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Carolaina wanted to head up to Heber Springs to pick up some more specialty yarn at the House of Yarn, so we made our first trip back up there since early spring. As usual, we always head over to JFK Overlook Memorial Park and enjoy the view. Sometimes we'll stop by the Fish Hatchery next door, but we didn't this time. Instead, I wanted to rediscover the Old Highway 25 Park down the road. As a teenager, me and Anthony had camped out there more than once, but strangly enough I had no memory of it. This bothered me more than a little. It seems the area marked as the "A" campsites is where we went. A memory of one camping trip came back to me as we drove through that part. That old park must have been expanded some time ago, because there was a lot more too it than I remember. Carolina and I fell in love with a couple of the camping spots in the "C" area. We will most definitely try to return in the spring.
I've got my own little digital cameras since the last time we made a Heber Springs trip, so I have pictures. I've posted 6 of the pictures from my Palm that were worth showing over on Flickr.
Heber Springs day trip 10-28-2006
I'll likely add photos to this set (and have to rename it) after later trips.
Yesterday, we made our weekly grocery run to Wal-Mart. I usually swing through the electronics section for a quick look. This time I saw that they actually had a couple of the mobiBLU mp3 players I want. I was waiting until Christmas to get one, but was afraid that they might not have any more, so Carolaina let me get one! She also talked me into going ahead and opening and using it since Christmas is more than two months away.
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I call it [in a cute little voice]: the SuperCube!
This thing is tiny! It's only 24mm on each side! If I were feeling brave, I could use a couple of these as D&D dice. ;)
You can sorta see the protective rubber/plastic shroud around the player in this low-res photo from my little pocket camera. |
It has 1Gb of storage and an FM tuner. I'm listening to 94.1 on it now and it gets better reception than my slightly-more-expensive portable Sony radio/CD player that I keep here in my office. It can also record to mp3 from any tuned in radio station, but at only 64K. Despite the low bitrate, it's still a cool feature that I wasn't aware of. [update] I found a setting to increase the recording bitrate up to 160K! It also has a small hole with microphone on the bottom to record up to 256Mb of your own audio. It's awesome.
Unfortunately, the battery only lasts about 6 hours on a full charge, but the user manual did warn that would happen when using higher volume levels. The car FM transmitter does a poor job, so I have to it working as hard as it can blasting the audio just so I can hear anything at all over the car's radio.
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calendar & weekend (Monday, October 16, 2006 - 6:04:12 PM)
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After checking on some monthly tracking data up here at work, I realized I had a need for a yearly calendar. Since I've been working with my calendar code recently, I quickly whipped up this neat page:
2006 Calendar
We had a very busy Saturday. Carolaina had a follow-up MRI scheduled for 9am at UAMS, so we had an early start. Afterwards it was nearly lunchtime, so we stopped by her favorite restaurant, Applebees, and took a couple of pictures of each other with my PalmPix camera:
Click on the images to see larger sizes over on Flickr.
That evening we attended the monthly astronomy club meeting. The club site has much darker skies than light-polluted Searcy. Since it was a nice clear night, we ended up having a wonderful observing session instead of the regular meeting. Every one of the eight concrete pads were taken and a couple of latecomers had to set up their scopes on grass. We brought both of our larger scopes to compare them. We found that there really isn't all that much difference between what we can see through them. It was so nice to be able to actually enjoy the dark night sky instead of being frustrated by lights and poor views.
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I mentioned some time ago that I would upload a photo of me all dressed up for the wedding we attended a couple of months ago. For your patience, you get two photos! Here are Carolana and I all dressed up:
Click on the images to see larger sizes over on Flickr.
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Ark-La-Tex star party (Sunday, October 8, 2006 - 8:59:22 AM)
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Complete Flickr photoset »
 A couple of weeks ago, Carolaina and I attended the 2nd annual Ark-La-Tex star party down in Nashville, AR. On the drive down, we stopped and ate lunch at Subway in Arkadelphia--the chicken & bacon wrap was good, but slightly different from what we get from the Subway here in Searcy. As usual, I was able to follow the maps & directions to find the RRAC property without any trouble.
We were the first non-club members to arrive that Thursday afternoon. Only one member was there at the time, club president Tim Eason, but others had been there throughout the day to help prepare for the event. We set up our tent next to one of the porta-potties which was right behind Roy’s observatory. The wind made it difficult to set up, but with the help of a couple of club members, it went up quickly. Rex from Rex’s Astro Stuff had arrived that afternoon. A retired couple also showed up briefly. They were from California, but had bought a house over in Mount Ida and had placed membership with RRAC for the times they would be visiting Arkansas. That afternoon was the first time they had actually seen the club property. I remember them mentioning that the astronomy club in San Diego were far less active than the ones in Arkansas.
