Colorful Coin

Under the category of "what the heck is that" is this coin I received in change the other day... The front side (left) is normal, but the back is in color! I didn't think much of it, figured someone was doodling with fingernail polish, and didn't think much of it. I finally dug it out of my change jar yesterday and took a good look at the obverse side. Shown at right, it appears someone took cares to color at least part of the design - trying to stay inside the lines, anyway... I took out my "supermacro" (Canon MP-E 65mm) to document here. The upper images here are at the lowest magnification I can get - about 1:1, or life-size on the sensor. The quarter just quite does not fit in the field of view. But even here you can see that the scene isn't a straight painting, rather it appears to be a multi-layer screen print. Note the screen dots on the details of the woman and what she is carrying - indicative of some sort of a screening or printing procedure.

I was not aware that this was a "thing", but a quick internet search showed them available at Amazon and Ebay for as little as $2 each when bought as a complete set. They appear to be legal tender, which is likely how I received it, when someone needed a quarter and spent this for whatever purchase was needed...

The close-ups here were taken with the same lens at about 3X magnification (scale at bottom is in millimeters. Note especially on the "Pennsylvania" detail, there appears to be a slight registration error of about a half millimeter. At right you can also see the barely-visible E Pluribus Unum through the layer of color at bottom...

All-in-all, an interesting circumstance to run into this item. They do not appear to be common, as after posting last night on FB, most have indicated they've never seen one! One fellow knew someone that collected them, but were new to another half dozen commenters. But they are out there and another reason to pay attention to your money!

The Star of Local "Crime of the Century" Passes Quietly...

The New York Times is always interesting - that is why I subscribe to weekday delivery. But today I read something that shocked me as I'd never heard the story before - and it happened in Tucson! June Robles Birt, who had been kidnapped for 19 frantic days in 1934, died 2 months ago. Her original obit had her married name listed, explaining why so much time passed before the star of the story was recognized as passing.



It was big news in 1934 - 6 year old "Little June" was kidnapped off a Tucson street while walking to her aunt's house after school setting off a frantic search. Over the course of a couple weeks and 3 ransom notes, the case was no closer to being solved. Finally a week after the last ransom note, a letter arrived, mailed from Chicago, with a crude map where "the girl's body could be found". Spectacularly, after a 3 hour search, the county attorney found her alive, locked and chained in a metal box buried underground in the oppressive AZ heat. Even with daily nationwide headlines, no headway could be made in the case, and June went on to successfully become as anonymous as she sought to be, marrying quietly and raising 4 children.  Of course, this is the "Cliff Notes" of the story - go read it yourself at the NY Times website!

No Substitute for Experience!

In the last post about the solar eclipse, I posted the best I could do in revealing the most out of my photos. I knew that you needed to take several exposure lengths to capture the tremendous range of brightness of the sun's corona. At left are the 4 exposures taken with the TEC 140 and Canon 6D that aren't totally overexposed (I tended to go way to long!). From upper left the exposures range from a 400th of a second to a sixth of a second at lower right. In an attempt to wring details out of the image, I did the standard HDR (High Dynamic Range) technique in Photoshop to combine them. That resulted in the photo shown in the above post that normally does a reasonable job in revealing details in a scene with a huge range in brightness. While ok, it was NOT what I was seeing others getting.

I arm-twisted my bloggin' buddy Ken to have a go at it. Part of my problem above is that I used jpegs, that results in loss of data. While I've had my camera over a year, I don't use the raw files as it would require my getting an annual subscription to Adobe which I refuse to do. Ken has the latest version and I though using the raws would make a big difference. But I was wrong as he didn't get great results either. He took the liberty of passing it on to another friend Stan Honda, a professional photographer and owner of several "Astronomy Pictures of the Day". I was reluctant to bother Stan, but Ken had no such reservations, so I was glad for the help!

And what Stan got was quite spectacular! Shown at left here is his proper handling of the raw data in revealing more of the coronal structure. I've yet to learn what he did, but he sent links to a pair of tutorials he followed from Adobe. I've not had a chance to work through them yet, but tutorial #1 is here, and tutorial #2 is here. If you have access to Adobe products and want to get into this kind of processing, I suspect all you need is there!

Thanks so much to Stan for demonstrating there is always more to learn, and thanks for revealing where you learned it!

