On today’s list of stuff to do, we find celebrating Verna’s birthday in Joshua Tree National Park.

Verna drove the cruiser home from the RV rental yard. At home we put the GMC in the garage, grabbed the dog and took off for Twentynine Palms, California, where we are tonight. Tomorrow we will tour Joshua Tree National Park before heading over to Arizona.

When I planted these poinsettias in the planters by our front porch, I knew that they would be pretty and festive for Christmas. Today, after the rain showers stopped, they looked very pretty indeed, adorned with these glistening raindrops. Click for large size.

Today is Solstice, the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere - according to the solar ephemeris for our location, the length of our day will be approximately nine hours and fifty-four minutes.

The graphic below is taken from a very interesting website, Archaeoastronomy.com. On their website, you can learn about Equinoxes, Solstices and Cross Quarters which are moments shared planet-wide, defined by the earth’s tilt and the sun’s position on The Ecliptic along 45° arcs.

This neat graphic is put into motion on Archaeoastronomy.com.

I found this picture on the internet when Verna asked me if we would be able to cook while we’re traveling down the road in a rented motorhome. I was looking to see if there were any gadgets that we could use to heat meals, á lá crockpot-style.

I couldn’t find anything that would be suitable for our needs and I would be afraid of carbon-monoxide poisoning with a device like this one, even if they were available today. I guess we’ll have to settle for cooking on the stovetop and in the microwave when parked.

We don’t exactly know why, but this image gets more hits than almost anything we have ever posted on our blog. All we know, is that when you Google® “Red and White Amaryllis” in an image search, this picture is at the top of the search results.

Given the season, I can understand a lot of searches for a red and white amaryllis. And, it is a nice picture, if I do say so myself. Click on the image to enlarge.

One way to keep track of the weather is to find webcams near the area in which you’re interested. Today, after the storm passed through, I took a look at the webcam on the Mount Wilson Solar Observation Tower. I saw this snowy fairyland and the observatory dome housing the famous Hooker 100 inch Newtonian Telescope at the left.

Here’s some history on the Hooker Telescope from the Mount Wilson Observatory:

The Hooker 100-inch telescope is named after John D. Hooker, who provided the funds for the giant mirror. It was the largest telescope in the world from 1917 to 1948 when the 200-inch telescope was built on Palomar Mountain 90 miles to the southeast. Many great discoveries were made with the 100-inch telescope Edwin Hubble’s refinement of the distance scale of the universe. The first optical interferometer ever used for astronomical research was used on the 100-inch telescope to measure the sizes of distant stars for the first time in 1919.

The 100-inch telescope has three optical configurations available to meet the requirements of a wide variety research projects. A very high-resolution spectrograph is located at the telescope’s Coudé focus. Located on the ground floor of the 100-inch telescope dome, the Aluminizing Room is used to recoat all of the telescope mirrors at the observatory.