A few pictures from the Elroy-Sparta Bike Trail, in addition to the ones added to the picture page:


This was the scene when we first arrived. It soon cleared, then it was HUMID!


The inside wall of tunnel #3.


Another shot of the inside wall of tunnel #3 and showing one of the streams that flow on both sides of the trail through the tunnel.


Looking back out towards the entrance.


The view in the center of the tunnel, where neither entrance could be seen. Kind of spooky!


Ah, the light at the other end!


Inside the tunnels, especially tunnel #3, the water runs and drips from everywhere. By the time you walk through (almost a mile) to the other end, you're usually a little damp. This is a short video of the water running out of the ceiling.

How does anyone sleep the night before having a few days off? I was so excited about the prospect of some time off that all I did was toss and turn. Sleeping pills would have cured that, but I don't like the effect the next morning. For the first couple hours after waking up I feel like I'm walking around underwater.

So, at 1:00am, I decided to go out and look at the stars! I could see them beckoning to me through the window. It was another excellent night for stargazing. Crystal clear and one of those nights where I could see many of the distant objects with no more than just my eyes. I snapped a few pictures (surprise!) which of course don't do justice to the sights I saw, especially through my binoculars.


The northeastern sky, 1:00am. Cassiopeia in the upper left corner. Below that you can just make out the double cluster, NGC 869 & NGC 884. Almost centered in the picture you can similarly just make out a fuzzy oblong speck. That's the Andromeda Galaxy.


Lower left corner is the double cluster. Look at it in binoculars, it's cool!


Fuzzy spot in the center of the photo, the Andromeda Galaxy. Great one for your binoculars! This picture is roughly what I could see with my eyes. That's one thing about the Canon SX100 IS, it captures the night sky pretty close to what I could see with my eyes, more or less. The most awesome thing about this picture, is that fuzzy dot in the middle is a trip way back in time. When I snapped this picture last night, I was photographing that galaxy the way it looked almost 3 million years ago! It's so far away that it took the light that long to get here for me to snap that picture! Mind-boggling!

Might head for the bike trail this afternoon!

Aliens have contacted humans several times but governments have hidden the truth for 60 years, the sixth man to walk on the moon has claimed.

Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell, said he was aware of many UFO visits to Earth during his career with NASA but each one was covered up.

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The Moon will cover up the Sun early tomorrow, although it will happen before dawn for those of us in the United States. This total solar eclipse will be visible along a thin path that runs through China and Russia, across northern Greenland, and into Canada.

Yee Haw! After today, no more milking cows for me until Monday! It isn't often that I get more than an evening off.

Our plan is to go to Elroy once or twice to ride the bike trails and go to Necedah/Millston once or twice to ride the ATV. Mrs. Reverend thinks it might be a little too hot for her to ride the bike trails (heat is not a big problem for me). We might wait on bicycling until Sunday and see what the weather looks like then. Doesn't matter, because it's never too hot to ride ATV, so we can always do that instead. Even though my Polaris Hawkeye is air-cooled, it doesn't care how hot it is while trail riding. As long as we're moving to keep the air flowing around the engine, it stays plenty cool.

If anybody would like to go bicycling or ATVing with us, or has similar plans that we could tag along on between Thursday and Sunday, please let me know. Our schedule is fairly flexible.

ISS tonight:

30 Jul -1.7 10:39:14pm NW 53

Doug Eichner represented the Polaris/Lone Star/Eichner Racing team and was declared victorious in the Open Pro Class at the fifth round of the ITP QuadCross held Sunday, July 20, 2008, at the legendary Glen Helen Raceway, in San Bernadino, Calif.

Six of the seven OEM's were represented on the line with 17 pros who each pushed their machines to the limit. Eichner, despite being under the weather, capably demonstrated the abilities of his stealth Polaris Outlaw 525S with enhanced power and exhaust from Yoshimura, suspension from FOX Racing Shox, and A-Arms, steering stem and axle by Lone Star Racing.

With the overall win in the Open Pro Class, Eichner currently sits atop the leader board of this division.

Looks like my hit counter will be breaking a million today! Free nude photo of me to the 1,000,000th visitor! I know I've posted some scary things here, but that's the scariest thought of all!

Thirteen years ago, William Dranginis saw Bigfoot. Fifty grand, a van, and a camera in a log later, the quest continues.

William Dranginis knows what you’re thinking, so maybe it’s best to get a few things straight right from the start. He’s not crazy, delusional, some lunatic on the fringe. For the most part, he’s your average suburban family man. Lives on a quiet street in Manassas. Has a great wife and two daughters; just became a grandfather. Has a good job designing surveillance equipment for the Windermere Group, an Annapolis-based technology firm that does contract work for the government.

He can’t help that he saw Bigfoot in the woods near Culpeper, Va., on March 11, 1995. Two witnesses were with him, both FBI agents. It’s not like he imagined the incident. In the 13 years since, he has spent more than $50,000 trying to prove Bigfoot exists. He has created sophisticated surveillance systems—wait till you hear about his new Eye Gotcha system!—and even designed a tricked-out research van with parabolic microphones and thermal and night-vision cameras. So he’s not exactly half-assing this quest.

Bigfoot, he wants you to know, are not just a bunch of pranksters running around in ape suits. Nor are Bigfoot the ghosts of some long-extinct creature, as some people claim. They’re flesh and blood, and they don’t just live in the Pacific Northwest. The creatures are here, within commuting distance of the nation’s capital. Bigfoot is the “last greatest mystery on earth,” Dranginis will tell you, so you may as well suspend your disbelief and come along for the ride.

