A Personal Blog

Last night went out to observe what was left of the yearly Perseids meteor shower. It was a beautiful night and the sky was ablaze with stars. We would have gone out the night before during the peak of the shower, but unfortunately Corvallis was socked in. Only saw a few meteors, but they were thrilling and beautiful ones. Apparently the Perseids Meteor shower is a yearly event that occurs because there is a trail of space debris flowing through space, and every year around August 11 or 12 we pass through it, giving us a “shower” of meteors. Also, there are several other meteor showers of varying intensity that happen throughout the year, one of the most prominent being the Leonids, which occur around November 17th. I shall be waiting with Excitement.

I kind of wish i that i would have kept up with the star watching a bit more. I feel like i have missed really learning half of the sky, as winter approaches, the first constellations i learned are quickly approaching, and i won’t have opportunities to learn the ones i missed until next year. (at least learn from actual sky observation)

Also living in Corvallis, I feel i really benefit from living in a flat area, sooo many more stars are available for viewing. I do miss the telestar 114az Telescope though, as it really provided some depth to the sky. I believe that it was just the right amount of power to make things in the sky readily visible without picking up too much interference with the atmosphere, and it was possible, tho at full power constantly necessary, to track with objects as they moved across the sky. Mountains actually look like mountains on the moon. Saturn’s rings were readily visible, as were the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Eh, it is only a 2 hour drive to my Pops house.

telestar 114az

Well, more than 7 months after my first post, perhaps it is time to update a bit on things that i have accomplished from that original list. I’m just gonna list things that i did do, and not worry about the rest, some of those things were pretty long term goals anyway .

As of now, i have:

Baked bread from scratch. many times over now. I love it, cooking, baking, it’s fun!! So i have baked white bread, wheat bread, and banana bread, and while i was still at my dad’s house, i had been baking the wheat bread on a fairly regular basis. very tasty! Not hard to do, just mix the ingredients, let the yeast make it rise, punch it down, let it rise again, bake it, and walah! bread! dash gone good bread too Now that i am in own apartment, haven’t begun the baking yet, but i do have the ingredients .

This year i did help immensely with the home garden, and i have been enjoying the fruits of labor since the beginning of summer. now that i am out of the house, i don’t have as easy access to the tasty plants, but i have tried to have some on every visit to my dad’s house. I also built several planters out of the same boards i made that crazy sled out of during winter, and have the planters set up at the new apartment on the balcony. haven’t planted anything yet… soon soon….

The learning of Russian hasn’t been a real hardcore thing, but i do feel like have learned a lot, and have become at least a little familiar with the language. i hear… like… every 3rd or 4th word .

At the end of this spring, i finished up an associates degree! word, not that it will get me far, but i am working on the next step here at OSU in the fall. New goal: B. S. in two or so years.

Remember that t-shirt thing? well, never did actually make a t shirt for cameesa, but did put that stuff on Cafe Press, and… have so far sold 2 tshirts!!!! woot woot! made 5 bucks… split between me and Oksana. wow, profits just rollin in…..

Totally made a white wings.

I was working on Learning the night sky pretty hardcore at one point, but then kinda slacked. I learned a lot, and feel pretty familiar with several of the major constellations, but i would definitely say my knowledge is incomplete. a little harder to keep up with here in Corvallis too, but i think i can handle finishing this one up in the near future.

Though i haven’t really reaped any profits from a website, i have started a project in the direction, in collaboration with my good friend Tom, with Goji Berries Facts. I may consider putting google ads here at this blog as well in the future. At this point the blog does get regular traffic, but not much, and mostly for insignificant and un-focused keywords. Certainly, won’t be pulling in more than a few dollars anytime soon, but money is money.

So, that’s the story. I pretty happy that i could say all that had been done actually. Perhaps the next blog will be an updated list and what i see for myself in the near future.

In other news, I am engaged! And getting married within the month! It’s craziness, but i am filled with Joy

Yay snow! It snowed Friday night, stuck through Saturday, and is still on the ground as of now, Sunday night. I feel kind of sad, because I really don’t feel the same fascination with it from when I was kid. Its exciting, but its also cold, wet, and slippery. When I was a kid it was like a whole different world out there after it snowed. Every familiar place needed to be re-explored in response to the snow. These days… I just think brrrrrrrr. What a wuss. Ah well, at least its beautiful, as well as an excellent excuse to light the wood stove, which I also love.

Current weather restricts the star gazing, and I don’t really want to go out when its not coming down, because its freezing! Seriously, It’s not that I couldn’t go out, its just that I don’t really want to. So just trying to keep up on Stellarium, as the winter sky slowly changes. I’m still very much looking forward to observing Saturn, should be right around the corner.

