Weekend Fun

Saturday night Ben and I went out on a date.  These days, it is more difficult to get out of the house alone, but none the less, we made it.  We got decaf coffees at a coffee shop and then set off to the Powell Observatory in Louisburg, KS.  On the way out I was this bunch of clouds and had to take a picture.  By the way, Friday night we went to a friend's house for dinner and I decided to leave my camera behind... besides, we were going to a little town in the Kansas prairie right?  Well... wouldn't you know that on the way we saw a field of llamas!  We could have had a family portrait in front of a field of llamas... but no!

When we got there it was too cloudy to see anything, but we spoke with some men in the Astronomical Society of Kansas City.  They told us that there are a variety of people in the astronomy club like judges, doctors, lawyers, computer programmers and all.  They all enjoy observing.  I asked lots of questions, but one was "what is your favorite thing to look at in this telescope?"  One gentleman replied, "oh, ring nebula."  He explained to us that that was a star that basically blew up and it forms a ring that sometimes can be colored and can stay that way for 1000 years.  I said "wow... it's amazing that it has that much gas to last that long" to which Ben said, "yeah, I thought I had a lot of gas."  It got kind of quiet then.  The guys told us that astronomers have a check list of stuff they try to find and that is how they become "master" observers.  I joked and said "and if you see a UFO you become a ninja observer right?"  It got even quieter after that.  Here's a picture of a ring nebula for your enjoyment.  If I were writing a paper right now, it would be on nebulas.  They are gorgeous!

Here is the telescope there.  There are some of the astronomers that have been cataloging astroids and have one actually named "Louisburg" after the town.  Would you believe that someone built this in his garage?  That's right... he did!  I asked it he was married and they said yes, he was, and that his wife said fine, he could build the telescope in the garage, under one condition... that she was able to still park in the garage.  Don't ask me how he accomplished that!!  They had a nice presentation on the moon and I learned quite a bit.  We'll go back sometime and actually look through the telescope.

We also spent time with family on Saturday.  This is a picture of Great Grandma Georgia with Zeke.

Great Grandpa S.E. and Gwen.

Ben hooked up the bike trailer tonight and they had a great time.  Zeke and I walked along with the stroller.