Start of a New Adventure!

Well today marks the beginning of a 2-week adventure! Not only am I on a road trip to observe the upcoming solar eclipse crossing the country, but I'm doing it with an astronomy group from Krasnoyarsk, Russia! Last time we saw Sergey, he was escorting 11 Russian "children", as he calls them (ages 9-16), as I was in charge of their itinerary while we did astronomy stuff in Southern Arizona for 9 days! As I write this, I'm in Blythe, CA, getting part of the trip behind me so I can pick them up at LAX early tomorrow afternoon!

This time there will only be 6 kids, I believe, as well as Sergey, and since my van only sits 7, I've managed to talk a friend of mine, Margie Williams, along as a secondary driver with her pickup and jump seat. That way she'll be able to haul some gear for me and also load a passenger or to. The trip is rounded out by our friend Donna who mostly wants to see the eclipse, but also wants to experience the trip with us as well, and having a 3rd adult can't help either!

But besides playing tourists on a road trip, there is an eclipse to observe! Since we are driving, we're not limited by airline weight or size limitations, and I've got a bunch of gear totally suitable for an eclipse! Shown at left is a view of the 3 main scopes, all mounted on a single beefy AP 1200 mounting. The main scope is a 5.5" diameter refractor which will give an excellent image on the full-frame Canon 6D sensor with its 1,000mm focal length. Next to it is a much-wider field of a 300mm lens on an APS sensor. The "tilted" scope at left is actually a spectrograph with a beefy prism in front that will take a spectrum of the sun's chromosphere at 2nd and 3rd contact - something fun to do! At right is a view from the other (top) direction!

And along the way, we'll be making some first-ever visits to some states for me (Wyoming, Utah), and we'll tarry long enough to see some of the sights as well, though plans call for us to be back in Tucson a few days after the eclipse to visit some of the "old standards" that amateur astronomers would come halfway around the world to see. It all starts tomorrow, or started today - depends on how you count! Stay tuned!

Arizona Aflame!

All of you have likely seen the nightly news and the reports that the western US is suffering simultaneously record high temperatures and dozens of forest fires. Even in my last post here I talked about a fire detouring my trip to the Canyon, and a glimpse of the fire showed one of the ancient cinder cones as if the volcano had come back to life! We've had close to a dozen within a hundred miles of Tucson the last few months, but two in particular have attracted a lot of attention. 

Most recently, the Burro Fire started about a week ago. It's cause is not yet known, but wasn't lightning as it was a storm-free day when it started 30 June. It is in a popular area for "wildcat shooting", so that remains a possible cause. While on the east end of the Catalina range just north of Tucson, it is not directly endangering any houses, but is very near the only access road to Summerhaven atop Mount Lemmon, so as a precaution, the mountain has been evacuated. Yesterday (5 July), I flew to Chicago and was surprised when we took off to the west, and circled around, flying along the front range of the Catalinas. We were not near the main part of the fire, but what did become clearly visible were the slurry paths from the aerial tankers as they controlled the southern extent of the blaze.  Current estimates have it over 25,000 acres burned, and only 11% contained...

Another major fire that had attracted my attention several weeks ago was the Frye Fire atop Mount Graham. Now burning for a month, it was initially not actively fought as it was a lightning-caused fire, not near any structures in a remote part of the range. Ten days later it had exploded wildly and threatened the major observatory at the peak, as well as cabins at several locations.

Now I'm a little paternal when it comes to the telescopes up there, as I worked on making all three of them! While I was at the Canyon a couple weeks ago I was looking for news to see if the scopes survived. Thankfully they did! Troy Wells was with firefighters atop the LBT structure and took the following video. Interestingly, it is mis-identified as being in Utah, and it is also reversed left-to-right, but the video is no less amazing. As the fire bears down on the structure, the cavalry arrives in the form of a DC-10 with a load of slurry!



The Observatories there literally appeared to be saved by that drop. An inspection a couple days later by the director of the Vatican Telescope resulted in the following report...


