Rome, 2024

We just got back from a 3 week trip to Italy and France. Rome was our first stop. The entire city was under construction getting ready for the 2025 Jubilee. The Jubilee is a centuries-old Catholic tradition that occurs every 25 years. It's a time for spiritual renewal, forgiveness, and celebration. The Catholic Church encourages Catholics to make pilgrimages to Rome or to a sacred site in their local diocese during the Jubilee. It begins on Christmas Eve this year and runs all year. This is a fascinating city if you’re at all into history. Also a great place to get your phone pick-pocketed on the subway, which really put a damper on things for a while. These are best viewed on a laptop or big screen. Captions will identify where we were. Come along!

Chasing Comets

With clear skies tonight we drove up to the parking lot at Flattop high above Anchorage around 7:30pm hoping to get a view of the comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. There were quite a few people waiting and praying the cloud layers would clear. And finally, we could see it! Really fun sharing this once in 80,000 years event with others. What a night.

Solar Storm, Oct 10-11, 2024. What a night.

Another big solar flare hit the night of Oct 10-11. With kp8 strength forecast we were hoping for a big show this time we weren’t disappointed. People around the globe got to see brilliant aurora. People as far south as Florida were seeing it, and friends of mine in Wisconsin got some nice shots with brilliant reds and pinks. Here in Bear Valley, the clouds finally opened up around midnight for about an hour and we got a really dynamic, active show. Not much red, but the aurora was dancing! Click on the images to see them full-screen.