Mouth of the Fish

I discovered a star tonight: Fomalhaut... aka Fum al Hut (Arabic for "mouth of the fish").

I was at Point Dume, a volcanic intrusion, on Zuma Beach in Malibu about 6:30 pm.

Sitting at the base of the huge precipice of rock, I noticed a bright star in the thin gap between the cliff and a 30-foot boulder broken off the cliff.  

I watched the star slowly slip to my right behind the boulder as Earth turned and wondered whether it was a star or a planet.  

Later I stood up and walked to where I could see the whole southern sky.  This star was very bright--1.2 magnitude, as I later learned, and it was the only one in that part of the sky.  

With the light pollution from Los Angeles, I couldn't really see Scorpio or Sagitarrius or the Milky Way.

I saw one reddish star and thought it was Antares in Scorpio but later learned it was Mars.  Scorpio had already slipped beneath the western horizon of the sea.

I could see Cygnus the swan and Aquila, the eagle, but east of them only this one unknown star.

Once I looked at the star map at home, I learned that Fomalhaut "lies in quite a barren region of the southern sky and because of this has become known as "The Solitary One" (The Nature Company Guides: Advanced Skywatching, p.269).

It's in Pisces Austrinus, which is down in the southern sky below Aquarius.  

What a lovely time, nestled in a lap of volcanic rock, watching the stars and the waves, safe in the shadow of the mighty intrusion.

Moonset

Slowly
ocean sucks
the thin orange slice
of moon 
into its salty mouth

--Moonset, August 28, 2014
     Santa Monica beach

Tribute to Nick Fagnano

We don't often get lightning and thunder in Los Angeles.

When we hear a boom, we think earthquake or explosion or plane crash.

On Sunday I was sitting in my back yard with a friend and heard a bit of rumbling.  We wondered what it was, and then saw a dark storm cell approaching from the south.  "Oh, it must have been thunder," we said.

A few minutes later there was a huge resounding boom.  

I live a mile from the beach, and it turned out that this lightning strike had hit the water and a light pole on Venice Pier.  It had killed one person in the water and stopped the heart of a surfer.

People pulled the surfer in, who turned out to be an off-duty lifeguard, and revived him.  It took an hour of searching before the other person was found floating in the surf.  

The one who died was Nick Fagnano, 20 years old.  He had gone to 8 am Mass with his parents that morning and kept a Bible at his bedside.  He had played baseball at Notre Dame High School and was a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

A climatologist from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that in Florida, there's a 1 in 600,000 chance of being hit by lightning on the beach, but in California it's 1 in 7.5 million.  

On Sunday that one was Nick Fagnano.

Random--but one always tends to ask, "Why him?"  Or "Why me?"

It's interesting that the hit took out one of the only people on the beach who had been at church that morning and kept a Bible by his bed.  He might have been the only one on the beach who attended a weekly Bible study with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. 

I don't like to think of God as orchestrating tragedies, but unlike other people, this kid was ready to meet his maker.

Jesus said that God knows when a sparrow falls to the ground (Matt. 10:29).  Thus God watched and embraced Nick as lightning struck the water around him. 

Psalm 139 says, "You know when I sit down and when I rise up.  You discern my thoughts from far away." 

Did the Creator of the universe redirect the bolt to avoid others who need more time to start talking to God?  

Or did the Creator (unheard) cry out, "No, Nick, don't go into the water to rinse off that sand!  Hey, everybody, get out of the water!"

We don't know--but we do know that being a follower of Jesus doesn't guarantee that bad things won't happen to you.

It just means putting your life in God's hands and trusting that all will be well.... even if the worst happens.

Los Angeles Times story about Nick:

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0729-lightning-20140730-story.html

Story about the injured off-duty lifeguard:

 http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lightning-storm-beach-lifeguard-20140729-story.html

Story in today's paper:

http://www.latimes.com/local/westside/la-me-lightning-strikes-20140728-story.html

Walking on the beach with my brother Bill... beautiful April day.

In town from rainy Steillacoom WA

Serious fishing going on...

Sea anemone are seeking dinner too.

Reflections on Earth Day 2013

Grey, grey Earth Day.  