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I don't normally post shit like this because the media and others do such a fine job of dwelling on it and blowing it out of proportion all by themselves (think - where is every single car accident detailed in the news? nowhere):

"Atv Accident - Wear Your Helmets!

I was outside in their driveway when I heard an ATV coming down the road which is an ATV Route. This is a pretty common thing but being an ATV guy like I am I usually stop what I am doing to see what people are riding. Well anyways along comes this ATV that is going faster than the posted 25 MPH speed limit which kind of ticks me off to see. There are two people on it, a guy driving and a girl riding. This I know because they were NOT wearing helmets. As they got to the corner of my parents lot the driver decides to slow down for some unknown reason. The driver decides to downshift very quickly and it almost sounded like the machine downshifted two gears. The machine was a Arctic Cat 300 and had 4WD. Well the sudden downshift force caused both the driver and rider to be thrown forward on the machine. Between the machine severe slowdown and the weight of the two people on it, the machine rolled over forwards on the blacktop road with both people underneath it. To spare you all the other details that happened the driver was able to climb out from under the machine and roll it back onto to its wheels. By the time I got there the guy driving was sitting on the ground over the girls head holding her forehead with her hand. He appeared fine other than some road rash to the side of his head, face and arm. The girl was just lying there on the road moaning her arm was broke and from her head injury. The girl had a gash in her forehead from up in her hair line down to the corner of her eye that was so deep that the when the guy let go the skin flapped back to reveal her skull. I called 911 within seconds of the accident happening but it still took the Ambulance almost 20 minutes to get there. The cops, first responders, and Heavy Rescue Fire Truck got there within 10 minutes. I don't know what the outcome of the girl was because of the privacy laws but they did Med Flight her out to a good hospital once they get her in the ambulance out in an open area to land the helicopter. Apparently the guy driver was drinking because after they treated him at the scene and got the girl out of there they were doing sobriety testing on him.

Having seen that kind of injury will definitely serve as a graphic reminder to always wear my helmet."

This accident was NOT caused by the lack of a helmet.
This accident was NOT caused by the ATV.
This accident was NOT caused by the road.
This accident was NOT caused by the alcohol.

This accident WAS caused by the operator.

Yes, I think everyone should wear a helmet, sometimes shit happens that you have no control over. But, all too often helmet advocates get so caught up in trying to force people to wear them that they lose sight of the real problem - the dumb bastard behind the handlebars! There is so much PREACHING to "always wear your helmet in case some dumb bastard gets behind the handlebars", how about a little more TEACHING people not to be dumb bastards to begin with?

I would have ended that story with: "Having seen that kind of stupidity will definitely serve as a graphic reminder to never be a dumb bastard."

I could sure tell this morning that the days are getting shorter. Aside from the fact that it's getting darker now when I head down to the barn, the whippoorwill was still singing his song today!

Mrs. Reverend is on paid vacation all week! La-dee-dah. Some people got it easy! Ha ha! I'll take some time off later this week, so we can go bicycling, ATVing, etc., but it will be without pay of course. Although, when you're paid so little you don't miss it much. Not much to miss!

One of the great joys of a dark summer sky is the Milky Way, which is a delicate band of light that looks like a glowing cloud. Its filaments of stars and voids are truly awe-inspiring, but you must get far away from city lights to see them.

So I went up to Big Sur, California, up on an air -- on the U.S. Forest Service road on Anderson Peak and installed a telescopic site up there. And the Air Force flew in a huge catarctic telescope from the Cape. It was built by Dr. Walter Manning at the Boston University.

They put this telescope up there. And with that thing, which had a focal length of 2,500 inches, we photographed an Atlas missile raising up out of the fog cover and flying downrange. We got all three stages of powered flight. And as the dummy warhead and the package flew on down the range, we were all celebrating the fact that we had seen the thing and accomplished the mission.

When I got back to the base with the film, the next day I was called into the office of Major Florenze J. Mansmann. And there were three people in gray suits standing in there. There was a .16 millimeter camera and a screen set up.

Major Mansmann said lieutenant, sit down and watch this. And he turned down the lights, turned on the camera -- on the projector and the film came on. And I recognized it as the film that we had shot at Big Sur the previous day.

Toward the end of the flight, I was looking at Major Mansmann saying pretty good stuff, huh sir?

And suddenly he said just watch this.

And as I watched, the warhead -- the dummy warhead, the chaff that was put out in front of it as the decoy to deflect the Russian anti-missile missile tracking radar -- everything was flying along and suddenly, in the same direction this stuff was flying, at about 8,000 miles an hour, an object came into the frame, shot a beam of light at the warhead, flew up to the top, shot another beam of light at the warhead, flew around the direction it was flying, shot another beam of light at the warhead, flew down to shoot another beam of light at the warhead and then flew out the same way it came in.

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Syracuse Sand Dunes Park, Kansas - LABOR DAY ACTIVITIES - UPDATE

This week, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mayor Ochs and Council as well as Chairman Crae Barr and Members of the Syracuse Sand Dunes Park Advisory Board for acquiring the new Polaris Ranger utility vehicle for the Park. Purchased from the Snow Ride Shop, it will be invaluable for our needs in maintaining all aspects of Park recreation and is very much appreciated. It will also come in quite handy for the occasional tour requested by the public who may be curious about the Park. Several tours have been conducted this week already. I also want to thank Hamilton County Fire Chief Ed Baker for the use of the Gator utility vehicle over the past year. The loan of the Gator by the County Fire Department certainly provided easy access for necessary Park maintenance operations and was also appreciated very much.