Roy showed us the inside of his roll-off roof observatory. The control room has a number of computers to control his scope, take the pictures and to process the images he gets. He has a 12-inch Meade LX200, with which he has discovered 82 asteroids!
control room |
12-inch Meade LX200 |
That evening, Tim brought up some spicy chili for us all to enjoy. After supper, they fired up the projector + DVD player and we watched the first episode of Firefly! The clouds kept us from doing any stargazing and the wind kept us from getting any good sleep that night.
They had no activities planned before lunch each day, se we were on our own to amuse ourselves the next morning. I kept myself entertained with Metroid Zero Mission on the GBA and nearly made it all the way through the game before lunch. We also took the time to walk all the way around their observing field. It seems that this field had cows in it until fairly recently--you couldn’t go two feet without having to step around yet another dried cow patty. On the backside of the property, someone had a spread out, overgrown junkyard that appears to have been added to slowly for fourty years or more. I wondered about the origin of some of the stuff, especially the wood-fired oven & range, the old train car and the rotting house trailer. The trailer, long-since collapsed, looked like it had been lived in at one point. Who were those people and how did they live?
During the day, the clouds had decided to mostly clear out. We did see some storm clouds building and breaking down as they passed far to the northwest. Rex also set up a couple of tables filled with astro accessories to sell.
Other members from our club (CAAS) arrived around noon that day. The caterer brought us burgers and fries for lunch. I enjoyed the burger, but Carolaina gave me hers since she can’t eat beef. I stashed it away in our cooler for later.
That afternoon, John Reed and Chris Lasley from CAAS gave a presentation on CCD imaging. It ended up being more of a round table/bull session/Q&A about the topic. John does planetary imaging while Chris tackles the much more difficult deep-sky astrophotography. I learned quite a few tips and tricks to improve my planetary images and got a glimpse of how to go about doing deep-sky--if I can ever afford the equipment. Astronomy can be a very expensive hobby!
Dinner that evening was actually something Carolaina could eat. The caterer brought each of us half a whole chicken! We mostly avoided the cole-slaw and cup of sugar passing itself off as beans.
Afterwards, Dr. Sears gave his presentation on his proposed Hera mission. If approved for funding by NASA, the probe will fly out to a near-Earth asteroid, dig out a sample or two and return to Earth. He gave a fascinating and detailed presentation that was probably the best and most interesting of the whole weekend.
The Hera spacecraft |
Dr. Sears explains theories on tektite formation to Roy and Patricia Clingan while his wife and mother-in-law watch. The discussion was sparked by Roy's meteorite collection. |
The sun had long set by this time, but clouds had covered the sky again, so we watched a couple more episodes of Firefly. After that, most of those clouds had disappeared so we tried to do some stargazing, but the wind defeated us. We didn’t even attempt to sleep in the tent because of it. I carried our air mattress into the clubhouse and set it up in a corner. Others had gotten the same idea and also bunked there, as well.
Saturday found us with another overcast morning. After a shower and breakfast for both us, Roy told us a strong storm front was approaching and would arrive in a couple of hours. Since the property is on nearly flat land, he was concerned for our safety and had us all drive into town and hang out in Wal-Mart during the worst of it. The worst I heard while there was some very heavy rain. It has to be raining fairly hard to hear anything at all inside one of those supercenters. By noon, we were getting really hungry and figured the worst of it had passed, so we returned to find the caterer had delivered lunch! Unfortunately, it was tex-mex that Carolaina couldn’t eat. I was worried about eating it since the chips, salsa, and beef & cheese smothered burritos appeared carb-heavy. Even though I ate most of it, I only gained a grand total of one pound the whole weekend. This tells me that I’ve gotten to the point where I can eat pretty much whatever I want, as long as I’m careful about the amount and don’t overdo it. A few more serious-sounding storms passed through while we ate.
About half the attendees wanted to watch “Mars Attacks!” after lunch, but some of us weren’t interested at all. So, we stood around and chatted outside while they watched inside. They only got halfway through the movie before time came for the next presentation.
Dr. Leming gave an interesting talk about the Gurdon Lights. He had a rather dry and repetitive style, but it was still fascinating to learn what could be causing this strange phenomenon. Since Gurdon isn’t far at all from Nashville, it would be possible to head over there sometime during the event, but we didn’t get the chance--maybe next year.
Our catered supper was slices of roast beef and pork with more sugar passing itself off as cole slaw and beans. We just ate most of the meat. With clouds and fog threatening, the evening didn’t look promising for stargazing at that point.
