🚴♂️ Saw this blooming Crape myrtle on today’s #bikeride.
🚴♂️ On this morning’s #bikeride , mixed up some old routes to create a new one for today. The weather was fantastic and it was another great day of riding.
Last night, it was one of the best Lyme Land Trust public Astronomy nights at Alan’s observatory. Clear skies, cool temps and very little glow. The Milky Way looked spectacular! There were lot more people (25+) and we split the telescopes out in 2 groups. I was with Scott and Jon in the field away from the big telescope. Jon’s mount kept misbehaving so we only used manual telescopes in our area. We could show a good bunch of targets:
- M4 globular cluster in Scorpius
- M8 Lagoon nebula in Sagittarius
- M13 globular cluster in Hercules
- Double star in Ursa Major
- Alberio in Cygnus
- Saturn
Along with the usual crowd of older folks, there were a few younger people who were interested and asking questions. It was a fun night overall. Hope we get more good nights like this.
Came into work to find that our latest paper is now available online. Congratulations to all my co-authors.
Small molecule branched-chain ketoacid dehydrogenase kinase (BDK) inhibitors with opposing effects on BDK protein levels. - Nature Communications 14, 4812 (2023)
Can’t believe Jerry Garcia was only 53 years old when he died in 1995 on this day. I am the same age now.
I haven’t been to a theater to watch a movie since Dec 2019 and I don’t feel like going to one anymore. It just feels onerous to take 3 hours out of a day to sit in a theater. I can do so many other things with that time. I’d rather wait for the movies to come to streaming services. With streaming, I have the choice to chop it up in episodes and watch it later in the night when I have time. Or not watch it to the end if I don’t like it.
At this point, I am not sure what will entice me to go back to a theater to watch a movie.
🚴♂️ Being there to take in this view is a good enough reason for riding 20 miles on the bicycle.
📺 Finally, finished watching “Hijack” on Apple TV last night. It was a good thriller with good performances all around. If it was a book, it’d have been a highly enjoyable read as well.
🚴♂️ It was great to see Mathieu Van der Poel winning the Elite men’s road race at the UCI world championships in Glasgow. He is a likeable guy and am happy that we will get to see him in the rainbow jersey at all the races for the next year.
Thanks to the flat tire on my bike, I am sitting here by this stream listening to birds and cicadas. This is in Devil’s Hopyard state park and there are no cars or humans anywhere. I am enjoying this solitude but I imagine that this place would get busy on a pretty summer day like today. There is no one around - maybe people will show up in the afternoon.
🚴♂️ From today’s #bikeride that ended with a flat tire. Didn’t have a repair kit so ended up calling my daughter to get picked up.
M51 aka the Whirlpool galaxy along with its companion dwarf galaxy NGC5195. They are at about 24 million light years away and the spiral structure of M51 seems to be affected by its interaction with its smaller partner. This is a stack of 60 one minute long exposures.
Another satellite trail going right through the target I was shooting. I see at least 1 satellite in the frames every night I am out doing astrophotography.
I am so happy with this morning’s bike ride that it doesn’t matter what happens during rest of the day. Not sure if it is the current condition of my bike or my performance but, I recorded the best time on this 20 mile ride that I have been doing for several years. My aim was to ride this route in 1 hour 10 minutes and today I completed with a minute and half to spare. I hope all of you are having a great Friday as well!!!
Pumped up the tires, lubed the chain and I was flying on today’s #bikeride . Not sure if it was the cooler temperature or just the urge to get away from work that made the difference but I bested my times from 2013 on some Strava segments. That was just insane!
TIL
‘Secret’ is something that you share with some people and keep from other people but ‘private’ is something that is only for you
Never thought about it this way.