Astronomizing July 13th and 14th

 

It was a good weekend at Pine Mountain Observatory. Friday night, the sky was crystal clear. With a crescent Moon not rising until 2 a.m., it gave us plenty of dark sky to explore. It had been a hot week in Central Oregon, so it was pleasantly warm as well. Clicking on any photo will give you a larger view.

Here's my best Saturn shot from Friday night. I took this through my telescope -- an 8" Dobsonian with the 11 mm Nagler as the eyepiece. I'm still using my Sony Cybershot to shoot through the telescope. That may change soon.



Mars is getting low in the sky. I took a movie through the 24" Cassegrain. You may hear Jim and Eric chatting some. Being low in the atmosphere is what makes it as wavy as it is.

With Jim and Gary outside with me, it made for a pleasant evening where we were able to give more attention to small groups of people. Got the first look at Andromeda this season. So, that was exciting. I love looking at Andromeda.

Saturday night didn't start out very promising. When I took my hike up to the summit. I felt splashes of rain and saw it coming our way.

 
 

I came down the summit and told Eric we were going to get rain. A few minutes later I was yelling up the dome, "Rain! Rain! Rain!" We can't let the mirrors get wet. So he shut the dome and I packed my telescope up.

We sat in the dome jawing and I started playing with the menus on my camera. All the muck cleared up and we had the telescopes going by 11 p.m. The playing with the menus during the rain allowed me to get my first Milky Way shots ever.

 

You can clearly see the Big Dipper over the dome.

We viewed a nova in Sagittarius when the crowd went home. Late nights both nights. Good groups both nights. I was hoping to see the Northern Lights on Saturday, but they didn't come far enough south, so I didn't get to see them. I was very disappointed.

This coming weekend, I'm taking off from star guiding for an adventure with the Husband Unit.

Please note, this blog is now at http://mpaxauthor.com/blog/ and will be there only beginning August 20th.

Spotlight on Venus, Space Opera, and IWSG

JL Campbell is kind enough to host me on her blog today, The Character Depot. I'm discussing the space opera and my favorite TV shows that inspired my love for the genre.

Very briefly, I was able to see the transit of Venus yesterday. Some of my astronomy buddies set up telescopes with sun filters (an accessory I do not yet have) on Pilot Butte, which is just a few blocks from my backyard. So, I hiked the mile up. There was a still a reasonable amount of blue among the clouds, although not warm. I had on a sweater, a fleece, my down vest, and was kind of sorry I didn't bring gloves and a hat. Seriously. It was barely 50 degrees here yesterday.

I got up there, said hello, and got a quick peek through both of the telescopes when the clouds broke. It was really neat. Venus was much bigger than I expected it to be. That peek was all I was going to get. The clouds swarmed in, it started raining, and then ... snow. It snowed on us. I swear this year the observatory season is just cursed.

Anyway, photo taken and provided by Bill Logan, a devoted observer of the sun. He's often at the High Desert Museum or on Pilot Butte, sharing his hobby and his passion. And he sends us all emails on what the sun is up to.

Photo taken by Bill Logan

Here's some photos from my hike ...

Moody skies over Bend, OR, from the top of Pilot Butte.

Juniper berries. Juniper, cedar, and sage, that's what this area grows very well. I must report that it smells just fantastic. Instant air freshener any time I open a window.

A sign of spring braving our crazy weather.



Last, but not least, it's IWSG day. Insecure Writers Support Group is hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh, writer and ninja extraordinaire. The first Wednesday of every month writers gather to share their insecurities or encouragement and support. It's not to late to sign up if you'd like to join us.

I wasn't sure what to expect with the launch of The Backworlds in early May, but am humbled and deeply grateful for all the support from all of you. The blogging community, you, helped me create a buzz, get Amazon to price match, provided reviews that made me warm and fuzzy, provided me time and space for touring, and also put me in touch with a great editor, who I look forward to working with again.

You helped my work get noticed. 2,000 downloads and growing. Thank you.

