Non-Fiction – Page 25 – Into the West

I Keep Looking Up

MySkyDirectlyOverhead1230am08Nov2011 — View from my backyard, directly overhead, facing west/northwest at 12:30 am Tue 08 Nov 2011

The first thing I do when I exit a building is look up. The only time I don’t do this is during inclement weather (usually defined as rain or snow or just overcast, but even clouds can be interesting). I try to locate the moon, if it’s supposed to be visible. If I can hear a flying vehicle (helicopter or prop plane or jet), I search the skies for them as well. I’ve given myself a crick in my neck and no few twisted ankles gazing skywards instead of watching where I was going. And my family just thought I was klutzy growing up. I decided to feature astronomy and telescopes for my eighth day of ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ series. The graphic to the left displays the skies above my house as they should appear the moment this post is published. If you’re reading this soon after it’s published, you’re either an insomniac or living down under. I will be sound asleep.

Asteroid Close-Up

Best seen from North America, the little asteroid 2005 YU55 will race far across the constellations in just 11 hours. Sky & Telescope illustration

The big news for today is an asteroid visitor flying close to the Earth, inside the perimeter of the Moon’s orbit. The Sky & Telescope web page article includes a chart and instructions for observing the asteroid (best seen from North America and the instructions even mention Kansas and Kansas City by name!). Look for it late in the day (near sunset).

Sun, Moon, Planets, Stars, Comets, Meteors

I am still blessed with good eyesight, at least of the far-seeing variety. My ability to read without assistance ended about five years ago thanks to my aging lenses in my aging eyeballs. Growing up with the space race in the 60s and 70s gave me not so much the astronaut bug but the astronomy one. I remember the first moon landing in 1969 and the first space shuttle launch in 1981. I still have the National Geographic magazines that featured the stunning photographs of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Neptune and Uranus from the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM). My grandfather, Daniel, worked for NASA‘s Ames Research Center as a glass blower and some of his work now rests on Mars from either the Mariner or the Viking missions.

Telescopes

I received my first telescope in the mid 70s as a Christmas gift from my dad. It was a three inch refractor that allowed me to view the moon, the planets and even a solar eclipse (by use of a clip-on white metal plate to project the image of the sun onto and avoid any eye damage). My parents stored the telescope while I was at college and while I started my family. Eventually, they brought it down to our home in Benton, where it sat neglected for the most part thanks to raising kids and working full-time. Sometime during the 90s, or during the move back to Leavenworth County, the telescope was either damaged or lost or both.

Last year, as a birthday present, my father purchased a very nice Meade ETX-90 with several accessories and eyepieces, including an SLR digital camera (Pentax K100D – sans lenses). After a few months of fiddling and fine-tuning, I decided I could benefit from the wisdom of others and became a member of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City in the spring of this year. I tend to participate virtually and silently (for the most part) by following the group discussions and reading the monthly Cosmic Messenger newsletter I made it to two meetings this year and have not visited the Powell Observatory or tried the dark sky site, mostly because the cost of gasoline remained high and the weather for most of the summer did not cooperate by providing clear skies for optimal viewing opportunities.

Astro-Vacations

Provided the world does not end next year, I plan to take a vacation involving astronomical observing and camping. We might attend something like the Texas Star Party or just spend a week near Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. I even thought of finding a camp site in the Flint Hills, because when we drove back north through them in early October, the skies were crystal clear and very dark,, with few trees to obstruct the horizon.

Far-Out Transportation

Strange how craziness infests my best intentions. I started this blog entry Monday to recap an interesting weekend experience. Now, I find myself approaching noon on Thursday with no progress on the blog front.

Last Saturday morning, I attended the Annual Driver Training for all Advantage Vanpool Drivers in Kansas City, Missouri. We left our vans for their annual inspection by the KCATA mechanics at their garage and took a bus to the facility for breakfast and training. The Vanpool Coordinator handed out updated policies and procedures for reporting accidents, maintenance and safety. Two of the biggest changes included a complete moratorium on the use of any kind of personal electronic device (PED) while driving (violating this policy would result in the termination of the vanpool) and when returning a loaner van, we are too top off the gas tank and remove all personal items and trash.