After supper, Dr. Bobrowsky from NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute gave a general presentation about our universe. While I can see how it would be interesting to an astronomy novice, the information and pictures he showed were already very familiar to us. He also came across as very much of an administrator when he gave political answers to our questions about upcoming space telescopes and possible repairs to the Hubble. After the presentation, he gave a neat hands-on demonstration outside about what we can see at different detail/zoom levels telescopes can show. He had set up a flashlight far away across the field with a red cloth wrapped around the light. The cloth had a few holes poked in it to simulate stars. We were going to compare what we could see in it visually compared to the view through a scope, but the humidity had completely fogged up the little refractor Roy had set up for him. He asked us how many stars we could see. We all saw four. As a group, he had us all then move a few feet closer to the light, then asked how many there were visible. Most people saw seven, but I could only make out five. We then moved closer still and could begin to make out a bunch of small “stars” made from very tiny pinpricks in the cloth. Finally, he let us walk all the way up to the flashlight to count how many “stars” there really were. If I remember right, there were about 17 total.
Dr. Bobrowsky prepares his presentation |
A reporter for the local public radio station interviews Dr. Bobrowsky. |
Then, it came time for the giveaway drawing. Dr. Bobrowsky held a clear plastic bowl with all our tickets and drew for each prize while Roy pulled out and handed the prizes to the winners. The first prize drawn was for a t-shirt, with the prizes getting bigger and more expensive with each drawing. Some physics professors attending the meeting won The Sky (Professional Edition) software and a Meade Deep Sky I imaging CCD camera--equipment badly needed in the astrophysics department of their local college. I won some CDs & tapes of audio tours of the night sky produced by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Then, it came time for the grand prize drawing. Suspense hung heavily as Dr. Bobrowsky slowly read out the winning numbers. She didn’t realize it at first, but he had called out the numbers on Carolaina’s ticket. She won the Celestron NexStar 114GT telescope!
We came out from the clubhouse to find the sky was as clear and dark as we could ask for. Even thought the wind had finally stopped, I was hesitant to get out the scope or her binoculars because the humidity was so high from all the rain that day. I pointed out constellations and the Milky Way to Carolaina before she quickly became tired. Kevin Davis from Oklahoma City had come all that distance with his massive home-built 25-inch dobsonian telescope. He showed us quite a few fascinating deep-sky objects before Carolaina had to give it up for the night. We set up the air mattress in the corner of the clubhouse for her and I went back outside to find that most of the others had gotten out their scopes. Since they weren’t worried about dewing on their scopes, I got out her binoculars. I looked at the sky along with the Edwards family who had won a pair of binoculars during the giveaway. There were quite a few faint fuzzy star clusters and galaxies in Sagittarius visible through her 15x70s. The Andromeda galaxy was an impressive sight in those dark, dark skies. Also, the Milky Way looked nearly as majestic as I remembered as a kid. They are really fortunate to have such a rural, dark area for their club functions.
The next morning, it was time to go. As we were packing up to leave, some RRAC members noticed Kevin’s large dobsonian was smoking! He had left it up overnight and was pointed just so that the rising sun shined right down in it. The focused rays of the sun were frying the expensive 2” eyepiece. I hope it turned out okay, but it’s more likely his $400+ eyepiece got fried beyond repair.
On the way home, we stopped back at the same Subway in Arkadelphia for lunch. While driving up I-30, I saw some neat clouds to the north that were outlined in blue. It was also neat to listen to one of the night sky tour CDs on the drive home. We really enjoyed the trip but were glad to get home.
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aborted stargazing (Saturday, October 7, 2006 - 9:05:25 PM)
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After finally getting an allen wrench set this morning, I was able to collimate our new scope. Also since we have such clear weather, we decided to try out and compare the scopes. We managed to see M13 and M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) through the Celestron. Then, we left it pointing at M31, set up the Meade scope and got it pointed in that direction. Unfortunately by that time, the just-past-full moon had risen enough to wash out views of any deep-sky objects in our already light-polluted sky.
While looking for M31, though, I did see something odd. I was seeing a fairly regular bright flash in the field of view. At first, I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but it continued. So, I counted the seconds between flashes and every 9 seconds it would flash brightly and 5 seconds after that it would flash dimly. I quicky realized that it was very likely a spent rocket body tumbling in low earth orbit. It was moving through the sky slowly enough that it was fairly easy to keep it in the field of view. It was so awesome to see. I got Carolaina to look and while counting the seconds for her, she managed to see it, too.
We got frustrated after that since the moon didn't allow us to see anything but the brightest stars, so we packed up the scopes and came in.
I just now did a little research and found out what we saw: it was the body of a Russian Kosmos 65MP rocket launched November 24th, 1994, from a place called Kasputin Yar. This particular launch seems to have been used for a re-entry vehicle test mission. There are so many launches with that description that it makes me wonder if that phrase is code for a secret military satellite launch. While space junk like this can possibly be a problem for future space missions, it's reassuring to know that orbits for stuff like this will eventually decay and will safely burn up in the atmosphere.
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