Jupiter and Alpha Librae

Jupiter is hanging our right next to Alpha Libra these nights. Alpha Librae is also known as Zubenelgenubi.  a-Librae is an easy binocular double star.

 

So last night I connected my cell phone to my binoculars to see what I could see. You can see Jupiter and some of its moons on the left side of the frame and a-1 and a-2 Librae on the right side of the frame.

 

I'm also going to include a screen shot from the Stellarium software. It identifies which of Jupiter's moons are which. The moon below Jupiter is lost in the glare of the planet. It looks like you'll need to click on the pictures to see the whole frames.

 

Radio World Article about TWR Bonaire

The May 9 issue of Radio World magazine has a well rounded story about the new TWR Bonaire transmitter.  You can read it here.

There are quotes from TWR President Lauren Libby, from Nautel, the TX manufacturer, and from Tom King of Kintronic Labs, who designed and built the antenna tuning systems.  They even have a picture of me in there, and used one of my night time shots, (not this one.)

Be sure to check it out.

Moon and Venus

The Moon and Venus made a nice pair in the evening sky last night. 

Here are a couple shots.

Those streaks aren't UFOs. I think there is some goop on the lens.

Moon, Saturn and Mars line up

From top to bottom, the Moon, Saturn and Mars were lined up nicely in the pre-dawn sky this morning. By tomorrow, the moon will be to the lower left of the planets.

 

I shot this with a 85mm lens so we are looking more "zoomed in" than my previous shots made with a 35mm lens. The darker picture is a short exposure so that the moon isn't blown out.

 

The longer exposure shows more stars. I labeled some of the Messier objects in the frame. Most of them have cool names in addition to their "M" numbers. You can Google them if you'd like to see more.

 

Big Fire

It appears that there was a pretty big fire east of Antriol, here on Bonaire, this morning

 

While I was watching the thick black smoke started changing to grey and white, which I took to be a good sign.

 

Planets Update

Mercury is gone from the evening sky, but Venus is impressive.

 

In the pre-dawn sky, Mars has been "zooming" to the East and is closing in on Saturn. They will be even closer on Monday-ish.

 

Here is a shot from 05:45 this morning. The lines point to Saturn, on the left. Mars, in the middle, and on the right is where Mars was 10 days ago, right between the Lagoon Nebula and the Triffid Nebula. I have a picture of that too, but it is grainy.

 

On this shot, I drew in the Teapot of Sagittarius. To the right of the spout, open cluster M7 is quite visible with fainter M6 to its upper right.

Moon, Venus, Mercury

The Moon, Venus, and Mercury made a nice horizontal line in the evening sky tonight

 If you live west of Bonaire, which is most of N. America, you might still be able to run outside and see this.

Moon and Planets Sunday Morning

Happy daylight savings time to those of you in the USA.  Bonaire time is now the same as the time on the East Coast.  whoo whoo

If any of you are early-birds and see this post while it is still dark out Sunday morning, here is what the moon and planets look like before dawn

 

From lower left to upper right, you can see the Moon, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter. You can also see the fishhook shape of Scorpius and the teapot of Sagittarius, sitting below the line of planets.

 

 

Three Morning Planets

While Mercury and Venus grace the early evening skies, there are three bright planets lined up in the pre-dawn hours.  This week, the moon is moving among the planets.


I shot a picture of the moon and planets lurking between the clouds this morning at 6:15. (March 8)  I've included lines to show where the planets are. The sky is light enough around 6am, that only the planets are visible. From left to right, the planets are Saturn, Mars and Jupiter


I'm also including three screen grabs from Stellarium that show where the moon was compared to the planets this morning, and where it will be Friday morning and Saturday morning. So if you have clear skies, you can go out before dawn and use the moon to lead you to three planets. You'll no doubt want to view these images at full size to be able to spot the planets.

Full Moon Rise

The moon was full back on Thursday, and the sky was pretty clear. I think the rainy season might be finally ending. So I zoomed down south to see if I could do a moonrise time-lapse.