Our instructor had trained hundreds if not thousands of people to drive, from high school teenagers to 86-year grandmothers. He also taught commercial drivers education and is a native of the Kansas City metro area (in fact, Noland Road in Independence is named for his great-great-grandfather). He recently retired from a long career as a teacher and coach and now consults to keep busy.

Four hours later, I survived the videos and enjoyed our instructor’s anecdotes without nodding off more than once. We returned to our vans via the bus and I drove back home to Lansing.

That evening, I took my father and my husband to the October 2011 meeting of ASKC at the Gottlieb Planetarium. The featured guest speaker, Jack Dunn of the Mueller Planetarium in Lincoln, Nebraska, spoke on the last Shuttle flight and the future of human space flight and exploration, mentioning SpaceX and Virgin Galactic by name (and showing us some prototypes via video on the planetarium’s dome. He claimed even Amazon’s Bezos is investing in private space exploration, but information on that venture is hard to come by (or not as it took me like ten seconds to find Blue Origin’s website … I just need some help deciphering their logo).

Prior to the Dunn’s presentation on far-out space tourism low Earth orbit vehicles, we learned about the Gottlieb Planetarium’s spherical projection system from it’s director.

As we were leaving, we admired an old fire truck, street car and noticed an Amtrak train with vintage Pullman cars waiting to leave the station. Fascinating mix of old and new transportation separated by mere minutes and/or light years.

I had hoped to report the status of star visibility from Union Station, but clouds obscured the night sky and reflected the abundance of light emanating not only from the Crown Center area but the Power & Light District to our north. I have two more opportunities to report from a location other than my backyard – tonight and tomorrow night, but with my son and his wife on the road from Texas to attend a wedding Friday evening, I probably won’t get the opportunity to make another entry in the Great World-Wide Star Count this year.

Swan Song Encore

For the second night in a row, I spent fifteen or twenty minutes outside, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness before participating in the Great World Wide Star Count. I relaxed on my upper patio, hiding behind my pile of firewood, which blocks the bright lights from the doctors’ office to my west. Apollo joined me both nights, enjoying the cool autumn breeze and quiet evening.

I zoomed in on the Northern Cross, also known as the constellation Cygnus, as the target of my naked eye observations both nights. I printed the observing guide Friday before leaving work. Despite being surrounded by city streetlights, prison security lighting and a nearly full moon, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could see down to magnitude five, but not quite to magnitude six, again according to the Northern Hemisphere Observing Guide.

Friday night I even setup the tripod and Canon camera to snap a three second exposure of the constellation Cynus:

Cygnus (just after 9 pm Central Fri 14 Oct 2011)

Tonight, rather than setting up the camera, I brought out the binoculars to see if I could discern the blue and yellow stars that make up Albireo in the head of the Swan. Having to look almost directly overhead and holding the binoculars away from my eyes did not result in a steady enough magnification to confirm. Perhaps tomorrow night I’ll haul the telescope up out of the basement and get a better, steadier look at that gem.

I need to find another place at least one kilometer away from my house to do a second observation to report back to the website referenced above. If only Lansing didn’t lock up all of it’s parks promptly at sunset, I might have an opportunity to observe from the new park out west on 4-H Road.

So how many stars can you see of the Swan? Step outside tomorrow night, give your eyes fifteen minutes to adjust and look directly overhead.

Keep looking up!

A Year in the Life of My Blog

Last year, a few days after my birthday, I scrapped my MySpace blog, mostly due to interface changes, and ventured here to WordPress with a backup blog at Blogger. My original intention was to journal my astronomical adventures here and do some inspirational topics on the backup site. While I didn’t blog daily, I did manage to craft over two hundred blog entries here (this being my 225th).

