Step to The Rear of the Bus, Please

We are making headway. Instead of throwing  conservatives under the bus, Obama has agreed that they can ride--but only in the back. I’ll bet the next step will be to have their own separate lunch counter in the Senate dining room.  Can equal but separate rest rooms be far behind? Gotta hand it to the guy, he does have a way with words.

JP

Signs of a Pending Divorce

It is usual just prior to a divorce that one of the spouses will state that the other spouse just does not appreciate what he/she has done for the other.

The second in line to the presidency of the United States is now whining that us poor folks out here in flyover country just don’t appreciate what the Democrats have done for us. She must have her head screwed on backwards. Of course we appreciate what they have done. We love being another several trillion dollars in debt. We love having a brand new health care system that takes from the rich (Medicare senior citizens) and gives to the handout class. We love the Cap and Tax bill passed by her and her cronies in the House that will send us back into the iron age. We are thrilled to have them take over 2/3 of our domestic auto industry. We are overwhelmed by their payoffs to their Union minions in their one billion dollar “stimulus” bill that stimulated the unions to contribute over 140,000 million dollars to Democrat candidates this go around.

I used to think that Nancy Pelosi was just another misguided San Francisco liberal. I have changed my mind. She is truly an idiot. She deserves to be divorced. From we the people.

A Beautiful Workout With a Dumbell

Another break from politics. Check out the image at the top.

The Dumbell Nebula, otherwise known as Messier-27, was discovered by the French astronomer by that name in 1764.  It can be easily seen with binoculars or a small telescope near the constellation Vulpecula, which is near Lyra overhead in early evenings in Utah. You can see why it picked up its common nickname. It is a planetary nebula, which means it developed from an expiring star that ballooned into a red giant and then shrunk into a white dwarf some 8000 years ago in relative terms. It has the shape of a prolate spheroid, which is a fancy name for an egg shaped object but with equal ends. We see it along the plane of its equator. The central star can be made out in the image. It is one of the most spectacular of the planetary nebulae.

Technical stuff: 10“ Meade LX200 GPS telescope; Meade Deep Sky Imager Pro I CCD camera; 30 minutes of luminance @ 30 seconds per frame; 10 minutes each of red, green, and blue filters again at 30 seconds per frame. Processed with NASA’s Fits Liberator, then combined in Photoshop 7 as a LumRedGreenBlue composite. Taken from my backyard in Sandy, Utah on the night of 20 October 2010.

8GEGKAHJEF9K

JP

I Can't Be Bought for $250

In a desperate bid to buy votes, the administration and their cronies in Congress have floated the idea of sending out a check for $250 to everyone on Social Security. I think the total cost of this was around 14 billion dollars. This ploy fails on several levels, the first being the fact that the U.S. does not have 14 billion dollars extra laying around to bribe its senior citizens. I don’t want my check since I know they will have to borrow it from my two month old grand daughter. She already has too much on her plate in terms paying off the U.S. debt.  It also fails the smell test because it supposedly will be appropriated by the lame duck Congress, and you know, you just know, that the Democrats will be in no mood to bring up the subject once they have been trounced in November.

Speaking of Social Security, did you notice that for the second year in a row, there will be no COLA?  More importantly, did you notice that we seniors haven’t taken to the barricades to vent our displeasure, ala France? Probably because as American citizens, we realize that with the economy in the dumps, this is no time to be sniveling for a bigger share of the pie. Most of us are thankful for just getting a check in the mail every month, unlike many Americans who are really struggling to get by.

So lets bag the bribe and get on with returning our economy to its rightful place. A good place to start will be to throw the bums out of office who have practiced fiscal diarrhea and get someone in there who understands you can’t spend more than you take in. It really, really, is as simple as that.

8GEGKAHJEF9K

JP

The Wonder of it All

M-42 (Messier Nr 42) The Great Nebula of Orion

The constellation Orion, the Hunter, is beginning to rise on the eastern horizon late in the evening. By January it will be coming up early enough for backyard viewing, but for now, about 3AM is a good time to observe. Since I know most of you are catching some well-deserved Zs about that time, I decided to image an interesting part of the constellation so you could share it early. Just below the three stars that mark the Belt of Orion, there is a fuzzy patch you can see with the naked eye called the Sword of Orion. A small telescope or a good set of binoculars will reveal a huge area of star formation, with dark and light clouds swirling in interstellar activity. With a larger telescope, like my 10“ Meade LX200, the area comes alive with detail. In the center, is a group of four stars (two with unseen small companions, for a total of 6) called the Trapezium. These bright new stars are illuminating the huge clouds of interstellar dust that are gradually coalescing into new born stars.

Imaging the visible Universe is my way of escaping the day to day follies of our political landscape. It provides a perspective that reduces the angst and increases the awe of just being alive to witness the wonder of it all. 

JP

California Dreamin' Dimwits

It never ceases to amaze me the innate capacity of Americans to inflict self-induced wounds to the body politic. California immediately comes to mind. As a resident of that state for thirty years, before coming to my senses and fleeing with all my worldly possessions to a much saner state, I watched that quintessential  beacon of prosperity and hope slowly dim as the dimwits took charge. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge believer in good environmental policy, but environmental policy run amok can destroy the quality of life with a vengeance. Here are just a few examples of green run wild.

Over what now turns out to be faulty, if not bogus science, nearly the entire logging industry of California was wiped out over a small bird called the Spotted Owl. California mandated fuel standards requiring ethanol and other additives ensures that state gasoline prices are always ten to twenty cents above what I pay here in Utah. Now we are finding out that ethanol production is just as damaging, carbon-wise, to the environment, as well as driving up the cost of corn. Then there is the big one--global warming and the dimwits response to it. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the Earth has been on a warming trend over the past hundred years or so. The science, with some caveats, supports that fact. However, the cause of the warming has yet to be determined, although the chief dimwit, Al Gore, seems to think so. He and his ilk have convinced a lot of folks, including the Terminator, that California should lead the way in capping carbon emissions. Since the dimwits can’t get Congress to go along with their goofy schemes, they figured California would be the next best thing in advancing their agenda.

So Arnie and the boys passed AB 32, California’s climate change law, a Cap and Tax scheme right out of the playbook of Babs Boxer. Reality has set in, now that the costs of this law are beginning to be understood. One study commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable concluded that over one million jobs would be lost and that each California family would incur an additional $3,847 per year in expenses. Now, with unemployment at over 12 percent in that once great state, the voters have been given a chance to put off this ruinous bill by voiding it until such time as the economy improves. If you are a Californian, for your own economic benefit, vote FOR Proposition 23.

If you are not a Californian, urge your friends out that way to put some common sense back into play.

JP

The Ring Nebula

See image to the right.

The Ring Nebula is located in the constellation Lyra, which is pretty much overhead in the night sky here in Utah about 8 PM. The very bright star Vega marks the constellation. The Ring Nebula was formed when a medium mass star, like our own Sun, burned out all its hydrogen. In order to achieve a new equilibrium where it can continue to burn, it expands into a Red Giant, throwing off clouds of matter in an expanding ring. The clouds are illuminated by the central star, which is formed after the Red Giant stage into a White Dwarf. You can just make out this White Dwarf in the center of the ring, which is viewed at a 30 degree angle from Earth, thus its elongation. I’ll add some color once I have imaged some additional frames. The Ring Nebula is a classic example of what are known as Planetary Nebula, due to their circular shapes and large size as seen through a telescope.

Technical Data: Taken with a Meade LX200 GPS 10 inch telescope with a Meade DSI Pro I ccd camera from my backyard in Utah. Twenty three 30 second exposures combined and processed in Photoshop 7.

JP