Shimarukus in November

Went on an early morning bike ride around the North end of Bonaire, before the men's breakfast at the International Bible Church. I was surprised to see some Shimaruku trees with fruit on them! I think of Shimarukus as being a late January type thing.

It was a good excuse to stop and take a picture. Actually, i feel worse when i stop than if i were to just keep going. When i get near home, i ease off the pace some, so i can "cool down" a bit. Then i feel ok when i stop.

Mondi Mud Frogs

Was just outside tonight so that he dog could have a final pee. Aren't you glad i shared that? 

 

The Mondi mud frogs are croaking up a storm tonight. We had 2.5 inches of rain today, (6.3cm) which is a lot for Bonaire. More and more mondi is being swept up by housing developments, but the song of the frogs can still be heard on the night breezes after a heavy rain.

Moon and Venus for September

The sunset Tuesday evening, here on Bonaire, was one of the best I've seen in a long time. The skies were spectacular as I was driving past the airport on my way South. Hopefully others will post some pictures of the sunset at its peak.

 

By the time I arrived at Red Slave, the colors were only a dim glimmer of what they had once been. But it was now dark enough that Venus and the Moon were visible, which was the image that I had been hoping for.

Skinny Moon Tonight

The New Moon was yesterday afternoon, so we made sure to be out looking for a skinny crescent moon this evening.

 

Fortunately the skies have been very clear the last couple days, so we were able to watch as it drifted down to the horizon.

 

Papiamentu language is now on TWR360

I've written about TWR's online media portal from time to time.  Well, a new language has just joined the roster, Papiamentu.

We printed 8000 copies of the Alimento Pa E Alma daily devotional book, and they are almost all gone. However these devotionals are now available online.

But wait, there’s more! Not one, but three Papiamentu programs can now be found on the TWR360 Web site. They are: Mi a Disidí, Muhé di Speransa and Alimento Pa E Alma.

Just go to www.twr360.org and click on Languages on the main page, and then click on Papiamentu.

You’ll then see current episodes of the three programs. If you then click on Ministerio I Igleseianan, you’ll see a link to the main page of each of the three programs.

For Mi a Disidí and Alimento pa E Alma, in addition to listening to the audio, you can get a pdf file with the text.

There is a new Alimento Pa E Alma episode for each day of the week. It matches the one in the printed devotional book, and on the radio.  There are three new Mi a Disidí episodes per week.

We’re still tweaking things, like: the Mi a Disidí spelling needs fixing on the title page, and Muhé Di Speransa too.

Coming soon are some Bible studies by Pastor Petrona called Awa Bibu.

There are TWR360 apps for Android and iOS devices too. On an iPhone, if you click on the little picture of the globe in the top right corner of the main screen, you'll get a list of languages that includes Papiamentu. On an Android phone, the first thing I saw when I launched the app was a list of languages that did not include Papiamentu. I then clicked around randomly at the bottom of that list of languages and a "home" type screen came up that has the same little map of the world at the top right corner that appears on the iOS home screen. I clicked on the little map and got a list of languages that does include Papiamentu.

And let me give a big thank you to the Francees and Senchi families for giving us the music heard on Mi a Disidí and Alimento Pa E Alma.

Please feel free to share this information about Papiamentu on TWR360 to anyone that you think might be interested.

Planets on Parade

Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are forming a nice line across the Bonaire sky. I tried taking some pictures Friday evening.


Last time i did this was in 2003, when Mars was a tiny bit closer to the Earth. My 2003 pix came out better than these, so I think i'll have to get out there and try try again.


But even these blurry pix show more detail than i could see in the telescope eyepiece the other night.

Space Station and Venus

The International Space Station was visible from Bonaire on Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week. On Wednesday, it passed quite close to Venus. In this video, Venus is the bright object to the right of the four palm trees. The ISS pops into view to the left of Venus at about 5 seconds into the video clip. The ISS gets quite close to Venus and then they both disappear behind clouds. The ISS emerges from the clouds first, and then finally Venus is visible again. The light down low on the left side among the tree trunks is an airplane headed to the Flamingo Airport.

Here is a link to the file on YouTube.

Moon and Planets Tuesday Evening

The sky was pretty clear tonight, so I zoomed to the beach and snapped the Moon, Venus, Regulus, and Mercury making a nice line in the sky.




The five stars to the right and upper right of Regulus form the Sickle, which is also the head of Leo the lion.

Moon and Venus on Monday night

The Moon was a little below Venus last night. It was a nice view. 

 

Tonight the Moon is to the upper left of Venus. If you start at the Moon, pass through Venus, that line will continue to the star Regulus and then on to Mercury.

 

Here is the view from last night.

