Total Eclipse

UPDATE 11:12pm - the clouds have shut down the show. At least for now. Maybe they'll just pass by.



[There are five posts showing different stages of the eclipse.]

It's Almost Gone

As it gets darker, my little camera's limits show more and more.  You still have time to go out and watch the moon covered completely and then come back. 


[There are five posts showing different stages of the eclipse.]

All You Have To Do Is Go Outside - Moon's Half Gone

If you are in Anchorage, you've no excuse not to go out and watch this rare wonder as the moon vanishes.  If you are elsewhere in North America, you're only excuse is an overcast sky.  I'm going back out to watch more.  (The pictures are all with my wee Canon Powershot and a tripod.  On this one I used spot focus, about 6X enlarge and pushing the exposure down two stops.)


[There are five posts showing different stages of the eclipse.]

I Know It's Cold, But The Moon Is Disappearing As You Watch

Now get out there and watch the moon disappear!  On the solstice no less. 


[There are five posts showing different stages of the eclipse.]

Go Out Right Now and Watch the Eclipse

Here's the pre-eclipse Anchorage moon about an hour ago.  It should be starting any time now.











It snowed again last night so I took this picture of the deck where I'm headed after I post this and then shoveled the snow.  The moon is visible and bright.

It will be going on for several hours so you have time. 


 From Drsky:

Observers in the western hemisphere will be treated to a great

total lunar eclipse on the night of December 20th/21st.

Total lunar eclipses are some of the most amazing events to view

in the night sky!

What makes this years eclipse so amazing; is the fact that the moon

Will ride very high in the sky and the eclipse will be seen from coast to coast.

Here are some details and links on this most amazing celestial event, as we end 2010!

Go to the drsky link for more info.

Catherine Doss Senungetuk's Exhibit Opens Tonight

I posted about this retrospective art exhibit not long ago. It opens tonight (Friday) from 5 - 7 pm at Out North. Since I wrote that post, Catherine's health has taken a turn for the worse and she's back in the hospital. We visited on Wednesday. There were others there as well. The setting was pretty good for being in a hospital. The view out the window of the Chugach was spectacular.

And while we were there a harpist wheeled in her instrument and played beautiful music for half an hour or so.

But it was a hospital room as the equipment loudly proclaimed.



Do come to Out North for the opening.







[Update: Catherine left us after the exhibition.]



UPDATE Jan. 1, 2011:  A Celebration of Catherine’s Life will be held in Anchorage at the Alaska Native Lutheran Church at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, January 14, 2011.  A reception will follow at the Out North Contemporary Art House.  In lieu of flowers, please offer a donation in Catherine’s memory to a charity of your choice.

Trying to Stay Cool in Chicago

Once L&N finally got us out of bed and out of the house, they took us to Lake Michigan to cool off from the stifling heat. where we parked next to this statue of Karel Havlicek, who Wikipedia says was a Czech writer.  The bio didn't mention Chicago so it wasn't clear why the statue was here.  But at the end was this addendum:

A Monument was raised to Havlicek in Chicago by Czech residents of the city in Douglas Park. Unveiled in 1910, the statue by Joseph Strachovsky shows Havlicek in a revolutionary pose, dressed in a full military uniform and a draped cape with his outstretched arm motioning the viewer to join him. The Monument was moved to Solidarity Drive on today's Museum Campus in the vicinity of the Adler Planetarium in 1981^[2]. In 1925 a biographical film was released.

The rest of these will have to pretty much speak for themselves.

This is from the spit that has the planetarium at the end.  That's the Shed Aquarium (lower left)  which our hosts are boycotting because they have "sentient beings" in captivity, including Beluga Whales.  I tried to find something about protests over the whales, and had to go through a lot of google pages until I found this 1991 Sports Illustrated article:

Recently the Shedd, a not-for-profit aquarium that first opened more than 60 years ago, has been the site of numerous protests. And as they have been doing for the past three years, animal-welfare groups throughout the world continue to file legal suits to prevent belugas from being taken into captivity. Lately the battle has escalated. In September two of the Shedd's six belugas died, prompting the governments of Canada and the U.S. to join in an investigation into what killed the seemingly healthy captive whales.

More recent articles talk about two baby belugas born at the aquarium, one of which died.  You can even go into the water and pet a beluga.  As an Alaskan who can from time to time see wild belugas, I have to remember that seeing these belugas live may do more good to protect our Cook Inlet belugas by making more people aware of these great animals.  It's a hard call and I don't have enough information to form a conclusion.  Two calves were born here in December, but only one survived (though this article focuses on the one that survived and the death of the other one is buried in the article.)  The article also says

Beluga newborns in the wild have a 50 percent survival rate and only 10 percent of calves born to first-time mothers live.

I'm not sure how they know this.  The ten percent rate sounds like  bad, if not impossible, evolutionary odds.

Did I say it was hot?

This is the bean at Millennium Park. as we drove by Tuesday afternoon.  Yesterday we spent time at the park and I'll do a post just on the park. 

These are shots from the back seat of the car as we drove through downtown on the way back to Oak Park where we're staying.

We stopped for dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant that had great food at reasonable prices.  It's called the Chickpea.  

It was full of Western ads and movie posters all in Arabic.  You don't need to know Arabic to get the messages.

And the moon played light games with the clouds when we got home.

Did I Mention How Beautiful Juneau Is?