 

I didn't get the shots I wanted, but it was close enough to whet my appetite. The photo shows the moon right behind the lighthouse keeper's house, and the video clip shows the moon rising.

 

The moon rose just a few minutes before the sun set. I saw the best green flash I've seen in years in the West, while my camera was merrily snapping away in the East.

 

 

Venus and Mercury

We've been watching Venus and Mercury in the west, right after sunset.


Tonight the two planets are at their closest together configuration.

The cropped photo shows the planets better. Once you know where to look, you'll probably be able to spot them in the full photo.

March 7 update:  Mercury has now moved from the lower right of Venus to the upper right of Venus

New Bonaire Transmitter is on the Air

We've heard encouraging reports from listeners in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Brazil.

Here are 2 links to pictures of the TX Dedication and of other events that took place last week.

TWR transmitter dedication event to be on Facebook Live

We're planning to stream on Facebook Live on Tuesday, Jan. 30 beginning at 2:30pm EST.  (3:30 Bonaire time)

https://www.facebook.com/twr.bonaire/

Awesome Aerial Views of the TWR Office - New Mural

Hi,
Just saw this on YouTube.  Very nice imagery shot at that perfect time of the day.  There are also some nice views of 1000 steps by the same person.

American Airlines will fly to Bonaire from Miami

Getting to Bonaire just got much easier.  American Airline will begin a direct flight to Bonaire each Saturday, beginning in June.  You can read all about it in this article on the Bonaire Insider.
We always make every effort to do a direct flight whenever we need to travel to or from Bonaire.  Now one can fly direct to Bonaire from Houston, Newark Atlanta, Miami, and Toronto.  Pretty cool.

Fire at TWR's USA Office

A fire broke out at the Cary office early this morning. Thankfully, nobody was in the building at the time, and there were no injuries.  You can read about it here.
And learn more about it here.

Solarcan Day

December 21 has been special for centuries, make that millennia, and has had a number of names.  Well now, Nerds around the world think of Dec. 21 as solar can day, the optimum day to set up your super long exposure pinhole camera.  Our son, Richard gave us a bunch of them and Kevin Baker helped me mount two at the TWR transmitter site this morning.  One is facing South like most Solarcan users do, and the second one is facing West.

The shutters are open and we'll leave them in place for a number of months, maybe all the way till the other Solarcan day, June 21.

Today, the Sun will set at the extreme left side of the top picture.  On June 21, it will set over the white building near the right side of the horizon in that picture.

You can read amore bout the clever Solarcan device here.














Below is a shot of the South facing can in place.

"Dog Tired"

In the picture of the thee tires. The small one on the right is the type of toy that all our other dogs have played with. We accidentally got the larger one in the middle a while back, and gave it to Coco. It turns out that he loved it. We've since gotten him a few more... they last about six months before he chews them up.

So as an early Christmas present, I gave him the really large tire on the left, that I just took off our trailer. He thinks it is great. He likes to shake it to death and also toss it in the air and try to catch it. He succeeds once in the attached video clip.

Gemini Meteors were Great

The Gemini meteors were great last night. There were clouds, but in between the clouds, the sky was super clear. Here is a picture of a meteor zooming past the Andromeda Galaxy and a picture of a meteor zooming past the Pleiades.

Small Magellanic Cloud

We have had really clear moonless skies at night this week, for the first time since we returned to Bonaire in August.  I zoomed out to Red Slave to see if I could capture the Small Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy.  It is at its highest point, five degrees above the horizon, around 8pm this week.
I shot a bunch of 5 second long exposures with an 85mm lens at f2, and combined them on the computer.  Stacking a bunch of frames averages out the random noise but keeps the stars.


The SMC is the elongated light-ish blob more or less in the middle of the picture.  The bright "star" to its right is actually a globular cluster, 47 Tucanae.  I couldn't see either of them with the naked eye that night, so you can imagine how dim the SMC is, and how effective the camera is a collecting pixels.