Thanks to Krista Norton at the Chamber of Commerce, the Park as well as a number of other attractions are listed online at www.travelks.com . We are hoping to have a written listing on the Official Kansas Visitors Guide magazine very soon as well. This magazine, and online site, are managed by the Kansas Department of Commerce, Travel and Tourism Division, to market Kansas to people on vacation and taking day trips.



This past Saturday, several of us met near the bridge to begin discussions regarding Labor Day activities. If you are interested with helping with an event, please contact me at 384-2480. At this time, we are exploring a day time River Poker Run, a night time Sand Park Poker Run, a Dunking Booth, and Sand Volleyball. The next meeting will be Thursday (tomorrow) evening at 7pm at the Sand Park Office.



Saturday was also the premiere of the game ‘Trail of Treasure’. Trail of Treasure is a Sand Park hunting game, in which the participants ride the park in an attempt to locate prize claim tickets. In this episode, the prizes were eight gift certificates to Ark Valley Oil Company and its convenience store in different denominations. Two participants won prizes that contained two chances and the highest draw totaled $35.00 in certificates. We had 31 participants for the game and they are looking forward to our scheduling the next one. Keep your eye on the News from the Dunes for an announcement in the near future.



Finally, Radio Shack’s Stan Englert announced this week a River Run Sunday to be held Sunday August 10th. For details, contact Stan or go to www.syracusesand.com . This looks to be a fun event with a prize for Best Decorated Tank. When you have finished with the River Run, come on out and Ride With Us at the Dunes!!





Mike Keating, Director

Syracuse Sand Dunes Park

P.O. Box 148

Syracuse, Kansas 67878

620-384-2480

www.syracusesanddunes.com

www.syracusesandpark.com

Some swirled, swooshed and hummed, while others hovered, zipped and zoomed.

Canadians in four provinces reported seeing a record number of unidentified flying objects in 2007, according to an annual report released by a Winnipeg-based non-profit organization that has recorded UFO sightings since 1989.

The UFOlogy Research Institute, which compiles data from sources including Transport Canada and the Department of National Defence, said researchers examined 836 alleged UFO sightings in 2007, an increase of almost 12 per cent over 2006.

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Something I dislike very much:

When a cow is pissing, the cow next to her swishes her tail through the piss stream and I just so happen to be milking her at the time, getting a face full of cow piss. In that situation the best I can hope for is that my mouth was closed.


This morning's daylight waning moon.

Is this what a sonic boom looks like? When an airplane travels at a speed faster than sound, density waves of sound emitted by the plane cannot precede the plane, and so accumulate in a cone behind the plane. When this shock wave passes, a listener hears all at once the sound emitted over a longer period: a sonic boom. As a plane accelerates to just break the sound barrier, however, an unusual cloud might form. The origin of this cloud is still debated. A leading theory is that a drop in air pressure at the plane described by the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity occurs so that moist air condenses there to form water droplets. Above, an F/A-18 Hornet was photographed just as it broke the sound barrier. Large meteors and the space shuttle frequently produce audible sonic booms before they are slowed below sound speed by the Earth's atmosphere.

BP America Inc., the largest oil and gas producer in the United States and one of the largest investors in alternative energy, made a gift of a solar-powered all-terrain electric vehicle to the Lakeshore Nature Preserve at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It was handed over to the preserve July 7.

The electric vehicle, equipped with a 48-volt battery system and a 185-watt PV solar panel manufactured by BP Solar at its Maryland facility, will be used to move staff and equipment around the 300-acre preserve. The preserve stretches across more than four miles of Lake Mendota shoreline, from near the Memorial Union Terrace on the east to Shorewood Hills Village on the west.

"The Lakeshore Nature Preserve is delighted to accept this electric utility vehicle from BP," says professor Ray Guries, chair of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Committee and chair of the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. "We know from experience that electric vehicles are energy efficient and convenient, and their quiet operation is a big plus for moving around a nature preserve. We are grateful for BP's support for clean energy as well as their support for the Lakeshore Nature Preserve."

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Getting everything done this summer that you wanted to? Only five more months from today until Christmas!

A great big telescope is indispensable for seeing faint deep-sky fuzzies. But on nights when you don't have the time or energy to set up a big telescope, it's handy to have a smaller scope you can quickly take outside for a short observing session. Here's how to choose a “grab-and-go” refractor to help you get the most out of every clear night.

The Basics

• The Telescope Mount. Some will disagree, but no telescope with equatorial mount qualifies as a grab-and-go. If you've only got 20 minutes, you don't want to spend time polar-aligning your telescope. So a grab-and-go telescope should have a simple and sturdy altazimuth mount.

• Telescope Tube. A good grab-and-go refractor has an aperture between 60 mm and 100 mm and focal ratio of f/8 or less. This keeps the length of the tube to 40-60 cm and the weight to 2-5 kg or so.

• Accessories. For a quick session, take along two eyepieces, one for low power and one for high-power views. And you can take a Barlow lens to double the power of each eyepiece. If you're looking at nebulae and you live under light-polluted skies, take an OIII filter. It's worth the effort.

A Deeper Look....

This sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere.

The time series shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (south) of the Great Red Spot (GRS). "Red Spot Jr." first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed.

But this is not the fate of "baby red spot," which is in the same latitudinal band as the GRS. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The baby red spot gets ever closer to the GRS in this picture sequence until it is caught up in the anticyclonic spin of the GRS. In the final image the baby spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (east) of the GRS. (Amateur astronomers' observations confirm that this is the baby spot that migrated around the GRS.) The prediction is that the baby spot will now get pulled back into the GRS "Cuisinart" and disappear for good. This is one possible mechanism that has powered and sustained the GRS for at least 150 years.

