Happy Travellers

This month, we spent three weeks in California, driving to see friends in various parts of the state. The main reason we went down was to celebrate our close friend Henry's eighty-fifth birthday in La Jolla. Over the years we have visited him and his wife, we've gotten to know many of their friends, and most of the family. We were one of four "international" couples; the others were from Sweden and Germany. There were about forty of us present. A great time was had by all - the festivity included a catered Mexican Lunch and a wonderful nine-person Mariachi band, which played for at least two hours.

Our fiftieth wedding anniversary occurred a week later. Seeing that so many of our friends had assembled, we arranged to celebrate that occasion after Henry's "big one". We had not announced this ahead of time, so it was a surprise to all. These anniversary celebrations took place in smaller groups at "Piatti's" Restaurant in La Jolla Shores, and at several "happy hours" at local friends' homes. Needless to say that the drinks flowed liberally, and food was equally plentiful (we have proof: our waistlines tell us so).

After about a week of this, we decided to wend our way home. We stayed with friends in Los Angeles and Chico and continued our anniversary entertainment in that fashion.

This car trip included (in chronological order) Medford, Oregon, and in Calfornia we stpped at Santa Nella, Solvang, La Jolla, Long Beach, Santa Nella again, Chico, Roseburg, Oregon, and Portland. We love travelling by car; you can be very flexible about your route. None of these stops were arranged in advance, we decided where to go while we were on the road.

It was a great trip.

A month later

  

Venus, Moon, Mars (faint dot at lower right of the Moon), Mar 21, 2015 evening

Moon, Mars (middle), Venus, on Feb 20, 2015 in the evening sky.

The top image shows Venus, Moon, and Mars yesterday evening. For comparison, the same three as they appeared exactly four weeks ago, shown above. The Moon has completed one orbit around the Earth, The Earth has moved about thirty degrees along its once-a-year orbit around the Sun. Venus, whose orbit is inside the Earths orbit and moves around the Sun more quickly, is starting to catch up to Earth. Mars, with its orbit outside the Earths orbit, moves more slowly than Earth. Mars, on the far side of its orbit (as seen from Earth) at this time, will disappear behind the Sun in a few weeks, and will then re-appear in the morning sky. This comparison is a good demonstration of the dynamic behaviour of the solar system.
Click on the images for a larger view, or use Zoom option.

A matter of perspective

There was a nice combination of the Moon, Mars, and Venus visible in the West last evening. This picture was cropped from original, taken with 200mm lens, ASA 800, 1/20 sec, handheld. Moon, Mars, and Venus aligned in evening sky. The Moon (top) is closest (360,000km), Venus (bottom) is about 213 million km away, and Mars (middle) 330 Million km.

The relative positions of the planets in February 2015 are shown in the scanned image at the bottom. The Earth is shown in green. Imagine yourself looking from the Earth towards Venus and Mars. Yesterday (February 20 around 7:30 pm) you would have seen the two planets aligned as shown below, located far beyond the Moon (the little black dot labelled "Moon"). The orbits are not to scale. If the picture were drawn to scale, Venus would be about 3 meters and Mars 4.6 meters from the Earth.
 

 

 

Orbit schematic scanned from Sky and Telescope magazine.

Into the New Year

My wife and I hope that all of you had a great holiday season. We enjoyed our usual Christmas family get-together.  For once, the two of us had a "stay-at-home" New Year all by ourselves. After watching the New York time ball at 9pm, we raised a toast or two, reminisced about past riotous New Years' parties here at home, in California and Mexico, and family members and friends who have died, and went to bed around 10pm - getting old, I guess.

A number of astronomical events (including a relatively rare triple shadow transit on Jupiter) were rained/fogged out during this month. A clear sky break during last week made it possible for me to have a look at comet Lovejoy, though. This is a relatively bright comet, easily seen through binoculars. It's bright enough to be seen with the naked eye as a faint, fuzzy star, but not in the light-polluted Metro area.

The days are getting longer; we're looking forward to more sun.

Christmas again

This year seems to have passed more quickly than ever - I think that's a sign of aging: every second, minute, hour, day represents a larger percentage of the rest of life, and somehow, our mind builds that into our perceptions.

My wife and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, an a Happy, Healthy, and Successful New Year.

This is the fourth Christmas since our son died - we live with the memories and are
thankful for having his wife and children live next door.

As time goes by...

Things have been busy lately. The RASC has been doing things astronomical - observing nights for the public and council and membership meetings, which always feature some interesting speakers. As usual, the weather ruled the success of the observing sessions; some had to be called off. The latest one of these was scheduled for the youngest group in the Boy Scouts (Beavers) in New Westminster today - but the weather gods do not agree, as you can see if you live in our area. If you are interested in astronomy, as I am, you get used to this.

Aside from my external activities, my wife and I have had some doctors' appointments - at our age, some issue or other always comes up. Well, "body and soul maintenance" is important at any age, it just becomes more necessary as time goes on.

Our daughter-in-law organized a very successful family get-together (17 people). We always have a great time and enjoy each others' company; there are none of the family frictions which seem to be the norm if you judge by the numerous TV shows which exploit that theme. We're lucky to be able to appreciate our individual traits.

Christmas is just around the corner - the year is quickly approaching its end. Something is tinkering with the speed at which time goes by, it seems to me.

Mushroom "Forest"

We have a couple of dozen or so mushrooms growing in our lawn again. This happens every year. I don't know whether they are edible (personally, I don't eat mushrooms). In any case, they are important or the well-being of the trees (they are a catalyst in the storage of nitrogen in the soil).

A made a reference to the "mushroom cycle" in May of last year:  http://penmachinedad.blogspot.ca/2013/05/the-fixer.html

I'm always astounded when these mushrooms appear quite suddenly, apparently "out of nowhere".

Nature is amazing.