I took a Sunday visit to a friend living in Safford, just east of Mount Graham on 2 July. The fire was still very evident even if the danger to the Observatories and cabins have passed. At left is a view of the only access to the mountain - highway 366, Swift Trail. Smoke hangs heavy over the eastern slopes, and while not easily visible in this shot, there was a sheriff and a roadblock a kilometer down the road. I was heading home about sunset, driving south paralleling the mountain and suddenly noticed the lighting had changed! A glance towards the sunset showed the sun hanging low directly over the main column of smoke. That was certainly worth a stop for a photograph!



Now Mount Graham is another waypoint on the flight to Chicago - it normally is visible outside the left window as we jet to the northeast. I paid the extra fee to get a port side window and was rewarded with the following view at left! Normally the 3 telescopes are clearly visible as we pass, but the smoke from the fire totally obscured the entire mountaintop!

Interestingly, I had also packed my IR-modified camera. This camera has a filter that ONLY allows infrared light to the sensor, instead of being blocked out like most cameras. As a result of the longer wavelengths used, blue skies get darkened and the chlorophyll of healthy plants appear almost white. At right is the infrared view. Most interestingly, the smoke is all but invisible! Blackened burn scars are much more easily visible against the white of normal forest growth. They were taken only a few moments apart, so the only real differences are the wavelengths of observation... The current status of the Frye Fire is about 48,000 acres burned and is about 66% contained.

WARNING!  Anaglyphs ahead!

For those of you who are fond of my anaglyph 3D images (I know there are a few of you out there!), I've combined image pairs taken from the plane to make 3D images. At left is again the color shot at visible wavelengths. You will see the 3D image with using the red/blue glasses with the red filter on the left.

At right is similarly the infrared anaglyph. I am truly shocked at how well the longer IR wavelengths penetrate the smoke of the fire. The 3D effect also seems stronger too - perhaps because of the mostly black and white image and its effect on the tinted anaglyph.



And believe it or not, the LBT is visible through what is likely about the thickest part of the smoke in the IR shot. Check out this full-resolution shot at left of the above image. Just under the center of the cloud at the upper profile of the mountain, the silver box of the LBT can be spotted!

While fire season is hanging on as long as the summer rainy season is staying away, it won't be long till the rains and humidity will extinguish the AZ fires at least. Meanwhile, I'm happy to be back in the green Midwest for a few weeks. I'm even looking forward to some hot muggy days - can't be much worse than the 115 degree days we've survived in the desert!

ADDENDUM!
I'm editing this entry as I just finished a new anaglyph of the slurry lines at the Burro Fire, and it was too cool not to include! Shown at left, the 3D anaglyph shows how the slurry lines were laid down mostly along ridge lines to prevent the fire's spread. That is all - enjoy!

The June Tradition!

For over a quarter century now I've followed a tradition. Back in 1990, my first wife Vicki and I ran off to Vegas to get married. Pausing at the Canyon for a brief honeymoon before a road trip to the Midwest to meet my family, we noticed that a telescope set up at the rim to look within immediately gathered a crowd. We decided then that we'd invite a few friends to join us on our anniversary and have a star party. Thus was started the Grand Canyon Star Party, our anniversary in May of 1991 (4 telescopes over the week!) was butt-freezingly cold, so have held it dark-of-the-moon in June since the second interation in '92.

The early years the rangers seemed to tolerate us, and it took a decade to grow into the full partnership it is now between park and astronomer. I've managed to be the only attendee that has attended at least a night at every year's event, sometimes over the objections of my boss or my responsibilities of a care-giving spouse.

Today is the last day of this year's version, and I was able to attend the first 3 nights last weekend. It was a great time, and an affirmation of what I found the very first event in 1991 - the joy and appreciation in feedback from the tourists that may be seeing a dark sky for the first time is the highest payback that us as astronomers can receive in sharing the views through our telescopes! I ran the event for a generation (about 18 years), and it is nice to see it thriving under Jim O'Connor's and the Park Service's attentions. At left is a selfie I took in our parking lot at sunset with the venerable Celestron 14" - here with a piggy-backed 500mm lens for some late-night imaging...

This year's trip up was uneventful. An early-morning start of 6am got us through Phoenix before reaching the 115F+ temperatures that were expected. The road typically taken between Flagstaff and Canyon was closed because of a fire, so went west to Williams before north to the Canyon. Interestingly, the fire could be seen at one of the many cinder cones connected to the volcanic field with the San Francisco Mountains. The smoke from the fire made it look as though the ancient cinder cone was active again!