You know what else makes me happy? Seeing how many of you are publishing and getting published lately. It's fantastic. It really is. So, congrats to all of you for being fantastic, awesome people. The sky's the limit for all of us if we continue to support each other the way we do.

OK, that got a bit sappy and gooey. But that's OK. You're all worth it.

Now come visit me at Joy's.

No Opening, Opening Weekend

I hear the rest of you sweltered in the US over the weekend. Not us. Friday's weather was so miserable, I had to have the lights on all day, wore two sweaters and socks. It only rained in town, but up at the summit of Pine Mountain there was a raging blizzard.

Because of all the ice and snow, we weren't open to the public. I hope this weekend will be better.

Laura from the Daily Dodo has a book out, 100 Blog Prompts. Available on Amazon and Amazon UK.

Thank you to Tara Tyler for the Kreative and Versatile Blogger awards. An awesome blogging friend, and a poet who often tugs at my emotions. Maybe she'll publish those one day. Yes?

And thanks to Trudy Schoenborn for the Versatile Blogger award, too -- an awesome in-person crit partner, friend, and writer. I try to channel her ability to twist and turn. An amazing talent.

Thank you Allan Douglas for the One Lovely Blog award. We're on a few Triberr tribes, but I met Allan before that. Perhaps on Twitter. He's been a great supporter since I released my free reads last year. A most valued friend.

And much gratitude to Alex J. Cavanaugh for honoring me with the You Rock award. I surely wasn't expecting that. I'm indebted to Alex for showing me the ropes of this blogging business and how to make a splash when launching a book. He's a great guy, a great friend, and a great writer who made me bawl more than any 'girl' book ever did. That takes talent. Another very valued friend.

You can't go wrong networking with any of these folks. You can only go right.

Writing News ...                             

 I want to say a sincere thank you to all of you for your support in launching The Backworlds. Amazon finally price matched over the holiday weekend, so the downloads are flying. It's also now on iTunes, B&N, Kobo, and Diesel.

Reviews are coming in, all glowing so far. :D Most exciting, I've started receiving fan mail via email and Twitter. I have to say fan mail is awesome. Sales of Semper Audacia pick up. My mailing list grows. Folks following the website via email grows.  None of this would have happened without all of you and what you did to help me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Christine Rains! You're to blame for me dusting off an old short story and rewriting it. Deadline for submission is this week ... like I needed another project. But the story and call for submission were so well matched, I couldn't resist. Almost done ...

I continue editing Stopover at the Backworlds' Edge. I'm no longer hating every word, just a few here and there. Sometimes the best fix for figuring out why I'm not loving my work is critiquing someone else's. Oh yeah! That's what I need, too. Funny how that works. In a good way. Anyway, it's on schedule for release at end of July.

I also wrote a tentative first chapter for a novella series to run between releases of Backworlds novels. This subseries will be stories from the Foreworlds, to flesh out my universe more completely. I also wrote a tentative first chapter for Boomtown Craze (and did test covers for both), which will be the sequel after Stopover. I'll include both first chapters at the end of Stopover.

Writing continues on The Renaissance of Hetty Locklear. I set a deadline with my editor. That will be out this fall as planned. Not sure I can get The Augmentation of Hetty Locklear out by the end of this year, but I'll give it my best shot.

This will be my only post this week. I'll be working on all the projects laid out above. I'll back next Monday.

So tell me, what are you up to these days? How are your projects coming along?

Xploring Wistful Nebulae

I have an interview up on Kela McClelland's blog, Teardrops on my Book. Come pop by.


What is a nebula?

Dust. More scientifically, an interstellar cloud of dust and ionized gases. There are nebulae which are remnants of dead or dying stars, and nebulae which are forming new stars.

From dead or dying stars, there are two types of nebulae. One is supernova remnants. A notable example is the Veil nebula in Cygnus. It's not very visible by telescopes unless you have an Oxygen III filter. Then it appears as a greenish smudge in the eyepiece. We don't get the spectacular color the computers add in for the Hubble shots.



