working at f2 and ISO 800.

 

 

Three Moons over Bonaire

I went outside with the dog around 10 pm for his final pee and saw the Moon real near Jupiter. It was quite striking.

 

You can use the Moon to identify all the major planets over the next week or so.

 

The moon will be near Mars on Feb. 1. It will be near Saturn on Feb. 3 and it will make an equilateral triangle with Venus and Mercury on Feb.5.

 

 

 

I shot a picture of the moon and Jupiter and when I zoomed into the shot, lo and behold I could see two of Jupiter's moons! So the close-up picture below shows three moons in total. whoo - whoo 

You'll need to click on these images to see the larger versions I think.

 

I am regularly amazed at what a camera can capture with a normal lens, 85mm in this case.

Full Moon Rising

The Moon was only three hours from being completely full when it came up this evening at 6:20 pm. The Sun set at 6:30, so they were sitting on opposite horizons at the same time.

It was quite windy and there were still eight kite sailors out on the water at sunset.

Here is what the moon looked like a little later on as I continued around the south end of Bonaire.

Wednesday Sunset

We've been watching the moon grow in size since Monday evening.  It is still a nice crescent shape, but is much higher in the sky already.

The sunset was nice this evening, not super bright, but there was color of some sort around the entire 360 degrees of the horizon.

You can see the moon in the full size version of the picture.