Check out the movie of a solar flare on today's APOD over at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/

Simply amazing.

Just checked the schedule and Yes! It is! Mt. Tam night!

9/15 8:00pm John Dillon - Randall Museum

"When Astronomy Became a Science”
An examination of the amazingly sophisticated astronomy that flowered more than 2000 years ago at the legendary Museum of Alexandria.

Friends, food, wine, astronomy. Throw in a great view of the bay, the bridges, the city... I love these things, even if it does take us an hour-and-a-half to get there.

This afternoon, I'm pleased to discover, the History Channel is giving me Lost Worlds: The Building of the Titanic. Must See. Those old pictures and films of the H&W shipyard back in 1910 are hard to come by. This kind of thing really helps with the realism when I write those scences in Dunallon. It's not as if I've spent lots of time in shipyards. Or even in Belfast. Especially in 1910.

So last night became an answer to at least some of my agnst, when we packed up a cucumber/carrot salad, a few olives, cookies and white wine, and joined a couple of friends at the amphitheater on Mt. Tam, along with their smoked salmon, bread and cheese. We talked, admired the view, and listened to an amusing and technical astronomy lecture by the great Alex Filipenko.

It turns out I'm not the only one struggling with depression. That's all I'll say about that, except to observe that, I feel somewhat lucky that my depression is due to perimenopause and hormones. I assume that means I'll grow out it. And the progestin has really helped. Not everyone has such an easy answer.

We used to do the astronomy lecture every summer. Once a month we'd all show up with our wine and food and be cool and intelligent and funny (well, we amused ourselves, at least). At first, we all stayed late and did the star-watching thing, but after a while, the romance of standing in line for 10 minutes to get 40 seconds at a telescope ran thin. Still, it's nice to stand in the parking lot and just look at the sky and talk until everyone's too tired to stand anymore. We quit going when Caltrans started working on the bridge late at night and for one entire summer, it was going to take us 2 hours to get home, with one hour of that spent sitting in traffic waiting to get on the bridge.

I know - we're wimps. Yes, we are.

So we got out of the habit of visiting Mt. Tam and we've missed it. We've all decided to get it going again. This is a Good Thing.