In honor of my original intention to explore the heavens, I wanted to encourage everyone (and motivate myself) to participate in this year’s Great World Wide Star Count. Don’t be shy! Anyone can participate and it doesn’t require any equipment beyond your eyes. This project is an annual survey of the night sky, held this year between October 14th and 28th (7-9 pm optimal viewing window) to record how many stars you can see in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) in the northern hemisphere (follow the link above if you reside Down Under). This helps map the spread of light pollution. I plan to get out my telescope (for the first time this fall) and view the beautiful blue/yellow double-star Albireo. I can’t tell from the survey’s website if they are affiliate with the IDA (the International Dark-Sky Association), but I’m doing my bit (via this blog) to raise awareness about the value of dark skies and their preservation and restoration.

And now, a brief retrospective of some of my favorite blog entries (indicated with asterisks) from the past year and a few popular (according to the stats) highlights:

Less than 60 days … (Oct 2010)
North Texas Thanksgiving (Nov 2010) *
unHoliday Decorations (Nov 2010) *
Christmas eLetter (Dec 2010)
Number One Son Graduates from Guildhall (Dec 2010) *
To Eleventy and Beyond (Jan 2011) *
Mezzo Soprano Grouto (Jan 2011) *
Crocheting Cap for Daughter (Jan 2011) *
Rottweiler Close-ups (Jan 2011)
Blizzard Baking (Feb 2011)
Great Thermostat Debate (Feb 2011)
Valentines With My Hubby (Feb 2011) *
Mansfield Park Victorian Visit Via Local Library (Feb 2011)
Altered States and Warped Zones (Feb 2011) *
Sunsetting and Moon Rising (Feb 2011)
More Than Just Bread Baking (Feb 2011) *
Mixed Media Meltdown (Feb 2011)
Fabulous Chicken Pot Pie (Mar 2011) *
Planned Obsolescence for Bibliophiles (Mar 2011)
Meeting Rothfuss in a Basement in St. Louis (Mar 2011) *
Other Worldly Choral Compositions (Mar 2011) *
My First Book Title Poem (Apr 2011)
All Dogs Go To Heaven (Apr 2011) *
Celebrating 25 Years with My Hubby (May 2011) *
Astronomy Week 2011 (May 2011)
A Farewell to Stargate (May 2011)
Astronomy and My New Nook Color (May 2011) *
My Pseudo-Google Alter Ego (May 2011) *
First Anniversary of My Grandmother’s Passing (Jun 2011) *
Daughter’s 22nd Birthday (Jun 2011) *
Tau-Day (Jun 2011)
How to Get Soaked in Less than Five Seconds (Jul 2011) *
Less Cake, More Pi (Jul 2011)
My 15th Anniversary at Work (but wait, I had to password protect that entry to protect unnamed entities; send me an e-mail if you want to read that super secret blog post) (Aug 2011) *
The Hugo Awards and My Nook Color (Aug 2011) *
An Evening at the Family Tech Support Opera (Sep 2011) *
The Dying Question (Sep 2011)
7s and Styx (Sep 2011)
Autumn Reveries (Oct 2011) *

Dog Day Doldrums

Mid-August usually simmers, steeping the Midwest in heat and humidity; yet we’ve been graced with temperatures in the 80s and relatively low humidity. Daily (or nightly) thunderstorms greened up the lawn, found a leak in my new roof (or old chimney) and delayed the second major home improvement project to replace our disintegrating driveway.

My daughter and her boyfriend fled the persistent Texas drought and constant triple-digit temperatures to bask on the beaches of the Bahamas this week. They returned to the Heartland yesterday, making a brief layover at KCI in the early evening. She called us as we were driving to a friend’s 50th birthday party. No word yet if they made it back to Texas (but I’m assuming they did and were just too tired to call).

Roxy, one of our Rottweilers, made a trip to the vet this week, ostensibly to have a stubborn tick removed from her inner left thigh (and also for some advice for her mobility as she ages … she’s over seven or eight years old now). Terry and I found the ‘tick’ Sunday evening. We tried several times to remove it, but could not find the head or legs (only the ‘body’). The vet got a chuckle when he explained that what we thought was a tick was actually a skin tab … it just looked a lot like a tick. I really should have put my reading glasses on Sunday evening and saved poor Roxy the abuse.

