Luna, Venus, and the Long Sunset

On a September 8 flight from Nampa, Idaho to Portland, I was treated to a conjunction between the crescent Moon ("Luna") and Venus.  It was just after sunset, so from our turboprop altitude of about 28,000 feet, the sky started with a deep red-orange hue at the horizon, then quickly transformed to blue, deep blue, and finally blue-black.

On this trip, I happened to have my Canon image-stabilized binoculars with me.  I count any planetary conjunction as a special treat if I can fit both of them into the same binocular view.  That was true in this case, so I alternated between taking photos and just gazing at the celestial pair.



No photograph can convey what Venus looks like "live," especially through binoculars.  It's a very, very bright but tiny point of light.  In a picture, you can show it as a sharp white point or a fat white dot, but neither representation quite captures how it pierces the semi-dark sky long before other planets and stars appear.

I had plenty of time to observe the sunset conjunction because the western horizon never lost its orange hue for the whole trip.  The person in the seat next to me was a pilot for Alaska Airlines, on his way to Portland to fly passengers to Hawaii.  (His name was Bob, and he courteously kept his reading light off so I could shoot these photos.)  Bob pointed out why the sunset was taking so long.  At the equator, the circumference of the earth is 24,902 miles, thus for any point to make a round trip in a day it must travel 1,038 mph.  We were flying near 45 degrees latitude, which only requires 734 mph to rotate through a day.  If we could match that speed flying east to west, the sunset would stop in the sky.  Our regional airline propeller plane was flying at about 345 mph.  So, we were chasing the sun with a time-stretch of (734-345)/734 = 0.53.  In other words, sunset time was going about half-speed for us.

When we reached Portland, our long sunset was still in progress as the city lights were flipping on throughout the city:



Sunset from an airplane over city lights is beautiful enough by itself, but on September 8 the presence of Luna and Venus in concert made it extra special.

Rotifer Philodina: a Change in Scale

Over the years, I have posted many photos of Big Things.  Sizes range from the Moon to Jupiter and the Sun, to distant nebulae and multi-lightyear-wide starscapes.

In contrast, during my recent trip to Haiti David and I explored and photographed Small Things through his microscope.  Technically called a "photomicrograph," the picture above shows a 0.02 inch creature called a Rotifer Philodina inside a drop of pond water.

It's interesting enough to see the creature frozen in time.  But it gets quite fascinating when you can see how it moves.  David and I shot the following HD video with my Canon T4i attached to his microscope's new camera adapter.  The movement is shown at half speed, making it possible to see the graceful twisting motion as the tiny creature "flies" through the water collecting nutrients with its twin rotary cilia. (I haven't yet found another YouTube video that follows the twisting roll action in flight.)  When it stops, the rotifer often anchors itself with spike-like feet.  At the 2:39 mark, the view switches to a higher magnification.  Toward the end of the video, a momentary blank view shows a myriad of other tiny water creatures inhabiting the rotifer's home water drop.  For the best, most frightening view of these pond water inhabitants, click on the "Full Screen" icon in the lower-right of the YouTube video window.  :-)



Yes, I realize that there are much better photos and videos of microscopic creatures available on the internet, shot through multi-thousand-dollar microscopes.  But I have to say, I'm happy with what David and I were able to do rather casually using a student-grade microscope and a medium-grade DSLR.

"Mountains Beyond Mountains"

Shortly after I found out that my son David would be flying for Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) in Haiti, I started researching the country that I only slightly learned about in high school geography class.  One of the books I read was, "Mountains Beyond Mountains," by Tracy Kidder.  Monday I got to experience some of the sights Kidder described as we drove into the mountain foothills above Port au Prince.



The road was "Highway 101,"  but there was zero resemblance to the nice paved road along Oregon's coast.  Near Port au Prince there was pavement, but by the time we reached our destination of "The Lodge at Furcy," Highway 101 was a narrow rocky path of bumps and lurches.  The hour-long journey covered only 15 miles!

After parking at the lodge, we walked along a side road where we met Cassionel and his family -- caretakers/farmers for one of the houses and the surrounding hillside farming property.



This blog entry's introductory photos were taken near the place pictured above where Cassionel was tending some parsley plants.  While we waited, family members descended a steep path to another plot of ground and returned with some fresh vegetables for us to buy.  (And, I have to say that the broccoli, green beans and spinach tasted much better than anything we can get at the store in Tualatin!)



This day's experience will provide a great answer for the question I get sometimes: "Is Haiti still a pile of rubble like we saw on TV after the earthquake?" Now my answer can be to show them the "mountains beyond mountains," with their green, fertile farming areas.



If you'd like to see the rest of my photos from that day of Haiti exploration, see this 19-picture Flickr set.