Astronomy

I'm one of those casual astronomers who loves to look at books** about the planets, stars, galaxies, etc., but who know the names and locations of very few of the visible constellations.

**(and the internet! Try http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html for the astronomy picture of the day!)

One of my favorite activities is looking for the visible planets and the moon. I get great satisfaction being able to look where I expect to find something, and saying "Yep, there it is."

I've got a small telescope, a 4" reflecting telescope from Edmund Scientifics called the Astroscan. It's very nice for very casual observation of things like the moon and the nearby planets. I've seen Jupiter's cloud bands and the four Galilean moons, and Saturn's rings.

One day, I tried to capture the moon with my Kodak digital camera by holding it up to the eyepiece. There's a small red LED on the camera that reflected into the image in an interesting way. I'm sure that most most backyard photoastronomers would groan at the interference, but I thought the effect was very "arty."



Here's also some pix of Alex helping me observe the transit of Venus on the morning of June 8, 2004. I didn't have the Kodak then, so the pix are courtesy of the camera in my PalmPilot.




In the picture of the Sun, Venus is the little black dot near the edge in the vicinity of 11:30. We projected the Sun's image through the telescope onto the piece of paper that Alex is holding.

Also, there's this picture of the October 27, 2004 Lunar eclipse I took with my PalmPilot held up to the eyepiece of the telescope. Wasn't there a Sox game on that night? I was too busy looking at the moon to notice... Lots of yelling in the neighborhood...

Someday, I hope to have the equipment to take some pictures of Jupiter and Saturn. The cameras that I have can't connect directly to the telescope that I have, and so I'm very limited as to what I can attempt to photograph.

But still, I do find satisfaction in what I can accomplish right now, which is more than the early astronomers could. Galileo didn't have any cameras.

Tree

Yesterday, we had that horrible snow storm that went from snow to slush to rain to slush to sleet and back to snow again. I had to work until midnight, and wasn't able to shovel the driveway until later today. We had some very interesting clouds at sunset. These are to the east, lit by a sun peeking through a gap between the cloud cover and the western horizon. This effect lasted only a few minutes, but was pretty nifty while it lasted.



After Karate this morning I went down to Big John's tree farm (with Laurie's mother) to pick up our tree. The drive to and from the tree farm was an idyllic tour through a crystal wonderland. Our poor tree was plastered with frozen crust, and most of the snow clung to its branches throughout the cutting, dragging, baling and trunk-stuffing.

Laurie wanted to have it in the house for decorating as soon as possible. I recommended we leave it in the baled state until the snow within had melted out. We placed towels around the base to sop up the melt water as it dribbled out. Alas, Laurie felt that the snow would melt out quicker if we sprang the tree from its baling twine. My thought was that a baled tree would drip in a smaller area than a fully opened tree would. Laurie felt we could handle a little snow, so I tentatively sipped some twine...

SPROING! SPLAT!

"Well," she says, "we should get the dustpan and broom for all of that ice..."

"What do you mean 'We' Kimosabe?" I ask...

The next hour or so was spent collecting ice clumps and changing out towels as they became saturated, the soft and gentle sounds of indoor rain, the smell of pine...

I highly recommend the experience. Please try this out for yourself...



Later, after dinner, we got the lights on the tree, and began to hang our ornaments.

Burn

Mr. Clumsy has yet again injured himself, this time an accident with microwaveable soup.



Fortunately, the burn was only first degree (no blisters). Laurie commented on how it looked like a shadow puppet of a bunny. I saw it differently.

Fishy

Alex suffered the loss of his pet, Fishy, on November 30.



Fishy was a blue Siamese fighting fish, and he had lived with us for five years (as far back as Alex can remember). We've since learned that the life expectancy for these fish runs about two years, so we were fortunate to have Fishy with us for so long.


He is buried in our front garden, below Alex's bedroom window, in an instant coffee can.



Fishy has been replaced with three new fish, Fishy Junior (a greenish Siamese fighting fish), Jeff, and Junior.



Collectively, they are the three stooges, and they are now enjoying the Bikini Bottom tank that had been Fishy's home for so long.

Thanksgiving

Alex had everyone in stitches when he asked if someone would pass the canberry sauce.

Here he is making the taters, and later Christine enjoys them!