These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008, by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Each one covers 58 degrees of Jovian latitude and 70 degrees of longitude (centered on 5 degrees South latitude and 110, 121, and 121 degrees West longitude, respectively).

We had an excellent time at the fair last night! Tractors, cows, pigs, rides, food, games, exhibits, free awesome fireworks, free admittance always - not even a gate or fence around the fairgrounds. What more could you want from a fair?

Adams fair, you ask? Ha ha - not a chance. Portage!

The experts at London's Natural History Museum pride themselves on being able to identify species from around the globe, from birds and mammals to insects and snakes. Yet they can't figure out a tiny red-and-black bug that has appeared in the museum's own gardens.

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On Coast to Coast AM 7/17/08:

Alcohol-Based Fuels
Ecological biologist David Blume discussed the importance and benefits of alcohol-based fuels, and how the petroleum industry has suppressed their development. Some of the earliest cars such as the Model T were flex fuel (running on either gas or alcohol), and Henry Ford was an advocate for alcohol fuel. However, he was opposed by John D. Rockefeller who pushed for Prohibition, which stopped the manufacture of alcohol for any purpose, Blume detailed.

Cheaper than gas, alcohol is a superior fuel, as it leaves no carbon behind, engines last longer, and it can free us from foreign dependence, he noted. There are some twenty different crops that can produce alcohol, and many of them, such as sugar beets, yield more alcohol per acre than corn.

Most cars can actually run with up to 50% alcohol in their tanks, without using any kind of conversion device, Blume declared, and kits can be added to vehicles for less than $300. People can get permits to create home distilleries to brew their own alcohol fuel, which enables them to be eligible for tax credits, he said. An advocate for community organizing, Blume said in many locales residents have set up driver owned stations which offer alcohol pumps.

The Results are In
At the start of the show, C2C producer Tom Danheiser announced the results of his experiment using the Water4Gas device on his car. Before the installation, he was getting 17.99 mpg on his Mustang, and after he averaged only 16.56 mpg, demonstrating he actually got worse mileage driving with the device. Engineer Fred Gutierrez who does installations of the device, said results vary depending on the type of car, and in 7% of the cases mileage does go down, even if the engine is running cleaner.

Hey! I've now taken over 3000 photos with my Canon SX100 IS since I bought it in April. One or two of them might have even been ok!


When the International Space Station flew over so early last night, the sun had barely set. Even with the sky still so bright, almost total daylight, the ISS was easily visible. Certainly brighter than any star, and brighter than anything except the moon and maybe Venus or possibly Jupiter.


The daytime moon this morning.

Compressed-Air Powered cars could take you over 800 miles on a single fill-up, at speeds of up to 96 mph. They should refuel in less than 3 minutes, and at speeds over 35 mph emit about half the CO2 of a Toyota Prius. Best part? You could see them in the US at the end of next year.

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ISS tonight:

23 Jul -0.9 9:10:13pm W 41

Blogger will be unavailable Tuesday (7/22) at 7:30PM CDT for about 10 minutes for maintenance.

The laid-back days of summer vacation are an ideal time to introduce children to astronomy. Sure, many kids hear about exotica like the Big Bang and superstring theory on TV. But too few enjoy the primal wonder of seeing the real universe first hand. If you get a chance, show a kid around the night sky this summer. They'll never forget it. Here are six sights to get you started.

The Basics

• The summer Milky Way. You need dark clear sky, a blanket to lie on, and that's about it. The knotted star clouds and dark nebulae never fail to astonish. City kids can't believe there are so many stars.

• The Moon. Use a telescope at moderate power, at or before first quarter. Look along on the terminator-- the dividing line between night and day. Smooth dark lunar seas and the long shadows cast by crater walls and towering mountains reveal a whole new world.

• A meteor shower. Everyone should see the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks near August 12. The anticipation of meteors suddenly streaking across the sky is better entertainment than any TV show. The more southerly delta Aquarids, in late July, aren't bad either.

A Deeper Look

• Saturn. Many amateurs get hooked after their first look at Saturn through a telescope. If you have good optics, challenge a child to see the Cassini division of the rings. And don't forget Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Covered with lakes of natural gas and a dense atmosphere of nitrogen and hydrocarbons, some scientists think it harbors the building blocks of life.

• Open star clusters. Homes to blazing young stars, the sight of an open star cluster gives a first hand introduction to stellar evolution. These are better for older kids who have the patience to learn to look through an eyepiece. Try M11 in Scutum.

• A galaxy. Take your pick: M81, M31, etc. Fire a kid's imagination by showing them close to a trillion stars at one time.

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ISS tonight:

22 Jul -2.4 8:46:27pm SW 74

This is it folks! My first UFO photos! Now before you get all excited and contact Sculley and Mulder, I'm just kidding. These are 15 second exposures of Jupiter.


Last night's Jupiter and moons exposed much shorter. From left to right: Ganymede, Europa, Jupiter, Io, and Callisto. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system at 3,279 miles in diameter, with Callisto being just slightly smaller. Europa has the smoothest known surface in the universe. Io has at least ten erupting volcanoes, meaning it has the most mutating, active surface in the known universe.


Big and little dippers.


Coming soon to a theater near you! International Space Station - The Movie!

ISS tonight:

21 Jul -1.0 9:57:57pm W 41

Brett realized he was now close to his mother's flat. Leaving the road, he ran down the small bank that ran parallel to it and frantically knocked on the window.

Barbara Forrest was in her living room at the time. Seeing her clearly distressed son through the glass, she dashed to the end of the room and flung open the window.