A blanket of fog extends from the ocean inland, perhaps as far as downtown Los Angeles.

On the beach there is only sand, grey water, and grey sky.

Once upon a time Earth had no seas.  Comets brought water.

Once there was no moon either.  As the debris from the sun's birth circled, consolidating into today's solar system, something hit Earth with a huge impact, blasting debris upward to become the moon.

Hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon somehow led to sea life... which led to reptiles, birds and mammals, including us.

Today the moon pulls Earth's seas as it rotates around us.  

Seagulls pick at the head of a fish on the beach.  

Humans walk and fish and surf on this grey morning at Santa Monica Beach, and we pause to celebrate our planet.  

Perhaps we take steps to protect life, or perhaps we work and play as thoughtlessly as the sea gulls and sandpipers. 

Sea Stars Hanging On

These sea stars are hanging on for dear life at the Venice breakwater.

When I happen to jog at very low tide, I can walk out and see them clinging to the rocks.  

They're under assault from a number of directions.

Sometimes people visiting the beach peel them off and take one home for a souvenir. 

Pollution from the sewers that empty directly into the ocean also threatens them.

Then there are the sea gulls and other natural predators.

These living things were at this beach three hundred years ago when only native people lived here.

They were moving slowly from rock to rock on many seashores long before humans existed, and they may be here long after Los Angeles and the human race are gone.

Meteor Showers: Fire and Water

A flash of our past and our future: the meteor impact near Chelyabinsk, Russia, early Friday morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=thQ2PDE3rnU&feature=endscreen

This meteor was about 55 ft. in diameter, weighed 10,000 tons, and is a remnant of the dust and rocks that swirled around the early sun 4.5 billion years ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323764804578312264130040432.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

Comets hitting Earth brought our water, eventually building to our oceans.  

Meteors peppered earth early in its 4.45 billion year history, one impact causing a chunk of earth and debris to rebound away and become our moon.  

Even now 100 tons of material the size of sand or smaller still hits Earth every day, reports Phil Plait on on Slate.   http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/11/asteroid_2012_da14_space_rock_will_miss_the_earth_by_17_000_miles.html 

When I walk on the beach tomorrow morning, I'll thank God for the gift of oceans.

I'll be waiting for the sunset bypass of Asteroid 2012DA14--17,000 miles from Earth and the size of a football field.

In 1908 a meteor exploded above Siberia, flattening trees over a 25-mile area.

The meteor that caused extinction of the dinosaurs about 60 million years ago was about the same size as the asteroid that will pass us by on Friday.

"It is only every 2,000 years or so that an object the size of a football field descends to Earth and causes significant damage, according to NASA," reports the Wall Street Journal, referring to the meteor fly-by on Friday.


As if humans were keeping a list in 4,000 BCE, 2000 BCE, and the turn of the first millennium CE.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578305163574597722.html

In contrast, a much smaller meteor like the one over Chelyabinsk causes damage on Earth about once every one hundred years.

Thank God that 2012DA14 will not be returning us to the dust from which we were formed.

Note of correction: 

In the first hours after the meteor passed over Chelyabinsk, some pranksters posted on YouTube videos of a gas crater in Darwaza, Turkmenistan, claiming it to be the site of impact of a part of the meteor.  I fell for it and posted the link below on my blog.  The footage also appears in the first link above of various Chelyabinsk videos pasted together, some from news broadcasts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cd47Q44igI

In this YouTube video someone walks through the snow around the edge of gas crater nicknamed "Gates of Hell."

Weratu Nectur posted this explanation of the 1971 crater on YouTube on Feb. 16:

In 1971 near the village of Darwaza, geologists discovered an accumulation of underground gas.  As a result of excavation and drilling, they stumbled on an underground void.  Then the earth collapsed and formed a large hole filled with gas.  

The fumes did not go out, so they decided to burn.  Geologists expected the fire would go out after a few days, but they were mistaken.  Since 1971, the natural gas coming from the crater stays lit day and night.

At any rate, this gas crater gives us a glimpse of what the meteor crater in Arizona near Flagstaff may have looked like when it happened between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago.  http://www.universetoday.com/32619/arizona-crater/