So, I have a few things to note towards achieving some of my other goals. Something I have failed to mention previously is that I have had an ongoing, albeit small, effort towards learning Russian. I like the idea of simply broadening my horizons with this project. I purchased several beginners language books, including Russian several years ago. It’s nice to finally actually be going through one of the books. I am also fortunate, and grateful, to have an extra resource in this matter from a special friend .

Previously, I had found an introductory free audio course in Russian on Itunes called A spoonful of Russian. While definitely qualifying as introductory, it was very helpful in presenting various aspects of Russian speech as well as information on Russian culture. The author is of Russian origin, and quite friendly. However, even though I found the program interesting, it is also simplistic. Very recently I came across another free audio course at www.book2.de. The audio recordings are much more traditional, and not nearly as personal, but they were just the kind of thing I needed to increase my vocabulary beyond saying hello and thank you. I really haven’t gotten that far with this goal, but I would really like to persevere, just a little bit here and a little bit there. It was such a rush when I learned how to read the Cyrillic alphabet, even if I didn’t understand the words. I am really looking forward to hearing simple conversation and being able to understand what is being talked about.

Also, I have been thinking about making that cameesa t-shirt design. I’m really not much of an artist, but that’s just more motivation to flex my unused artistic muscle. All I have to do is come up with something simple, using a minimum of colors, and make it appealing to the eye. I’m not sure where the actual idea will come from, but I’m sure something will find me. Something I have realized over the years, is that I often tend to have friends that are far more creatively inclined than me. Always drawing, writing, singing, dreaming, and being creative. Its funny, but it seams like many of the most important people I have met in my life seem to have this creative penchant, whereas I feel relatively uninspired. Funny thing, dunno what to make of that. Anyway, point being, I think I will have to consult with some of these friends if I want to get anywhere in this matter.

I also keep telling myself to go make white wings! But I keep not getting to it. It’s not like I have a busy life right now, but no time for making paper airplanes? It’s a sin! Things happen though, work continues on the addition to the homestead, here and there. Other things come up, daily boring life things I guess. Well, not all boring ))).

Scott, one of those creative people I was talking about earlier, has invited me to his work’s Christmas party in Seattle. I’m psyched!!! Not everybody gets to go to a SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) Christmas celebration! And I’m not even a huge video game nerd! Only a medium sized nerd. Makes me feel like a pretty lucky bastard. Thank you Scott. Word!

The Stars twinkle eternal. Always there, night and day, clear weather or socked in. I guess when something is always there, it gets taken for granted. Part of the joy of being back in Oregon has been the dark starry nights. Out in the woods, on a moonless night, the cosmos seems to go on and on forever in intricate detail. Should you pull out even simple binoculars, to look in an area where you see only one star, you suddenly see ten. Pretty cool stuff.

Simple understanding of the night sky:

• If you are looking up at the sky at a certain time every night (say 12am) the night sky will rotate around you once a year. In other words, the night sky of January 1^st basically always looks like the night sky of January 1^st.

• The yearly rotation of the night sky revolves (approx) around the north star aka Polaris, which is also the same star the nightly (and daily) rotation of the sky revolves around.

• Planets Move independently of the of stars, but still in a semi-regular pattern.

• All planets (and most objects in the solar system) are traveling in a counterclockwise direction if viewed from above the earth in the direction of the north pole.

• Outer planets Jupiter and Saturn don’t move too much year to year, because they are out quite a bit further from the sun than earth, and take much longer to go around the sun (low radial speed, not necessarily low actual travel speed). So one year you will see Saturn (at midnight) in early January, next year it will be mid January (approx 2 weeks later) until you see Saturn in the same place (at midnight). Which means it will also have moved against the background of the stars, but not much. One should be able to observe these two planets on basically a yearly basis.

• Mars takes approximately (pretty big approximation, its actually 690 days) 2 years to go around the sun. Because we are chasing it, and basically do 2 revolutions (approx) for every 1 revolution mars does, Mars is basically visible at the same area in the sky every two years (approx approx approx). Draw it out for yourself, or just trust me.

• Venus and Mercury can be visible, but only during the evening or morning near the horizon in the direction of where the sun is setting or rising. This is because they are closer to the sun than us. They are never going to be visible in the middle of the night in the middle of the sky. The timing of their visibility seems a bit more complicated to me (probably not too complicated math, but not worth trying to figure). Recommendation: Stellarium! Or pay attention to some kind of astronomy newsletter (or blog!)

