Travelogue

Mercury, seen in silhouette, makes its way across the face of the Sun, with the Washington Monument in the foreground. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

SUN SHOTS: There are plenty of post-transit photos of Mercury making its way across the face of the sun from yesterday's solar event.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was one of those watching. (The Solar Dynamics Observatory views the sun in a variety of wavelengths of light in the extreme ultraviolet.) It's some pretty cool footage. 


Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein

FASCINATING WINDOW: Today we 'had' to watch an hour-long video about a pair of brothers who traveled to Indonesia and the Spice Islands in the 1970s, videography equipment in tow. It was a course requirement for CJ's World History class.

To be honest, if you'd asked me before today what or where the Spice Islands were, you'd have gotten a blank stare as a response. Now, thanks to the British brothers Blair (Lawrence and Lorne), I know a fair amount about the Indonesian archipelago.  

The Blairs traveled in and around Indonesia for 10 years, documenting their adventures along the way. The recordings turned into "The Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey." In the episode we watched today, the brothers lived with members of the Bugis tribe for months. The Blairs' goal was to follow in the footsteps of the 19th century naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace. 

The Blairs' initial excursion would up turning into a two-decade endeavor of documenting the relationships of Spice Island ecology and telling the stories of their peoples. Some of their work would up as an Emmy-nominated BBC/PBS television series, "Ring of Fire."

Shot with 16mm film in high heat and humidity back in the early 1970s, the photo quality of what we watched today is pretty poor by current standards. However, I found myself quickly 'forgiving' that, in exchange for having a vantage point to places and people most of us will never get to see in person.

We found it interesting when reading the credits that financing for the brothers' efforts was provided, in part, by Ringo Starr.

Apparently a digitally remastered DVD was released in 2003. I'd be curious to see what its video quality is like.

Poking around YouTube, I found a one-hour documentary, "Beyond the Ring of Fire." I listened to and sometimes watched about half of it while posting this blog. It's super interesting.


SPACE SNOOPY: I couldn't help but notice, but in the last couple of years, Snoopy (of Peanuts fame) has had a higher profile. He's popping up everywhere, and often these 'wheres' are off planet, like the moon or Mars.

As it turns out, Peanuts and the space program have a long relationship. Back in 1969, the lunar module and command module  for Apollo 10 were named after Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Also in '69, NASA started an annual Silver Snoopy Award given out to employees for "outstanding achievements related to human flight safety or mission success."

There's a new graphic novel about to come out, "Snoopy: A Beagle of Mars." I checked out some of its pages online today. It looks like lots of fun. It comes out Dec. 18. Hopefully we can check out a copy from a local library.

Meanwhile, a brand new series, "Snoopy in Space," is launching on the new Apple TV+. I don't think we'll have Apple TV+ any time soon, so who knows if we'll ever get to see any of it beyond YouTube trailers.

Eyes on the Skies

WATCH OUT: I had the stage set. There were two pairs of binoculars, some solar safety glasses, a couple of cameras ... we were hoping to see the transit of Mercury first thing this morning. 

However, the clouds had a different idea.

The event started about 4:35 a.m. Seattle time, but sun didn't rise here until after 7 a.m. today. So, Right after, I scanned the skies for any sign of an orange orb. For about two minutes I could make the disc out, but it was behind a *bunch* of tree branches from my vantage point. I used all of the tools at my disposal, but there was just no way I was able to see that speck in front of the sun given the clouds, the blowing branches and my under-powered binoculars. Bummer. 

Naturally, the sun came out about 15 minutes after the event was over. That's that Annabelle's checking out in the photo above. 

Missing out was kind of a big deal because this is the last time Mercury transits the sun until 2032, and during that occurrence, people in the U.S. won't be able to view it. Americans have to wait until 2049 for the next opportunity. Sigh.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Christian was also looking skyward. He's in Florida for a work conference which starts this afternoon, leaving his morning open. It just so happened there was a SpaceX launch this morning, so he hopped a shuttle from Orlando to Cocoa Beach. Below is a photo of his viewing spot. The tiny white block on the lefthand side of the photo is actually NASA's enormous Vehicle Assembly Building. The white speck in the middle of the frame, between the palm trees and a pole,is the launch site.

Though he was a bit of a ways away, he was a lot closer than us. ;) And he got to see the lift off! So happy for him - what a bonus to his business trip!

Here's the entire SpaceX broadcast of the launch. Lift off happens just after the 19-minute mark.

On board the launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, were 60 Starlink satellites.

Christian's view of the launch wasn't quite as close as the official SpaceX broadcast.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket nailed its landing on a barge named Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic Ocean. You can see that about the 27 minute mark of the video. It's the *fourth* time this piece of equipment has been launched and landed. What an accomplishment for SpaceX.

PLAY THE GAME: We continue to play board games for fun and to boost our logic and strategy 'muscles.'

Chess continues to be a favorite. I call this victory "March of the Black Queen." I checkmated CJ upon turning a lowly pawn into a powerful queen.

We were playing this game during Sunday Night Football. While playing, the announcer talked about how the Minnesota Vikings' Amari Cooper plays chess in the locker room all of the time. Interesting!

A new-to-us game is "How to Rob a Bank." Three players are the robbers, working together, against the fourth player, the bank security guards. 

It's a fun concept and quite different than most games. We'll be playing this regularly, I predict.