A quick stop at the telescope field, a run to the campground to set up the tent, a bite of dinner and then back to set up the telescope for the night. It wasn't until about sunset that I had a chance to roam and meet up with friends from over the years. At right, Bernie Sanden at left had a trick played on him - Dennis Young at right had hidden Bernie's expensive Tele-Vue eyepiece and replaced it with a cheap substitute. Before too much anguish, Dennis 'fessed up, and Bernie managed a smile at being "scammed". That is Joe Bergeron, long time artwork contributor for our t-shirt designs in blue at left...

The first night was fantastic! I had an immediate crush of public as soon as we were able to get Jupiter in the eyepiece. I had 30 people in line at my scope most of the night, so was difficult to change objects without upsetting folks in line for a while. Managed some great views of Jupiter, Saturn and Messier 13 in Hercules. The seeing was near-perfect, and, of course, as soon as the crowd departed after about 10:30, I fine-tuned the collimation of the C-14 and was able to run the power on Saturn well in excess of 300X without any breakdown!

After a reasonable night's sleep in the cool temps, I made it to the rim after nearly 24 hours there! It looked about the same as last year! Looking for a nice shot of it, over near Yavapai Point (where the star party was held for decades!), took some shots from one of my special viewpoints from where I used to set up my binoculars for hours and days to attract people's attention to the star party. Here I took a pair of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images with both the standard camera (Canon 6D) and an IR-modified camera (an old converted 20D). While the color image looks nice, I always like the alien view of an IR image, whose longer wavelengths cut haze, darkens a clear sky and turns vegetation white. The HDR image uses 3 different exposures at differing exposures to compress the shadows and highlights to see all details in the single frames...

When I had arrived at Yavapai, I noticed a little something out-of-the-ordinary. As I left my parked van, I spotted an elk as it walked past me towards the rim with single-minded-purpose! With a quick pace, looking neither left nor right, it seemed to be late for a meeting... After my own stop at the bathroom and collecting camera gear, I headed rimside too. As I approached, I found the reason for his being there! Right at the rim was a water bottle filling station and there was the elk... He had managed to open the valve and there he was slurping water from the valve!

Now realize these are NOT pets, nor raised in captivity. They are wild creatures capable of dangerous behavior if started or if fawns were around. Yet there was a crowd of people gathered around, most turning their back to it to take a selfie. The three girls at right asked me to take their photo, but I declined saying I wanted to document their selfie because they looked so stupid! There has been a huge uptick in elk over the years and they were pretty much everywhere around the park, at all hours of the day and night, so whenever driving you had to keep an eye out!

On night 2 there was a little smoke coming up from the fire near Flagstaff, but it dissipated and cleared just after sunset, never really affecting the observing. Huge crowds again, and I met some amazing people, whose story I'll save for a subsequent post. The top photo shows the 500mm lens recently obtained mounted on the scope and I hoped when the crown thinned, to take some photos to better show people what we were looking at with a few seconds of exposure. About 10:30 again the crowds thinned and I went looking for Comet Johnson C/2015 V2. It was in a very sparse field and took me a while to locate it, but a brief exposure showed the characteristic green glow, caused mostly by the dissociation of carbon in the vacuum of space as it approaches the sun. The exposure at left is a stack of 6 exposures of 2 minutes each and show a short stumpy tail that we could only imagine visually in the 14" telescope...

Those who have seen my photos before know I'm a fan of dark nebulae - seen mostly by silhouette against more distant star clouds. For that reason I show the exposure of Saturn at right - extremely overexposed at center. It happens to be crossing the Summer Milky Way and a long-ish exposure shows many of these distant dust clouds in profile. For that reason alone this is a favorite exposure from the Canyon!

Similarly, not far away, I tried the same thing on one of the coolest sights in the sky, Messier 22. A globular cluster, it contains the mass of about 300,000 solar masses, and is quite spectacular with the rich star fields in the background. In the full field at left, you can see the thin wisps of dark clouds in projection against the star clouds near the galactic center. While the 500mm is nice for showing extended clouds like this, it isn't optimum for showing details of objects like this cluster. A full resolution crop is shown at right and starts to show some details of the star cluster. It also has a lil' buddy to the upper right - what looks like an extended bright star is actually another globular NGC 6642. This smaller cluster is also nearly 3 times farther away (26,000 light years, vs 10,000) than M22, making it look diminutive.

