luna

my attempt of taking a picture of the lunar eclipse
(through dirty double-glazed window, and with no tripod to speak of..)


some explaining:
this photo is of the moon in full eclipse. the reason that it looks like a full moon, is that the moon is actually gets a little bit of light, even when it's in the shadow of earth... the light that hits the moon is partly a reflection from earth, but mostly light from the sun that goes through earth's atmosphere and bends around and hits the moon. that's also why the moon looks red when it's eclipsed - the 'blue' part of the sun's light gets scattered by the atmosphere (that's why the sky is blue!) and the red penetrates better (that's also why the sun looks red when it sets!)
this is a picture of the full moon


here are some pictures of the eclipse that a friend of mine, Yossi Huri, took through a telescope. he's a professional with many many years of experience in astro-photography, and also a singer, to those of you who recognize...

the pictures are of 12, 35 and 50 minutes after the beginning of the eclipse, and the last one is the full eclipse.

Kube Bamia

i tried to make Kube Bamia from Orly's recipe today. i've never done that before. it's basically Kubbe soup, so the kubbe itself is meatballs with a semolina (solet) shell, cooked in soup or tomato sauce.
the recipe calls for 'solet', or semolina, which i couldn't find in the store because here it's called 'cream of wheat' for some reason. the reason is, as i realized, that it indeed becomes kinda creamy if you add water to it... anyway, on the 2nd trip to the store i found the right stuff.
i didn't cook it all the way yet. just prepared the kubbe balls (well, balls is sort of an overstatement. they are more like barbaaba...) and put them in the freezer.
it was a big mess. the semolina 'dough' has the oddest consistency. it's sticky, but stretchy, and still tears easily, but you can patch it with no problems... sort of like liquid dough. weird. i'm glad i took that pottery class!
i hope it's worth it :) will let you know. we'll have some in the next few days.

here are some pictures that Ron took!

wiiiiiii

remember playing Mario Brothers in our old nintendo, probably 20 years ago? the little chubby guy who walks along, jumping on bad guys shaped like mushrooms, jump up under a brick to destroy it and get a coin to save your life?
well, seems like a lot happened since...
i've never been a fan of computer/video/sega/nintendo/ps2 (mchak et hameyutar) games. the only ones i really ever played were those quest games where you have to solve your way to the treasure (remember King's Quest? anyone?), tetris, and - the legendary Super Mario.

so now playing it again, with all that crazy 3-d animation, fancy special effects and stuff, the things i find to enjoy most are the sounds that pop up sometimes and bring me back to being 12 years old. a 'priu priu priu' sound when your mario goes down a pipe and pops out somewhere else... crazy. you're a kid again.

San Francisco

here are the pictures...

when 20 cars pile up

this is what happens when people drive on an icy&snowy road the same way they drive the rest of the year. this weather related accident blocks the road that we intend to drive on tomorrow. nobody was seriously hurt, but i hope they clear the road in time!

more on this accident here

Israeli food

last night we had leftovers Shakshouka. it's basically some onions tomatos and sausage, topped with leftover meatballs in tomatoes that we had a couple of nights ago, a few eggs, and some cheese. not to forget the hot pepper and tabasco.

which reminds me, that sometime next month, i'm hosting the monthly dinner as a part of our dinner club (we call it gastro-ph, if you don't understand the nerdy joke, you're probably not an astronomer).
at first i thought of cooking japanese (i mean, sushi). but later on i was convinced that israeli dinner would be a good idea.

and then comes the problem - besides Hummus, bamba, shkedey marak, and fresh salad - everything israeli that i think of is actually 'importd' to israel by someone's grandma from irak, morocco, poland, germany, turkey... see the problem?

so i'm using this platform for a short survey:

what is israeli food for you?

birthday

i had a nice birthday. even though i hate the thought of getting old.. that's why i decided to be 29 this year (making it my 2nd 29th birthday, cause i celebrated being 30 and 31 the last 2 years).
anyway,
we started the day with breakfast sandwich (eggs, bacon & melted cheese on an english muffin)(we don't need to worry about cholesterol for another few years), and then went over to the lakefront to see if the lake is indeed frozen like it seems to be from home.
a relatively normal day at work
and a birthday sushi dinner at the place down the street from us, accompanied by a bottle of red wine, and not having to drive. oh, and they gave us free dessert :D
i also got a couple of presents from israel -- DVDs from the young sharonim, and flowers&yellowbear from the less young sharonim!! hurray!!
thanks everybody. and thanks ben for loving me even though i'm old :)

Holey land

Chicago is full of holes. POTHOLES to be more exact. the combination of low maintenance and frequent freeze-thaw cycles makes the roads feel like you're driving off road.

we don't have our own pictures of this yet, so i borrowed this one from Chicago Sun-Times. something like this can easily make you pull off the road with a flat tire.
we both keep our eyes on the road looking out for them and hope to dodge them in time and not get into other drivers' lane in the process. today we almost missed a perfect parking spot because of concentrating on the potholes!

Grand Canyon

here are some pictures from our airborne trip to Grand Canyon.
well, over it anyway...

the line on this image is the area we flew over, of which i took pictures (the rest of the flight wasn't as exciting).
i labeled most of the images, and some of them have coordinates, if you want to go through them with google earth (and you should, it's so much fun, that i spent a few hours tonight doing that!)
[go to picasa album]

Berkeley

We're visiting Berkeley, where we both have friends and collaborators. it's a nice escape from the Chicago cold weather (the temps dropped 50 degrees over one night a day after we left town!), although i don't appreciate the rain that much.
we did had a couple of nice days, and got a chance to enjoy the view from the hill.

[picture of SF and the bay area to come here]

i was mostly amused by the fact that people know of me over here.. i guess the couple of papers that have my names on them were noticed over here, since both at Berkeley and LBL there are large supernova groups... anyways, it was a nice feeling.

another great thing is meeting Dovi, Hila and their kids - i didn't realize how much i missed working in the same room with dovi...

tomorrow we're taking the day off and go site seeing in San Fransisco. so more on that later!


p.s. - don't ever go to Kimchi Garden on Durant street. even if you're really really hungry and it's 11pm and nothing else is open.