Looking east/northeast from Parallel and 110th near the Legends.

I only got to ride in the van one day this week. I took Monday off, rode Tuesday and then drove the van the rest of the week. I saw some fantastic sunrises and tried to snap a few photos with my cell phone (while driving). As we near the autumnal equinox, the sunrise coincides (inconveniently for eastbound drivers) with our commute from Leavenworth to Kansas City. By the time we reach Parallel or State Avenue, the sun sits just above the horizon, so a bit of cloud camouflage eases the eye strain and makes driving safer. Finally, after nearly ten days of driving a loaner van, the vanpool returned our van to us from the repair shop. I opted to swap the vans Friday morning after dropping off the other two riders at Hallmark. I got almost all the way to the Plaza before I realized I’d left my cell phone in the loaner van. The guard at the KCATA garage probably thinks I’m blonde or something.

I missed the Perseid meteor shower, like most of the rest of the United Stats, thanks to a full moon (and hazy clouds or even thunderstorms). My husband sat outside one night this week, but he reported the moon lit up the atmosphere so much, he could hardly see the brightest stars. In fact, he had trouble finding the constellation Cassiopeia, normally very easy to spot as it looks like a W or an M (depending on it’s current rotational position around Polaris). I did spy the waning moon one morning approaching Jupiter and snapped a photo with my cell phone since I was headed to the van and running late (so couldn’t setup the good camera on a tripod for a more professional-looking amateur photo). Saturday morning (early early early), if the clouds had been absent, would have shown Jupiter within five degrees of an even thinner moon.

Wednesday night, WolfGuard auditioned a drummer to replace the drummer/lead singer who recently moved to New Mexico to pursue better employment opportunities. Thursday night, Terry and I ventured into North Kansas city to the other Sears store (as opposed to the one down south on Metcalf). Sears seems to be the sole remaining tenant of the dying Antioch Center shopping mall. We’re still wrangling with Sears over a refrigerator we purchased in May, so we went looking at different, hopefully better models. We also stopped at two office supply shops to look at shredders, during which a beautiful sunset occurred and once again I only had my cell phone camera with me (sigh).

We wrapped up the week spending some time celebrating the life of a good friend at his 50th birthday party. We had a great time visiting with old friends and heckling the over-the-hill dude. I’ve still got a couple of years to catch up with him.

Searing Summer Reads: The Third Third

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows Sirius A, the brightest star in our nighttime sky, along with its faint, tiny stellar companion, Sirius B.

Sirius rising before or with the sun, so the ancients believed, caused the ‘dog days’ of summer. The term ‘dog days’ only obliquely refers to our four-legged furry friends; and more directly points to the Dog Star (aka Sirius), the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major. I cannot confirm or deny Sirius’ proximity to our sun, thanks to the record-breaking heat and humidity scorching the Heart of America and hazing the eastern horizon in the pre-dawn night.

Appropriately, Monday, the 1st of August, 2011, marks another Ozone Red Alert Day in the Kansas City metro area. My new central air conditioning system barely cycles while the sun shines.

I received word from my hubby that the leather chaise lounger we purchased a week ago at Nebraska Furniture Mart arrived undamaged. The delivery guys wrangled it upstairs to my new library, where I hope to spend many cool evenings reading the final third of my hot summer reads. Almost immediately upon the heels of the phone call about the furniture delivery, my husband sent me a text message to let me know the roofers had finally arrive (again on the hottest day of the month so far) and stripped the old shingles off in less than an hour. By the time I return home, I may have a new roof. Ironically, a representative from our insurance company stopped by (before the roofers but after the furniture delivery guys had left) to take photos of the property. Terry tried to explain to him that the roof was about to be redone (how prophetic his words became), followed immediately by the driveway (complete rip out and re-do on it as well). I just hope the interior designer we scheduled an appointment with for this evening can envision and inspire our remodel despite the normal chaos. And it will be after the sun sets tonight before I can relax and enjoy my new lounger in my new library with one of the following sizzling summer reads:

The SciFi and Fantasy Book Club at GoodReads started Red Mars for the August science fiction selection. From the book blurb: “Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in human evolution and creating a world in its entirety. Red Mars shows us a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.”