Also nearby is a pretty pair of objects if you do wide-field imaging like this with the 500mm. You might have spotted them here before because M20 and M8 (Triffid and Lagoon Nebulae) are a common target of mine. Both glow with the characteristic red tint of hydrogen emission, as these star-formation clouds are predominantly hydrogen. The Triffid Nebula at top is so-named because it is split into 3 pieces by narrow dark clouds. It also sports a striking blue shade on top - the result of the dust and gas reflecting light from a nearby blue star.


Finally as I was considering closing down for the night, I noticed that the Andromeds Galaxy was getting high in the northeast. The 500mm is a perfect lens for the object as it barely fits in oriented diagonally. Messier 32 is the nearest bright galaxy to the Milky Way at about 2.5 million light years. It is also the farthest you can see with the naked eye if you have a dark enough sky!

Tuesday brought something rare - clouds! There was even thunder and lightning scattered around the Canyon. I spent some time along the Canyon edge. Shown here is an interesting sight - a single condor attracting a LOT of attention, not unlike a Hollywood starlet and a gaggle of press corps!

I ended up heading home after dinner, avoiding the 120+ degree heat of Phoenix by traversing it at Midnight! So I got my dose of the star party - glad I made it, always wanting more, but sometimes life gets in the way!

Surviving The Republican Convention!

Blessedly, the Republican National Convention ended this evening. I normally wouldn't be watching it, but as a fan of Rachel Maddow, I feel bound to watch her show every night, and since she was covering the convention this week, there you go! I'm not really a fan of Trump or his ilk, but we've found a way to make watching (and listening) to them more enjoyable...

On our last trip to the Midwest, on a visit to our nephew's house, they had little guns that shot suction cups at flat surfaces (think television sets!). You get a little emotional release by shooting at anyone causing you stress or unhappiness. Fortunately, I found a couple in the Target store when we returned to Tucson, and it was one of Melinda's anniversary presents when we celebrated in June. Shown at left, they shoot little Nerf suction cups with surprising velocity and easily fly straight across the room and stick to our new big-screen TV. The only problem with them is that Melinda is a little too weak to pump the mechanism, but it is easy enough for me to do it for her. The little stickers are different colors, so you can identify which of you took which shots.

So Melinda found some release in shooting the TV after I made her at least listen to the broadcast. At right is my grouping from across the living room, though I moved across the room so that I could get the gun and TV in the same frame for an image. Nice shootin' eh? Must be from the practicing I get w/my shootin' buddies out in the desert, though the suction cups are easier on the TV screen than the real thing!

Cats, Trumped!

Trump our Lucy - the donor!

Ever since Donald Trump has been in the news, seemingly forever, his coiffed comb-over has been the butt of jokes and comments. Take the classic Letterman bit "Trump or Monkey" that got laughs for years. Well, recently, with his running for POTUS (President Of The United States), derision has returned in full force. And while we've been doing this for years (really - WE invented it!), "Trumping your cat" has been all the rage the last few months!

Well, midway through our Winter season, our youngest cat, Lucy, needed some severe combing, so got out a handful of fur, so she was our donor kitty this time. "Collect, shape, place - and now document" is our new mantra! So at left is Lucy, Trumped! Pretty good, she tolerated it better than I expected, and the shade, of course, matches pretty well. There was an extra curl or two in the hairpiece, which was reworked for other volunteers...

Sugar Pants - not quite natural...

Squeeky - our winner!

Sit still very long in our house, and one-by-one, they all come by for attention! So with our lil' hairpiece set aside, we patiently waited. Next up was our "pretty boy" Sugar Pants, who also tolerated it well and doesn't look too uncomfortable with the rug. While the shape is good in this case, the contrasting color just doesn't do it for me.

It wasn't too many minutes later and our newest adapted feral, Squeeky (or Squeeks, Mr. Squeeker - you get the idea) came by and got in the fun for the first time. Ladies and gentlemen - I think we have our winner! Not only did he wear it well, but he had a bit of attitude and did a great job!

As the opportunity presents themselves, you might see more of this - they don't hate us for it, so it makes their owners smile, so why not?

Shout It From The Mountains!

