Long Stem Rosette

A present for Valentine's Day.

Explanation: The Rosette Nebula (aka NGC 2237) is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers. But it is the one most often suggested as a suitable astronomy image for Valentine's Day. Of the many excellent Rosette Nebula pictures submitted to APOD editors, this view seemed most appropriate, with a long stem of glowing hydrogen gas in the region included in the composition. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros, some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this rose are actually a stellar nursery whose lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds and radiation from its central cluster of hot young stars. The stars in the energetic cluster, cataloged as NGC 2244, are only a few million years old, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula is about 50 light-years in diameter. Happy Valentine's Day!

Credit & Copyright: Adam Block (Caelum Observatory) and Tim Puckett

Two more posts today.

Venus and Jupiter in Morning Skies

I find myself busy with burst pipes under the kitchen sink and lots of water to mop up. So, instead of writing anything, here is a lovely picture to reward you for visiting. And reassure Julie that I'm fine.


Explanation: These two celestial beacons shining brightly in the east before sunrise are actually children of the Sun, the planets Venus and Jupiter. The second and third brightest objects in the sky at Night after the Moon, Venus and Jupiter appeared separated by about 2 degrees when this picture was taken on January 30th, but closed to within nearly half a degree early yesterday morning. In the serene foreground is the shoreline along the Miankaleh Peninsula and Gorgan Bay, an important bird and wildlife refuge in the southeastern Caspian Sea. Over the next two days, early morning risers around the globe will be able to enjoy a close pairing of Venus and Jupiter with an old crescent Moon.
From Astronomy Picture of the Day: NASA
Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN) Click to enlarge.

Andromeda Island Universe

This photo from The Astronomy Picture of the Day, courtesy of NASA, is so lovely that I had to share it. And, since I'm working on a post for tomorrow or the next day, I'm using it as my "checking in so Julie knows I'm OK" post for today. Do click and enlarge -- the bigger it is, the more you can see.

Explanation: The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, a bright yellow nucleus, dark winding dust lanes, gorgeous blue spiral arms and star clusters are recorded in this stunning telescopic digital mosaic. While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept only 80 years ago. Were these "spiral nebulae" simply outlying components of our own Milky Way Galaxy or were they instead "island universes" -- distant systems of stars comparable to the Milky Way itself? This question was central to the famous Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, which was later resolved by observations of M31 in favor of Andromeda, island universe.

Credit & Copyright: Tony Hallas

Starry Night Castle

Starry Night Castle
Credit & Copyright: P-M Hedén

Explanation: The tantalizing Pleiades star cluster seems to lie just beyond the trees above a dark castle tower in this dramatic view of The World at Night. Recorded earlier this month, the starry sky also features bright star Aldebaran below the Pleiades and a small, faint, fuzzy cloud otherwise known as Comet Holmes near picture center at the top of the field. Starry Night Castle might be an appropriate name for the medieval castle ruin in the foreground. But its traditional name is Mörby Castle, found north of Stockholm, near lake Skedviken in Norrtälje, Sweden.

NASA's web site has some of the loveliest pictures I've ever seen. Here is one for you to enjoy.

picture and text, NASA.gov Astronomy Picture of the Day

Lovely to Look At

I haven't anything to say this morning, so I thought I'd share this lovely picture of the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. When Richard and Julie were little, and I was a student at UC Berkeley, every Saturday we would spend running errands and exploring the world. One of the stops was the Campanile, which charged a dime for the three of us (R & J in the double stroller) to go to the top. It is a lovely view and on a clear day you can count the windows in the buildings in San Francisco.

Memories of Home

To someone like me, who was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and lived a good number of years there, there is nothing as lovely to look at as the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog.

It feels like home. Cool weather. Sourdough bread. Ripe produce bought at farmers' markets. Dungeness crab at the wharf. Long walks at my own pace.

Hangin' out in Golden Gate Park and the zoo. Flower sellers on street corners. Being able to choose almost any cuisine and find it in a range of prices. Book stores and golden afternoons.

The Perfect Spiral

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA)- ESA / Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. Chandar (Univ. Toledo) and J. Miller (Univ. Michigan)

Explanation: If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe of about 100 billion stars, 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces, M74 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as an Sc galaxy, the grand design of M74's graceful spiral arms are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Constructed from image data recorded in 2003 and 2005, this sharp composite is from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Spanning about 30,000 light-years across the face of M74, it includes exposures recording emission from hydrogen atoms, highlighting the reddish glow of the galaxy's large star-forming regions.