The second type from a dying star is the planetary nebula. The final stages of a main sequence star's life (our own Sun will die this way), it's shedding off its gases. Prime examples are the Ring nebula and the Dumbbell nebula.

The Ring appears as named and has a blue tint in eyepieces. Bigger telescopes which gather more light can show a star in the center of the nebula. It's in the Lyra constellation near Cygnus.



The Dumbbell is in the Cygnus constellation. It's a planetary nebula sideways. It appears with a greenish tint in the eyepiece. This photo taken by the camera attached to the 24" Cassegrain at Pine Mountain Observatory.



Prominent examples of nebulae forming new stars are the Orion nebula (in Orion's sword--the closest region of star formation to Earth) and the Lagoon nebula near Sagittarius. Since Orion is a winter constellation, the Lagoon is what I usually show to visitors at the observatory in the summer. The Orion nebula is below it. Both photos also taken at PMO.



There are also H II Region nebulae which include diffuse, bright and reflection nebulae. By definition they contain no well-defined boundaries, which actually applies to almost all nebulae. A nebula can have more than one classification. It can have dark and bright regions, be forming new stars and parts of it may reflect light.

The Swan nebula, also know as Omega, Checkmark, Lobster and Horsehead nebula is a group of newly formed stars. It's also a nebula we often show in the summer, located near Sagittarius.



My favorite nebula is Orion. But since it isn't visible most of the summer (unless I stay up until dawn), the Lagoon is my favorite summer nebula.

OK, my X, Xploring, is really lame. The observatory opens in one month though. So, I'm Xcited, too. It's possible one or more of the nebula contain Xenon, and I'm sure they've all been looked at by X-ray telescopes. There we go, PaX.

The Backworlds Blog Tour May 7th, 2012

 If you'd like to help me get the word out of my next release, The Backworlds, I'd be most appreciative. Sign up below for the launch party, and I'll see to it you're emailed what you need to post up.Will give you a break when AtoZ ends. Post up any time the week of May 7th. And you don't have to visit anybody. The Linky link is so I can be organized.

Sign up is HERE

 2012 AtoZ Challenge hosted by Tossing It Out (Arlee Bird) Amlokiblogs (Damyanti Biswas) Alex J. Cavanaugh (Alex J. Cavanaugh) Life is Good (Tina Downey) Cruising Altitude 2.0 (DL Hammons) Retro-Zombie (Jeremy Hawkins) The Warrior Muse (Shannon Lawrence) The QQQE (Matthew MacNish) Author Elizabeth Mueller (Elizabeth Mueller) Pearson Report (Jenny Pearson) No Thought 2 Small (Konstanz Silverbow) Breakthrough Blogs (Stephen Tremp) Coming Down The Mountain (Karen Jones Gowen)


Do you have a favorite nebula? Is my X lamer than yours? Go ahead, you can say yes.

Dreaming of Summer

I'm being interviewed at Lynnette Labelle's today. It includes an excerpt from Semper Audacia. Pop by for a visit. :)

I really started missing the observatory about last week or so. Maybe a week earlier. We don't open again until Memorial Day weekend. Siigh.

The long off-season is good for me though. I have more time to write. All that wishing gets me thinking, gets put into my stories or ideas for new ones. Like the give and take between planets and moons, I need the give and take of the short season and long off-season.

Here's a photo of M17, known as the Swan Nebula. It's above Sagittarius, looking toward the center of the galaxy. You can see the swan shape, yes? Taken by the camera attached to the 24" telescope.

Here are some shots I didn't share during the season of flora, etc... I love photographing all of nature--what's below my feet as well as what's over my head.

What does winter have you missing?

Weird Tales of Pine Mountain

The bottom of Pine Mountain, where the observatory is, was the sight of several cattle mutilations in 2000. There were reports of strange lights in the sky in Millican Valley. One of the mutilated bulls was found in a tree.

