Partial Eclipse from town!

 8 April 2024

   Where I live was too far from the center for a total eclipse, we had about 34%. We also had clear skies, better than much of the totality lane.

   I loaded up my telescope into the 109 on Sunday the day before mainly cause the eclipse started at 10:12 and I didn't want to do all that loading first thing in the morning. Leaving my place around 9:30 I drove into Boulder Creek and parked next to the bank I had gotten permission to set up in front of. Then I dragged all my stuff in 2 trips and set up. 

   The mirror had to acclimate so after a bit I checked the focus with my collimator and it was close, 10 min later and it was better, no adjustment needed.

   Once it was ready I put on the solar filter for todays viewing.

Then as if by magic the monster in the sky started taking a bite out of The Great Snickerdoodle in the Sky.

I used my point and shoot camera through the lens of my scope, the sunspots do not show up sadly.

Peoples came by and took a gander at the Celestial Extravaganza.

It took around an hour to reach maximum at 11:12

Some peoples hung around for a while and took many looks, others a quick peek and moved on. I was glad to see some kids getting a view. Then at 12:12 the moon exited the path of my view to the Sun.

Fun fact; when you get the Sun light on your Land Rover, it left the Sun 8 minutes earlier, When you look at the Sun you are looking back in time.

I had a good time, met around 20 peoples and they left happy and thankful!

My scope is an Orion 8" Dobsonian. I think they have more electronics these days.

https://www.telescope.com/Orion/Telescopes/Dobsonian-Telescopes/rc/2160/pc/1/12.uts

No Shadow People were harmed making this blog.

After the Rain

 22 Jan 2024

   Happy New Year All!

    Today I got rid of some cabin fever after the rain stopped. I had 6" of rain over the last weekend. I didn't do too much some of the roads are closed due to fallen trees and mud/debris flows and wires down. 

   I drove up to Miller Property County Park, it is a new park and so far undeveloped. It is fairly unknown so not much visited. The creek, Kings Creek was still up about a foot though there was evidence it had been 4-6" higher earlier. Still the trail on the far side was under water. I just took some pictures as I walked around and ate an apple. There are fallen trees around and 2 into the creek as it was windy last night. The one picture with a broken tree on the hillside I think all 3 pieces are from the same tree.

   Anywho, it was nice to get out. I wish my ankle would let me hike again. Word to the wise; Don't get old!

Enjoy!

The last pic is the largest redwood tree in the park, those upper branches are HUGE, perhaps 50' long and 36" in diameter near the trunk, 120' in the air.

The Shadow People

 3 Nov 2023

     I was on my way to the Sierras going to pick up my friend Alane when I became aware of the Shadow People. All my life I had seen signs of them, yet it took this trip to acknowledge their existence and the threat they are to the whole World.

    Let me start by saying I don't think I've ever actually seen a shadow person, O maybe that flicker on the edge of my vision was one and I just didn't realize it. Now that I am more informed I will try to turn my head a little quicker next time. They are really fast!

   So what did I learn about these shadow folk? Glad you asked! For 1, they must be everywhere! Throughout California and Nevada, both in cities and rural I saw signs of them and their animals. OH, YES! They have animals too!

  So the first giveaway for me was just seeing this warning sign along the roadways that Shadow People were up ahead. It seemed the roads leading into every town had them,

   Once I realized that the Shadow People existed I learned that they had children just like us non-shadows.

Indeed, in some places apparently whole Shadow families are known to scurry across the roads dragging their Shadow kids behind them!

   Their are even places where Shadow men get on their bicycles. I KNOW I've never seen a Shadow cyclist on the road. There was that one time when I was out mountainbiking though....

   Out in Nevada we didn't see whole herds of Shadow cattle, yet the signs were there!

   Some appeared quite dangerous!

There are places where the Shadow People are not allowed to go;

   So on Saturday morning Oct 14th I realized that the Moon was NOT going in front of the Sun. Instead I saw it for what it was: An effort by the Shadow People to permanently block the light from the Sun so they could go out and about freely and not live in the shadows! The Shadow People want to rule Earth!

