The seeing and the starry sky were exquisite Saturday night for our September Open Night. The sky over the village was cloudless and sparkling with diamond stars. The Milky Way stretched broad and bright overhead, arcing half-way across the sky, dust lanes evident. It was the finest sky I've seen in quite some time. All told 49 visitors came, stretched out over the two hours of the event — much better than 49 all showing up at once, which has often happened! The smaller crowds at any given time allowed for better interaction with visitors and gave them the sense that they could take their time looking through the telescope. Several College students were in attendance including a young man from Mexico City. Students rarely show up at these events so it was a pleasure to have them. Three students arrived at the scheduled 11:00 closing time and I spent a half-hour with them… they were excited and enthusiastic about the entire experience. Earlier in the evening a girl, maybe eight years old, was obviously enthralled with her views of Jupiter and the Galilean Moons; she even used a chart I provided at the eyepiece to put names to the star-like dots aside the huge planet. It is extremely gratifying when someone, most especially a child, really "gets" what they are seeing when looking through a great telescope. That young lady wasn't just looking at Jupiter, she was observing! Also featured was the Andromeda Galaxy which filled the field of view with its misty wonder – the light of a trillion stars 2.5 million light-years away! Jupiter was resplendent with not only the dark, broad equatorial cloud bands visible, but other "stripes" could be seen in the temperate zones. I must say, between the excellent seeing and improved tracking of the telescope, I enjoyed the best views I've ever had of those two objects, both at 122X. The telescope's right ascension clutch has been slipping badly. By hand-tightening the clutch I found that the telescope tracked as well as some modern electrically-driven scopes making higher-magnification public views practical and enjoyable. Observing Jupiter was, by the way, greatly aided through use of a neutral density filter — it was difficult to observe without the filter as Jupiter was so very brilliant! It was an excellent night.
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Noted in passing: Last evening as I was leaving a parking lot, there were three of us waiting to exit to the through road. On my left was a Toyota Prius. Ahead of me was a Honda Civic Hybrid. I was driving my 2010 Honda Insight. Three cars waiting, all of them hybrids. A sign of the times.
The "Towercam" at the top of the Mt. Wilson solar observatory tower captured this image tonight. The facility's Internet connection had been broken for several days having been burned out by an intentionally-set backfire. Tonight the Observatory remains under threat but the degree of danger is believed to be lower now than in recent days. Mt. Wilson is, among other things, the place where Edwin Hubble did much of his groundbreaking work. It is also a modern astronomical research center. The situation is being chronicled in a blog by Mt. Wilson personnel. Image: "Towercam," UCLA Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; quality adjusted by JG.
The first week of September saw Earth's Moon and Jupiter in a slow nightly dance across the sky. At first Jupiter trailed the waxing Moon; the week ended with Jove leading. This picture was shot the night of September 1 from the Observatory's back yard. Light just above the trees is light pollution from a nearby small town.
Today is my day to go to work late. Last night was a lovely clear night. I had the time and energy. I had this morning to rest up. So I went to the Observatory last night and wound up staying til almost midnight! Typical of me, I didn't get to bed until close to 2 AM and then pretty much woke at 5:00. Nap? Nope! I went to Hinckley Lake –it was a beautiful morning– ran an errand, and did my laundry. I'll probably crash later (at work, of course) but it was totally worth it. I saw the brilliant waxing gibbous Moon in great detail last night and Earthbound glories this morning. You have to enjoy times like these when you can for you never know whether they'll come again.
I was intrigued by the trailers I'd been seeing for the animated feature film, Coraline. We sat down to view the DVD we'd borrowed from the library and were quickly enthralled by the picture. She Who Must Be Obeyed was completely drawn in by the spooky –even scary– nature of the fantasy tale. I very much enjoyed the story, yes, but the look, sound, and feel of the film kept me smiling throughout. Traditional pen and ink film 2D animation is pretty much gone, replaced by computer generated images. Depending upon the studio and makers, 2D art may not suffer and it surely helps having machines generate the tweens. Stop motion animation has also gone largely to silicon-rendered 3D imagery. There's often something missing from stop-motion's 3D substitute, however, and it's hard to put your finger on just what it is. Though I've been a longtime fan of Pixar Animation Studios' wondrous works –dating back to when I saw Luxor Junior at an animation festival– I've retained an admiration for the craftsmanship and the art of handmade stop motion films. Coraline, while it incorporates some CGI, is basically hand-crafted, old-school stop motion and it is beautiful, raised to exceptional levels of quality. We purchased the Collectors Edition DVD package at a local store so that we could have the bonus features and were so very glad we did. The disc presents the how-it-was-done details I really wanted to see. Far from spoiling the fantasy, the "making-of" documentary deepened my appreciation for what Laika Enertainment had done in their first feature film. The level of detail in the animated figures and their sets is astounding. It's wonderful to know Laika's out there making films this way and I hope to see more from them. I highly recommend Coraline to a wide range of audiences including fans of fantasy, weirdly creepy stories, and animation. I do not recommend this film for small children as they will be frightened.
I upgraded my PC last night. The Dell OptiPlex GX620 now sports 3 gigabytes (GB) of memory and a second hard drive that has {gasp!} 325* GB of storage space. The C: (boot) drive remains in place with its 80 GB. I could almost hear my PC sigh with relief as it adjusted to the roominess.