I am posting the pretty picture today because the world is too much with me, late and soon. The political landscape is so ugly, so rotted, so depraved that I can't write about it, and yet to write about anything else would be trivial. So, here is a picture of something that is both beautiful and non-trivial.

Photo and text from Astronomy Picture of the Day. Do click and enlarge.

Moon Over Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Moon Over Pigeon Point Lighthouse
Credit & Copyright: Tyler Westcott

Explanation: This spectacular sky is mostly human-made. Once a year, the Light Station at Pigeon Point near San Francisco, California, USA is lit as it was over 100 years ago. During this time, light generated by five kerosene lamps pours through 24 rotating Fresnel lenses, warning approaching ships to stay away. Early last week, light emanating from the Pigeon Point Lighthouse was particularly picturesque because of a thin fog, also blurring the distant Moon. During the latter 1970s, the lighthouse was guarded by an 800 pound pig named Lester. In modern times, the light house is still active but has been supplied with a more efficient flashing aerobeacon.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

A Thing of Beauty

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

Explanation: The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Do click to enlarge.
Photo and text courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day

Shifting The View From Interior to Exterior

Since I've spent so much time examining my own motives and trying to get beyond the fog of self delusion lately, I thought I would rest and allow some mystery to take me back into its arms.

I love this picture, from SFGate.com, of the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog. It somehow makes The City seem like a magical place, wrapped in white, approachable only through true vision.

Forest and Sky

Credit & Copyright: Vincent Jacques
Explanation: With pine trees in dim silhouette, this skyscape from Breil-sur-Roya in southern France was captured on November 11. In the early evening scene, a satellite seems to streak through the branches, while bright, round, fuzzy Comet Holmes appears to lie just beyond them, near the stars of the constellation Perseus. Mirfak, alpha star of Perseus, is the brightest star above the comet and to the right. Next Monday (November 19), Holmes will be close enough to Mirfak to view the star through the remarkable comet's expanding coma. Recent measurements place the dusty coma's diameter at about 1.4 million kilometers, even larger than the Sun.

Ed.'s Note: Predawn skies this weekend will feature the Leonids Meteor Shower.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day

Peculiar Arp 87

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA)

Explanation: A cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust stretches for over 75,000 light-years and joins this peculiar pair of galaxies cataloged as Arp 87. The bridge is strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity. As further evidence, the face-on spiral galaxy on the right, also known as NGC 3808A, exhibits many young blue star clusters produced in a burst of star formation. The twisted edge-on spiral on the left (NGC 3808B) seems to be wrapped in the material bridging the galaxies and surrounded by a curious polar ring. While such interactions are drawn out over billions of years, repeated close passages should ultimately result in the merger of this pair of galaxies into a larger single galaxy of stars. Although this scenario does look peculiar, galactic mergers are thought to be common, with Arp 87 representing a stage in this inevitable process. The Arp 87 pair are about 300 million light-years distant toward the constellation Leo. The prominent edge-on spiral at the far left appears to be a more distant background galaxy and not involved in the on-going merger.

From Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Fruits of Autumn

As many of you will remember from I Always Wore White, when I was a little girl in the early 40s, I used to crawl under the pomegranate trees in my Grandmother Hunt's back yard and eat the fruit, leaving my pretty white dresses with stains that all the energy my mother put into the scrub board could not take out of the cotton.

As you can see from this picture, a small child would be well hidden under a tree like this. It was such a magical place to be -- cozy, cool, and full of my favorite food.


And the pomegranates themselves! Such full balls of deep red fruit, filled with glowing seeds. When they were very ripe, the skin would crack and the seeds would peek through and tempt me beyond resistance. When I heard the story of Adam and Eve I could fully comprehend Eve's inability to leave that apple alone. If it had been just a tenth as lovely as a pomegranate, the world would have been well lost for all of me. And might still be.

In the late 50s, when I was in high school, we read local California authors one semester. John Steinbeck and William Saroyan were my personal favorites. In 1940, Saroyan published "My Name is Aram," a collection of short stories about growing up in the Armenian community of Fresno. So, the events of "The Pomegranate Trees" must have happened in the late 20s or the 30s. This was the story of Saroyan's uncle who planted a pomegranate orchard before people in California knew what this wonderful fruit was, and so went broke. And yet, by 1945, the time of my story, my grandmother had a line of these lovely trees as a back fence. How quickly things change.

