Day #574 Aurora Borealis from the ISS

Speaking of the moon, as we were yesterday, here’s a story from NASA: time-lapse photography of the earth taken by the astronaut crew of the International Space Station’s Expedition 30:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWz5ltE_I4c&feature=player_embedded 

The green aurora borealis and aurora australis you’ll see in this video are precisely like what I saw years ago from the back deck of our house in Vermont. Seeing those green swirling, waving curtains above me was an awesome experience that’s almost impossible to describe. Now you get a chance to share it.

I’m glad that my friend Judi A. Winall, an incredible photographer whose Master’s Thesis I supervised, took the time to send the link to me.

BEEattitude for Day #574:

       Blessed are those who travel far and blessed are those who don’t, for they shall all see wonder if their eyes and their hearts are open.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart 

Day #531 Where'd the Time Go?

Where'd the time go?

When I started this blog, it seemed like 600 days would be so far in the future, I wouldn't have to worry about it. I thought those 600 days would take me through my first honey-harvest.

Well, if I still had the bees, I'm sure it would have.

I'm looking forward to the honey that will come from me bees, though, even if I'm not the one tending the hives. With the rate the weather's going around here, that should be fairly soon.

Speaking of weather, I found out why all this warm, unseasonable weather. Good old Science at Nasa came up with this explanation about the solar eruptions that lit the thermosphere up "like a Christmas tree."

I thought you might be interested. I wonder if the bees are enjoying the results, or if they're getting too hot too soon.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/

BEEattitude for Day #531:

       Blessed are those who explain esoteric ideas, for they shall have the benfit of knowing they’ve enlightened others.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart 

Day #483 Philae and Rosetta

My e-friend Dauna Coulter has done it again (as she always does in her articles for NASA Science News). She’s made a little-known scientific project not only understandable, but lyrical as well.

NASA's Rosetta Project, as Dauna explains it, is a romantic plan for landing on a comet (not-so-romantically named 67P) some time in November of 2014.

Why do I call this a romantic plan? [And I must mention here that romantic was my term for the project, not Dauna’s.] I’m glad you asked, though. The lander, the little craft that will descend to the surface of the comet while Rosetta orbits a mere kilometer above, is named Philae. Philae is an island in the Nile River, the site of an obelisk that  helped to decipher the Rosetta Stone.

I just love to read proof not only of the knowledge of scientists, but their literacy as well. And I don’t mean that to sound condescending. I’d truly like to meet the person who came up with the Philae/Rosetta tie-in. Just as the Rosetta Stone unlocked the secret language of hieroglyphics, good ole Philae is set to help us decipher the mysteries of what comets are and where (and when) they come from.

Here are the links to the whole story, if you’re interested:

FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/02feb_rosetta/

A video version of this story is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoePrO4-fGQ

BEEattitude for Day #483:

       Blessed are those who fly to new fields, for they shall find nectar in abundance.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart 

Day #467 Until the Sled Dogs Sing

I try not to complain about the weather. I figure the only things I have a right to complain about are the things I helped to institute--or tried to prevent. That’s why I vote each year, so I’ll earn the right to comment on what is (or isn’t) happening on the political scene.

That’s why I conserve water, recycle, give blood, and donate to libraries. So I’ll have the right to complain if things don’t go well -- or congratulate myself when they do. After all, I own a piece of the action.

But I don’t complain about the weather, since there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. That ridiculous bumper sticker that says Prevent Global Warming, for instance. Just how am I as an individual supposed to prevent global warming? I reduce, reuse, recycle. I buy local products as much as possible. I drive a fuel-efficient car, and I lump all my errands together so I don’t have to make repeated trips down the same road.

Still, I’m up against large industries spewing out fossil fuel residues by the ton. And I’m up against the Arctic Oscillation. Not much I can do about that.

What is the Arctic Oscillation? I’m glad you asked. My friend Dauna Coulter, a writer for NASA Science News who I’ve quoted before in this blog, explained it quite well this past week. Here’s the email that came to me, since I subscribe to NASA Science News

Winter seems to have been on hold this year in some parts of the United States. Snowfall has been scarce in places that were overwhelmed with the white stuff at the same time last year. In today's story from Science@NASA, JPL climatologist Bill Patzert explains what's going on.

Here’s Dauna’s story. Read it and then decide whether or not you have anything to complain about.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/17jan_missingsnow/

And here’s a video about it:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUa820fT1g

BEEattitude for Day #467:

       Blessed are those who try to understand the “why” of it all, for they shall find new fields of flowers to explore.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart 

Day #440 Night Sight - Moon, Venus, Jupiter

All you have to do this evening to see an amazing sight is to walk outside after sunset and look to the west.

The moon, with earthshine illuminating the vast bulk of it, will be joined by Venus and Jupiter in one of those spectacular shows that most of us miss -- first because they're not a daily occurrence, and secondly because most of us don't look up at night sky.

Here's the story from NASA Science News. You'll learn what the Da Vinci Glow is.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/23dec_nightafter/

Enjoy the sight!

