Moon occultation of Venus April 22, 2009

Ok, I know Thomas said we wouldn't post anything until Sunday....but earlier this morning was a rare occurrence called an occultation.  The planet Venus was occulted (covered) by the Moon.  It was only visible from North America and we had a perfect shot of it from here in Prescott.  The sky was clear and the temperature was about 60 degrees - an ideal setting to wake up to.   From our house we had to drive over the hill so we could see the sight since it was so low in the sky.  When I crested the hill it was an incredible sight to see Venus so close to the crescent moon.  I got out my camera and started taking pictures.  I am still getting used to the camera and didn't realize until Venus had almost disappeared that I could digitally zoom even more.  It still turned out great.  Simple things like this give me great delight.

Sunday Night Astronomy

Thanks to a wonderful telescope we were gifted for Christmas of last year, we can now see the heavens in a new way. The post of Venus was only the beginning of what I hope will be called "Sunday Night Astronomy". When the opportunity presents itself, every Sunday night, we will attempt to observe and take pictures of other celestial bodies. We took some pictures of Mercury tonight, and I wanted to share some of them with you all (its harder to get a clean picture of Mercury than of Venus, because Mercury is so much smaller, even though it is closer to the sun).  The picture in the middle is DIGITALLY ENHANCED to show detail, while the picture above it is similar, but not changed.  The picture on the bottom is my personal favorite, as it displays the visible spectrum reflected by Mercury of the sun's light.

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Thomas

Weekend fun for the boys

Over the weekend we worked on our house. First we let the boys have a party. They had about 14 teenagers downstairs. I feel crazy old. Bryan and I took turns "checking" on them in the basement. (And i pigged out on the coffee cake a kid named Smiley brought to share.) I need to get Smiley's recipe.

Saturday the boy fun continued as Bryan and Uncle Jared started working on a loft in our game room. Power tools, drill bits, and tape measures, levels, powersaws.

I WISH I HAD CLAWS!!!

After a long trip to San Diego to visit our friends in 2002 I had an incredible experience that can be summarized by this edited photo. We arrived at our friends very late and quickly got our children settled in sleeping bags on the floor. Wendie and I visited briefly with our gracious hosts and then we got settled on couches. I hadn't gotten to sleep when Thomas came up to me and insisted that I get something out of the car for him. It was cold and I thought it was an unnecessary request at such a late hour. After several unsuccessful attempts to persuade me to get the item Thomas became somewhat enraged. All but a few night lights were off in the house when Thomas, eerily illuminated, obviously disturbed and potentially possessed, stood there stiffly with his arms folded and teeth clamped together and growled, "I WISH I HAD CLAWS!!!" For a moment I was truly concerned for my personal well being and wondered how I could be the father of such a demon spawn. Fortunately the night passed without incident and after sending him to a "special school" Xavier has done wonders with my son (this is from the movie X-men).

Amateur Astrology

My horoscope has been telling me to get into Astronomy.(JK) We have a telescope that I recently used to see the last phase of Venus before it dips into the sun's glare. I tried to get a picture using the camera pointed into the lens of the telescope. I was quite pleased at my first attempt to capture an image. I'll have to figure out a way to get it to be more steady. In spite of my lack of experience you can still clearly see the multi-colored crescent shape of Venus. Bryan