I've heard reports of strange lights on that road from others -- encased in a bright light. I had my own encounter with lights the first summer I worked up at the observatory. I thought it was another car, but the lights traveled at strange and inconsistent speeds. At several points I thought they were going to pass me, so I slowed up. Only there was no noise and no brightening, and when I turned around, there was nothing behind me. The second incident, I realized the lights were vertical and not horizontal. They'd start off far behind me, then zoom up as if traveling several hundred miles per hour. I called them an UMO [unidentified moving object] as they didn't appear to be flying.

Every night I've returned from the observatory since, I've looked for those lights. I've never seen them again though. Disappointing as this time I'd investigate more. I'm just so curious. What were they?

Yes, I'm always on the look out for weird, but I'm not prone to seeing things. I've been wanting to see a cougar for 4 years and haven't. Bet they've seen me though [so, I tease one of the other volunteers that the lions are in the bushes watching us]. Sure, I've made up stories about yetis for the guests, but I've never seen one. Which brings us to another weird tale. The Pine Mountain is part of the Deschutes National Forest, which is known for Bigfoot sightings. Cool.

Maybe the lights were Yeti with mopeds. Shrug. ??

So on with the cattle mutilations. One of the new volunteers worked for a national park in Arizona, and told me how he was called in to investigate a cattle mutilation down there. He said it was really strange as there were no tracks near the carcass. He said just the udder was missing and the wound appeard as if it had been cut out. There were no tears or teeth marks, just a precise hole. He said no animal had done that. There was also very little blood which is a characteristic of all reported mutilations.

Since reports in Millican Valley noted strange lights, I wonder how the two are related. But like all great mysteries, I'd hate for it to be solved and to really know. I doubt the reality is as spectacular as what can be imagined. The imagining is where all the fun is for me.

Millican Valley coming down off Horsehead Ridge

Looking East in Millican Valley. A couple of antelope add to the scene.

Looking West from Millican Valley. The Cascades in the distance.

The gangsta cows of Millican Valley

 What mysteries do you like to think about?

PS, I have a guest post on The Capillary where I talk about physical limitations.

Flying Alien People

I'm at Jon Mac's Mythik Imagination today, contributing to his Weird Wednesday feature. I adore weird. Such stories fuel my imagination and spark me up with inspiration.

If you want to hear about my latest stargazing adventure, visit: www.mpaxauthor.com/blog/ My fellow star guides and I met up at PMO last Tuesday night (November 1).

And, I'm talking about blogging at Savvy Self-Publishing.

Yes, another busy blogging week.

PMO Closed

So, yes, the observatory season ended, Saturday, October 1st. It was such a crappy day all day Saturday, we were all pretty bummed that we might not get any sky. It looked pretty darn hopeless, honestly.

The sign says closed. :-(

We got some glimpses of the Moon, and I jokingly said I'd try my Hogwarts spell [which worked once earlier in the season]. It's pretty simple. I flick the fingers of my left hand at the sky and say, "Clouds go away."

We laughed, not expecting it to work. I packed Orson Bradbury up in the car before total dark. Two of the volunteers and I shared 'Cannon', our name for the University of Oregon's 10" dobsonian telescope. Our newest volunteer entertained us with a story of a cattle mutilation he had witnessed -- which I'll tell you sometime soon -- when he was down in Arizona. He just moved up here from there and spent many years working for the National Parks. Yes, we like science, but we also share a like for weird.

Lo and behold, my spell worked. The sky cleared to almost perfection. We looked at all our favorite objects and shared them with the visitors. Our guests went home. I went into the 24 to hang and look through the big telescope the rest of the night. I fought the sleepies to stay up to see Orion and all its splendors. Well, ten minutes before it rose high enough to look at, the clouds came rolling back in. Like a huge black curtain, saying, "Good night and adieu until next May." Siiigh.

Just as sad, I had to return the magic eyepiece [the 11mm Nagler] to the kind volunteer who lent it to me for the summer. I've got to get my hands on one of those. It gave me views through my 8" dob which rivaled the 24". No lie.

