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Shadows at the Moon’s South Pole

This is a multi-temporal illumination map made of the moon’s South Pole with a wide-angle camera. To create it, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft collected 1,700 images over a period of 6 lunar days (6 Earth months), repeatedly covering an area centered on the Moon’s south pole from different angles. The resulting images were stacked to produce the featured map—representing the percentage of time each spot on the surface was illuminated by the Sun. Remaining convincingly in shadow, the floor of the 19-kilometer diameter Shackleton crater is seen near the map’s center. The lunar south pole itself is at about 9 o’clock on the crater’s rim. Crater floors near the lunar south and north poles can remain in permanent shadow, while mountain tops can remain in nearly continuous sunlight. Useful for future outposts, the shadowed craterfloors could offer reservoirs of water-ice, while the sunlit mountain tops offer good locations to collect solar power.

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Scenes from 1983

In the Barrio, Tucson AZ
In the Barrio, Tucson AZ
In the Barrio, Tucson AZ
Dennis Shelpman
Your Host
Your Host
Dennis Shelpman
Your Host
Dennis Shelpman
Your Host in Sabino Canyon, Tucson AZ
Scott West in Sabino Canyon, Tucson AZ
The Patio at the Connection, Phoenix AZ
The Connection, Phoenix AZ
Brett Walker tending bar at the Connection, Phoenix AZ (Yes Virginia, that’s a real Mack truck.)
Saint Tropez performing at the Connection, Phoenix AZ
The Patio at the Connection, Phoenix AZ
Your Host in Sabino Canyon, Tucson AZ
My workplace at the time, CSA Architects, Mesa AZ
My workplace at the time (my desk dead center in the photo), CSA Architects, Mesa AZ 
The Patio at the Connection, Phoenix AZ
Donnie on the Patio at the Connection
My workplace at the time, CSA Architects, Mesa AZ

If we had digital cameras or cell phones when I was in my 20s I would’ve taken a lot more photos.

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THIS is Why I Still Wear a Mask in Public

From Mock Paper Scissors:

As we say here, we might be done with the pandemic, but the Trump-Virus ain’t done with us:

“The number of attendees who have tested positive for the coronavirusafterlast weekend’s Gridiron dinner has risen to 67, organizers say, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who became the third member of Biden’s Cabinet in attendance who was infected.”

The subhead of the article says that “More than 10 percent of attendees of Gridiron dinner have been infected with the virus.” And as is typical for D.C., the WaPo didn’t include the health status of anyone who worked the event. I guess the invisible are truly invisible.

As the Gridiron dinner was announced and the society pages at Der Tiger Beat auf dem Potomac filled with stories of who was going, tuxedo rentals, the bon mots of the guests, I kept wondering if it was going to turn into a super spreader event, and lo! it has.

Look, I get it. I’ve been hunkered down since March 13, 2020, and so going on 3 years without dining out, going to a concert, no travel, doing much of anything in public has been a chore and always a gamble after assessing the odds. But even a nobody like me,  I knew that this thing was not going to end well, and I wondered why the connected and powerful didn’t see it.

Anyway, this is now an object-lesson for the rest of us. Keep following protocols. Stay safe.