We were dreading the routine.  Here we are on 10 September, 25 months into Melinda's cancer fight, sitting in the oncologist office waiting for the results of yesterday's PET scan that monitors the effectiveness of her treatments.  These scans, taken every 2 cycles of treatments (each cycle is a month) are the gold standard for monitoring the growth and spread of her small-cell lung cancer tumors.  Unfortunately, for over the last year now, each scan has been progressively worse, or new spots have popped up in new places, marking a wider spread each time.  Our oncologist, Dr Garland, who we love, always seems to have a new chemo combo to offer as we abandon each treatment that isn't helping her.  But after a year, you would think that the list of options are getting shorter and shorter...

So here we were on another Thursday waiting to get the update.  I asked Melinda, "What is your "spidey-sense" telling you about the results"?  She felt that the results would be good, which I thought was going out on a limb after so many cycles of bad news...  Minutes later, nurse Nancy (yes, really!) came in and said Dr. Garland was in her office doing cartwheels - the PET scan was miraculously good!  Unfortunately, we saw our oncologist's PA (who we also like a lot), and she provided us a copy of the PET report.  There were lots of $5 words, but notably states "Marked interval decrease in size and metabolic activity of the previously identified lymph nodes.  Previously identified left retrocrural, aortocamal conglomerate and periceliac lymph nodes are not seen on today's exam."  One set of lymph nodes that had grown into a single mass in the last scan was now reduced and resolved into 3 smaller spots.  So while we didn't do cartwheels, the ear-to-ear grins we carried expressed our relief!  Good news at last!

So we'll continue with the Irinotecan for a while, and in two more cycles (2 months) hopefully we'll see continued improvement.  She had today's infusion immediately after seeing the PA.  Our buddy Erica sat with Melinda during her treatment as I had to be home for meeting pest control, then we went out for steaks to celebrate, and Melinda finished off her Ribeye without leftovers!  It is amazing how a little good news will brighten your day, week, or for that matter, the entire month of September!  Spread the word!

Blog On Hiatus...

Just a note that the blog is off the air for now.  We made it back safely to Tucson early this morning, but while in the Midwest, my computer with image archives and Photoshop for editing "blew up".  It wasn't very spectacular, but the display (which one tends to need for working) suddenly got bright and went away.  So it is at the shop and in the intervening week or so I'm not going to worry about it.

Melinda had a dentist appt today, and her first treatment of cycle 2 is on Thursday.  This new chemo drug is really knocking her down with nausea and fatigue, so she is resting up for this next cycle, after which is her next PET scan to see if it is doing her any good.  But for now, life goes on as normal here - check back in a couple weeks as we resume operations...

The "R" Word!

We've travelled a hard path for the last 7 months.  Melinda's initial diagnosis of small-cell lung cancer was a shock, but we jumped into the battle without hesitation.  We've done everything Dr. Garland has wanted us to do, and she has an aggressive outlook on treatments.  We know there is no cure for small-cell, but today we finally heard the word, brought on by yesterday's PET scan, the definitive measure of her cancer.  When Sandy, Dr. Garland's nurse first called this morning, Melinda thought there must be bad news, until she said the radiologist report said "continued complete metabolic response to treatment", in other words, there was no detectable cancer activity!  When Melinda first dared ask if her cancer was in remission, Sandy confirmed that was the case!  HAPPY DAY!  She still has a week of the full-brain radiation to zap the microscopic cells that may or may not be in her brain, but when we see Dr. Garland on Monday, we're expecting confirmation of Sandy's news leak, more details and likely get to see some images too.  At that time she'll go over the schedule for continued long-term monitoring for a possible return.  While we've hoped for good news, it looks that it has finally arrived, and it is time to celebrate. 

Addendum: For those interested in the tech speak, from the radiology report:

IMPRESSION:
Complete response to therapy. The primary right pulmonary hilar mass and paratracheal lymphadenopathy are no longer identified. No new FDG avid disease is identified.

The Prodigal Son Returns, But...