"Mum – look!" insisted Brett. Margaret's jaw dropped as she looked up to see the gigantic object hovering over the roof of her building. Brett's father Martin came to the window too and was equally amazed.

As all three looked on, the object again rotated on its axis and quietly flew off towards the town center. The family would later learn that their upstairs neighbor had witnessed the entire event through her window; as had numerous other local residents.

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Today's Bike Ride

I had my trail bike (3 speed) out of the shed doing a little tinkering on it. Decided I would take that one on our ride today instead of my everyday bike (single speed), since I haven't ridden it for awhile. I usually only ride it when I go to the trails. It's really not my favorite bike, the single speed is, but it's a lighter frame, has a low gear for climbing up the long grades, and I have it set up to haul all the crap we take with on the trail rides.


We noticed I have a new calf and cow waiting for me out in the pasture. - A turkey vulture picking at the afterbirth.


Mrs. Reverend's bike.

Robert Buchanan, age 85, of Arkdale, Wisconsin died Friday, July 18, 2008 at the House of the Doves Hospice in Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Funeral services will be 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at the Roseberry's Funeral Home in Friendship, Wisconsin. Pastor Terri Skildum will officiate. Interment will be at the Strongs Prairie Cemetery, Town of Strongs Prairie, Adams County, Wisconsin. Military rites will be offered at the graveside service by the Adams County Honor Guard.

Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. on Monday at Roseberry's Funeral Home.

obit

ISS tonight:

20 Jul -2.5 9:34:06pm SW 73

His fellow blackbirds warble and twitter when they're trying to attract a mate.

But this fellow has a rather different seduction technique.

He can ring like a mobile phone, peal like a car alarm, wolf-whistle and every morning as the sun rises he lets out a wail that sounds exactly like an ambulance siren.

Experts are highly impressed with his talents, as blackbirds are not known as the greatest imitators.

They believe he is trying to attract a lady friend using the sounds he hears every day.

But the family who have to listen to the racket - the Talbots - are not quite so enthusiastic.

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Stay up to about 11 p.m. this week, and you'll find the Great Square of Pegasus looming up in the east — an early foreshadowing of fall. It's a bit bigger than your fist at arm's length, and it's balancing on one corner.

The modest but long-lasting Delta Aquarid meteor shower is strongest this week. It's best seen from southerly latitudes and before the first light of dawn.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) is still very deep in the glow of sunset. Using binoculars, look for it just above the west-northwest horizon 20 to 40 minutes after sundown. Venus is making its way up very slowly toward a grand "Evening Star" showing in late fall and winter.

Mars and Saturn (magnitudes +1.7 and +0.8) are sinking lower in evening twilight. They're moving apart now; on July 18th they're separated by 4°, but on the 26th by 8°. Twinkly little Regulus (magnitude +1.4) remains 7° to Saturn's lower right. Look early before they all sink too low and set!

Jupiter (magnitude –2.7, in Sagittarius) shines with a steady glare in the southeast at nightfall. It's left of the Sagittarius Teapot and just below the bowl of the smaller, dimmer Teaspoon. Jupiter now gets its highest in the south by midnight daylight saving time. For high-resolution scopes, Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its little red companions have been putting on quite an interesting performance; see press release from the Hubble Space Telescope site.

The International Space Station last night. I almost missed it. It was thundering and lightning off to the west, and mostly cloudy. I was about to give up, when suddenly it appeared through a hole in the clouds. It caught me by surprise, so I didn't even have time to set the timer on my camera. I just swung the tripod that way and hit the shutter button, hence the squiggle at the beginning of the trail.


The sunset Thursday night. We've sure been having some colorful sunsets this year.


The gardens are really growing this year, with sufficient rainfall for a change. And especially since I've got most of the potato bugs squished now.


My favorite place to read my books.


The yellow day lilies are blooming, but not the orange ones yet.

This hot, dry time of year is known as the Dog Days for the Dog Star, Sirius. The star is so close to the Sun at this time of year that it is lost in the Sun's glare. Because it was so close to the Sun, people associated it with the hot days of summer.

The mission of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) is to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.

Goals:

1. Stop the adverse effects of light pollution, including;

* Energy waste, and the air and water pollution caused by energy waste
* Harm to human health
* Harm to nocturnal wildlife and ecosystems
* Reduced safety and security
* Reduced visibility at night
* Poor nighttime ambience; and

2. Raise awareness about light pollution, its adverse effects, and its solutions; and



3. Educate about the values of quality outdoor lighting.



To achieve these goals, IDA takes an award-winning unified approach that supports the individual efforts of our members and of others who advocate quality outdoor lighting. In fighting light pollution we work with communities, astronomers, ecologists, and lighting professionals. We are active on local, national, and international stages and have already accomplished much, but our work is not yet done.

International Dark-Sky Association

ISS tonight:

19 Jul -1.1 10:45:36pm W 42

Castle Rock Family ATV Club Members and Interested Parties:

Regrettably, the club picnic scheduled for July 18th and 19th at Hamm's
property is cancelled due to schedule conflicts and the short of interest.
The Board regrets any inconvenience of this short, short notice.
This email may not reach all parties, so communicate this message
accordingly.

CRFAC Board of Directors

The 400 State Trail is now open between Elroy and Wonewoc (for approx. 8 miles). The rest of the trail remains closed. Significant damage to bridges and trail surface between Wonewoc and Reedsburg from June flooding will require time and funding to address. Contact the Trail Headquarters for current conditions. http://www.400statetrail.org/
The Elroy-Sparta Trail is now open after devastating rains caused a 2 week shutdown to clean it up and make repairs. Contact the Trail Headquarters for current conditions. http://www.elroy-sparta-trail.com/

I know some people that could benefit from one of these devices!

