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.