Sometimes I’m slow to catch on. Sometimes I’m just plain stubborn. In the case of podcasts I’m guilty of both. Last week I broke down and subscribed to a couple of reef based podcasts – TalkingReef and Reefcast. iTunes makes subscribing trivial and I have to say I’m sorry I held out as long as I did. Podcats ROCK and my commute just got a little less sucky.
Picked up a Tridacna derasa clam from the local fish store, North Side Aquatics. I’ll have to keep an eye on it as they can grow upwards of 20 inches!
I carved this little guy for a contest at work. I got the inspiration from Jack-o-Lantern.com. Not being satisfied with just carving a pumpkin I set out to be different. I decided to carve a small 3.5 inch pumpkin and light it with a small USB rechargeable light. With a little help from a mellon baller and a pumpkin carving tool it was quick work.
No, I didn’t win anything but I had fun! See more Pumpkin Pi pictures on Flickr.
Okay, I realize that Charles didn’t have the advantage of quality telescope optics such as those we have available to us today. I can even accept the difficulty of differentiating a globular cluster from a comet in his day. But Charles come on! Turn the focus knob or have a little less wine with your cheese already!!!
Seriously, Messier 29 through most any telescope available today is easily seen as a fairly course open cluster. It lies in a dense region of the milky way near Gamma Cygni. Grab your binoculars or low power eyepiece for this one.
I captured M29 using a 12.5 inch f/9 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with an SBIG ST10XME and AO7. The image is a combination of 48 – 10 second exposures.
It’s no secret that given the choice I’d rather whip out my PowerBook than log onto my Windows machine. Not looking to start a rant here just stating my preference. I knew when I whipped out the PowerBook for my presentation at the Ark-La-Tex Star Party I would take a few lumps from my fellow geeks – and I did. Now imagine how delighted I was when three of the six speakers (yes including me) did so on a PowerBook. Many of my fellow astro geeks were stratching theirs heads on this one – it’s no secret.