 

Moon, Planets and Milky Way

The super skinny Moon will be right next to Mercury tonight, at least as seen from Bonaire. (if the skies are clear) Mercury is to the left of the Moon. Venus shines up above the Mercury-Moon pair. The Moon will move up closer to Venus by Sunday night, July 15.

 

Here is a Milky Way panorama I shot last week after the rains cleared the dust out of the skies for a day or two.  Not sure how it will look downsized here.  The original file would print about four feet wide at 300 dots per inch. If I ever shoot this again, I'll try getting closer to the huts so they don't end up so teeny tiny in the image.

 

That's Mars coming up to the right of the red light on the horizon.  The red light at the top of a radar tower.  The Southern Cross is at the far right.  The Northern Cross is at the far left.

 

Kibrahacha Trees 2018

I shot a zillion Kibrahacha tree photos over the last two days. I haven't even inspected them all yet. Here in no particular order, is a short selection of images so far.

Kibrahachas Are on the Way

Following the big rains on Sunday, we've been eagerly anticipating the blooming of the Kibrahacha trees.

There is a lot of yellow on the hills of Sabadeco and the ones east of Antriol. I haven't been up north but hopefully those trees will all bloom too. I think tomorrow will be awesome.

Right now the flowers haven't quite popped yet.

Vesta July 2

We had 1.75 inches of rain on Sunday, the first real good rain in months. It may have washed some of the Sahara dust out of the sky because the sky was pretty clear Monday night, at least in the South where we wanted to see the Milky Way. Most of the rest of the sky was murky.  I never did see the North star for example.

But we were able to see, from west to east: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.

Here is a shot of the summer Milky Way showing where the asteroid Vesta has moved to. That is a cloud at the top left.  This is a much wider shot than the one I posted a week or so ago.

Another look at Vesta from June 18

Here is a wider view of the Milky Way, were the asteroid Vesta was hanging out last Monday. I labeled a bunch of the cool things that we were looking at with the binoculars.


I also drew a red line to about where Vesta should be tonight


Oops - That bright blob labeled Jupiter is really Saturn!



The Pipe Nebula is a dark nebula created by foreground dust that is obscuring the background stars. If you look at this whole image upside down, like you would be seeing it in Australia, you'll see that the pipe forms the head of the Kiwi figure.



I use the pipe nebula to gauge how clear the sky is. If I can make out the pipe shape with my naked eye, the "seeing" is as good as it gets here.

Asteroid Vesta

The second largest asteroid, Vesta, is "close" to the Earth right now, as it orbits the Sun. Kind of like Mars will be at the end of July. They say that it can just barely be detected with the naked eye right now. Well, the sky was clear last Monday, so we zoomed out to a dark site to see what we could see. 

 

The moonlight was interfering until it set around 23:30. Then the clouds swarmed in. So we didn't get to see Vesta with the naked eye. We observed it in binoculars though. I snapped a couple pictures with the zoom lens at about 200mm. You'll need to click on the thumbnails to see much of anything in these images. 

 

The darker picture is a 58 second long exposure and shows fainter stars than we could see in the binoculars. The lighter picture is 96 seconds long and is starting to show the Milky Way star clouds. By now, Vesta will have moved towards the upper right side of the frame. If we ever get a cloud free night, I'll want to check it out again.

 

Oh, and that clump of stars to the upper left of Vesta is M23.

 

Mini Moon

 

The moon was "new" yesterday afternoon, so I was curious to see if I could see a moon sliver tonight. There was quite a bit of haze, but no clouds, and I was able to spot it. The Moon is a little easier to see in the photos than it was with the naked eye.

Sunrise Video Clip

Here is a short time-lapse sequence of the sunrise this morning.

Sunrise

I went out this am to get a sunrise sequence, based on yesterday's scouting trip.

I'll eventually have a 4 second time-lapse video. Here is an individual frame.

Moon Pix

While I was out taking pictures of Jupiter and Zubenelgenubi last week, I also took a few of the moon. I used the phone and a pair of binoculars on Wednesday night and the telescope and a camera on Thursday night.

I guess it is no surprise that the telescope and camera did better, but it was sure fun to mess with the phone and binoculars. Sometime I'll have to try the phone and the telescope.

With some work, both night's images could be made better, but there would probably always be a difference because of the difference in the raw images..

Jupiter and Alpha Librae part 2

I got the telescope out last night to take another look at Jupiter and alpha Librae. They just barely fit within the field of view of the f10 scope. Jupiter is at the top left of the frame and Zubenelgenubi a and b are at the bottom right of the frame.

For the second image, I centered Jupiter in the frame and cropped the heck out of the image so the moons were more visible. The top right moon is Callisto, Europa is between Callisto and Jupiter. And then during the time i was out there, Ganymede popped out below Jupiter.

That is what i like about observing Jupiter, one can watch the moons orbit around the planet, which by the way, was the beginning of the end for the theory that the Earth was the center of the Universe.