Orbital Precision

  Every year I watch as the sun aligns with this farm silo and casts a long shadow across my walking path. The shadow is surely a quarter mile in length (it extends well behind me in this picture).

 Of course this happens on multiple days centered on this date but there is only one day when the shadow is at this  exact spot. How faithful is the orbit of the Earth!

 I walk nearly every morning,  usually two miles, and I  watch for this to happen (just as I watch for my shadow the be cast upon a tree on the same day every year). How many times have I been at this exact same spot at this exact time on this exact date and watched the sun rise behind this silo?

 It is something I can depend on.

Comet Leonard

  I've been trying to view Comet Leonard for some weeks.  First it was in the morning sky, getting ever lower with every passing day, and then in the evenings sky, where at least I wouldn't have to crawl out of bed early. But then the weather turned and there were cloudy skies  and rain almost every day.

 At least now the three planets lined up in an arc in the southern sky offered a good guide as to where the comet was located. And for once the sky cleared.

 I used this telephoto shot (15  seconds) and two stars at the top (18 Cap on the left, 16 Cap on the right) as a guide to see where Comet Leonard should have been located (I have the spot circled in red). Stellarium presented me with this view:

 And here are the  two shots side by side for an easier comparison:

  Bottom line: the comet is nearly impossible to see with anything other than a time exposure so enough  light can be collected. I saw nothing with quick snapshots nor with my binoculars. Is that C/2021 A1? I can't be sure but it seems to be in the right place.

 Another problem was how low the comet was. It was at an altitude of just 8° at 6 PM and half an hour later it had dipped to 4°. That's a lot of  atmosphere to look through. and at those times - even now that we're at the shortest day of the year - the sky still had a  substantial glow.  That light pretty well masks any hope of seeing this dim object (in-the-sky.org shows its magnitude as only 5.6).

 It's a little fuzzy but so are the other stars. There's no visible tail (it would be pointing to the upper left if visible).

 All I can say is I tired.

Viewing the Geminid Meteors

  I took the  easy way out. The sky was partly cloudy at best and the temperature dipped to 26°. Those were two good reasons to go to bed. And I did. But not before setting up my Wyze V3 security camera in the back yard. With night vision, it does a reasonably good job of recording the night sky.

 It's not fancy. But at $36 and with a resolution of 1080p, it's something I can afford and the results satisfy  me.

 Here's the best shot I grabbed from video.

 I had the camera tilted fairly high and aimed roughly SSE. This was certainly the brightest fireball I found on the footage I've reviewed (I haven't finished since I recorded  from 6 PM yesterday (12/13) until 7 AM today  (12/14).

 The Geminids peak after 2 AM usually so I didn't want to miss anything.

 This meteor was more typical ... just a quick streak. I saw many that  were simply quick flashes but clearly meteors. During the hour beginning at 2 AM, I counted 26 meteors. I counted as many as three within a single minute (posted below) but then there were gaps when there was nothing.

 Here's a one minute video beginning at 2:18 AM. You'll see two meteors, both on the right side of the frame. The first is at :03 and the second is at :45.

 And here's the one minute that had three meteors. At 3:13 AM they occurred  at :26 (right side of screen), :32 (center) and :49 (top right). That's quite a pace. For reference, that's Orion on the right.

 Finally, I took a time lapse video of the entire night. I set the camera to grab a frame every 30 seconds. It's purpose? Mostly to judge how the cloud cover was running because there were only two frames grabbed every minute. It's not meant to be a complete picture. The original video is high quality mp4 but it's 130 megabytes and can't be uploaded to Blogger. So I converted it to wmv but lost considerable resolution. But you'll get the idea ...

Orr's Check Property

  Back in July Tom and I visited with Dr.'s Steve and Ami Orr when they stayed in the Traverse City area (Long Lake) to get a start on plans for their eventual home after they retire. It's on the Leelanau Peninsula northwest of Traverse City. The nearest town is Northport.

 I wrote about our vacation there and you can read about it here.

 Now, almost exactly five months later one structure is built on the property and plans are progressing for the rest of the construction. The trouble is, many things are not available with the current COVID-caused supply chain issues. For instance, power hasn't been installed because the power company cannot get meters.

 So while things are at a  standstill - it's winter, too - Steve and Ami made a whirlwind trip to northern Michigan to check with the builder and architect.

"Ami and I are flying in a small plane with a local dermatologist," Steve said. "We will rent a vehicle to drive to our property." They rented a condo from the architect's wife. 

