Raptors!

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum has an impressive Raptor Flight "show" that I highly recommend. I admittedly to not know much at all about birds, but I wanted to post some of my pics from my visit this morning.

The birds fly untethered out in the open desert and literally whoosh within inches of the spectators.
 
They started things off with a Chihuahuan Raven. My Raven pics aren't the best, so keep looking past them.

 Next came the Great Horned Owl.

I even managed to catch it in flight.

The Prarie Falcon:

The Ferruginous Hawk:

The Ferruginous Hawk in flight:

Finally, we have the Harris's Hawk. This one took flight, gained altitude and circled high above until the member of the museum staff gave the signal for it to dive in. It was an impressive dive. I managed to catch it swooping downward, like a guided missile.

Up close and personal with the Harris's Hawk:

This amazing display happens twice daily. For most of us seeing these beautiful birds in action is a wonderful and rare thing.

Star Trek: Balance of Terror

 

Its a cat and mouse game across the stars as the Enterprise becomes the first ship to meet the Romulans in a century. But first, it is time for a wedding.

Angela Martine and Robert Tomlinson are getting married aboard the Enterprise as it is patrolling the Earth outposts that guard the Romulan Neutral Zone. Kids, marriage can be a wonderful thing, but this isn't the best way to get one started.

Outposts Two and Three have gone silent and the wedding is stopped as we learn that Outpost Four is under attack.

A dandy map of the Outposts along the Romulan Neutral Zone.

The Enterprise establishes communications with Commander Hansen on Outpost Four. He is not having a good day. 

"We're a mile deep on an asteroid. Almost solid iron. And even through our deflectors, it did this."

A ship appears, fires another shot and disappears again.

Outpost Four is destroyed.

Who did it? The Romulans, of course. Lt. Stiles had relatives in the last conflict with the Romulans and knows that their ships are painted with a Bird of Prey.

A message is intercepted and we get our first look at Romulans. 

Who do they remind you of?

Kirk makes it clear to Stiles that there is no place for bigotry here. Too bad Stiles doesn't get it.

Should the Enterprise retaliate and risk galactic war? Spock thinks that they should because Romulans are related to Vulcans:

Spock: And if Romulans are an offshoot of my Vulcan blood, and I think this likely, then attack becomes even more imperative. 
McCoy: War is never imperative, Mister Spock. 
Spock: It is for them, Doctor. Vulcan, like Earth, had its aggressive colonizing period. Savage, even by Earth standards. And if Romulans retain this martial philosophy, then weakness is something we dare not show.

And even though the Romulans have a cloaking device, the chase is on!

Astronomy Interlude #1

Comet Icarus Four: "Behold a marvel in the darkness."

In the depths of deep space comets are frozen solid with no atmosphere (called a coma) or tail. When the Enterprise and the Romulans encounter this comet, it shouldn't look as cool as it does with a nice tail, but I guess that would ruin the plot point.

Still, when real comets enter our inner solar system the Sun heats the ices and they can put on a nice show in the sky. Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere haven't had much to see in the way of comets since the late 90s. Below is a photo I took of Comet Hale-Bopp in March 1997 at Lake Afton Pubilc Observatory in Wichita, Kansas. (By the way, Lake Afton Public Observatory is a cool place. If you are ever in the area be sure to check it out. Check out more pics of Comet Hale-Bopp from LAPO here.)

Hale-Bopp was indeed an awesome comet. Note that it had 2 tails. This is pretty normal. The photo above shows a bluish straight tail above a brighter, curved tail. The blue tail is composed of ionized gases, while the white one is primarily dust. Hale-Bopp's dust tail was bright enough that it was easily seen in light polluted areas. Ion tails are pretty much washed out by light pollution.

For more on comets check out How Comets Work. There are pictures there from the 1910 passage of Comet Halley that remind me of the comet that was used in this episode of Star Trek.

A final point about comets. 2013 may bring three comets to our skies: Comet Lemmon and Comet PANSTARRS in March. Comet ISON may be the brightest of the three, by far, and possibly greatly outshine even Comet Hale-Bopp. I'll be posting comet updates here on the blog in the future.

Back to Trek, mostly.

When Kirk asks about the comet, Spock does not need to consult their "Table of Comets" to know that this one is ordinary, an "ionized mass, a trail of frozen vapor particles." A printed volume of comets is pretty old school, even for vintage Trek, wouldn't you agree?

