Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
It was raining this morning (as predicted) when I got up, but cleared up in the early afternoon. There was actually some sun showing, and I could hear the now resident red-shouldered hawk screaming out in the trees. I went out and was looking off to the north and east for the hawk. Something caught my eye and I turned back to the south.
WOW! This layout across the sky, this composition, this mixture of forms and shadows and various shades of white and sunlight… WOW!
I understand that there’s a huge mix here of cirrus clouds and stratus clouds and some building cumulonimbus clouds and so on. But all together? “WOW clouds.”
I grew up in Kansas for a while, saw lots of HUGE thunderstorms, even a tornado or two, and I do dearly love seeing and experiencing that kind of violent weather. But there’s a lot of simple joy in suddenly turning around and seeing a 360º panorama like this.
More unexpected, widely scattered, pop-up thunderstorms. Nothing heavy near us, but I was out on the front yard and this was looking threatening.
Literally two seconds later, the first of many drops started slamming into the back of my head.
I suspect if you zoom in far enough on this picture you can see a million or so not-so-tiny drops, falling at terminal velocity, targeting my skull like Nature’s own soggy cruise missiles!
I ran for the house. Fortunately, I was designed to be drip-dry.
It’s a really excellent stick. Ausgezeichnet, so to speak.
First of all, today is my birthday, I’m now 68.
But why the stick? (Despite the fact that it’s an excellent stick!)
A few days ago I scanned past a post on some social media site or the other and saw a picture of a guy with a stick. It was a nice stick, a very nice stick. He had been out for a walk, had found the stick along the way, and had picked it up and was taking it home because when he was a little kid, if he was out playing and he found a very nice stick, he would pick it up to play with and take home. And he was betting that all of us would have done the same. AND HE WAS RIGHT!
The bigger point was that we had changed as adults, and not necessarily for the better. We had lost the ability to be playful, to find joy in simple things, to just pick up that stick and play with it and take it home just because it was COOL! He was reclaiming that childhood wonder. He was going to play with the stick! It was his! He found it, fair and square! He was going to take it home!
I was impressed. And inspired.
And then, that very afternoon, I found an excellent stick in our front yard. (It’s been windy.) And while contemplating my advancing age and impending natal day celebration, I realized that this was a *SIGN*.
So here I am, 68, with my stick. What kind of stick? A really excellent stick. (Pay attention. Work with me here. It’s probably either a midlife crisis or a stroke.)
When a rocket launches it leaves behind it a trail of exhaust. From the rocket itself there’s a V-shaped plume of exhaust that grows bigger and wider as the rocket ascends and the air pressure drops. This can sometimes be tough to see during daylight unless you’re close to the launch site. At night it’s much easier to see the rocket and V-shaped plume since the rocket is so bright, but you often can’t see the long plume behind it because there’s nothing illuminating it.
But there’s a sweet spot, for a little while after sunset (or before sunrise, but getting up that early? who needs that sort of negativity in their lives?!) when it’s dark enough overhead to see the rocket, but the Sun’s still shining over the horizon to illuminate the plume…
I didn’t figure it would matter at all. We again had several pop-up thunderstorms that weren’t in the forecast at all (what IS up with that?) and late this afternoon we were getting light showers and we weren’t watching anything in the sky except the bottoms of some thick, black clouds.
But I checked again just before the SpaceX launch, and it was surprisingly clear. I kicked the “LIVE!” button in Facebook.
It was AMAZING!!
The plume had gone from horizon to (almost) horizon (there’s a tree there to the southeast) and the lighting and timing were perfect.
In the video you can see the first stage come up from behind the mountains (0:56), shut down and separate from the upper stage (1:42), the second stage light (1:49), the first stage falling behind with occasional white flashes from the cold nitrogen gas thrusters it uses for maneurvering (2:37 & 2:39), and the two fairing halves separating and falling away (2:46). If you listen carefully (or are using headphones) you can hear neighbors from a couple of spots through the neighborhood hooting & hollering.