Disk space was running short. Just before the upgrade there was only 21 percent free space on that single hard drive. That's getting to the point where crowding is felt.
Fortunately all seems to have gone well. I'm not certain the internal frame was intended for two hard drives but I was able to mount, securely enough, the new Western Digital HDD into the system. There were available SATA data and power hookups. The drive was not, however, visible to Windows XP when I started the system. I reopened the case, checked all connections, and then it occurred to me that there might be something the matter in BIOS. It turns out I actually had to enable the second drive in BIOS. Once that was done, everybody was happy. I toddled off to bed leaving the system formatting the new disk, something that took probably a couple of hours.
The whole thing was necessitated by digital photography. The new DSLR adds about 16 megabytes (MB) per RAW image I shoot, and I'm trying to switch to shooting only RAW. Even with reliable online backup from Mozy, I worry about loss of my burgeoning image collection. Though I haven't looked at them in years, I don't worry about the drawer of photographic negatives I generated in my time as a professional photographer. I'll also be moving files around on the PC in preparation for a "clean" install of Windows 7 this fall. Having your data on a physically separate hard drive is a good thing when you're planning on wiping out everything else!
Hmmm…. I wonder how many terabytes of data those negatives represent!
* I'm not a big fan of hyper-sized hard drives as I believe they are at greater risk for problems. The new drive was actually the lowest-capacity desktop model I could find on the shelf at Best Buy! Terabyte and half-terabyte models were the most common.
Our little town's annual festival ends with fireworks. Last year we had grandstand seats from our own balcony. This year the fireworks were moved to a new site and when the display began I had to move too! I briskly carried my tripod-mounted camera up the hill about a quarter-mile until I spied a parking area with a clear view of the air bursts. I greeted the people standing there, plunked down my tripod, and started shooting with the EOS 50D. I got many pleasing shots of the aerial display but this — oooh! ahhh! — is among my favorites. Looks a bit like subatomic particle collisions. Nice end to my weekend even if I didn't go to the festival and get cotton candy as I'd hoped. For those who may be wondering: 200mm lens, ISO 100, 3 sec., f/11.
It was a mostly-cloudy and cool day, only about 70F degrees. After a quiet Sunday morning at home, we decided to explore a park we'd not visited before — Plum Creek Park in the Medina County Park District. The park is located at the edge of the sprawling suburban city of Brunswick and immediately adjacent to residential areas. Exploring the earthen paths through the park's woodlands, however, you'd never know you were so close to "civilization." The woods were lovely, dark, and deep, as the poet wrote. We didn't see much in the way of woodland fauna. We did see deeply green mosses, interesting fungi, tree bark of various textures, and enjoyed an invigorating stroll over the rolling woodland floor. She carried her newish Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot camera and I my new Canon EOS 50D SLR for its first outing in the real world.
With the canopy of trees overhead and thick clouds above that, it was dark along the path. I shot a good number of photos and had some good results. Many shots, however, just didn't make it. Between the difficult conditions and learning the new camera, quite a few shots were exposed poorly or were not in good focus. There's much yet to learn, but I know it's me and not the camera! Except….
That darned 17-40mm wide-angle zoom lens continues to disappoint. I won't give up on it til I can try it stopped down to a decent aperture but I'm unimpressed –disappointed, really– with what I'm seeing. I had hoped the new camera body might provide better results than the little Digital Rebel XT did with this glass. Nope. {sigh}
UPDATE: It is beginning to appear the "software" problems I was having were not so much the fault of Photoshop CS4 as they were Photoshop's issues with my video/chipset drivers. I was able to open and edit a couple of photos after updating the drivers (Dell-modified Intel drivers). It's not all cleared up as PS crashed whilst I was saving an edited image. At least it appears we're headed in the right direction. Then there's learning to work effectively with RAW files….
I've been pouring more resources into my photography lately, encouraged by some of the results I've been getting. I even have a small show coming up in October! After much (agonizing) thought and consideration I was able to purchase a new camera body to try and expand my grasp. The new "baby" is a big, fat Canon EOS 50D. It feels great in my hand and the shutter has such a smooth feel and sound it will be a pleasure to use. There is much to learn about features but I seem to be picking it up quick.
I made a few test shots around the house this afternoon including the one below… a bright red, ripe bell pepper hanging from a plant set out by She Who Must Be Obeyed. The afternoon was dreary and the pepper was shaded somewhat by the balcony railing and the plant's own leafs. Still, this 50mm macro view is darned nice for a handheld test. Tonight I ran the ISO all the way up to 3,200 and shot an image of the clock and plain, cream-colored wall on which it hangs. Image noise was easy to see but much better than my little Digital Rebel XT might manage… if it could reach 3,200. The picture of the clock was good and sharp under high magnification. I'm sure the camera could do quite well under dim lighting conditions especially where darkness will hide some of the "grain." I'm sure this camera and I will have a very good time together.
The only problem so far has been not the camera but my new, upgraded version of Adobe Photoshop. I got it installed but it has a tendency to crash… often! It's CS4 and has many features I was looking forward to using. I guess I'll be on the phone next week with Adobe support to see if I can fix it. Blah!
By the way, one of the peppers from Her plant was incorporated into a lovely, spicy Indonesian noodle dish this evening. Quite scrumptious.
PhotonStopper 