Astronomy Interlude #2

At one point Kirk expresses doubts about what he is doing and McCoy tells him this:

Jim. In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Don't destroy the one named Kirk.

Our perception of the universe has changed quite a bit since the writers penned McCoy's little speech. How does it hold up today? Back in the 60s the number of confirmed "exoplanets" - planets beyond our own solar system was zero. Today the number is in the thousands, and growing rapidly. Thankfully, the number of known planets has grown to the point where actual statistics can be done. While we cannot travel at warp speed across the galaxy, we can estimate the total number of Earth-type planets in the Milky Way. Numbers released earlier this week estimate that there might be 4.5 billion planets like our Earth in our galaxy. McCoy certainly got that way wrong, didn't he?

How did he do on galaxies? McCoy said that there was "three million million galaxies". That's 3,000,000,000,000 or 3 trillion galaxies. This post from Discover, suggests that the actual number should be about 176 billion galaxies in the universe, but also that the Hubble data may actually under estimate the number and that with future instruments, like the James Webb Space Telescope the estimated number of galaxies in the universe may jump to a trillion. If so, then McCoy's estimate is only off by a factor of three, which in astronomy is often pretty good. I should also point out that the estimate of galaxies above is for the observable universe. The entirety of the universe is bigger than we can see, so the count really is likely several times larger than 176 billion, even without speculating what we might learn with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Back to Trek.

The ships maneuver and battle. At one point they each lay still and, strangely enough, everyone must keep quiet to avoid detection by each other. Details like this are horribly wrong (sound doesn't travel through space you know), but help to give this episode a feel as if the starships were two submarines in battle.

Rant: Why is it that ships in space, when damaged, are tilted? Are they taking on water? Is there some galactic frame of reference with a preferred direction for "up" that they must follow?

Anyway, shots are exchanged. Both ships are damaged and in the big conclusion there is a phaser coolant leak aboard the Enterprise that incapacitates Stiles and Tomlinson who are manning Phaser Control. Spock has to rush into the room to fire off the shots that cripple the Romulan ship. He rescues Stiles (in spite of his feelings toward Spock) but Tomlinson will never be getting married as Spock was unable to save him. I am not sure why his bride to be wasn't in the room too, as earlier in the episode they both worked there. Shouldn't she be dead too? Maybe the Romeo and Juliet ending would have worked better (I know, there was no suicide here.)

All-in-all it this is a solid episode of Trek. Guest star Mark Lenard does a great job as the Romulan Commander. He is given some great lines:

"Danger and I are old companions." and, speaking to Kirk at the end, "I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend." 

And at least one line that doesn't make any sense at all: "Centurion, I find myself wishing for destruction before we can return." Wait. What?

That aside, it is a fine episode. Composer Fred Steiner wrote only about five and a half minutes of music for this episode (the rest is tracked from other episodes), but it is good stuff and includes a menacing theme for the Romulans: hear it here from La-La Land Records.

Also, Five Year Mission did another cool song for this episode, it is worth checking out and you can watch the full episode here from Star Trek.com.

Next up is What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Snow in the Desert

Last night's winter "storm" in the Tucson area left a dusting of snow all the way down to elevations of about 3,000 feet. That's still higher than my location, but enough for just about all the local mountains to get some of the white stuff.

It is pretty normal for the Santa Catalina Mountains to get snow - they are over 9,000 feet in elevation, but the much lower Tucson Mountains rarely do. Yes, it does occasionally snow all the way down to the desert floor, but not very often.

Here's the view from my back yard this morning looking toward part of the Tucson Mountains. Sombrero Peak, seen in many of my hot air balloon shots did not get any snow. Maybe next time.

ISS over Tucson

We had a nice passage of the International Space Station this evening. It slipped right between Orion and Taurus. Check it out:

Star Trek: Charlie X

It's the Thanksgiving episode of Star Trek! Kirk himself says that: "On Earth today, it's Thanksgiving. If the crew has to eat synthetic meat loaf, I want it to look like turkey." Mmmmmm, synthetic meat loaf that looks like turkey.

On to the show. The Enterprise meets up with the starship Antares. They beam over Charlie Evans, the sole survivor of a transport ship that crashed on the planet Thasus fourteen years ago. Although there are rumors that Thasians actually exist, none have been seen and Charley has apparently been on his own since the age of three.

"Is that a girl?"

