UCLA Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden

Last weekend, after a nice brunch at Meet in Paris (or is it The Paris?) in Culver City, we drove over to UCLA to visit the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. I hadn’t been there since I was an undergraduate at UCLA and I believe I only went there once. It is really a treat.

Located at the south east corner of campus, the garden is very well maintained. The plants are plentiful and healthy, the paths are clean, and there is a bit of wildlife in the pools along a little creek. Parking on the weekend is easy either along the street or in parking lot #2.

Along the path

It was a pleasant day, with the high overcast providing a pretty backdrop to the trees overhead.

Trees and sky
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A Planetary Lineup and a Hawk

April 24th of this year featured a nice lineup of the naked-eye visible planets in the morning sky. Four planets, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Saturn were all lined up in the eastern sky. I got up early — 5:15am — to get some pictures. There was already some twilight in the sky, illuminating some faint clouds above the mountains. Please click on the picture to see it at full-size.

From left to right, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the Moon

Here is the same image with the planets annotated.

As labeled, from left to right, Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the Moon

Since I was up early, I watched the sunrise. It was nice to watch the slowly changing light with the Sun finally bursting over the horizon.

Sunrise over the Santa Rosa Mountains
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Knapp’s Castle, Santa Barbara circa 1980

I have finally got around to looking at my old black & white photos from the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was given a film scanner for Christmas in 2020 and so have been able to turn these old Tri-X Pan negatives into digital images, bringing them into the 21st century. It has been a great walk down memory lane.

One set of pictures were taken at Knapp’s Castle, a ruined mansion in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara. I was visiting friends in Santa Barbara around 1980, and we headed up the San Marcos Pass road, turning onto East Camino Cielo at the top of the hill. The road to Knapp’s Castle is about 1.5 miles down the winding Camino Cielo. As we walked out to the ruins, the view of the Santa Ynez Valley and Lake Cachuma were spectacular. (Click on any picture to get a full-sized view.)

Lake Cachuma seen from Knapp’s Castle

The ruins are just that — ruins. The mansion was built in 1916 by George Owen Knapp, the founder of Union Carbide. It burned in a wild fire in 1940. As you drive around the back roads of the Southern California mountains, you will occasionally come across the remains of a burned structure. Ironically, the most common thing left after a fire is the fireplace. The rock structure of the fireplace survives. Lake Cachuma is in the distance.

The remains of a fireplace

Some other rock walls survived the fire. Here the Santa Ynez Valley is visible through the small window in a surviving wall.

The Santa Ynez valley seen through the window

The USGS had come through in 1956, dutifully marking the location. I tried to look up the marker using the word “BURRO” which is inscribed on top of the marker, but had no luck.

1956 Azimuth Marker

The friend who accompanied me is silhouetted against the western sky as we make our way back to the car.

Taking in the view of Lake Cachuma

It is interesting to note that, while I did take a full roll of 36 photos that day, today I would have taken far more. I do admit I like the ease and convenience of modern digital photography.

Cranberry Lake, Anacortes, November 2021

Last Thanksgiving we travelled to Anacortes to be with family. My in-laws moved there over 10 years ago and we have come to like this small community in northwestern Washington. A great feature of Anacortes are the Community Forest Lands. The Community Forest Lands are almost 3,000 acres of forested lands and lakes on Fidalgo Island where Anacortes is located. Cranberry Lake, the largest lake in the Forest Lands, has a parking area very close to my in-law’s house. On a cool and damp but not wet day, I took a walk around Cranberry Lake.

Cranberry Lake is at the north end of the Forest Lands, near the Washington State Ferry terminal that connects the San Juan Islands with the rest of the world. It also connects to Canada too, but that’s a different story. There is a steep dirt road up to the parking lot at the north end of the lake. The spillway is next to the parking area and you have a beautiful view south over the lake.

The Cranberry Lake dam is next to the parking area at the north end of the Lake. This view is taken from the dam looking south.

At the parking area there is a nice map that shows the local Forest Lands (this view only includes Cranberry Lake). The trails are well marked and very well maintained.

