Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Semper Fi

From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli,
We fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.
First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title of United States Marine.

Our Flag’s unfurled to every breeze from dawn to setting sun.
We have fought in every clime and place, where we could take a gun.
In the snow of far off northern lands and in sunny tropic scenes,
You will find us always on the job, the United States Marines.

Here’s health to you and to our Corps, which we are proud to serve.
In many a strife we’ve fought for life and never lost our nerve.
If the Army and the Navy ever look on heaven’s scenes,
they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.

Happy 231st Birthday to the USMC. God bless all Marines, past present and future!

10 Nov 2006 by Military

Iris

These beautiful Iris stems were my table centerpiece last week. Those are gone now, but today I replaced them with new stems and also got some Sumatra Asian lilies — more on those after they bloom.

10 Nov 2006 by Home & Garden Photography

Mercury to Transit the Sun Today

UPDATE 2: A Segment of a heliograph taken in Hawaii shows a tiny dot near the center. The dark spot on the left is a sunspot that is rotating towards Earth.

UPDATE: Astronomy Picture of the Day shows just how unspectacular the transit will appear.

Don’t get your hopes up for a spectacular view of this event. Even with eclipse glasses, mercury’s image will appear to be so very tiny compared to the solar disk.

Left: A prior Mercury transit as observed by SOHO

If you have a pair of binoculars available, you might try and project the sun’s image onto a flat, shaded surface. Point the objective lens (the end you don’t look through) toward the sun and try to focus the solar disk onto the flat surface. DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN THROUGH THE BINOCULARS!

If you plan to try and observe the event, for God’s sake, do not look at the sun without the proper solar filters — instant damage can be done to your eyes.

From NASA:

NASA – 2006 Transit of Mercury

On Wednesday, Nov 8th, the planet Mercury will pass directly in front the Sun. The transit begins at 2:12 pm EST (11:12 am PST) and lasts for almost five hours. Good views can be had from the Americas, Hawaii, Australia and all along the Pacific Rim.

[Read more]

08 Nov 2006 by Astronomy Rocket Science

Duty and Privilege

Well, we just got back from voting and now await the returns. Since we’re on the west coast, many of the races of interest won’t start to be tallied for another couple of hours (polls are open until 8 PM here). However, there are enough national contests interesting enough to keep us entertained. Good luck our favorite candidates and God Bless America.

07 Nov 2006 by California Patriotism

Samhain

Today is the autumnal cross-quarter day. Like equinox and solstice, a cross-quarter day identifies a place in the Earth’s orbit. Cross-quarters occur at the midpoint between solstice and equinox.

Image: Diagram of solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter events. (Courtesy Archaeoastronomy.com — Click for an animated version)

Ancient Celtics celebrated cross-quarter days as significant events in their calendar. Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the end of summer. Samhain is the word for November in the Irish language. The same word was used for a month in the Celtic calendar, in particular the first three nights of this month, with the festival marking the end of the summer season and the end of the harvest. A modernized version of this festival continues today in some of the traditions of the Catholic All Saints’ Day, the secular Halloween, and in folk practices of Samhain itself in the Celtic Nations and the Irish and Scottish diasporas.

Archeoastronomy.com is an interesting site to visit. Go there and read about the ancient peoples celebration of celestial events. Also visit Old News and read about the possibility that ancient Native Americans may have been influenced by the Celtic calendar! Fascinating stuff.

07 Nov 2006 by Astronomy Culture

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