Orion the Hunter

Orion the Hunter

Orion the Hunter

Last Saturday morning I couldn’t sleep. We had gone to bed early the previous night, not long after sundown. We had tried to get in at Turkey Run State Park, but that campground was full. Later we met a family who were camping there and they claimed that it filled up last March.  We ended up camping at Rockville Lake Park, where we had originally planned on staying. As I said, we went to bed early, but did not get to sleep until much later. Rockville Lake Park is located just outside of Rockville, the county seat of Parke County, IN. Part of the reason that we could not get to sleep was, because we could plainly hear the PA system from that night’s high school homecoming game, which was across town. Other noise came from the small two lane country road that ran across the bottom of the lake’s dam. I think that a lot of that noise came from the hundreds of visiting ATVs that were also in town last weekend. We saw many of these people the next day, they seemed nice, but they were also awfully noisy. The third source of noise were the pickup trucks that also seemed to stream by our campsite interminably. We had picked a site overlooking the lake, swimming area, picnic area and boat ramp, basically all of the fun places in the park. I guess that it is natural to expect that these attractions also attract nuisances.

Early to bed means early to rise, especially if your sleeping on an air mattress. It was still an hour before dawn when I couldn’t sleep anymore. When I got out of the tent, I was greeted by a beautiful starry night. I snapped the picture with this post, along with a bunch more. I used a Canon SX-40, which is basically a point and shoot, albeit with a 35X zoom. Mounted on a tripod, I was able to take this photo. Interestingly, Betelgeuse, the star in the upper righthand corner has a reddish tinge that is because it is a red giant. Also, in Orion’s belt is Orion’s Nebula. If you click on the photo thus zooming in, you might notice that the nebula is ever so slightly more blurry than the other stars. All of the stars are streaked a bit, because I used a 15 second  exposure.

 

Circling, Cycling Uranus

Uranus from the Traverse Bay Community Solar System

Uranus from the Traverse Bay Community Solar System

Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781 during the reign of King George III. Our 2011 Lakeshore excursion encompassed most, if not all of the solar system. This year’s route, gave us only the outermost planets. Good news though, at least in Traverse City, Pluto is still a planet. We were in day six of our seven day bike ride, when we encountered this sculpture. For me, the subjects of Captain Kirk and Klingons came to mind while viewing this art. I don’t know why, but I had a deep seated feeling that they were all related. This feeling continued to nag at the back of my mind or whatever as the day’s ride continued to unfold. I think that that is enough dancing around the central issue for now. The issue that bit me in the butt.

Big Dipper With Clouds

Big Dipper With Clouds

Big Dipper With Clouds

I created the animated GIF with this post last year, but never used it until now. This summer, I’m looking forward to getting out into darker locales, where I can hopefully take more spectacular night sky photos than I can living deep within the light well of Saint Louis. Last summer, while vacationing at the cabin, I took a few good low light photos, like this blog’s current header. The cabin situated on Lake Superior’s coastline lends itself to superior sunset photography, as this week’s sunset themed photo posts can attest. I was able to do some interesting light painting, while playing in the dark on the beach, but even the cabin has fallen into a light well and other than a few stars, the night sky is washed out.

Forty-five minutes west of the cabin, on Chippewa County’s Lakeshore Drive (I think that the older name, the Curly Lewis Highway has more panache.), in the Hiawatha National Forest is a place called Naomikong. While, Naomikong is not perfectly dark, it is quite dark and also offers a westward lake view. I hope to make it there this summer on a clear night, with enough wind to handle the bugs, but not too windy to shake the camera. Maybe I’ll get really lucky and see the aurora borealis, which I have only seen once in my life.

Anne continues to work feverishly on her current quilting project. It is starting to come together and really looks quite nice, maybe even Paducah nice? She hopes to have it ready for final assembly tomorrow. All the while, she continues with her marathon bicycle riding and hopes to hit 400 miles for June this week.

I’m still feeling sleep deprived after Sunday night’s witching hour of a baseball game, but today at work was way better than yesterday was. Sleep deprivation means no dawn patrols, bicycling in the park. After a wet, but relatively cooler weekend, the Lou’s weather has returned to its regular steamy summer sauna.

Solar Eclipse – February 26, 1979

Solar Eclipse - February 26, 1979

Solar Eclipse – February 26, 1979

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain, I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? Don’t You?

