Even More Northern Lights!

 See also: Northern Lights and More Northern Lights!

Click on the pictures!

Early last week, I got word that we were expecting a solar storm on October 10 and 11. I had just started by staycation and I had the flexibility to travel north. First I checked the weather for places up north in Michigan and found out that clouds were expected to roll in on the evening of the 10th and rain on the 11th. Checks in Wisconsin and Minnesota didn't fare well. New England was slightly better but I wasn't sure I wanted to travel that far. So the 11th was a bust but I could roll the dice for the 10th. I was able to get a room in Mackinaw City that was near the park that looked upon the Mackinaw Bridge.

Once I got checked into my hotel, I went across the street to the park. There were already people there that had staked out positions. Photographers with fancy equipment. I talked with this guy that was taking pictures of the bridge. It seemed the northern lights were going to be the icing on his cake -- if they came out.

I grabbed some dinner at a local chippy and discovered that I'm not really a fan of whitefish. 

With dinner done and the sun setting, I grabbed my camera, tripod, and a folding chair to stake out my spot on the beach. When I got there, even more people were there and the one good spot that I was planning to claim--which had boulders--was taken. So I backed up a bit to a grassy part of the beach.

The wait for the darkness after sunset was long but eventually--with the aid of the camera--the lights started to appear.

At first, the lights were barely perceptible. Even with the camera's display, I wasn't sure I was seeing anything.

The plan was to use the Mackinaw Bridge and have the lights be the backdrop but most of the interesting views were to my north east, coming overhead and even behind me, and then going towards west south west. I wasn't looking north to an aurora, I was in it.

Greens and reds were the colors I have always seen. Only now, after viewing these photos, I can see the different colors that were shifting about. This guy here was pretty annoying. His cellphone was always shining back at me.

The lights are starting to intensify.

Streams of light would move along from the right to the left and pulsing in intensity.

A family decided to plant themselves in front of me. They were probably annoyed by my camera's timer light going off but oh well, I got there first.

The moon was still up and I can only imagine as I looked in back of me to the south and south west, how more bright these might have been.

For a few minutes, the lights really got bright and I could see the colors with my own eyes.

Looking above me. I like to imagine this being a phoenix.

The clouds are rolling in and becoming a problem.

Better take a moment as this is coming to an end!

Some evidence I was actually there!

They're going!

The last of the lights that I saw were dimmer and also thanks to the clouds, I had to stare straight up. I continued to watch the lights shimmer and dance. When I finally packed it in for the night, they were very dim but I had been out there in the cold for almost six hours. Nature was calling -- but back to the hotel. 

I was so fortunate that a series of circumstances came together to allow me to experience this. There is a tinge of regret however. There are many people I know that haven't experienced it. I know I would be deeply jealous.

More Northern Lights!

 See Also: Northern Lights

This year continues with the astronomical delights. Along with the Perseid meteor shower came another chance to see the aurora borealis. This place is just north of the Niles and has a good view to the north. Along with the few shooting stars, I got to gaze at these lights as well.

I stayed out until around 2:30 in the morning. Of course, I was dragging at work! It was so worth it, though.

Northern Lights

A friend in Scotland and my aunt in Ireland posted some pictures of the northern lights on their facebook accounts while I was at work. That night, I was running a drawing and I could not wait for that promotion to end so I get get out and go see the lights for myself.

South Bend

As soon as I got out of work, I went up to the top of the parking garage. I could see some green in the sky but putting the camera on night mode revealed much more.

I sent pictures to friends and family in case they were missing out. After all, I would hope someone would do that for me.

I took the bypass up to Berrien Springs in hopes of darker skies and but I think I was catching the tail end. My friend Molly had sent back some amazing shots but when I got near to where she was about half an hour later, the colors and structures were more muted.

Near Berrien Springs

Still, I was excited to experience this. I haven't seen the northern lights since 2001, also from the top of a parking garage at Michigan State University. With the sun approaching solar maximum, I hope I get another chance soon.