Persimmons are the other delight of autumn. They hang on the tree after all the leaves have fallen, and look like a Japanese variant of a Christmas tree. My dentist in Stockton had a persimmon tree right outside the window of his office and I used to purposely make my appointments in the fall just so I could look at that tree.

This variety of persimmon, the Hachiya, is deceptive. It must be very ripe before it is eaten, because in its unripe state it is full of tannin and if you bite into it your head will turn inside out and you will bite your shoulder blades in agony. Dry! Land, child, the Mojave should be as dry as your tender mouth!

When I worked as a parenting coach, since I worked for a non-profit, what they couldn't pay us in money they tried to make up in other ways. One was more vacation. The longer I worked there, the more vacation days I earned. So, for a number of years I spent the entire month of November in California. I would start with a week with Julie, go to my mother's for a week or so, to Kate's for a week, and end up with Julie. I would buy Hachiya persimmons my first day there and put them in Julie's window to ripen, knowing that by the time I got back they would be just ready to eat. The first year I did this, Ted thought they had gone rotten long before they were ripe and threw them away. You have to let them get soft and jelly like. And then they are heaven.

Since the Hachiyas are a problem for some people, and don't ship well, a more popular persimmon is the Fuyu. This is the one that we can get in Juneau. It is rounder than the Hachiya and can be eaten while it is still crisp like a Braeburn apple. It isn't quite as sweet, but is a real treat none-the-less.

And this matters becauase right now there are pomegranates and Fuyu persimmons in my kitchen and I am in heaven.

The Elephant's Trunk

The Elephant's Trunk in IC 1396
Credit & Copyright: Brian Lula

The Milky Road*

The Milky Road
Credit & Copyright: Larry Landolfi

Explanation: Inspired during a visit to Fort Davis, Texas, home of McDonald Observatory and dark night skies, photographer Larry Landolfi created this tantalizing fantasy view. The composited image suggests the Milky Way is a heavenly extension of a deserted country road. Of course, the name for our galaxy, the Milky Way (in Latin, Via Lactea), does refer to its appearance as a milky band or path in the sky. In fact, the word galaxy itself derives from the Greek for milk. Visible on moonless nights from dark sky areas, though not so colorful as in this image, the glowing celestial band is due to the collective light of myriad stars along the plane of our galaxy, too faint to be distinguished individually. The diffuse starlight is cut by dark swaths of obscuring galactic dust clouds. At the beginning of the 17th century, Galileo turned his telescope on the Milky Way and announced it to be composed of innumerable stars.

* Picture and text from Astronomy Picture of the Day.

My Perfect Candidate& PhotosFrom SFGate.com

When I took yesterday's test, I agreed most with Dennis Kucinich. A result that didn't surprise me, since I supported him in 2004 and still do. And, I noticed in the comments from yesterday, that a number of my readers also agree with him.

And now, for something completely different:
Taken at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Potpouri II

Saturday was such a lovely day. It began, as many days do, a couple of days before. On Thursday the clouds left for the first time in over two weeks, and I got to see the harvest moon after all. Sitting at my computer, with the breathless beauty of the full moon shining, and almost total silence from the open window. Friday the sky was a heart gripping blue that cheered the spirt and allowed the temperature to drop into the 40s, so that when I left for breakfast on Saturday morning amid full-on rain, the mountain tops were cold enough that by 9:45, as I was sitting on the bench in front of A & P* watching the ravens in the parking lot, talking to children I know as they went into the store, and waiting for the Care-A-Van to come and pick me and my groceries up and take us home, the rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted. And I could see snow on the very tops of Mount Roberts, Mount Juneau, and across the channel on Mount Jumbo.

My trip to A & P had made me appreciate living in a small town and knowing my neighbors. There is a woman here who looks like a friend of mine from my Fairbanks days, and so I have noticed and talked to her over the years. I have watched her sons grow from two tiny guys in '93 to two well behaved and handsome teens. Today they were in A & P and the younger son came over to me and asked if I had heard from my friend who looks like his mother lately. Told me who his teachers are and what sports he wants to play.