 They flew out of Findlay, Ohio Friday (12/09) afternoon in this Beech A36 Bonanza. Since I had the aircraft registration, also know as a "tail number", I was able to follow their flight in real time with an program called FlightRadar24 on my phone.

 Here they are having left Findlay and flying north. The trip was estimated to take about 90 minutes.

 And here they are arriving in the Traverse City area. The pictures below are nighttime views of the city as they prepared to land.

 Over the weekend they visited their building site. So far just a guest house/barn has been constructed.

 A Starlink dish is already in place for Internet at the site. Steve said he'll add cameras and a weather station so the property can be monitored remotely. Of course when they're there this will provide their link to the world. The site is very remote.

 On Sunday's flight home, the pilots flew them over their property.

 They own a bluff directly on Lake Michigan. Check out my linked blog for summer views.

 Back to FlightRadar 24 for a view as they flew home.

 Steve took this picture of the cockpit.

 Flying sure beats the long drive, especially on winter roads.

 So the building project has begun even if delays could total several months. Tom and I hope the visit again next summer.

Frosted Anise Cookies

  Every year at Christmas I think back to the German Springerle cookies Mom used to buy at Woody's grocery in West Carrollton, Ohio (now out of business). They were square, like little pillows, and crunchy on the outside  and soft in the middle. Each was impressed with a design.

 They were strongly anise-flavored. And they were delicious.

 I was wondering if I could make something with a similar flavor but without all the work. Readers Digest Canada has a recipe posted that seemed easy enough and so I tried it. The recipe is here.

 This is certainly not the traditional German cookie. Not even close. It is essentially an anise-flavored sugar cookie. But it is also delicious in its own way.

I wanted a stronger anise taste so I added two teaspoons of anise flavoring (it is alcohol based). Even that in retrospect is not enough. So I made my own glaze (just confectioner's sugar, vanilla flavoring, an entire teaspoon of anise flavoring and enough milk to make the glaze creamy and spreadable.

 But I found the cookies are great without glazing and I'm leaving most of them plain.

 I simply melted the butter in a bowl in the microwave, added everything  except the flour and mixed it thoroughly, first with a tablespoon and then a  whisk. I did not use a beater (absolutely unnecessary). I folded in the flour last (because I wanted the liquid perfectly mixed first).

 I used a small ice  cream scoop to place the battery on a non-stick cookie  sheet. I did not fill it completely. I found  the recipe made 33 cookies. I needed a longer baking  time: 13 minutes vs. the called for "8-10 minutes" as these cookies are probably larger than the recipe calls for.

 The cookies never browned on the top but the bottoms began to lightly brown. Even so, they are perfectly baked. The four teaspoons of baking powder gives them a hefty loft. Talk about little pillows!

 They are certainly delicious and remind me of the cookies Mom bought from Woody's so many years ago. But only the taste is similar. Yet if time is of the essence, especially at the holidays, these are a satisfying substitute for the real thing.

 

Planets Line Up

  It's not technically a conjunction but it's still an impressive alignment of three of the major plants: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. And they're being joined by the Moon.

 Here's the view Stellarium predicted for 1800:

 And here's what I saw at that hour:

I went out about half an hour later and took another look after it had grown a bit darker. This was the view then:

 And finally I had my Pixel phone use the Night Sight (Astrophotography) mode to get this shot:

 Jupiter is first in line (left) above the Moon.  Next is Saturn. And finally Venus is at the lower right.

 I then went back in the house and affixed my cameras (Canon PowerShot SX20 IS) to the tripod I was using and took a few shots of the moon:

 And here's a close-up:

 The Moon  is in the "waxing crescent" phase. About 30% of the disk is lit. It's just two days shy of the First Quarter.

The Bicycle Museum of America

  Last Saturday (12/04/21), my brother Bob,Larry Sabin and Mike Wuebben took a 69 mile day trip north to New  Bremen, Ohio to tour The Bicycle Museum of America. All three of the guys are avid cyclists though Mike is also a collector.

 These pictures were all credit Mikes wife, Gina Bachiller Wuebben.

Larry (l) and Bob

Larry (l) and Bob

Bob

Bob

Larry

 Bob said this is the "second largest [bicycle museum] in the country, I think. Three floors of antique bikes and other current [models]".

 The crew also stopped at the Moeller Brew Barn in Maria Stein. "Good food. Good staff,. Good day," Bob said.

Credit: Google  Maps