The Prodigal Son returns, but we no longer speak its language...  The story came from the always interesting blog of Emily Lackdawalla a few days ago.  The spacecraft known as the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3), launched in 1978 and repurposed in 1983 to study a pair of comets, then named the International Cometary Explorer (ICE), is returning to Earth's vicinity.  She reports that though a dozen of 13 instruments continue to operate, and it still has maneuvering fuel, at NASA's investigation into a possible repurposing of it, Goddard Spacecraft Center indicates we can no longer communicate with it.  Obviously the standards for radio signals has changed in those decades and the hardware needed to upload information to the spacecraft was retired and surplused in 1999.  The cost to rebuild new hardware to speak in an obsolete standard was determined to be too high to consider. 

So while it listens for instructions as it approaches the Earth, we won't be able to talk to it.  Interestingly, if it is ever recovered, NASA has already donated it to the Air and Space Museum, but that would require extraordinary effort as well.  As a long-term fan of spaceflight, it is sad to see it happen, but I'm amazed it hasn't happened before.  How many of you can download software for your computer from 3.5" floppies which was the standard just 15 years ago?

RAIN!

Rain in the desert is a rare thing.  We're supposed to get over half of our annual total (about 10" or 25cm per year) in the months of July and August, but this summer's totals were miserable in our part of town (just over an inch or so), while other parts had plentiful rain.  It was so bad I needed to water our cacti and trees to survive the hot months. 

But finally, this weekend came a confluence of effects that brought a slow-moving "cutoff low" through Arizona, and over the last 24 hours we got about 2" (5cm) of rain.  Interestingly, even though the top of Mount Lemmon got over 5 inches, a trip or two over the Rillito wash while running errand today showed a little stream, not even bank-to-bank, all of today's moisture soaking in instead of running off.  And while it is hard to photograph a rainstorm, I tried, catching drops running down the leaf of a Rhus Lancea (and catching a droplet of drizzle at center left) forming an inverted image of the trunk and fence in the yard, and some of the circular wavelets in the front yard "Lake".

Of all the pictures I took of the circular waves, only one showed any of the effects of falling drops in water that is sometimes seen in flash shots or short exposures.  You might spot them in the photo at left, but it helps to click and load the full-size image to see the column of water in the center of the lower-left wavelet, and many others in this shot show suspended drops as the column drops away.  I'm not sure why this is the only frame that shows any of the effects...

I ran a few errands around town, enjoying
driving through the gentle rain.  Also today was the 31st El Tour de Tucson, and a UA football game.  It was the first time in the el Tour history that steady rains fell!  While I was out and about I happened to catch a small section of a rainbow arc at one of my stops.  Interestingly it is seen over Mr K's Barbecue, which closed down a couple months back...

While stopped at the moment, the precipitation might not be over.  The original forecast had rain into Sunday, with the snow level dropping to the point where we'd see snow in the nearby mountains.  After months and months of no rain, I don't think anyone minds a few days of it...

The "Crimes" of Malala

I don't think in 600+ posts we've mentioned current events or politics and with good reason - there are other more dependable sources of news and information.  Anything I've got to say is generally my opinion and everyone is entitled to form their own about most any topic.  As much as I'd like everyone to think as I do, it is the differences between us that make life interesting.

But I've been dismayed and sickened by the news from Wednesday regarding 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, a young girl living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan.  Seems I've read about her in recent years, but she was front-page news in the New York Times as she was specifically hunted down Tuesday as she rode the school bus home by Taliban and shot in the head and neck, along with 2 other classmates.  She continues in a coma and some signs of improvement were seen today, her odds of survival placed at 70%.

Her crimes consist of her continued interest in going to school and becoming a doctor, which girls are forbidden to do according to Taliban doctrine.  Despite the acid attacks, public beatings and bombing of girls schools, Malala has become the face of girls in the Islamic world interested in furthering themselves.  She appeared in the documentary film "Class Dismissed" chronicling the closing of the private school run by her father Ziauddin as they were forced to flee Swat Valley when the Taliban took control.  My favorite parts of the documentary is when Malala is shown with her father - he is so proud of her standing up for what is undoubtedly right.  The young girl, 11 when the film was made, shows confidence and intense purpose among the beheadings, beatings and killing around her.  The half-hour film can be accessed through the link in the article above, or in a blog post written by the film's maker Adam Ellick.

Read the articles and comments, watch the documentary and be outraged at what zealotry is capable of performing.  Try as I might to understand how her crusade to go to school can be defined as "an obscenity" (Taliban quote as they accepted responsibility), I am utterly speechless...