My most anticipated reads beckon from my favorite book club, the Beyond Reality group (also at GoodReads). Our illustrious leader, Stefan, noted in his Welcome to August 2011 post our serendipitous C.J. Cherryh group reads for both science fiction and fantasy. I started Foreigner this morning and plan to read The Fortress in the Eye of Time soon after. I am most excited about reading all of the Honor Harrington novels (see my previous posts campaigning for David Weber’s series to overcome Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files).

My other two book clubs, Fantasy Book Club and FBC Series, continue to serve up excellent reads and discussions. I jumped the gun on the August read for FBCS by finishing Mistress of the Empire on Saturday. But I renewed the Black Prism, checked out earlier in July from the KC Public Library. As soon as I finish The Snow Queen, I’ll start reading the latest from Brent Weeks.

Most of these books sport astounding cover art by two of my favorite cover artists: Don Maitz and Michael Whelan. My permanent collection of the Empire Trilogy and Magician (Apprentice and Master) includes the editions with cover art painted by Don. Of those five covers, my favorite is probably this one:

My hardcover of The Snow Queen does not have a dust jacket with the famous Michael Whelan cover art, but I needed some MW eye candy:

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention cover artist David Mattingly, painter extradonaire of both the Honorverse and Darwath. Of all the Honor covers, this is probably my favorite:

Of necessity, I kept my August summer reading to a bare minimum. I will sacrifice about a week of reading time at the end of the month to drive to Atlanta and attend the 25th iteration of Dragon*Con. And if I though it was hot in Kansas, I can’t wait to melt away in Hotlanta with fans and friends of fantasy.

Book Review: A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets by Pasachoff/Menzel

A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets by Jay M. Pasachoff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I checked this dense compact field guide out from my local library in the hopes of using it in the field with my telescope. Due to its size and weight, I found it nearly useless to use in the dark with my red flashlight at my telescope. The atlases were too small, requiring my reading glasses, and the binding too stiff and tight to allow the field guide to be laid flat and free up a hand to adjust the telescope.

The information provided in the guide appears current as of a dozen years ago (circa 1998). I’ll run through the table of contents with some observations below:

1. A First Look at the Sky – How to differentiate between a star and a planet. Includes a pair of sky maps showing the brightest stars with arrows showing the pathways that help observers find them.

2. A Tour of the Sky – Highlights of the seasonal skies for both hemispheres and a bit on solar observing.

3. The Monthly Sky Maps – Maps are drawn to minimize distortions in regions of the sky most studied, using 45 degrees altitude (halway up the sky to the zenith).

4. The Constellations – History and origins of the constellations and where they can be found in the night sky.

5. Stars, Nebulae and Galaxies – Descriptions of stars, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies (including our own) and quasars. Includes color photographs of the most familiar objects.

6. Double and Variable Stars – Includes graphs and charts.

7. Atlas of the Sky – Fifty-two charts, each accompanied by a half-page (three or four paragraphs) detailing the best tourist destinations for the observer (like a travelogue for your vacation to the stars). This was the main reason I checked out this field guide but, as I mentioned above, the binding prevented me from effectively using this guide while out on my star safari.

8. The Moon – I read this chapter several times and used the excellent maps of the moon during an extended observing period (over several days) in April 2011.

9. Finding the Planets – Tips and timetables for tracking the planets (mostly the easily observed planets like Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn).

10. Observing the Planets – A tour of all the planets (including the recently demoted Pluto), with lots of color photos.

11. Comets – Description, observing and photographing tips.

12. Asteroids – Only two pages long, includes a table of the brightest asteroids.

13. Meteors and Meteor Showers – Table of major meteor showers and how to observe them.

14. Observing the Sun – Concise breakdown of the sun’s composition, but the majority of the chapter deals with solar eclipses and how to observe them.