• This information is based on the idea of observing a planet at the same time of night at certain times of year. Basically just because Saturn is going to visible at midnight in January, doesn’t mean it isn’t visible right now. Currently one would just have to wait until early morning to see it. Point being, very large portions of the night sky will be visible on any given night, I figure something like ¾ or more of it (not factoring how north or south you are), but some of it might require being awake at 4 in the morning to see.

• Probably should be mentioned that latitude will make a pretty big difference with what can be observed. Most people who might read this blog are likely to live in the northern hemisphere, and will have never seen parts of the southern sky (myself included). The portion is a relatively small percentage area of the night sky depending how far north (or south) you are, but nonetheless, there are stars that you and I have never ever seen. Guess I am gonna have to make it below the equator some day. (Actually, when I lived in Caribbean, in a tropical latitude, during the winter, technically the full southern sky should have been visible to me. Too bad I did not know jack about the night sky then, or I could have made more of it.)

• Finally, any person on the face of the earth (again, not counting for latitude), will have a similar experience of the night sky on a given day. So although Iraq maybe in the middle of the day right now, when it is night for me, in 12 hours they will experience an extremely similar night to what I just experienced. Even time of events, such as moon rise, position of stars at midnight etc, should be fairly similar. (figure no more than an hour or so off due to position of time zone). I personally feel quite connected to everyone else on the earth by this similar experience, we all see the same thing in the sky. Pretty cool if you ask me.

So the starry sky has been there my entire life, and although I have enjoyed the occasional star gazing experience, I have not enjoyed much past that. Time to change that. First off, I totally have to recommend Stellarium. Its free at this point, but also just in beta stage, so may not be free forever (like i would recommend something that isn’t free). Get it while you can! Only problem I have had is trying to run other programs simultaneously, and that’s no surprise considering how far my computer is from state of the art. Its like having the planetarium in your computer. With a few clicks you can enter your location on the earth, and the program presents a view of the night sky in real time. This picture includes not only the stars, but also the moon, planets, other planet’s moons, dwarf planets, asteroids, nebulae, the milky way, and even other galaxies. Plus all the constellations are presented in a simple and easy to digest format, including visual art to help figure out what the hell the ancients thought they saw up there.

An image of Orion’s belt taken from Stellarium. Copyright ©Stellarium

I never thought it could be so easy. I’m pretty sure I have half of the northern hemisphere night sky constellations remembered already, including a few interesting stars, as well as the Andromeda galaxy, which is one of the few galaxies visible (not very f-ing visible if you ask me) with the naked eye. Seriously, only took an hour with the computer. Now I just have to wait until summer (or stay up all night) to learn the other half…

However, I also have had access to a telescope, which helps keep it interesting as you go the through the night sky. The telescope is a reflector, Telestar 114AZ by Meade. The initial mirror has a diameter of 114mm, almost 5 inches. With the highest power lens, the image diameter is like half the diameter of the moon. Point being, fairly powerful scope. At full power, objects move out of the image in less than a minute, and it really takes effort to track. And honestly… you don’t see much more at the higher powers, the atmosphere just messes the image up too much. The craters on the moon are a little more clear… but I feel I get just as much effect for most objects at a low power setting, or simply looking through binoculars. In fact, the binoculars are probably the best tool for simple observation. Way less effort, and still quite an impressive effect. The moon just looks like a white disk until you take a look through these simple optic tools. Absolutely recommend binoculars, even a shitty pair.

The big thing I am looking forward to now though will be a sighting of Saturn. It is visible currently, but one has to stay up till 2 or 3am to view. I have not made the effort yet, but every day that time is a little earlier in the night; and, in January, Saturn will actually be visible near the horizon at Midnight. I have had a chance to look at Saturn through the previously mentioned telescope a long time ago, and can say that this is probably one of viewings a high power telescope really comes in handy for. Actually seeing the rings in real time is pretty mind blowing. So I will look forward to reliving this experience in the near future.

Well, thats my take on astronomy at this point. I can name a few of the brightest stars now, mainly Vega, Capella, Alderban, and Sirius. I will continue to keep it up, focus on learning new constellations as the year progresses. Kind of fun hobby so far. Not too much effort to keep up with either, and pretty much free, excluding telescope. Like I say earlier, not really necessary, but I do completely recommend some sort of simple optics, like binoculars. Of course, if I was loaded… it would be pretty sweet to have one of those computer controlled tracking telescopes, where you just dial in the object or whatever. Eh, too easy :p

Also… long entry. I will try to avoid doing that in future. Maybe… Maybe I will just make long entries my thing. Eh, whatever, figure it out as you go. Still pretty cool to have skylarmarvin.com. It’s like a pride thing. Motivates me to put stuff up. Awesome.