The best part of poor observing conditions...

¡¡ESPECTACULAR!!

Yesterday while I was at dinner, the observatory assistant working at my telescope left a note that was a sky map with the International Space Stations's fly-by marked and labeled "¡¡ESPECTACULAR!!"

After getting everything set up for the night, I took the camera and tripod outside and got this nice picture. I know I should have exposed for longer, but the twilight was still really bright, and I feared over exposure.

So there you go, ISS (with Endeavour still docked to it!) flying by Cerro Tololo. It did a nice large arc missing zenith, the point directly overhead, by merely 3 degrees, I believe. It was rather spectacular.

More Adventures in the Andes

Please note, for some reason Blogger won't let me post the photos in such a way that will allow you to click on them and view them. I will continue trying to fix this, as it wasn't a problem when I posted the Shuttle picture a few days ago.

Once again it is rather chilly in Chile. That tends to happen in the winter, but I really think that joke never gets old.

I spent a day and a half in La Serena. This consisted of a lot of walking and a lot of napping. It was a relaxing time. I was very disappointed with the selection of junk at the "craft" market, La Recova. Not only has the stuff been the same for the last three years (OK, OK there was some new pottery, but I didn't like it enough to be tempted...the outrageously bright baskets to go with my other outrageously bright baskets did tempt me, however), but it has gone up in price. There is also no bartering these days.

I'm now up on the mountain and busying myself by taking pictures of the Andes. I have to say that the ride up the mountain is about the only car ride that I never want to end. Once we get to the mountains, it takes about 45 minutes to ascend and every second of it is an amazing view. Speaking of amazing views, I am happy to take advantage of the fancy new camera that took all of the pretty aurorae pictures. I hope to take some lovely ones of the stars. The ones I took tonight came out alright, but there is a thin haze that is blocking the majority of the faint stars of the Milky Way, so you can'texactly tell that it is in fact a way that is milky. I'm also really hoping to capture the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of our very own Milky Way.

In any case, I give you this lovely picture. Why yes, that is the moon. It's really rather bright...and I exposed the image for thirty seconds for dramatic effect. You can see from this that there are some low clouds.

So far observing is going as well as usual...bad weather and computer problems. However, I'm in Chile. That being said, yet again, the hot dogs I ate at lunch...and dinner...must then be Chile dogs. Like chili dogs, but not with chili. They were also not with buns, but that's beside the point.

Space Shuttle Launch

On April 28th, I decided to be spontaneous. I booked a flight the next morning to Orlando.

I was in Florida, rented a car, and drove to the coast.  I wanted to see Endeavour make its last journey to space. In the photo, Endeavour is behind the structure on the left. It was sadly very far away. Even more tragic was the fact that Endeavour didn't launch.

Endeavour actually launched today; I watched the live feed. It was not the same, but I had an adventure anyway.