Even fifteen minutes after the launch, the plume was still illuminated as the upper level winds twisted and dissapated the exahust, still lit from the Sun far over the western horizon.
Online on social media you’ll see videos and pictures from all up and down the California coast, from Pismo Beach to San Diego, down into Baja, and inland in as far as Palm Springs, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas. There’s even one picture from a guy somewhere over the Rockies at 34,000 feet, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.
The roses aren’t the only flowers starting to rouse for spring. I went around the side of the house and found this:
As with the roses, this bush has been trimmed back quite a bit by the gardeners over the winter. (After I took all of the Christmas lights off of it…) But the leaves have returned and with it, one pioneering, flaming red bloom.
The humming birds are regular visitors, not just to the feeders in the back yard, but to all of the blooming plants throughout the neighborhood.
In addition to the hibiscus and rose, across the street there are fruit trees (oranges, at least, possibly others) that are just covered in tiny white blossoms now. Not only are they all covered with bees (a great thing in its own right!) but the hummers are swarming all around the neighborhood.
I had noticed this bud starting to grow over the last week, but when I went out today to get the mail I found that it had finally “popped!”
Classic form, perfect structure, beautiful color.
The only spot of color in a long row of roses that got cut back for the winter around the first of the year. Give it a couple of weeks, there will be roses of a half dozen different colors up and down the row. (When we find the “forever home,” I need to plant roses like this all along the driveway or by the front porch.)
Not noticed until I was going through the pictures for this post – a little friend hiding in the petals! Click on the image to blow it up to full-sized – can you find them?
In the middle of watching the hockey game tonight (it was good, Kings 5-0 over the Blackhawks) we got a blaring warning emergency alert, followed by the robot voice synthesizer from the National Weather Service warning about severe weather, up to and including hail, thunderstorms, and a possible tornado. WTAF?!
We didn’t get more than a few drops here, most of the action was east of Downtown LA and in the San Gabriel Valley, all thirty to fifty miles to our east. (Southern California’s a big place.)
By late tonight, the leftover remnants were over us, and with the quarter moon (that bright spot in the lower right) lighting them up from above and the light pollution from the city lighting them up from below, they looked pretty cool!
The big takeaway lesson for the evening, however, was that it’s so much harder to get down on the ground and then back up to my feet than I remember it being when I was younger. This sucks! (For the record, I was laying down on my back on the patio to try to stabalize my arms when holding my phone to take these 10 second exposures, rather than just walking inside the house to get one of the dozen or so tripods I have… Okay, so, the true takeaway is that I’m an idiot, but that’s not exactly news now, is it?)
1) Be careful to watch the partial phases of the eclipse carefully and protect your eyes!
2) If you don’t already have safe eclipse glasses and you’re going to watch the eclipse, get them now! They’ll sell out quickly.
Never look at the Sun without protection except for when it’s 100% fully eclipsed. For those 4:24 you’re going to see one of the most amazing sights in the entire Universe and you can whip those glasses off and see it in all of its naked eye glory. But for the partial phases for a couple hours before totality and for a couple of hours after totality, you MUST have protection for your eyes.
And NEVER look at the uneclipsed Sun with binoculars or any kind of magnification without special solar filters designed specifically for that instrument. You can cause permanent vision damage or loss in just seconds.
When shopping for eclipse glasses, make sure you only buy from reputable sources and manufacturers. There are reports already of many sellers on Amazon and elsewhere that are are pushing knock off glasses that don’t meet the proper standards for protecting your vision. I got mine from 2024eclipse.org. (For a package of ten I paid $27, including tax and shipping, so that should give you a good baseline for how much you should be paying.)
At the end of the day, if you can’t get certified eclipse glasses and April 8th comes and you still need a way to look at the partial phases of the eclipse, there are other options that don’t involve looking directly at the Sun. We’ll get to those another time.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 