In an attempt to understand the extent of cow flatulence on global warming, scientists in Argentina are strapping plastic bags to the backs of cows to capture their emissions.
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ISS tonight:

18 Jul -2.6 10:21:51pm SW 72

A few pictures and short video of yesterday's storms:

Jessica Lafreniere of Antrim, New Hampsire miraculously suffered only slight injuries after a lightning strike apparently went through her foot and exited through her nose ring. "Light came in and hit her, and the bottom of her feet lit up red," Jessica's mother Danielle Taylor told reporters. Video story at Breitbart.tv.

Federal Aviation Administration radar appears to confirm the presence of unidentified aircraft on Jan. 8 over the Stephenville-Dublin area, with at least one appearing to head toward President Bush’s Crawford Ranch, the same night that dozens of people reported seeing UFOs, according to a report released Thursday by a national group that studies reports of unidentified flying objects.

"Radar detects an object at 7:20 p.m. only 2.8 miles south-southwest of the constable’s home and traveling in a southeastern direction," the report states. "This matches very well with the time and direction of the constable’s sighting. At 7:36 p.m. radar shows the object suddenly veering to the north at 1,900 miles per hour and then returning a minute later to continue on its southeastern course."

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Aw, come on! Isn't it obvious that there's "no center stripe" painted on this road? Do we really need signs to point that out? One sign every 1/2 mile? If you can't tell by looking out your windshield that there is no center stripe, you're probably not smart enough to read the sign anyway. Which leads me to the big question - why the hell are you driving?

The Sasquatch was sighted on June 19 at 2 a.m. when a husband and wife were travelling down the mountain after watching the city lights from a lookout point. The wife was busy fiddling with CDs when the creature crossed in front of them.

He grabbed his wife’s arm and said ‘did you see that guy cross the road?

“His wife started asking him questions, like what was he wearing. He said that he wasn’t wearing anything, he was just really hairy. She asked how tall he was. He just said that he was really big. Finally she asked, was it the Sasquatch? No, he replied. It couldn’t have been, there’s no such thing as the Sasquatch.”

The man who saw the figure described it as having “long arms, down to his knees,” a “very heavy, big upper body,” a “thin waist,” a “flat stomach,” and no neck, “just kind of a head.”

He compared it to being “big like a wrestler, flexing its back and chest.” He also said it was about seven feet tall, covered in black hair, and walked on two legs.

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Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.

So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle."

This report, that there's nothing to report, is newsworthy because of a growing buzz in lay and academic circles that something is wrong with the sun. Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots declared one recent press release. A careful look at the data, however, suggests otherwise.

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As you gaze at the Moon tonight, look for the dark "seas" that dot its surface. They are vast slabs of hardened lava, the remnants of a heavy bombardment during early lunar history. Earth received a similar pummeling but all traces of it have vanished.

A 5,000-mile-wide hurricane-like storm swirls at Saturn's south pole. Note the well defined eye.


A bizarre six-sided feature encircling the north pole of Saturn near 78 degrees north latitude has been spied by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

My original plan for yesterday was to do pretty much nothing. It turned out way too nice of a day for that. I thought about going bicycling, but it was really windy. Even as much as I like riding my bike, I don't like fighting the wind. So instead, I gassed everything up and headed over to Necedah with my ATV.

If possible, I never miss an opportunity to go riding. These days it hurts a little more to buy my gas to get there and back, but I still always buy it. It's well worth it. I could sink a bunch of money and time into other crap, but it's my memories of FUN that will last me all the way to the grave. Those are my highest priority. Even if it does mean clenching my teeth a little when I squeeze the gas pump nozzle. Big deal. Life is full of compromises.

I didn't see any flooding. North of Necedah the routes were dusty even. All the marshes and every little bog were full of water though. West of Necedah some of the routes had puddles on them, but still no real flooding. The Yellow River wasn't out of it's banks, but was brown with muddy water.

The Hawkeye ran perfect. I've almost got 2000 miles on it now. Another 100 to go. The problem I had with the choke knob going back in all by itself when cold starting has been cured. I took the tension nut off, wrapped a tiny piece of black tape around the tensioner, and that stuff is so gooey that it holds the choke wherever I set it now.

"It's not begging if you know the people, it's mooching."

- Homer Simpson in Any Given Sundance episode

An American man has succeeded at the third attempt in making a 235-mile (378km) trip in an armchair held aloft by party balloons.

Kent Couch soared across the Oregon desert to the neighbouring state of Idaho in a journey that took him about nine hours.

Mr Couch took an air gun and blow pipe to control his elevation.

He had to bail out by parachute on his first attempt and his second fell short of the state border.

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One of the biggest stars in our region of the galaxy is Antares. It's not far to the upper right of the Moon at nightfall, and it shows a distinctly orange color. As a red supergiant, it is doomed to blow itself apart as a supernova.

Last night was another excellent night for stargazing! Even better because there was a breeze, which eliminated the dew and thus any lens fogging. Except the moon was a little too bright. Aside from cropping/sizing/compressing to display here, the following pictures were taken straight from my Canon SX100 IS camera with no addition optical aid (no telescope etc. used). Not too bad I guess, for a halfway el-cheap-o camera that can be purchased at any old Wal-mart. I've paid a lot more for cameras in the past that wouldn't show anything at all under the same conditions.


Big Dipper - Little Dipper


Jupiter and moons - Jupiter and moons bigger


The Moon - The Moon bigger

William Puckett marks his map with all of the reported UFO sightings in the United States.

