Observing with Street Lights

Observing with Street Lights
Dark sky sites not always necessary to see the Milky Way (This image was taken ouside of a B&B in Julian, CA)

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Vacationing in Florida and touring Thomas Edison's summer house and sadly Dr Gary can't make APS meeting in SLC

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, we are out of the observatory having a fun time in sunny Florida so we haven't set up the scope or tripod at all.  We've been enjoying the hospitality of Packed up and Moved to Florida, Bill and Bene.  We've been enjoying the warm weather and sun and have one photo we wanted to share and that is of the approach of sunset from our harbor cruise.  We weren't quite able to see the actual
sunset because of clouds along the horizon, but it's still quite an impressive sunset.  Also I've pasted in a photo from our visit of Thomas Edison's summer house and chemical laboratory that he had in sunny Ft Meyers.

We have few scientific topics and project status updates to share.  First we got a note from our volunteer coordinator, regarding our upcoming Saturday night of observing on the 60 inch scope on Mt. Wilson, that the forecast is for rain so we will just have to wait to see if we will get to see anything or not.  I hope we get to observe because this is our second attempt at this and we are anxious to be able to tour the historic telescope.

Secondly, we heard from Searching for Gravity Waves, Dr. Gary, that he probably can't attend after all the American Physical Society April meeting in Salt Lake City.  Darn.  I so much looked forward to getting together with Dr Gary again.  Ever since we met at the APS meeting two years ago in Baltimore and after we recognized how our individual journeys, from one career to a second "career" in physics, have been the same and based on our new love and interest in physics, that we knew we were kindred spirits.  I will be sad that we won't be able to get together.  I'll still be in SLC with a couple of thousand real physicists and other members of our Southern California science squad of "senior physicist wannabes" hearing about the latest discoveries and research results.  Since I went to University in SLC over forty years ago, it will be fun to see how things have changed.

Lastly, I'm getting way behind in the Coursera free internet course on Big History.  You all are probably way ahead of me on this course.  What's that you say about not having signed up yet for the free course?  Ok, ok, you still can sign up and if your interested in just seeing some of the pictures and topics being covered you can check out the topics from the professors university website:  http://libguides.mq.edu.au/content.php?pid=604842&sid=4990752


Until next time when we return to the observatory,
Resident Astronomer George


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