Yeah, Charlie hasn't been out much. He is going through some serious teenage angst and, as we soon learn, he has powers much like Gary Mitchell developed on Where No Man Has Gone Before. Unlike Mitchell he really, at least for a while, wants to fit in and is looking for an authority figure to give him some guidance. 

"Do you like me?"

The Antares has gone on its merry way and after a while urgently tries to get a message to Kirk but is mysteriously destroyed before they can say what it was.

Meanwhile, Charlie joins the fun in the Rec Hall where Spock is jammin' on the Vulcan Lyre and Uhrua sings along - first about Spock and then about Charlie. Everyone has fun in the Rec Hall.

Except maybe Charlie. Did I mention that he has a thing for Yeoman Rand? Yeah, big time. He wants to impress her, but she isn't interested.
 
Naturally the place to give Charlie an lesson on how to better fit in is the ship's gym, because everybody likes gym class, right?

The activity above left is dangerously close to Anbo-jytsu,one of ST:TNG's sadder moments. Thankfully, at this point ST:TNG hasn't been invented yet.

Things go well until the Gym teacher shows up....

and Charlie makes a crewman vanish.

Eventually he does that a time or two - even making Yeoman Rand vanish. He melts chess pieces and creates more mayhem before taking command of the Enterprise.

Just when Kirk figures out how to take care of getting command back the Thasians show up and say some pretty weird stuff:

I have taken my form from centuries ago, so that I may communicate with you. We did not realize until too late that the boy had gone, and we are saddened that his escape cost the lives of the first ship. 

So he knew centuries ago that he would have to become a giant, transparent floating green head to communicate with Kirk about Charlie, but didn't see it coming that Charlie would escape from the Thasians? I don't get it. At all.

He explains that they have to take Charles back because the power they gave him to survive makes him too dangerous to be among humans. Even in the face of what Charlie has done, Kirk makes an appeal for Charlie to stay with them. He's just that sort of guy, but his plea is to no avail.

Charlie is taken away and for some reason everyone is sad.

Charlie, played by actor Robert Walker, is properly annoying in this episode, but it isn't one of my favorites. There are some good things here though. For me the big Rec Hall scene is the standout, which I guess says a lot. Also, there's the wonderful score contributed by Fred Steiner, who wrote some 24 minutes of music for this episode. Be sure to check out this cue, Zap the Spaceship, over at La-La Land Records.

Want to watch the episode online? Star Trek.com serves it up here.

Next time Trek takes it up a notch with Balance of Terror.

Las Vegas, NV: Crazy Bright or Insanely Crazy Bright?

Check out this new view of Las Vegas from Canadian ISS astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield:

He tweeted/posted this photo on January 23rd saying "here's Las Vegas late at night. Even my NightPod camera found the lights too bright." Yeah, they are too bright indeed.

The guy is all over social media and is posting lots of nighttime and daytime shots of Earth from space, so if you are into that you should follow him and like him and stuff. Find him here on Facebook and on Twitter as @Cmdr_Hadfield. He's on G+ too, but I rarely hang out there and didn't bother to look him up. Sorry.

As for Vegas, there is little or no control of lighting there. The opposite is encouraged. Its glow can be seen on the ground for hundreds of miles away disrupting ecosystems and brightening skies that would otherwise be dark. What shines in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.

My previous post about Las Vegas from December, 2011: Cities From Space - Las Vegas, NV is the most popular one that I have had on this blog, with over 1,700 page views so far. I know, that's not much, but it is a small blog. I also mentioned Vegas in my post Which Cities Have Lighting Controls? You can Spot them from Space.

Orion in the Evening, GLOBE at Night

If it isn't too cold where you are these evenings you might want to head out and have a look at Orion. It looks pretty good. Jupiter hanging nearby in the constellation of Taurus the Bull adds to the show.

Here is a picture that I snapped earlier this evening.

The grouping of stars left of center is Orion. The bright "star" in the image is Jupiter. The V shaped group of stars to the lower of Jupiter is the head of Taurus the Bull. To the right of Jupiter is the Pleiades, a cluster of stars that is also called the Seven Sisters.

There is a bit of cirrus cloud in the image, so I'll have to shoot again when it is really clear.

If you are out in the evening enjoying the sky, you might as well also participate in the GLOBE at Night program. The program runs now through February 9th and again during the next two months when there is no Moon in the evening sky. To participate one needs to only look at Orion and compare it to their charts. By doing so you can help measure light pollution in your area and join thousands of people from around the world in an important citizen science program. It is easy and worth while. Why not give it a shot.