Cicadas Emerge

Brief Adult Lives

In mid May large numbers of cicadas were all around our town. In certain neighborhoods their singing created loud inescapable background noise. At one wooded location, away from roads and traffic, I recorded a steady sound level of 69-70 decibels!

Nymphs emerged from the ground leaving these exit holes behind in my daughter's front yard.

The nymphs climbed up trees or other nearby structures.

Eventually, nymphs molted into the adult stage.

Soon adults were everywhere, crawling on the ground, landing on streets and sidewalks, fluttering lazily past in the air, and even landing on my leg while I was out biking. This specimen posed nicely for a portrait just above my knee.

The goal of adults is to mate and reproduce. This couple was busy doing the job.

Adult cicadas die after mating. Roads and walkways were littered with their corpses. It was hard to avoid running over dead cicadas during my bike rides.

 

Adult cicadas lead a brief alien life!

Approaching Solar Max

Good Seeing!

Maximum sunspot activity will occur over the next several months. Lots of modest spots have been spread across the Sun's face lately, with occasional giant groups appearing from time to time. On the morning of April 23rd, with scattered thin hazy clouds and contrails present, I gambled on future clearing and set up my solar telescope. Conditions were pleasant with no wind and temperature at 56 degrees. Drifting clouds and contrails ruined the first video clips I made, but, eventually, miraculously, everything cleared. At that point I discovered the seeing was excellent!

I began by taking a quick photospheric image with my Seestar. Seestar's field of view captures the whole Sun at once and shows the entire distribution of sunspots across the disc. (The orange color is caused by Seestar's solar filter.) Notice the large sunspot group near the right limb.

My 100 mm Lunt solar telescope reveals the Sun's chromosphere, the layer just above the photosphere. The Lunt, with 3X Barlow lens, has a much smaller field of view than the Seestar. To make a full disc chromospheric image I have to combine several individual images into a mosaic. The next 12-panel mosaic shows most of the chromospheric disc (slightly tilted relative to the Seestar view). Excellent seeing conditions allow this image to be viewed at 100 percent without loss of detail, so be sure to click on the picture to view it at full size.

Click on the following labeled image to see sunspot groups identified. Notice complex activity in the 3645/3647 group and magnetic arches in 3646. These details are visible in the full size image.

An individual image of the 3645/3647 group shows it was quite active with white energetic emissions threaded throughout.

At 10:04 EDT sunspot 3654 on the left and 3652 on the right were simultaneously emitting modest flares.

Only two notable prominences were present. I captured them with limited success.

Unfortunately, cloudy weather prevented me from imaging the enormous active sunspot responsible for the recent May 10th geomagnetic storms and auroras. That remarkable sunspot endured its roughly 13-day passage around the solar backside and is now coming again into view around the eastern limb. It looks quite diminished at this point, however. I wait patiently for the next rare clear day that aligns with solar action.

Texas - Part 6

Austin

Our last Texas tour day began with a bus tour of Austin. The guide, a standup comedian who performs in local clubs, amused me with a rapid fire stream of comments and facts delivered in a quirky kind of slang. Not everyone was amused by her delivery, but I enjoyed it immensely. (Some other guides on this tour were knowledgeable, but had annoying speaking styles. They often couldn't complete a sentence without backtracking to include some small historical detail.) Anyway, as the bus drove through different neighborhoods we saw many small nightclubs/bars where live music plays nightly. We also saw several colorful wall murals along the way. It was hard to get good pictures from within the moving bus. I missed capturing some of the better murals.

The guided tour ended with a visit to the Texas State Capital Building, an enormous, massive stone edifice, where we stood under the dome and saw some portraits of all past Texas governors.

After the capital building the comedian guide left us. It was lunch time, and our regular tour guide took us to a food truck park. She said Austin is famous for food truck culture. The colorful trucks were parked in a semicircle.

As you can see, there were six or seven different truck menus to choose from. About 75 percent of the available menu items were unfamiliar. I'd need several Google searches to even begin contemplating a choice. Instead, I looked for something recognizable. Suspicious of spicy barbecue sauce, I skipped the barbecue truck and settled on a lobster roll.

Bad luck. The red truck was out of lobster, so I got two hot dogs instead. These were really excellent hot dogs, so I hit the jackpot! While eating at our picnic table we were entertained by loud, squawking great-tailed grackles who make a living on scraps from the food truck park.

In addition to regular food trucks in the area there was also a gelato truck, a barber shop truck, and the drug truck pictured below.

After lunch we drove to the Zilker Botanical Garden where we initially had this nice view of the Austin skyline. Notice the nicely clear sky two days after the solar eclipse.

A Red Admiral butterfly sat nicely upon some flowers.

The most interesting part of this botanical garden for me was the Cretaceous section where all specimens were either identical to Cretaceous plants, or descendants of Cretaceous plants. Along certain sight lines you could almost image walking through dinosaur territory.

Near the visitor center a small terrarium housed carnivorous plants, including Venus Flytraps seen below.

After the botanical garden the bus drove through the LBJ ranch, the least interesting part of the entire tour for me. We did see LBJ's birthplace and his grave in the unpretentious family cemetery there. I was also surprised by great numbers of pecan trees growing in orchards on the ranch. In November the public can harvest pecans here in one gallon buckets.

