remembrance of things past: california coast 1985-2002 (1)

A view of the Pacific Ocean under moonlight:













A successful hunt in 2000 in the National Forest:



You can compare the size of the pig with my foot (at the left). He was about 200 pounds and as fearless as a young pig can be: he charged me after i shot him the second time with my Enfield .303. The third shot finished him off. Lots of yummy pork steaks for a couple weeks after that.

eye on the sky

Last Saturday evening (8 dec 07) it cleared up for a few hours after 9pm local, and i was able to get in some viewing with scopes. My short list of objects:

Mars (60mm, 45X)
Ceres (60mm, 3-in)
17P/Holmes (3-in) - comet still quite visible, even with naked eye
M37 )
M36 ) 3 open clusters in Auriga (60mm and 3-in)
M38 )
M42 in Orion (3-in)
M31 in Andromedia (3-in)

That evening did not look for Uranus and Neptune, but i observed them one evening at mid-week last week. Soon Neptune in Capricorn will be too low in the sky to view after sunset. Also, have not tried for the increasingly-dim asteroid Pallas lately; last time was maybe three weeks ago.

computer mouse

This past Saturday i tried to get my old Pentium-1 150MHz computer going after a year of not using it. When i flipped the power switch, all that came out was a couple beeps and then nothing. Not even the BIOS would come up on the monitor. So i took the screws off the case. Voila!



A mouse had filled one part of the compartment with shredded toilet paper. Well this machine, stinking of mouse urine, is headed to the nearest dumpster. I'm not even going to try to troubleshoot it. Mouse urine could have corroded all kinds of components on the circuit board. I still have my Pentium-3 laptop...

Then i identified two of the species of trees near where i live. One is the Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis):



And it has "cones" that look like berries:













Another tree right next door i identified as the Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi):



and it has cones that look like this:

a rainbow this morning

Little bit of rain this morning. Am so glad it doesn't rain much here. Of course a bit later this year we'll have at least a couple feet of snow.



Last night i checked out comet 17P/Holmes again. It is as large as it was, but dimmer by a factor of 10 at least! Right next to Alpha Persei. Most people would not find it impressive at all right now, but i am still awed by it. The cheap binoculars don't do it much justice, but the 3-inch reflector still shows a short very blunt tail on it.















And here's a pic of the south side of my camp:



The dish is for DirecTV but i'm too broke right now to pay the $49/month for it. I just watch free broadcast channels right now. Lots of crime/terrorist dramas on the networks. My pda/cell bill is $90/month, and well worth it. Internet and phone in the forest. And free (broadcast) TV.

caveman

August to November 2005, and June to October 2006, i was living in a cavelet here near Susanville. Most of the lava tubes are old and collapsed in the Susanville area, so this was a rare find. In the picture you see some of my amateur radio gear.



The cave became too wet in winter (drip drip from all the cracks in the ceiling) plus it wouldn't heat up very well even with a propane space heater going full blast. Tenting it is best; it doesn't take much fuel to heat up a small 7-ft dome.

Here's a link to another previous domicile; this is similar to the tent i currently live in: 2006

more on 17P/Holmes and other objects

So now i'm beginning to make a short list of objects to view with my puny 75mm reflector and 60mm refractor. The night of November 1, it was:

Uranus: in Aquarius
Neptune: in Capricornus
Comet 17P/Holmes: in Perseus
Pallas (the asteroid): in Aquarius

The skies have been dark, but there is a bit too much moisture in the air. Pallas was barely visible in my 60mm refractor.

Here is someone else's (not my) photo of comet 17P/Holmes:

Comet 17P/Holmes !

Last night at 9 or 10 pm located the comet 17P/Holmes in Perseus, not too far from Alpha Persei! Used junk $10 7x50 binoculars, and it was a fuzzy disk unmistakable for anything but a comet. It's the first time i've observed a comet since Halley in 1985-86. In October 1985, Halley was quite a bit like 17P/Holmes: a more or less round fuzzy disk.

Now the clouds have moved back in (today) ... we'll see when it's clear again. Using the software CNebulaX, it'll be very easy to track, unless it dims out again. News on the Web said it was a magnitude 14 comet until it exploded a week ago and rose to about magnitude 2.8.

looking at the sky

The past couple of months i've been tracking the movements of Uranus, Neptune, and the large asteroid Pallas. Using the software CARTES DU CIEL (sky maps) to locate the planets. Uranus and Neptune move fairly slowly, so it's easy to track them from day to day and week to week. Pallas, on the other hand, is much closer to the Sun and to us -- its orbit lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It's a faint 9th-magnitude object, so you really have to keep up with it, with the aid of the sky maps. By now i've lost it again and will have to wait until the next dark, moon-free, clear, night to look for it again.

Other than that, two weeks ago my camp was visited by a 300-pound black bear, actually a beautiful brown in color. As I arrived, it had apparently eaten about three loaves of my bread that were hanging up -- not high enough -- in the huge juniper under which i camp.

A couple of shots in the air with my 20-gauge only made it run away about 20 yards. After maybe 10 minutes of stand-off, i decided i didn't want to go to sleep with this animal in the vicinity. I aimed for the bear. The first shot missed; i saw a puff of dirt in front of the bear. The second shot must have hit him good, because he abruptly wheeled around and took off at high speed. After a minute or so i took off after him, to see where he'd go, but 15 minutes of searching yielded nothing. I suppose that's good news. Haven't seen him since, but now i sleep with a loaded shotgun at my bedside.


10/25/07


Maybe i'll buy a bear tag for my hunting license, and kill the next bear to come along. Yummy.