William Puckett's work has him going more than he ever did when he was a full-time employee. It helps him put the pieces of the puzzle together.

As a UFO investigator, Puckett acknowledges or debunks stories of unidentified flying objects in the sky, landing on the ground and hovering over homes through his Web site www.ufosnw.com.

Along the way, the former National Weather Service and Enviromental Protection Agency meteorologist believes he and others are closer to proving that we aren't the only ones living in this universe.

"My intent behind this - why I do this - is for my own scientific curiosity," said the Ocean Shores resident. "I want to stimulate the awareness of this phenomena to the public. It isn't all crackpots and nutcases, although some of them are. I believe that we are not alone."

Puckett's work as a UFO investigator expanded in 2004 when he began his site - UFOs Northwest - during his final years as an EPA weather forecaster in Bellevue. However, his interest in the subject began in the early days of UFO sightings and hysteria.

"I grew up in the 1950s and UFOs were on the national news," said the Peerless, Mont., native, who moved to Ocean Shores last summer. "In those days, everyone believed they were Russian. Later, we learned that they had UFO cases and the objects weren't their's either. If they weren't from the U.S. or from Russia or from escaped Nazi scientists, what were they?"

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On Coast to Coast AM Tuesday 7/8/08:

Expert in UFOs and the paranormal, Bill Knell shared details of UFO cases, and sightings by such people as Walter Cronkite, Jackie Gleason, and JFK. During a lunch he had with Cronkite, the veteran newsman told him he witnessed a UFO shoot a blue beam at a missile in the 1950's. The military claimed it was a test to see how the media would react to a UFO event, but Cronkite and other reporters there didn't buy this explanation, Knell recounted.

At the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, MA, JFK and guests witnessed a disc-shaped craft around 60 ft.-in-diameter hovering several hundred feet from their boat, Knell reported. Howard Hughes was said to be taken to a military base in 1947 and shown crashed UFO materials. It was "damnedest stuff I've ever seen," he reportedly commented. The government wanted him to find out what it was made of, said Knell.

Knell met with Jackie Gleason in Fort Lauderdale in the mid-1980s to discuss UFOs, and Gleason shared details of his viewing of a "spacecraft" and alien bodies, arranged for him by his good friend, Pres. Richard Nixon. The viewing took place in a large hangar at MacDill AFB in Tampa, where he was shown a broken disc, parts of which were still hovering. Gleason also told Knell that he saw alien bodies, "in a good state of preservation," that resembled what we think of as greys.

Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius, the scorpion, stands well to the left of the Moon this evening. The star shines orange because its surface temperature is thousands of degrees cooler than the surface of our own star, the Sun.

The final mystery of 9/11 will soon be solved, according to US experts investigating the collapse of the third tower at the World Trade Center.

The 47-story third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers.

Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse.

Conspiracy theorists have argued that the third tower was brought down in a controlled demolition.

Unlike the twin towers, Tower Seven was not hit by a plane.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, based near Washington DC, is expected to conclude in its long-awaited report this month that ordinary fires caused the building to collapse.

That would make it the first and only steel skyscraper in the world to collapse because of fire.

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This morning, at sunrise, there was a rare rainbow in the west. I peeked out the barn door and just happened to see it. I didn't have my camera in the barn, so no picture. It didn't last long, before it started pouring rain again and disappeared. I got 4 inches of rain, and it looks like it's finally about done for awhile, at least until tonight. Not nearly as much as they got on the good side of the river in Mauston (I heard up to 10 inches). As usual, the sand here has soaked our rain up with no ill effects!

Behave Yourself: Star-Party Etiquette

Whether you're a beginner or experienced amateur astronomer, star parties are a great way to share your interests with others and check out all kinds of astronomical hardware. But there are a few unwritten rules of behavior at a star party. Here's how to avoid being an astronomical social misfit.

The Basics

• The most important rule for any star party: don't turn on a white light without everyone's permission unless it's a dire emergency. White light ruins your fellow observers' dark-adapted vision. And you could completely ruin someone's long deep-sky image. Not a good way to make new friends! If possible, bring a red LED flashlight specially designed for astronomy.

• Arrive before dark. This gives you time to set up your equipment and get oriented. And for a serious star party, don't drive up (or leave) with your headlights turned on once the crowd has started observing. Many star parties don't allow it.

• One of the pleasures of a star party lies in looking through all kinds of different telescopes. But always make sure you have permission to look, and especially to touch and adjust someone else's optical equipment.

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Mars and Saturn stand almost side by side tonight. They are low in the west at nightfall. Saturn is slightly brighter and slightly higher in the sky. Saturn displays a bit of a golden hue, while Mars shines orange.

Saturn and Mars are in conjunction (actually, practically the same distance they were apart last night).

Jupiter's big moon Ganymede slips behind the planet's western edge around 7:29 p.m. CDT. It reappears out of eclipse by Jupiter's shadow, barely off Jupiter's eastern edge, around 10:54 p.m. CDT.

Sightings are being reported again in Cherokee County Oklahoma of the tall, hairy creature with a face resembling a human and a strong stench - Bigfoot.

This time north of Tahlequah on rural State Highway 82 at Gideon, near Peggs, experiences include the thud of heavy footsteps running and shaking the ground, large footprints in the mud and a very strong, musky odor.