Gearing Up for the Eclipse

In less than a week, I am headed off out west to see the Great American Eclipse. I've got my fancy solar eclipse glasses. My car and camping reservations are done. My friend Kraig is lending me a five gallon gas tank-just in case.  The tent that I ordered will be delivered on Wednesday. Yup, I'm pretty much set. I just have to hope for good weather and a little bit of luck.

How Lucky We Are, Indeed

NASA held a press conference to announce that a small star designated TRAPPIST-1 about 40 light years away has seven terrestrial planets orbiting it with three well within the goldilocks zone and prime candidates for hosting life.

Take this quote from Carl Sagan:

How lucky we are to live in this time – the first moment in human history when we are, in fact, visiting other worlds. 

I consider myself fortunate to be a witness to human discoveries. I know things that people who came before did not know maybe never even dreamed of. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto but I have seen the geological feature named after him. I have seen Pluto’s demise as a planet but may be around to see its replacement.

What makes me sad, though, is that I will not be around to see some other fantastic discoveries. While I am optimistic that one day humans will explore other worlds outside our solar system, I am not so optimistic that that I will be around to see it happen. Forty light years doesn’t seem far and at the same time, it is depressingly far. Even the nearest star system seems just beyond our reach.

When those new worlds come into view and when new life is discovered, I hope that our descendants will realize how lucky they are to be living in their time. Each generation gets to make their mark on history and I must remind myself that we don’t get to make all of them.

Braving the cold to see a fuzzy dot.

I just got back from the beach a little while ago.  The comet, C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) has made its debut a number of days go in the local skies.  However, Michigan weather being Michigan weather, it has been mostly overcast.  I made an attempt this past Friday and that turned out to be a bust because of low clouds on the western horizon.  Today didn't look that great.  Hell, it was snowing this afternoon but the clouds cleared out this evening and gave us this:

PANSTARRS didn't show itself until much later after this picture was shot but I was able to look at it through some high powered binoculars that were provided by the astronomy club from the local university.  I also got a crack at it with a telescope but oddly enough the binoculars had the better view.

Picture from Stellarium.

This is probably the only good attempt that I will be able to get.  Although the comet is moving higher each night, it has also been dimming since Sunday.  It's already hard enough to find with the naked eye so some binoculars and telescopes are going to be needed the next time fair weather comes in.

At least there was no deer this time.

Last night Kacey texted me to ask if I wanted to go check out the Perseids.  I have to admit, I was a little spooked because the last time we tried this, it turned out to be a little disaster.  We made our way to just north of Galien where we could be as far away from the city lights as we could reasonably go. It was a beautiful night.  The skies were clear and there wasn't a moon so we got to see some spectacular entries.  I think we spent almost two hours there soaking it all in.  Luckily I brought some hot tea.  It may be the middle of summer but dang was it chilly.

Transit of Venus

My friend Kacey, who is also into astronomy, invited me to join her this evening at Notre Dame.  The university was holding an event for the transit of Venus that was opened to the public.  They had set up telescopes and passed out solar shades to those who showed up early.  Since the next transit is in 2117, I'll either be dead or downloaded into a cybernetic body so I thought that I should make an effort to see it.

I was fortunate to get to see the planet during first contact--when it came into contact with the sun disk's edge.  It looked like the sun had a small nick.  We had thought that we wouldn't be able to see Venus using the solar shades.  We found out though that it is hard to see but it is possible.  We were able to see more of the transit on our own without needing to line up at another telescope.

For most of the time though, we were inside where a lecture hall had a live feed from other telescopes.  In the room we were in, we could see a feed from Notre Dame's own telescope as well as one from the Maura Kea Observatories in Hawaii.  An instructor (I assume) held a Q & A.  I was impressed with myself in being able to answer most of the questions asked... at least if I was asked them.

After one last look, with the solar shades, I was done.  I mean, I'm not gonna watch a dot cross sun for the next three or so hours.  Still, I had a good time and I was glad that I was able to witness it happen with my own eyes (even if assisted with filters).