I got to sleep in and didnʻt get up til 9am. Then I worked on some posts and since the sun was shining again, went for a run.

It turned out that in the Channel it was foggy again.

 

Since I met that geologist while I was taking a picture 

like this, there will be no stopping me.

On the way back the creek was generating its own fog.

And when I got home, the crocus had opened.  I guess this is included in the rent.  The stigmaʻs bright orange reminded me that crocus stigmas are the source of saffron.  But it turns out not just any crocus.  From Local Harvest:

The expensive saffron spice that you buy in the store is the dried female portion (stigma) of the Saffron Crocus. Why not grow your own? Saffron is the world's most expensive spice. Fortunately the home gardener only needs a couple dozen Saffron Crocus to produce enough saffron for some occasional dishes throughout the year. The corms will multiply each year, and to prevent overcrowding, corms are divided every 4 to 5 years. Saffron is grown mostly as a culinary and medicinal herb, having been cultivated for at least 4,000 years. Historically saffron has also been used as a natural dye for hair and natural fabrics, and for use in perfumes. Medicinal: Traditional use for its spasmolytic and sedative effects. Ornamental: Saffron blooms in mid-fall, producing exquisite brightly colored, lilac-purple blooms, each with three vibrant red stigmas. Even if you never harvest Saffron Crocus for food use, it deserves its own special place in the flower garden.

 Unfortunately,  the site also says it grows in zones 6-9.  That would work in Juneau I suspect, but not in Anchorage.  

So then I went down to the capitol and sat in on the full Finance Committee hearing on the medicaid budget which was interesting, but they didnʻt talk about the mental health budget or Bring the Kids Home.  But Iʻd gotten a call from Rep. Jouleʻs staff to pick up the spread she they were working off of at the subcommittee meeting so Iʻll try to make the corrections this weekend. 

And when I was back home, K and P knocked on the window and invited me to walk back up Perseverance Trail.  P picked up a friend's dog - Apollo - and off we went.  Except an almost full moon was coming up as the sun was setting and I kept pulling out my camera.

From the street outside our gate.

Looking back as we walk up Basin Road past the houses.

Looking up ahead.  

 

Walking back.

Ring Around the Moon

Saturday night there was a ring around the moon.  I tried to capture it with my camera, but I just got the moon and black.  But playing around with it in iPhoto I got this white shadow of the trees and in the upper right hand corner it could be some of the ring.  (I used the shadow button to boost whatever was in the shadows.)  To the naked eye it was easy to see, but my camera had more trouble. A ring around the sun is easier to catch on camera. The moon ring was all the way around. I should mention that Juneau's night sky is definitely darker than Anchorage's.  

Home Hiwaay has a page describing rings around the moon and other interesting moon effects.

A Ring Around The Moon

The ring around the Moon is caused by the refraction of Moonlight (which of course is reflected sunlight) from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. The shape of the ice crystals results in a focusing of the light into a ring. Since the ice crystals typically have the same shape, namely a hexagonal shape, the Moon ring is almost always the same size.
Less typical are the halos that may be produced by different angles in the crystals. They can create halos with an angle of 46 degrees.
Moon Ring Weather Folklore
Folklore has it that a ring around the moon signifies bad weather is coming, and in many cases this may be true. So how can rings around the moon be a predictor of weather to come? The ice crystals that cover the halo signify high altitude, thin cirrus clouds that normally precede a warm front by one or two days. Typically, a warm front will be associated with a low pressure system which is commonly referred to as a storm. It is believed that the number of stars within a moon halo indicate the number days before bad weather will arrive. Give it a try the next time you observe a moon halo.

We'll see if there is a storm in the next few days.

LA Moon

More Fun Guests

A friend of a friend and her sister arrived last night. This is their first trip to Alaska and they planned something a little different from most first trips. They're headed off to the ferry to Valdez from Whittier today. Then to McCarthy in Wrangle-St. Elias National Park where they will spend most of the time before driving back to Anchorage. Since the road to McCarthy is notorious for causing flat tires, they couldn't rent a car from a 'normal' car rental place and had found High Country which was the first stop from the airport.




The huge full moon had just come up as we rode the rest of the way home in two cars.







I woke up 'early' to find that J had gotten up even earlier and made a nice breakfast for our guests. I told them I needed this picture in case they didn't show up on time and I had to show the police their picture. Fortunately, their sense of humor was as warped as mine. Or maybe they were just being polite guests.


Well, the moon seemed that big. Would you believe. . .

Glen Alps Sunset/Moonrise

Anchorage lights starting to go on, Denali's peak
coming out of the clouds 150 miles away.

Looking in the opposite direction, the moon
was rising from behind the mountains.

Full Moon at Half Moon Bay

Our son and his roommate picked us up at the airport and we're now at their place just off the beach at Half Moon Bay. J and J and I walked Kona on the beach in the moonlight.

Here's the sound of the surf while you look at the iPhoto cranked up shots. If you look at the screen from the right angle, not only can you see my wife and son and his dog, but also their shadows and the surf.   [UPDATE:  The site I kept my audio, Jamglue, has shut down, and the audio I had there is, apparently, gone forever.  Sorry.]
Half Moon Bay surf under Full Moon by AKRaven

Looking toward Pillar Point, north of Half Moon Bay.

We left Anchorage a day after the full moon in January and we're due back tomorrow. The sun isn't quite full, but I used my poetic blogger's license with the title.