f-stop: Waxing Moon

The Moon Photographed from Souda Bay, Crete, 21 June 2018

Dock of the Bay...

A nice evening of "Long-Eye Liberty". The sun was setting as I set up the little 70mm 'scope on the bow to spend a couple of hours exploring the lunar terminator--that slowly moving line between day and night on the Moon. In the course of the session I was joined by three Shipmates--one of whom had never seen Luna through a telescope before--and took a few minutes to introduce them to our battered satellite's face in close-up, plus views of Jupiter and Saturn.

Alone again, I sought out a few globular clusters in Hercules and Ophiuchus. I closed down just after midnight and only a short time later was dozing-off in my bunk--I don't remember my dreams of last night but suspect that they were happy affairs involving calm waters, dark nights and stars wheeling overhead in a sea breeze.

 That works.

You're In The Navy Now...

I would like to present for your entertainment and enlightenment this wonderful evocation of life in the great gray ships of the Navy. This is the anonymous creation of a Sailor, first posted (as far as I know) in 1998. I'm so glad I stumbled across it again the other day...

“Ah—the Navy—It’s an adventure….The suggestions below are made (for the benefit of) those who think the Navy is a “TOP GUN” existence. You know, those who watched one too many episodes of “JAG”, and think that Navy life is glamorous. To experience Navy life, try a couple of these—right in the comfort of your own homes.

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight.

2. Run all of the piping and wires inside your house on the outside of the walls.

3. Pump 10 inches of nasty, dirty water into your basement, then pump it out, clean up and paint the
basement “deck gray”.

4. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town, find the  most run down, trashy bar you can, pay $10 per beer until you’re hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.

5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawn-mower.

6. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On Saturdays and Sundays declare to your entire family that they used too much water during the week, so all showering is secured.

7. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.

 8. Have your next-door neighbor come over each day at 5 A.M., blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it, and shout “Reveille, Reveille, all hands heave out and trice up”.

9. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she’s going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard at 6 A.M. and read it to her.

10. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock the bathroom door for 12 hours and hang a sign on it that reads “Secured—contact OA DIV at X-3053”.

11. Submit a request form to your father-in-law asking if it’s OK for you to leave your house before 3 P.M.

12. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then board up all the windows and doors for 6 months. After the 6 months is up, take down the boards, and since you’re on duty, wave at your friends and family through the front window of your home…you can’t leave until the next day.

13. Shower with the above-mentioned friends.

14. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home (i.e. dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).

15. Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15 minutes.

16. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere. This will ensure your engine is properly “lit off”.

17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep your 3 times a day, whether they need it or not.

18. Repaint your entire house once a month.

19. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning you can get your hands on.

20. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, randomly losing every 5th item.

21. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV but only watch CNN and the Weather Channel."

Fossil Hunting in Aurora, North Carolina

Lucy and I visited the Aurora Fossil Museum on a chilly day in February. Wet, cold and gray, but we had a great time delving into both museum and gravel pits in search of treasures from North Carolina’s distant past. We found quite a few, too—a handful of small sharks’ teeth, some impressive fossilized coral fragments, some small objects that might have been rib bones. Lucy made the best finds; a pair of Mako shark teeth, one of them completely intact!

Inside the museum we were impressed by the displays of fossils both from the Aurora pits and other sites worldwide; this is a tremendous collection amassed over decades, and we could sense the passion behind the effort and its results.

We recommend the Aurora Fossil Museum to anyone interested in our world’s past. It’s a little out of the way, but definitely worth the trip. Oh, and should you decide to come to this little town in the coastal hinterlands of North Carolina to visit the museum, be ready to get dirty—no visit to this remarkable place would be complete without digging up a few souvenirs to take home with you!

Telescope Spotting in the Palmetto State, Part Two

A small part of the Ariall Collection of vintage telescopes, on display at the observatory.

Telescope Spotting in the Palmetto State, Part One

The 12 3/8-inch Alvan Clark & Sons refractor in the South Carolina State Museum’s Boeing Observatory

Mechanical Worlds

Still no relief on the starlight front--it's been an overcast weekend--but I DID get the chance to do some astronomy outreach last night at the VLM. It was the monthly star party/laser show event in the Abbitt Planetarium, so I crated-up the orrery and assorted other educational props and set-up my table in the planetarium lobby.

Quite a crowd, actually! At least one of the showings sold out, and I'd estimate a hundred-odd people came through to watch 'Floyd' in coherent light.

I kept busy with a steady stream of folks curious about the brass-plated clock-work device I was tending. I talked about orreries, tellurions and other pre-planetaria means of visualizing the motions of our solar system's worlds and answered questions about my favorite subject.

Also on display; a die-cast rocket miniature, a sporty red toy car, and a tiny metal astronaut (this is Lucy's keychain, borrowed for the evening). Any guesses as to what recent event THIS collection might be alluding to?

My favorite question of the night: "If the Earth is flat, how do time-changes happen?" Where to begin?