I’m sure these numbers and letters mean something.

During my senior year of college, I saw an interesting presentation on television called Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Basically, it was about tracking the human migration out of Africa and into the rest of the world all those tens of thousands of years ago. How they do this is finding mutations or markers in genetic samples from populations all over the world. By identifying and comparing these markers they can find common ones that bind different groups together. …Oh just watch this.

I sent in a sample a few months ago and I just recently got my results. I don’t know much about my family tree beyond a few great grandparents on both sides. I’ve heard stories. Like my paternal grandfather’s family is descended from some Scandinavian royal house or that my maternal grandmother’s family we wealthy landowners from Spain. I’ve come to just accept that one side of my family is essentially German, and the other side is essentially Malay.

I wanted something more than just a verbal history. I wanted some evidence. Although this test wouldn’t confirm or deny the stories that I have been told, it is going to go deeper. What it would tell me is where my genetic relatives are and trace my lineage all the way back to Africa. Specifically it was going to show my paternal lineage—from me to my father, to my father’s father and so on.

The result was surprising. I was expecting a result to tell me that I was related to the peoples of northern central Europe. Turns out I have to travel further west to find my genetic relatives. I am a member of a haplogroup called R1b. According to the website where I pulled my results, the surviving members of the man whose marker is M343 live as far to the west in Europe as you can possibly go before falling into the Atlantic. Heavy concentrations of them are in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, western France, and northern Spain.
This doesn’t necessarily mean what I have been told about my family is wrong. There are, after all, men who are in the same haplogroup that I am in all over Europe and even into Asia and Africa.

This has actually fired up my imagination. I find myself wondering about the various great^N grandfathers and what their lives were like and what kind of journeys they took. Could they imagine how successful their descendants would be?

Go Green… Comet!

Ever since I heard about Comet Lulin appearing, I have been keeping a watch out for a clear evening around the time of its closest approach. The Lake causes our part of the region to be in an almost constant grey funk with cloudy skies. I had also been in contact with my friend Kacey who is also interested in astronomy so that when the time was right, we could see it together.

The last time we tried this turned out to be a disaster. During my junior year at MSU, there was supposed to be a meteor shower that promised to be spectacular. The problem was that the weather wasn’t cooperative. Michigan was under a blanket of clouds. Having the time, money, and spontaneous drive to do not-so-smart things, we decided to take a road trip to west Illinois where the weather was clear. On our way there, we would be passing near to our homes and by cruel fate, when we were only miles away from home, we hit a deer on the highway and wrecked her car. Her mom was pissed when she came to get us!

The other night turned out to be less of a disaster and more of a disappointment. Although we had a great viewing area (see this post), the comet wasn’t as visible as I had hoped. I honestly thought that at the very least we would see a fuzzy green dot. It was barely visible to the naked eye and in binoculars it appeared to be a green star slightly blurred.

Even though the comet turned out to be a dud, we did have excellent viewing conditions and spent some time finding faint constellations and looking out for Mars (which I’m fairly sure we identified correctly). Both of us want to travel out west some day and see how great the viewing is out there.

I'll catch the next one in 2010

Last night's plan see the lunar eclipse was a bust. The skies seemed to be clearing up when I got off of work but the clouds rolled in just before the event started. The best that I could hope for were brief views in between breaks in the clouds as you can see from this snap shot. It wasn't as if I could travel to escape the cloud cover.

In my junior year of college, there was supposed to be a superb viewing of some meteor shower. I want to say it was the Leonids but I can't be sure. Anyways, the skies were overcast in East Lansing but they weren't in western Illinois. Trying to be spontaneous, I convinced my friend Kacey, who is also interested in astronomy, to drive us out to Illinois just so we could see them. It was supposed to be an exciting road trip.