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My father was a 14-year-old boy at the time of the Tunguska explosion, and he said he was playing with other boys in the streets of his hometown in Nicaragua.
The event probably occurred between 7 and 7:30 p.m. My father described it this way: "Suddenly, an intense light more brilliant than the sun covered the sky and the entire town. We became paralyzed when we saw, slowly rolling across the sky, an enormous fireball moving apparently from west to north.
"All the townspeople exited from their homes and knelt on the ground, praying for God's forgiveness. They embraced each other in confused crying and moaning, also asking each other for forgiveness. People yelled that it was doomsday. The fireball also made a frightful noise, like a wildfire.
"Maybe the fireball took two or three minutes to disappear. But a few minutes later, a tremendous explosion was heard whose echo remained vibrating in space with a noise like that of a big waterfall. The brilliance left by the fireball was diminishing but did not disappear for the rest of the night. That night, the whole town kept praying until the new day arrived. Really, it seemed like the end of the world."
What my father witnessed was one of the most compelling and frightening event of modern times. The entire world witnessed or felt the effects of the object wrapped in fire, which was responsible for the devastation in Tunguska. Scientists agree it was a massive explosion that occurred around 7:14 a.m. local solar time in Tunguska. They estimated the energy of the blast was about 30 megatons of TNT, or about 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

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LP gas is $2.35 per gallon today. I just got $812.68 worth of it! Holy shit. Fortunately, if all goes as planned, that will heat our water and cook our food until next summer when we'll need to buy it again. Thank God for wood heat. If we had to heat our home with the furnace again and use the 2500 gallons of LP that it used to take every winter, we'd have to live in the street. That's more than 25% of our total annual income!

Makes me want to get out and cut some wood, even though I have enough cut for many, many years already, but it's like money in the bank. Can never have too much firewood.

When the septic tank pumper gets here ($100), I'll be all set for next winter already. I have my own pump for it, but it's a lot of work (and stinky, splattering poop) to get most of the solids out. All the trouble I had with it in the past, I thought I'd have it professionally pumped at least a couple years in a row. Knock on wood, I've had no trouble with it since last summer when I had it pumped.

Holy cow! Summer is half over already. It sure doesn't last long. What have I done so far? Not nearly as much as I want to.

I haven't really went anywhere on my bike. Around the block, but I hope to hit the Elroy-Sparta bike trail at least once this summer. I want to ride the 400 too. It's open now from Elroy to Wonewoc, but remains closed from there to Reedsburg yet. That's ok though, because I normally don't ride farther than Wonewoc anyway, and seeing the flood damage (taking pictures) would be cool.

I went on a few ATV rides. One with my buddy Swiney, one preparing for the Castle Rock Family ATV Club scavenger hunt, and the scavenger hunt itself. I doubt if I will be able to go up north this year either, but I still have fun riding in Juneau, Jackson, and Clark counties. The cheese trail is cool too, but takes so long to drive there. More driving time = less riding.

I've done quite a bit of stargazing (my regular readers can vouch for that, I can hear them now - "oh no, not another article about the night sky"). Unfortunately, the only night of the week that I can really muster up the energy to stay up all night is Saturday (no milking for me on Sunday morning, despite the fact that I still, from habit, get up at 4:00am!). So, if Saturday night is cloudy then not much stargazing that week. But that will change quickly as the days get shorter and the sun sets earlier. Then I'll get at least a few hours of night sky patrol any night I want!

Summer may be half over already, but it's not over! Lot more I want to do yet.

Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, is putting in a big appearance this month. It is visible from dusk until dawn, and it's brightest for the year. Look for it low in the southeast at nightfall. It looks like a dazzling cream-colored star.

From the Hollywood Hills to the Nevada state line, people reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky and appearing to fall toward the San Bernardino Mountains on Tuesday morning. But explanations of the mysterious object were scarce.

San Bernardino County Fire Dispatch reported receiving dozens of calls related to a fireball moving at high speed in the northwest sky around 10:40 a.m.

"We got quite a few reports. It started with a gentlemen in the Lake Arrowhead area reporting a fireball in the Meadow Bay area, and then we started getting calls from all over," said San Bernardino County dispatch supervisor Tom Barnes.

"Fire crews in Barstow and on I-15 near Stateline came up on the radio and reported an object in the sky moving very fast across the northern sky and described it as yellowish green in color with streaks of debris. It looked like it burned up before it hit the ground."

Barnes said the department has "basically determined it was most likely not an aircraft and was probably man-made or a meteor entering the Earth's atmosphere."

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Here's a few pictures from watching the fireworks at Castle Rock Lake last night:


Looking south across the lake, towards the dam, from the point we were perched on. - A couple on a jet ski. - The sun setting, almost fireworks time.


There were a few flying machines out there. A seagull? - An airplane. - This guy flying the ultralight always flew right overhead every year for the last several, until now. This is the closest he got his year.


Actually, I believe this year was the worst fireworks display yet. Only one at a time for the whole 15 minute show, then the Grand Finale was just a handful of the loud booms! If you notice my fireworks pictures are all of one firework only, that's why. I'm not sure who was having fireworks on the Juneau County side at the same time, but that's where we should have went! Even from 10+ miles away they were much better than our side of the lake.


Looking west across the lake. You can see the light from the good fireworks on the horizon, and the streaky boat lights from the long exposure. - Saturn, Mars, Regulus, and the waxing Moon all in a perfect line. - The stars and the lights along the lake shore. I took some of my stargazing equipment along, in the hope that I could do some after the fireworks. The conditions were perfect for it. Except my daughter and niece (they're both teenagers and old enough to know better) decided during the fireworks it would be fun to scream at each firework at the top of their lungs, without shutting up in the least despite repeated threats from all the adults there. Then as soon as the fireworks were over and they finally quit screaming, they whined and whined to go home. No stargazing by the lake for me. Didn't do any when I got home either. Somehow looking up through the same old holes in my treetops at the stars wasn't so appealing.