15. Coordinates, Time and Calendars – Definitions of right ascension and declination and an analemma graph and photograph.

After reading this field guide, and being disappointed in its field usefulness, I decided upon the Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas for use on my observing nights. While the Pocket Sky Atlas lacks the travelogue features of this Field Guide, it makes up for that in ease-of-use and weightlessness.

View all my reviews

Dark of the Moon, Light of the City

After weeks of overcast, I couldn’t believe my eyes on the commute home yesterday. A clear blue sky with little to no haze and not a single cloud to be found. Waiting for the sun to set never seemed to take so long as it did last evening. I wasted some time with a quick grocery shopping run on my way home from the Hallmark parking lot. Terry made an awesome salad, which I ate as soon as I got home. He also planned to grill a couple of t-bones we’d purchased last month at the local farmers market in Leavenworth. Even though the charcoal fired up perfectly, the steaks disappointed. It’s been decades since either of us had such a grisly tough steak. We will NOT be purchasing any more meat from that particular local farmer.

I got caught up on Jeopardy and still had an hour to go before sunset. I fed the dogs, did some laundry and watched a rocket reality show hosted by Kari Byron on the Science channel. I ignored most of it (as I do most reality television) and Terry drifted off into his after-supper food coma. I started transferring telescope equipment from the basement to the backyard as soon as the sun set. I left the patio door open so Roxy and Apollo could come visit me if they wanted to. For the most part, they ran along the privacy fence, occasionally barking at evening strollers and/or their dogs.

Just as I attempted to do an easy alignment in the alt/az mounted mode for the ETX-90 and the Autostar, I realized I needed my cell phone for the time (because the Autostar asks for the date and time first when you turn it on). I ran back in the house and got my phone and saw my father had called while I was outside. I admit I was a bit distracted while talking (mostly listening) to him as I attempted to align the telescope. He asked me where Saturn was and I thought it was almost directly overhead. After I hung up, I realized that what I thought was Saturn was actually Arcturus (once I used the Big Dipper’s handle arc to find it among the constellations that I could barely see through the ambient Lansing light pollution). Once I confirmed via the telescope that bright fleck was indeed a star and not Saturn, I drove a ‘spike’ towards Spica and found Saturn in close proximity to another bright star in the constellation Virgo. Here’s what I saw last night facing south from my backyard (well, I saw some of this – except for the view blocked by my tall house, several very tall trees and an electric utility pole in the southwest corner of my yard).

South Horizon to Zenith on 31 May 2011 at 2215

: South Horizon to Zenith on 31 May 2011 at 2215

I attempted several times to align the telescope but failed repeatedly (even the Autostar kept telling me I failed). I could not use Arcturus as one of the two alignment stars because it was so high in the sky I could not use the finder scope. I know, I know, I should have installed my new red-dot finder scope before the first clear night in weeks arrived. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. 😛

I found Saturn and rejoiced in the clear view of it’s rings, using the 26mm and 16mm eyepieces. However, because I couldn’t get the telescope aligned properly, the slewing couldn’t keep up and Saturn drifted out of the field of view rapidly. Then, Saturn drifted behind the electric utility pole and I needed to wait five or ten minutes for the Earth to rotate enough for it to pop out on the other side. My night vision had begun to settle in (since I’d been outside for thirty minutes or so) when my neighbor to the north decided to turn on very bright lights in her second story south facing bedroom, leaving the blinds open. So much light emanated from that room that I could read my star atlas without using my night vision preserving red flashlight. I could have screamed in frustration. What I should have done was grab my camera and take photographs of her through her window and post them in this blog. For crying out loud! Don’t people realize that when you leave your blinds open and turn on every light in the room, it’s like a stage to those outside?!?!? She’s lucky I exercised restraint and left the camera inside.