   The Earth was lucky to escape this time!

     Upon further investigation I discovered that there are also Pale People, perhaps they are another race of Shadow People? There needs to be DNA studies!

    And evidently not all of these folk are to be trusted, here is a Pale man abducting a Pale girl seeking to get away on a Pale bicycle!

15 Nov, 2023

It's not fair! Now I am told that they have flying cars before we do!

Annular Eclipse Trip

 12 Oct 2023

Packing up my scope in the 109,

I left my house heading to the Sierras where my friend lives in Mountain Ranch. Once across the Central Valley and up into the mountains to her house, we put our gear out and packed what we needed into her 2002 Range Rover. Early the next morning at O dark thirty we headed East to Nevada.

    We had originally intended to head to Winnemucca, except the weather forecast wasn't so good so we searched GoogleEarth and found a place NE of Eureka up NV Hwy 892, just past the end of pavement.

13 Oct 2023

 It was a long drive across the Loneliest Highway in America, 50. We fueled up in Eureka before heading East and then North on 892.

   As always the scenery was spectacular and having learned so much more about the geology made it more interesting as Alane read from the Roadside Geology of Nevada book.

Here is a screenshot of the round trip;

Some of the terrain along the way;

We figured that we would be the only ones around such a remote place. Shortly after we got there I shot this video;

When perhaps a hour after we got there a caravan of Jeeps turned off and headed down a road I hadn't seen on GE. Mostly Gladiators none stopped to say hi. That night shortly after dark we saw a light bobbing our direction along the road we came in on, It passed us by and kept heading down the road. I figure it was some local who had been to the next ranch over and visited his girlfriend. Weird though.

After dinner we spent a little time checking out the stars with my telescope, Jupiter was up and we could see 4 moons lined up. As it was cold we got in the sleeping bags around 9 and went to sleep.

During the night I had set my trail cam up at the end of the Rover an we did have a visitor.

 https://youtu.be/lhn-K6s0L98

14 Oct 2023

     After a solid nights sleep I woke up around 0630 and got up. My Dobsonian telescope was set up and ready to view the eclipse.

The eclipse started early around 0804 and I oscillated between the scope and eclipse glasses. Here are some of the pics I took holding my point n shoot up to the telescopes lens.

  The sky darkened somewhat and didn't get as cold as we expected.

As the moon centered itself and the limbs closed around it I caught a brief view of the mountains on the Moon, Sadly I could not get a pic of that. 

And then it was annularity!  I figure we got around 4 min of annularity,

It was not so dark, the breeze had died down and it got COLD! We guessed that at around 40% coverage we began to feel warmth in the rays and shortly after that the breeze began to resume.

After the eclipse was over I ran my metal detector over the ground a bit and besides trash I found this hitch pin,

Packing up;

After packing up the Jeep convoy came out and 1 of them stopped to talk, they were from SoCal, We headed back to Hwy 50 and fueled up in Austin prior to turning off on 722 and there we headed down to Hwy 21 at that turnoff we had lunch,

We drove down the Reese River Valley and searched for the road over to Grantsville, an abandoned mining town.

  Not soon after we went to Berlin Ghost town. This is the 30 stamp mill.

    As it was almost sunset when we left we headed to Hawthorne and some din-din at Port o Subs, the only other place open was Mickey D's.

I finished up the day driving to Hwy 395 and then Alane took over driving us via Hwy 4(won't do that again) and back to her home. There we both hit the hay. It had been a Loooong 894miles.

15 Oct 2023

After breakfast since she lives in gold country we couldn't not metal some of her property. We found metal cans and a tent pole and a grommet and a few nails, no gold.......

The eclipse was very cool, if you ever get the chance GO! I've now seen 2 totals and 1 annular and a few partials.

After detecting I hopped back in my 109 and headed home. Traffic was good until I hit Manteca then things got brutal, an accident kept me in stop n go for around 45 min in the sweltering sun, At one point I measured 113°F on my chest! Passing the accident things got better until hitting Livermore when I missed my turnoff and had to sit in stop n go again.........

But I made it home to tell the tale.