BEEattitude for Day #440:

       Blessed are those who look up in wonder, for they shall see miracles.

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:

my books:  http://www.franstewart.com Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart

Day #418 Total Lunar Eclipse

Here I go again, letting you know about interesting goodies from Science.NASA.gov.

If I lived in the western part of the USA, I’d be out at 6:45 a.m. on December 10^th to watch a total lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, I live in the Atlanta area, so no eclipse for me. But, I did get to watch a simulation of it that explained why the moon looks bright red during a total lunar eclipse. You wanted to know that, too, didn’t you?

Here’s the answer:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/02dec_lunareclipse/

Be sure to click on the triangle to play the video so you can see the simulation.

BEEattitude for Day # 418:

       Blessed are those who step outside and look up, for they shall see wonders untold.

 _______________________________

The teeny details:

BOOK SIGNINGS

Today! Come on by if you’re in the area.

Dec. 4   1-3 p.m.   Humpus Bumpus Bookstore, Cumming GA

Dec. 10   2-4 p.m.   Peerless Bookstore, Alpharetta GA

my print books:  http://www.franstewart.com

Please buy them from an independent bookstore or directly from my website.

my eBooks for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006AA0I4M

Day #386 Spiral Arms

Astronomers have, according to a posting on NASA Science News, been cataloguing stars for more than 400 years. There are, as Dr. Tony Phillips put it, “dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.”

Not so.

Someone found a star with Spiral Arms.

Cool, huh?

It’s only 400 light years away from earth. Speaking cosmically that's practically next door.

It stretches more than twice the diameter of the orbit of Pluto. That’s big. Really big.

And nobody ever noticed it before.

Don’t you wonder what else we don’t know, what else we’re not even aware of not knowing?

What is there about bees, trees, the ocean, the people around us that we've just never noticed? May we could look a bit closer...

BEEattitude for Day # 386:

       Blessed are those who study the stars, for their vistas shall be infinitely large.

Day #303 Bee Flight and Space Flight

One of the nicest things about bees—and there are MANY great things about bees to choose from—is the way they fly, particularly on their orienting flights, when they leave the hive for the first time. They circle around and around, making sure they know precisely where home is so that later on in life, when they’re three weeks old and begin to forage far from the hive, they’ll know what to come back to and where it is.

Wednesday morning I went outside at 5:45 to be sure I was in place for the 5:48 to 5:50 flyover time of the International Space Station. I found that exact time on NASA’s ISS Tracker site. Go to “Sighting Opportunities,” enter your country, and continue from there.

As I watched the space station fly over, I couldn’t help but think that all our space flights so far (and I vividly recall the very first one) must look, to beings far from Earth, like the orienting flights of bees.

There is the bright, shining space station, circling around and around its Earth hive, accompanied by millions of bit of debris that previous flights have left up there—dust, bits of paint flakes, and lots of bigger pieces, too. These bigger pieces (anything more than 10 centimeters in diameter) are what contribute to the “Kessler Syndrome.” This syndrome states the possibility that eventually we’ll fill the space around us with so much dangerous junk, that future space flights will be at risk or downright impossible because of the risk of collision.

Here are two pictures of space waste that I lifted from the NASA site and good ole Wikipedia.

Not a pretty picture, eh?

So, in that way, we are not like bees. Just about the only space debris bees leave is bee poop. They don’t poop in their own hives—there’s a big difference between bees and people! And bee poop is biodegradable, unlike the metal and plastic waste we tend to leave behind us, both above earth and on it.

Still, the ISS was gorgeous in that pre-dawn hour, and seeing it was well worth the early trip to the end of my driveway.

Now, over the upcoming weekend, I hope to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. If I do, I’ll let you know for sure.

BEEattitude for Day # 303:

       Blessed are those who clean up after themselves, for they shall walk and not stumble.

Day #263 Crazy Weather

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard; man's nature cannot carry
The affliction nor the fear … from Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Lear

Shakespeare wrote these words for the Earl of Kent. We wonder the same thing, though, don't we?

One of my favorite science writers, Dauna Coulter, whom I’ve mentioned before in this blog, started a recent NASA Science News article by quoting these lines from King Lear.

Then, she underpinned that classy start with an astonishingly clear explanation of why we have such crazy weather patterns going on. It’s all about LA NADA.

So, what does this have to do with bees?

They have to put up with the weather even more than we humans do. They don’t have air conditioning or umbrellas or tornado shelters. Despite that, they don’t complain about the weather.

I’ll take that back. Any backyard beekeeper can attest to the fact that bees get grumpy when the wind comes up on a cloudy day.

And who knows what they’re conveying to each other when they’re all stuck in the hive on a tempest-tossed day full of such groans of roaring wind and rain? Maybe that’s where Shakespeare got his inspiration.

BEEattitude for Day # 263:

       Blessed are those who write well, for their writings shall be loved, and shall give them a special kind of immortality .

Happy Birthday, Eli!