So we're traveling down I-94 and going through our home county of Berrien which is in the most southwestern part of the state. Just as we crossed the St. Joseph River. BANG! A f'ing deer hits us. After screaming our respective lines of obscenities, We limp to a service station to survey the damage. My stomach sunk to my feet when there was a foot of car missing. It was exchanged for a few tufts of deer fur.

Luckily this happened up the road from our parents. Her car was pretty much done for and we returned to Lansing without a car, without any money, and without seeing the meteor shower.

I try to do my stargazing with a little more planning nowadays. Plus, it's not as if I haven't seen a lunar eclipse before. They happen a lot more frequently than solar eclipses (which I haven't seen a total one ever). So I can at least show you a picture that I got from one that occurred in 2003.

The Longest Night

Solstice.



h/t to kadoty86 for posting this

Genetically Gay

There is an interesting article in the June 2007 special edition of the magazine, Discover. The title is “Born Gay?” by Michael Abrams if you are interested in looking it up, which I would recommend because I won’t do it justice here. But it begins to answer one of the biggest questions that I have: Why am I gay?

At first, I refused to even think that I was gay. I thought that I had normal adolescent feelings and that everyone goes through it. I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t anything more than admiration of guys that I wanted to be like.

Progressing in my religious studies, I understood homosexuality to be a sin. Since everyone is born with original sin, there is a burden that everyone has to overcome. Homosexuality was my burden and I thought it was a burden that every person probably had. I was just weaker at suppressing my sinful desires.

Finally, when I finally admitted it to myself that I was gay, I clung to the belief that God made me this way. The problem is that it doesn’t cut it anymore. That doesn’t tell me why I am the way I am. Even though God and I have a direct relationship (a jab at my Protestantism), we don’t have conversations. So the answer to my question is going to have to be answered somewhere else.

Many people’s beliefs on how homosexuality comes about fall into one of two categories: nature or nurture. Many of the religious and social conservatives tend to go with nurture. They would argue that homosexuality is a choice or is at least caused by something in a person’s experience. Then there are others that believe that there is something genetic about homosexuality and that it can’t be helped.

Discover’s article is fascinating in that it brings up various studies that may be pointing us to the answer. By now, many gays are probably familiar with news articles that have tried to indicate that homosexuality it genetic. Some probably legitimate, but most are probably trash. The ones I’m familiar with off the top of my head are:

Nature Abhors a Crowd: Gays—One more way nature likes to control the population.

The Helpful Uncle Theory: Nature likes to make gay people so that they will increase the chances of survival of their family.

The Ring Finger Test: If your ring finger is bigger than your index, you have a higher chance of being gay due to the hormones present during fetal development.

Gay Brains Smaller: Comparisons between gay men and straight men show that gay brains are smaller in a certain area. (In the article, it mentions this to be the INAH-3 brain region of the anterior hypothalamus.)

Sibling Placement: The more older male siblings a guy has, the greater his chances of being gay.

*Sniff*: A development quirk causes homos to like the scent of people of the same sex rather then the opposite.

Anyways, this article comes up with something new and, which sounds to me, more promising. Researches believe that while there may not be a gay gene per se, there is something on the X chromosome. This solves the problem of, “If gays are less likely to reproduce then eventually their genetics would die out.” Since the X chromosome is passed on by the female, the gay genetics can keep getting passed down.

Again, there isn’t a gay gene. Otherwise, we would see identical twins with the same sexual orientation but we don’t. It is suspected that what causes homosexuality is the switching on or off of certain sections of genetic code, a process called methylation. What causes these switches is largely unknown but it could be something as simple as diet or even a reaction to medication.

I have wondered how news of genetically caused homosexuality would be taken. Mostly by the right and left wingers that have an entrenched positions on the issue. Why am I gay? I fear an answer would bring up tons of follow-ups. How would religious conservatives react? Would they drop the “gay is a choice” bullshit? Would secular progressives allow the abortion of fetuses shown to be gay? Would genetic modification be an option to parents who don’t want gay children?


This post probably would have made it to Peering but I thought that since it wasn't really about a personal experience of mine, I might as well post it here.