As the day wound down, the last stop was the LBJ presidential library for which I had zero initial enthusiasm. It turned out the library was one of the best things we saw near Austin! On the first floor was a wonderful exhibit illustrating historical and cultural events during the course of LBJ's life. Much of it included events we actually lived through, so it was nostalgic to step through our youthful years again.

Apparently, Texans are quite fond of their native son, LBJ. In my youth I was not so fond of his Vietnam War policies. But Vietnam aside, he did an amazing amount of good things including the war on poverty, medicare, medicaid, the civil rights act, the voting act, headstart, PBS, and more. He was a strong supporter of NASA. It really is an amazing record of accomplishment, especially compared with how little gets done today. This large wall photo in the library shows LBJ signing the civil rights act in 1964.

Also on the first floor was a wonderful exhibit illustrating the history of American music from the 1700's up to Taylor Swift, including genuine articles of clothing, musical instruments, and original lyrics owned by iconic performers. I was particularly interested in the pictures of the Victrola which looked identical to one my grandparents owned. When I was about 5 years old I used to see this device in one room of our rented house.

The Victrola played old fashioned thick disc records like these.

Another display featured what could fairly be claimed as the first rock and roll record - The Fat Man by Fats Domino. This was recorded in 1949 when I was about one year old. I've had this as the first song on my oldies playlist for years.

The library was our last stop in late afternoon. Closing time was near. As time ran out we hurried up to the second floor where I found another great exhibit of LBJ's political life with more nostalgic material from political campaigns and cultural events. Also on the second floor was a portrait collection of all presidents and their first ladies from George Washington to Obama. I could have spent much more time in this place, but the library was closing and we had to hurry back to our bus.

Our Texas tour was over. We did see lots of interesting things, but it was a major disappointment to see only thick clouds instead of a total solar eclipse! 

Texas - Part 5

Drive to Austin

The agenda on the day after the solar eclipse was a drive from San Antonio to Austin. Leaving San Antonio we passed what our guide said was the world's largest pair of cowboy boots created by an artist I'd never heard of. I took a picture from inside the bus instead of going outside in the rain for a better shot.

On the way to Austin the tour planned an extended stop in the town of Fredericksburg originally founded by German immigrants in 1846. Months before this Texas tour I used Google Maps to explore Fredericksburg's location and noticed the town of Luckenbach nearby. Hey, I thought, this must be the town mentioned in Waylon Jennings' well known country song! So, out of curiosity, I zoomed in to the satellite view and noticed there was hardly anything in Luckenbach. Aside from momentary amusement provided by the Luckenbach discovery, I thought no more about it. So it was quite a surprise when our tour guide said we were stopping at Luckenbach on the way to Fredericksburg.

Luckenbach, named after an early German settler, turned out to be a fun mixture of authenticity and tourist trap.

The post office building was filled with antiques.

Behind the post office was an older building and a small music hall with a stage for performers. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and others have performed here.

There was also a gift shop where we tried on cowboy hats for fun.

After Luckenbach we traveled on to Fredericksburg, about 13 miles away. We were given several free hours to roam around on foot and find a place for lunch. Having some German food in this German-founded town seemed like a good idea, so we set off to find a German restaurant. The first restaurant possibility was guaranteed to be crowded, so we tried a second candidate many blocks further down the main street. The midday temperature had risen to about 90 degrees and we started sweating during the trek. Along the way we passed a building which originally served as the Gillespie County Courthouse from 1882 until 1939. It is now the Pioneer Memorial Library.

A unique wood carving, called the Eagle Tree, stood on library grounds. It was carved from a diseased tree by chainsaw sculptor James Brazeal in 2006. Notice the partially clear sky in the background - one day after the eclipse.

Buildings along the main street had a small town late 1800's look.

Tiring in the heat after several blocks, we eventually came to a German bakery/restaurant where we hoped to find a reasonable chance of finding a seat. Unfortunately, the bakery was small with relatively few tables, all filled. A long waiting line stretched along the sidewalk outside. So on we slogged for another block where we decided to settle on a restaurant without an obvious German name. This restaurant had plenty of empty tables and wonderfully welcomed air conditioning. To our delight we found they served German jagerschnitzel. The jagerschnitzel was excellent and the restaurant was quiet enough for normal conversation! It's getting harder to find a quiet restaurant these days when so many have roaring background levels with blasting music.

After lunch we walked back along the main street stopping in several shops along the way. I liked these two artworks made of clock parts in one of the shops.

A crystal shop had an enormous chandelier near the entrance.

Beautiful crystal sets were on sale, but I found the high prices shocking!

I guess somebody buys these things, but not anyone I know! The shop also displayed this very cool Greek warrior statue.

Fredericksburg was an interesting place. It would be nice to spend more time here on a cooler more leisurely day. This is the birthplace of famous WWII Admiral Chester Nimitz. There was a WWII National Museum of the Pacific War which we didn't have time to visit. But soon it was time to return to our bus. It felt good to sit in air conditioning again. Soon we were on our way to Austin.

Arriving in Austin in late afternoon, we hoped to walk from our hotel to a nearby restaurant for a light dinner. That plan was canceled when thunderstorms and heavy rain began. So we settled for a rather disappointing dinner in the extremely noisy hotel restaurant. Tomorrow would be our last tour day.