_______________________________ 

The teeny details:
my books:  http://www.franstewart.com
my eBooks on Amazon for Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Fran+Stewart
my eBooks on Smashwordss (for all other formats):  http://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Fran+Stewart

Day #207 Wish I Knew More

Well, I think I may have another problem, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

It turns out the brown box isn’t as deep as the white box or the yellow box. I don’t know what happened, because I ordered a “deep hive body,” and I guess I assumed it would match the size of the others. I think what I got was a “medium.” That’s what comes of not knowing enough about what I’d ordered to check it when I picked it up. All those words – deep, medium, and super – were just that. Words. Without the experience of working with the various sized hive units, I simply didn’t know what I was doing.

I have a feeling I’ve squashed the bottom part of the frames against the screened bottom that I spent a lot of time attaching to the bottom of the brown box. I sent off an email to the folks I bought it from, asking them what was up and if there would be a problem for the bees.

Hope I hear back soon . . .

Meanwhile, if this is the worst thing I have to worry about, I’m in pretty good shape. My friend Dauna Coulter, a writer for Science News @NASA lives in Huntsville, Alabama, and went through all that recent hurricane damage. Here’s her story about it if you’re interested:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/06may_tornado/ 

BEEattitude for Day # 207:

       Blessed are those who write about their experiences, for they shall pass on an enduring legacy of memories.

http://www.franstewart.com

Day #68 The solstice lunar eclipse

Bees and the night sky? Bees and the moon? Bees and astronomy? Bees and the Solstice? Bees and photography?

A similar lunar eclipse in Nov 2003
Photo credit: Jim Fakatselis



I can't think of a way to connect this blog-post to the general topic of bees, but I'm going to post it anyway because I think the topic is pretty interesting.

If you read this blog regularly, you know I subscribe to NASA Science News. I'd like to share with you this great article about the total lunar eclipse that will be visible on the night of the Solstice (the night between December 20th and 21st).

The article explains why the moon glows an eerie red during a lunar eclipse and exactly when to see it. The photo above comes from the NASA article.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/17dec_solsticeeclipse/

 If you live anywhere in North America, you'll be able to see the eclipse -- if you're willing to take the time. If the skies over Georgia will cooperate by staying cloud-free, I plan to give a look.

I know it's possible to see a lunar eclipse despite the light pollution of a city area, because the following two photos were taken by my son from a balcony in downtown Atlanta during an eclipse in November 2008.

Yelloideas Photography

Yelloideas Photography

I've seen only a few exlipses, but each one has been memorable indeed.

If you see the one next week, let me know what you think.

BEEattitude for Day # 68:

       Blessed are those who look up, for they shall live in wonder. We bees wish we could see the moon; it sounds marvelous.

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       Those precious places in this country where light pollution is not a factor. 

Day #44 Reaching Across the World

On Tuesday, I mailed some of my books to two people I'd met through the internet. One is working on her Doctor of Divinity degree; we correspond through emails and Skype. I may be editing her work, but I'm also learning a lot from her.

Another is a science writer who works for NASA. I subscribe to NASA Science News, and I kept noticing her name listed as the author of articles I truly enjoyed reading. Finally one day, after reading her explanation of "Curiosity" (a space exploration vehicle trudging over the dusty Mars landscape),  I clicked on her name. Ah-ha! A link to her email. So I wrote her a quick note about how much I had enjoyed that particular article. She manages to get wry humor into most of her articles. In this one, she'd said that exploring Mars was much like finding your grandmother's dusty journal in an attic. Of course you'd read it! And you'd find out that "Granny was a pistol."

Here's what I said to her in my first email after I introduced myself briefly:

           I am so impressed when I read a scientific article that is as lucid as yours was. Your image of exploring grandmother's dusty diary was truly brilliant.  The "bird-dog" simile was equally effective. Thank you for your meticulous detail and your fine writing. You're going on my gratitude list tonight because of the joy I felt reading about "Curiosity."

          Best wishes,

                  --Fran

 p.s. I have read my grandmother's diaries -- and she WAS a pistol!

She replied and, over the past year we've kept up quite a conversation. She finally got around to reading my first mystery, and then asked me to send her another one. The same thing happened with the doctoral candidate in Australia, who is working her way through every one of my books.

Well then, where do bees come into all this? Think about the folks who emigrated to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries. I'd be willing to bet some of them were beekeepers. The sailing ships then were rather like the internet now. They carried letters (emails). They allowed forays into new realms (like internet searches). The beekeepers, finding bees in the Americas, would have recognized them and their value, much the same way I recognized value in the NASA article and the dissertation.

Queen bees, on their maiden flight, during which they go to where the drones gather (a new territory indeed for the young queens) and mate with a large number of drones from differing bees hives (colonies). They bring the resulting genetic variety back to their hive in the same way that ideas from the New World mingled with ideas from the Old.

So - pull out your granny's old diary. You never know what you'll find. Maybe she kept bees.

BEEattitude for Day # 44:

       Blessed are those who explore new worlds, for they shall find nectar in abundance. 

One thing Fran is grateful for right now:

       My connections with Mesheril and Dauna