This map is posted at the parking area (“You Are Here”)

On my hike, I took the the trails that closely followed the shoreline. There are some beautiful views of the lake.

Looking south across Cranberry Lake
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Return to Lovric’s Sea Craft, Anacortes Washington

Back in 2016, I took a stroll through Lovric’s Sea Craft in Anacortes and wrote a post about it. I had a chance to go back last Thanksgiving so I through I would post some new photos. But first, a little more background on Lovrić.

Founded in 1965 by Croatian immigrant Anton Marion Lovric, Lovric’s Sea Craft is a full-service maintenance and mooring facility with extensive facilities for maintaining sea-going vessels. It is the largest private dock north of Seattle. Located along Oakes Avenue, it is just a mile or so from the Anacortes Washington State Ferry terminal.

I was there last fall on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It was a nice, cool day, with the Sun peaking through the clouds. There are several old buildings on the property, all in some form of use. Since it was a work day, I stuck to the public areas of the facility. (Click on a picture for a full-sized version.)

Lovric’s warehouse

The facility is packed with boats, as some appear to be berthed there permanently, others are awaiting work.

Boats of all shapes and sizes are packed along the docks

There is old equipment all around the facility. I came across this story about Lovric’s published last March. It describes some struggles at the facility with a major wind storm and a filing for waste clean up from the State of Washington. That there is clean up needed is not a surprise.

Some of the masses of old equipment rusting away

The neighborhood above Lovric’s is nice, with great views north across the Guemes Channel with views of Guemes Island, Cypress Island, and, on a clear day, the Canadian Rockies.

The hillside on north Anacortes is packed with houses looking across the channel

The weathered wood on the old buildings looks nice.

An old building at the wharf

This lift has seen better days.

This lift has seen better days

Repeating the first photo so Facebook picks this one for the thumbnail.

Lovric’s warehouse

The Milky Way, November 2021

I was out in the desert a few weeks ago right at the new Moon. I took advantage of the dark skies to take some wide field shots of the Milky Way, which is right overhead at dusk this time of year.

I aligned and combined the images in PixInsight where I also removed some light pollution gradients. I finished the images in Lightroom. I took the images with my Sony RX-100 V on a iOptron sky-tracker tracking camera mount.

This first image is a composite of three, three-minute exposures. The RX100 does a noise reduction routine that takes as long as the exposure, so I find that the six minutes required for each three-minute exposure works well for me. The image was taken looking northwest. The fuzzy spot on the right is the Andromeda Galaxy, or Messier 31. The Double Cluster is visible on the right, just a little lower than the Andromeda Galaxy, just below the constellation Cassiopeia. Click on the image for a full-sized version.

Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy

The second image is a two image composite, also three minutes each. It is almost overhead, but looking toward the west. Vega is the bright star in the lower left, with the constellation Cygnus anchored by Deneb in the center of the image. The dashed line at the lower left is an airplane that passed through the frame.

Central Milky Way

I am happy to have some astrophotos here in the blog after many months, particularly given that this is nominally a website dedicated to astronomy!

Alaska 2006: Glacier Bay Whales #2, Breaches

I promised last month to provide some more pictures of whales breaching. So here they are. While I usually try to tell a story, since I find myself with so many similar photos of whales breaching that I am just going to post the photos.

I know that is a little lazy on my part, but it was amazing seeing all of those whales and I couldn’t stop taking pictures or even not scan them off of the negatives.

Breaching Whale 1

They are impressive creatures.

Breaching Whale 2

Here are a whole bunch.

Breaching Whale 3
Breaching Whale 4
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Alaska 2006: Glacier Bay Whales #1

After three months off I am back with more Alaska photos. This month is the introduction the whales of Glacier Bay. An earlier post covered Johns Hopkins glacier. Since the photos were not ordered by time, I do not really know if this is before or after the visit to Johns Hopkins. Click on any image to see a full-sized version.

Clouds among the mountains surrounding Glacier Bay

We were in Alaska in late June and whales were everywhere.

Whales spouting in the dusk

There are humpbacks but also orcas.

An orca racing through the water
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