At any rate, I did capture some photos of Jupiter through the 24. We didn't have a filter on, like we should have, so the glare made the pictures a bit blurrier than they otherwise might have been. Still, they're not bad. You can see Europa peeking up over Jupiter, a little left of center, looking a bit like a pimple. The red spot is also visible in the large band of red closest to Europa and just above center.

Can you believe I already miss it? I can't. I was so ready for the break, and have been going 200 mph since. Yesterday I had convinced Husband to go out with me last night, but the clear day turned into a cloudy mess. So, we didn't go out. He was able to fix my telrad, and rumor has it the holiday season could bring me a magic eyepiece of my very own. :D

Have a great weekend everybody!

One To Go

This is the last weekend the observatory will be open until next Memorial Day.

Last Friday was so perfect. Absolutely perfect. Warm. Cloudless. Moonless. Dark. Manageable crowd. The sky just took my breath away. I stared at old friends, knowing I might not see them again until May, and spent hours roaming around the sky, just roaming. It was perfect.

Managed to get some shots of Jupiter. Knowing the weather here and turn on the head of a pin, I savored it, knowing another ideal night was not likely to come along this season.

Sunset from the bottom of Pine Mountain looking across Millican Valley toward the Cascades.

Sunset from the summit. Smoke from wildfires made for a terrible sunset Friday night. It didn't effect viewing at all though. Thank goodness.

Jupiter through 11 mm Nagler, blue filter on. Zoom.

All four Galilean moons lined up perfectly Friday night. Not sure of the order, but Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. This was taken through a 25 mm eye piece, no filter.

Saturday was still warm, but the wind howled, driving in a cold front and a parade of clouds. Viewing was hit or miss, the clouds having a fun game of hide 'n seek with us. Still managed to get a glimpse at most objects, but it wasn't as clean of a view as Friday night. By the time we got everyone through to see Jupiter and the summit had cleared for me to think about snapping some photos, the clouds socked us in. Good night, Mary, they said, drawing a thick black curtain over the stars.

Lots and lots of clouds. Boo. Pretty, but boo. Tonight is supposed to be clear and it's supposed to get up into the 80's. So maybe I won't freeze too badly. Tomorrow, the weather says rain. So, tonight may be it.

Thanks to Kathy McKendry of Imagine Today and Tara Tyler of Tara Tyler Talks for the versatile blogger award. Two very awesome bloggers. Check them out.

PS, anybody else having trouble following people? I can from the top, but not by hitting the sidebar widget. Google won't sign me in. Another fun blogger glitch? Annoying if someone has the google connect follow, but isn't on blogger.

Come back Monday for a Semper Audacia party, and enjoy your weekend. What plans do you have?

Shooting the Moon

The past few weeks up at the observatory were obscured by full Moon then by very cold nights the following week and clouds.

Full Moon weekend was warm. I didn't even have to zipper my coat. We were bombarded by moths outside. My car is still covered in moth guts. There wasn't much to see besides the Moon and Jupiter that weekend. I couldn't even find the brightest guide stars to point my telescope to where another object would be. Those I could find were severely washed out. To add insult on Saturday night, clouds rolled in. Between those and all the smoke in the air, Jupiter rose a bright orange. I'd never seen it that color before. My photos of it didn't turn out so great. But I did get some Moon shots.

Autumn in the high desert doesn't bring a lot of color in the form of trees, but the brush changes color, bursting with yellow. Juniper and cedar are evergreens, and the deciduous kind of tree doesn't really grow here.

Almost full Moon before the clouds swallowed it up.

Here's a video of the clouds covering the moon.



Last weekend was frigid. I managed a few shots between shivers on Friday night.

Saturday night was completely socked in. :-( No star gazing.

Only two more weekends before we shut down until next May. :-( I hope the weather cooperates so I can savor these next few weeks. The Moon will be out of the way if the clouds stay away.