OK, enough with the channeling of Carly Simon, that was the July 10, 1972 eclipse. I did fly off to see the total eclipse of the sun, but it was to Manitoba, not Nova Scotia. I’m talking about the February 26, 1979 total eclipse, over thirty years ago. I was working at Chrysler, in Michigan. One of my business associates had a private pilot’s license. He arranged the trip and rent the plane, six seats, single engine.

A 10,000 foot cloud deck and a VFR only flight plan led to a bumpy start. I nearly tossed my cookies before the pilot found a hole in the clouds to smoother air. I remember flying over Lake Michigan most distinctly because the pilot eventually announced that we had crossed enough of the lake to glide to the other side, if we had to ditch.

We arrived in Winnipeg, the night before the eclipse. The morning of the eclipse the weather was cloudy, not a good sign. We took off for the north-east, first to be under the total eclipse and second to look for clearer skies. An hour before the eclipse, we found what we wanted on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, at the Gimli municipal airport. Our backup plan was to put the airplane on autopilot and do the best that we could. I wonder to this day what six bodies leaning to the right side of that small plane would do.

There were already several hundred people at the airport when we landed. I set up the camera and was ready in plenty of time for the big event. The three pictures with this post were all taken during the total part of the eclipse. From left to right the exposure time was successively decreased. In the first picture, the corona is most visible. In the middle picture, the corona is reduced, but you can see a red flare at the five o’clock position. The right picture has the exposure time further reduced and now you can see two red flares. Amazingly, the human eye could see every detail in all three pictures, simultaneously.

During the eclipse, not only did the amount of light change, but the kind of light also changed. Earthly objects took on a strange new hue. It also got noticeably cooler. Now we are talking Manitoba in January, but it still got colder. After the eclipse we packed up and flew home.

Jimmy’s on the Park

Some of the caricatures of Saint Louis nobility at Jimmy's

Some of the caricatures of Saint Louis nobility at Jimmy’s

Anne and I celebrated Valentine’s Day, with dinner at Jimmy’s on the Park. Jimmy’s is a De Mun area restaurant that has been in business for almost twenty years. The signature aspect of its decor are the banks of caricatures that line its walls. A small subset was captured in the picture with post. The persons depicted are an amalgamation of Saint Louis area royalty and Jimmy’s regulars. Considering the prices there, maybe being a regular is synonymous with royalty. It was a fun night, the food was good and the service was excellent. I especially liked the blueberry crème brûllée. Apparently, like some restaurants have a soup of the day, Jimmy’s has a crème brûllée of the day. Yum!

Before dinner, we exchanged Valentine’s gifts. I went with the traditional flowers and chocolate, the flowers being cut orchids and the chocolate being Christopher Elbow’s designer chocolates. They look almost too good to eat. I went the traditional route, but Anne really out did herself. She made me a Love quilt. She called it a cheater quilt, because it uses a printed pattern instead of pieced bits of fabric. I think that it looks simply marvelous. It is almost done, Anne is working on it as I write. When she finishes it, I’ll share a photo of it. I almost forgot, she also got us passes to The Heights, the local municipal gym. This gift will dovetail nicely with the chocolates that I gave and get us over the hump of the remaining rump of winter. 

I could easily round out this post with a rant directed at the Missouri Department of Revenue and its byzantine motor vehicle process. I am trying to allow Dan to licence his car in California, but its Friday and you don’t really want to hear about any of that. Instead, why don’t we reach back to Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.

Anne and I watched the SOTU together, how romantic. No really, people find members of their political persuasion more attractive than others. A Stanford study showed that matched political ideologies could swing a subject’s desire. We lightened any sense of sexual tension [Anne says what sexual tension? Mark says you were in the room.] with a game, SOTU bingo. I might have won, if I had caught the fist bump banter between Obama and Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL). Kirk responded to Barack’s fist bump with an exploding fist bump. Anne went on alone and won during Marco Rubio’s response. I had quit the couch by then, because it looked to me that Rubio was moving the game from bingo to some sort of drinking game. 😉

I never thought that yesterday’s post about today’s passing asteroid, DA14, would be upstaged by a Russian meteorite about the size of a semi. The video footage from the meteorite was amazing and really helped to hype the DA14 conjunction. Apparently, Russian drivers go around with a constant video feed, because of rampant fraudulently staged traffic accidents. We had an office pool going as to where the asteroid would land. The actual event was a bit of a let down. It looked like a cursor moving across the screen.