There were Alice, age six, who I held when she was 4 days old, and her younger brother, Jonathan, who had to show me the carnival squash their great-grandmother was buying. And, there was their great-grandmother.

I was having trouble with my back today, and when I was at the deli counter I leaned against the case to ease it. The young man who was waiting on me noticed that I wasn't doing so well, and instead of handing me my chicken over the top, where I would have had to stretch, he walked it around and put it in my cart. When I got to the check-out, the clerk remembered that I'm now sales tax exempt** and asked me for my number -- a good thing, because when I'm in pain I forget to give it to her. The young woman who was bagging remembered that I need anything the Hooligans would get into put into one "cat bait" bag, along with whatever has to be refrigerated, so that I can put that away as soon as I get home and then sit down and rest my back if I need to. It's nice when people know you and care about what you need.

When we got home, I went up the stairs first, to unlock the door. And when I got to the landing half way up, there was a redwing sitting there looking stunned. As I got closer, he turned his bright little eye toward me but otherwise didn't move. I waited, wanting make sure that the Care-A-Van driver knew he was there and didn't step on him or get startled at the last minute and drop a bag of groceries on him. While I waited I talked to him quietly. By the time Robert was loaded with grocery bags and reached me on the landing, Sweetie shook his head, took a tottery step, and flew away. As we went up rest of the stairs, we could see a small, gold feather on my window.

As always, sitting for about 15 minutes*** eliminated the pain in my back, and I spent the rest of the day watching the first four segments of Ken Burns' The War that I had recorded from PBS. And reading. The only thing that put a little rain on my parade came when I was reading. When I lived with people, I seldom turned on the TV unless there was something that I wanted to watch, but now that it's just me, I like to have CHCH**** on when I read. And for some strange reason, for the first time since I moved here in 1993, they were playing songs! Songs from the 30s and 40s. I find it hard to read when someone is singing. I can totally tune out talking and not even know there are people in the room, but singing cuts right through my defenses. I tried turning the volume down, but that just left me straining to hear the words. In order to get back in my comfort zone, I had to mute the sound and put Mozart on the CD player. And since I didn't want to get up and change the CD all the time, I had it on repeat. That gets just a little boring.

* Not, like on the east coast, Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, but Alaskan and Proud. Except for their produce department, which too often is the A & A, Alaskan and (Should Be) Ashamed.

** That's because I'm 65.

*** After I'd put the cat bait away.

****CHCH is "the Channel channel," so called because it is a public access channel that has a camera mounted over the Gastineau Channel and plays classical music. It's nice to have the music on when I read, and better than the radio because there is no talking at all. No commercials. No commentator. Just classical music. If I look up, there is a lovely scene in front of me. During tourist season***** I can watch helicopters take off to deliver tourists to the glacier for a sled dog ride. The rest of the year I may see people fishing on the shore, various small boats, birds, or just the clouds.

***** Just ended. No more cruise ships in the harbor dwarfing all of our buildings. No more crowds of people on the streets totally oblivious to the fact that this isn't Disneyland and cars actually drive here. No more groups of tourists stopping just in front of you under the awning to talk over what they are going to do next, forcing residents to walk out into the rain and the street to get back to the office after lunch.

Saguaro Moon

Credit & Copyright
Stefan Seip

From Astronomy Picture of The Day

Tonight's Full Moon, the one nearest the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere, is popularly called the Harvest Moon. According to lore the name is a fitting one because farmers could work late into the night at the end of the growing season harvesting crops by moonlight. In the same traditions, the Full Moon following the Harvest Moon is the Hunter's Moon. But, recorded on a trip to the American southwest, this contribution to compelling images of moonrise is appropriately titled Saguaro Moon.

Even though Juneau is under cloud cover, as we are so much of the time, and I can't see the moon from my window, luckily this site exists and I can see it, along with the saguaro cactus, which I also love. Clear nights on the desert are wonderful.

Do click and enlarge

Time Lapse: Juneau, Douglas, and Idaho Inlet

Today is one of those days. Can't think of a thing I want to say, except for things that would take four months to write. So, here is a YouTube of a time lapse of Juneau, Douglas(across the Gastaneau Channel, visable from my apartment window), and Idaho Inlet (an area famous for wildlife viewing near Glacier Bay).

Breakfast for Mama & Baby

A number of you said how much you love giraffes the other day, so I decided to give us another look at a baby and her mother.