Cosmic Strings

Two years ago I endeavored to learn about the local wildflowers around Lick Observatory. I headed out with a digital camera and took pictures of every flower I could find while hiking around the mountain and driving down Mount Hamilton Road. Now that some of the spring flowers are starting to bloom I’m going to head out again to see if I can find flowers I’ve never seen before and get better pictures of the ones I have. It never ceases to amaze me how many wildflowers are around here that I’ve never seen before. Anyway, you can see the Mount Hamilton wild flowers I’ve managed to photograph so far (more will surely come sometime in the future). I’ve also added a link to the wild flower pictures that Henry Coe State Park put on line. Many of the flowers are also seen on Mt. Hamilton, but some are only seen at the lower altitudes of Coe Park.

Here I am at the telescope waiting for the rain to stop so I can actually look at something astronomical instead updating the blog. One of the things astronomers have to make peace with is the weather. Telescope time is meted out to various different observers and there are no rain dates if the weather is bad. This was disappointing earlier this week when we wanted to observe Jupiter’s moon Io while it was in eclipse to see if we could measure the infrared emission of the active volcanoes on its surface without any confusing reflected sunlight. Sadly, it poured rain and there was no telescope action. Maybe tonight the weather will clear and we can do something….