Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A couple more photos of the eclipse...

If  you haven't read the next post, read that one first and then come back to this one.  Here are a couple of professional photos of the eclipse last week.  This one was taken right here at the Phoenix Zoo in Papago Park.  The photographer got the image of some fellow eclipse viewers up on a rock.  He sold this one to the local paper. 
This one is just so fun and inventive.  I know there was some photoshop post-production on this one to put the blue sky back in, but I love the creativity!

Solar eclipse- May 20, 2012

I've loved astronomy and NASA since I was a kid.  I learned about the Space Shuttle when I was in 3rd grade in 1973 and was hooked.  Our school in Winslow Arizona- amazingly- had a really cool model of the solar system with arms holding and rotating the planets and moons and there were pulleys and chains and a high wattage light bulb in the middle of the sun to cast shadows and such.  I learned how seasons worked and what an eclipse was.  You would flip a switch and it would go through an entire years worth of orbit in a couple of minutes. 

I couldn't resist partaking in the viewing of a solar eclipse in my area.  We had intended to jet out after church and drive up to the Navajo Nation to get exactly under the eclipse but upon studying the nature of an annular eclipse, decided to stay home.  The moon was further from the earth at this time than usual and would at best would only create about 87% coverage.  Places like Albuquerque NM and Page AZ would have a perfect "ring of fire" but no additional coverage than other places within 200 miles or so.  Viewed from Mesa AZ, we got as full a viewing as we could but the outer edge of the moon touched the outer edge of the sun leaving a crescent shape but not a ring of fire.
We are all laughing in this shot because I had tickled Shaw to get a smile out of him and he elbowed me in the nubbins! 

The local community college science department invited the public down for some planetarium shows and they had a few telescopes set up with filters for viewing the eclipse.  They also provided these cool viewing shades for the public.  
 
 They anticipated about 100 people and nearly 500 showed up. 
These telescopes allowed us to see sunspots and flares and the shape of the moon as it passed.  It was really brilliant. 
 
The science geeks (students and teachers) from the astronomy department at Mesa Community College were most gracious and helpful and friendly and informative and they were sooooo buzzed about the general public paying them some attention.  They made sure to invite us all back on June 5th when Venus will pass directly in front of the sun.  That will be just a tiny speck but they promised they would get out the telescopes for us if we come down. 
A citizen astronomy enthusiast brought this device.  It's a series of lenses and mirrors that project the image of the eclipse on a screen for safe viewing. 
 This is just snapped from my camera with the viewer you saw earlier. 
This is something that everybody should have learned in elementary school... poke a pinhole in a piece of tin foil.  You can adjust the distance between the foil and a paper plate or piece of white paper to see the image of the eclipse projected on the white surface. 
 
You can see the little thumbnail on the plate in the center of the tin foils shadow.   Lesa was amazed and commented that when she was in 4th grade, there was a partial eclipse and her teacher had the students poke pin holes in paper plates and look directly at the sun through the hole...  She didn't "get it" and had a bunch of 4th graders looking directly at the sun through a pin hole in a paper plate!  Sheesh!
 
I'm a huge lover of people watching.  There was a woman there who just couldn't get her brain around what was happening.  Couldn't grasp orbits and where we are relative to the sun and the moon etc.  I fought back thinking she was an idiot because it was crazy-awesome that she was trying to understand as a few people attempted to explain what she was seeing.   In reality, eclipses happen all they time with various planets and moons and stars blocking certain views from certain viewers.  It's just extra interesting when they happen where WE can see them. 
Here's the coverage at about its peak.  Viewed on the mirror image above and straight in to my camera below. 
There will be a total solar eclipse in 2017 that will go directly across the center of the U.S. in mid-day and it will completely black out the sun.  ROAD TRIP!  Who's in?

Missed it by that much...

These pictures are actually a couple of weeks old.  Too busy to post them.  You know we have visited the temple construction site regularly but guess what we missed?  Several Facebook friends posted pictures of the Moroni statue getting hoisted up to the top of the steeple the next day.  
We'll have to snap our own pics on our next visit. 
You know, Shaw was about half this height when the temple was just a vacant lot....
I was about the same height though...
It appears that they have the shell all sealed up so they can fire up the AC and get lots of interior work done over the summer months.  They can install the windows next winter. 

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Service project

Shaw and I took care of a Priesthood assignment last Saturday morning.  We got up at 420AM, hit the road at 430AM, drove one hour south to Coolidge AZ for a 530AM start time.  The sun was just coming up over the horizon.  About 40 volunteers cleared the weeds out of about 5 miles of irrigation canals around several wheat fields.  


We did stop for burgers on the way home.  Nothing like a cheeseburger for breakfast... it's man stuff, women wouldn't understand.