With my night vision ruined, Saturn still behind the utility pole and the dew rapidly drenching all the sensitive optics, I elected to teach myself a couple of constellations and their primary bright stars, hoping my neighbor would turn off her bedroom lights. Using my new Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas, I found the charts for May and June evenings and studied the constellations Virgo and Leo. I also refreshed my memory of Bootes and Gemini (which I could barely see sinking into the western horizon, basically just the two dominant stars representing the twins’ heads – Pollux and Castor). Saturn was close enough to Porrima (also known as gamma Virginis) to see it through my telescope eyepiece’s field of view at the same time I watched the ringed planet.

The constellation I spent the most time studying lies just to the west of Virgo and contains several bright stars easily visible in from my light polluted back yard.

Denebola and Regulus are both visible soon after the sun sets. I studied Leo for several minutes, fixing the alignment of its stars into the pattern shown above. I returned to Virgo, since Saturn is traversing through that constellation at the moment. The configuration represented in my star atlas differs from those I have found represented on the internet this morning:

After waiting more than fifteen minutes for my neighbor to turn off her bedroom lights, I gave up, packed up the telescope and transferred it and all it’s accessories back down into my basement. Rain and clouds are predicted for the next few days (of course) during the darkest phase of the moon. I could just cry.

As an anniversary gift, my husband bought me a Nook Color last week. I’ve used the free downloadable Nook for PC software for years (well, at least as long as Barnes & Noble has offered it) and even used it on my BlackBerry last year before budget belt tightening meant my employer retracted said BlackBerry. So, I’ve accumulated about three dozen ebooks from various sources, including Barnes & Noble, but relied heavily upon Project Gutenberg for access to public domain works from the 19th century, which allowed me to read such English Literature classics as The Age of Innocence and Jane Ayre as well as purchase contemporary science fiction and fantasy works that I consider some of my all-time favorites like The Time of the Dark and The Magic of Recluce.

The first week or so of ownership didn’t involve much reading, in the traditional sense. I test read a couple of books (including reading the Nook Color User’s Guide twice) to adjust the font size to suit my aging eyes. I explored various wifi hot-spots I might frequent near my employer’s building (including the free one offered by the KC Public Library via their Plaza branch) and at home (my own guest wifi network which I setup a couple of months ago but had not tested yet).

The first app I downloaded and tested I heard about at GoodReads. Announced on their blog back in late April, the developers at my favorite book-lovers website created an app specifically for the Nook Color. Currently, the app is limited in functionality very similar to their mobile site but I hope for some improvements in future versions, most notably the ability to vote (or like) reviews from my updates feed and support for discussions and groups. I may have found a bug in the status update feature, at least as respects audio books or ebooks (which use percentage read instead of page read). Since the Nook Color also includes a web browser, I can surf to GoodReads’ mobile site or even regular website if I encounter a problem with the app.

The Pulse news feed application came next. I am not as wowed by what it serves up for news articles and find myself preferring my laptop and FireFox web browser for current events perusing.

Since I had given up on listening to audiobooks on my dumbphone, I took the 4GB microSD card I purchased several months ago (and could not use in said dumbphone due to firmware restrictions to 2GB) and inserted it into the Nook Color. I then connected the device to my laptop via the miniUSB cord and copied the entire audio book for Elvenbane (all 15 CDs worth in MP3 audio format). Using my old BlackBerry stereo headphones (the best sounding most comfortable ear buds I’ve every worn), I have enjoyed listening to the book while relaxing on the back seat of the van I ride to commute daily.

But the most exciting opportunity occurred today at lunch, while I surfed my feeds at Twitter and Facebook using Planet Sub‘s free wifi service. Astronomy Magazine announce today, at 11:25 a.m. the ability to subscribe to a digital version for the Nook! I subscribed right then and there and downloaded the June 2011 issue before returning to my office building. Now, if I can just get B&N to also offer Sky & Telescope for the Nook Color, I’ll be in astronomical heaven! I will console myself by reading the digital edition of Astronomy magazine on the ride home this afternoon.

The first ten days of ownership of the Nook Color promise many more enjoyable hours of reading, listening and surfing. I have had very few problems with the device. I highly recommend it for the geeky gadget-loving reader.

Category: Non-Fiction