It's the time of year when the days are
filled with Spring rains. This year the uncharacteristically
large amount of water caused the disastrous
landslide in Oso Washington, north of Seattle, and delivered to the
city it's wettest March. 
Serious Rain Fall
Our garden pond has been in "overflow status" for months. In the mountains the intense snowfall regularly closes the highway. L spent 6.5 hours one evening stranded on Interstate 90 waiting for the highway to reopen. Hmmm ... could it be climate change?
News & Notes
In November 2012 we "sent" a postcard from the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano on Hawai'i. It showed the two Keck telescopes "opening their eyes at sundown." We mentioned that the day before we met Mark Durré, an astronomer from Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, who was observing black holes this night using one of the telescopes.
Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea
We sent Mark this picture of his telescope getting to work and asked if he would send us a picture of what he "saw." Well, he did. What he was looking at was a black hole at the center of NGC 2110, a galaxy in Orion. If his instruments had been collecting light he might have seen the picture on the left, but he was collecting other kinds of radiation data, summarized by his heat map on the right. Can you find the black hole?
Sky Survey's NGC 2110 (center) ... and as seen by Mark's Instruments
What did it all mean?
His observations "demonstrate the physical
linkage between AGN
[Active Galactic Nucleic] feedback, which
triggers star formation in massive clusters, and the resulting stellar
winds, which cause the observed [Fe II]
emission and feed the black hole." For the whole story check his
paper, published in the
April edition of the Astrophysical Journal. We were all fascinated by the stars that night!
The sixth edition of L's textbook Fluency with Information Technology is now out. It is
another huge rewrite - the field does continue to change. Although the tradition of a
cover wave continues, this time the cover designers chose a graphic rather than a photo.
J has tuned up her floor loom in preparation for a return to serious weaving. Tuning up her craft, she made a small area rug of linen (warp) and wool (weft). It was fun to be back on the treadles again, so more rugs are looming in her future.
First In A Series ...
