The Ghostly Light of the Pleiades

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Oh, Halloween.    What a fun holiday!   Kids, costumes and candy.  Spooky-scary fun for all!

I know some folks get uptight about this Holiday, relating it to Devil Worship, for the narrow-minded or at best, Paganism.    Pfft.   Its an astronomical holiday!  Sure, it relates back to the festival of Samhain in Celt and Druidic culture.  If you think about it, many of our holidays or customs relate back to such festivals and traditions.   Heck the date of Christmas itself probably relates back to Saturnalia.    Jesus wasn't born on December 25th.

Most holidays, when you think about it are astronomical in origin, as they related to the Solstices or other astronomical movements.   Without "America's Got Talent", "Dancing with the Stars" and Daily (Bad) News Broadcasts, folks spent much more time watching the sky than most of us.

Building tales around the movement and stories of the objects in the sky was a thing in those days.   As I understand one story behind the Pleiades is that they were seven sisters.   One day the Hunter Orion noticed them and drunk with lust pursued them across the countryside for 7 years.   Eventually Zeus took pity on them, transforming them into doves and nestling them safely in the sky out of Orion's grasp.

Halloween is the night that the ghostly blue sisters culminate to their highest point in the sky, at midnight.  

Wishing you and yours a safe and fun Halloween! 

 

NEO Astrophotography Experiment - The Moon as Seen by an iPhone 6, Lumia 1020 and A7r

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This is very subjective.   Of those below, which image do you prefer?
The moon, as seen by the Sony A7R in Cassegrain Focus (Click here for Full Res)
The moon, as seen by the Lumia 1020 through Eyepiece Projection (Click here for Full Res)
The moon, as seen by the iPhone 6 in Eyepiece Projection (Click here for Full Res)

This mostly applies to near-earth-object photography, the moon, planets, etc.   Deep Sky Photography is a different endeavor, as previously mentioned:  http://www.graffitivisuals.com/blog/2014/9/1/astrophotography-that-mortals-can-understand

I decided to embark on a very unscientific experiment last week.   When I stepped up the primary optical tube a couple months ago, I decided I'd sell my trusty Meade ETX 125 but I'd send it off to have it serviced, first.

It returned last week from a thorough cleaning and inspection and I took it out for one-last-dance to make sure everything is Kosher with it before listing it for sale on Craigslist.

(In fact it is still for sale at the time of this post, anyway.)
http://mobile.craigslist.org/ele/4702647753.html

But, I digress, this is not a commercial :) 

So, the experiment was simple:   Of these few available imaging gadgets, when paired with the Meade ETX 125 which grabbed the best images of the Waxing Gibbous moon?

First, the A7R..    So, the A7r *should* have had a tremendous advantage over the other two methods, simply by being in Cassegrain Focus (shooting prime through the telescope instead of through an eyepiece) and by being a generally kick-ass camera.  

But, it really didn't 'kill it'.   I think a bit of this relates to shutter curtain shake with the A7r when mounted on this smaller telescope.  At preview-size it seems sharp but at full-resolution, you can see some softness, especially in the craters along the bottom-right.  Surprisingly, the f15 shot isn't consistently sharp across the frame, which could very well be the small aperture of the telescope but was a surprising result (to me, anyway) nonetheless.  EFCS (Electronic First Curtain Shutter) would have prevented this softness most likely.

Still, I'm not hating on the A7r.  It is still by far the best camera I've ever used (for my types of photography.)

Next, the Lumia 1020.   The Lumia 1020 *should* also have some powerful advantages.   The 38 effective megapixels, RAW image capability and manual controls in the software and lack of shutter curtain shake *should* make it the stand-out winner.  

I must admit that I really can't stand the Nokia Camera App on Windows 8.x.    Whenever people try to represent a dial-based interface on a touch screen, it seems to turn out bad.  

So, aside from hating the user interface, the Lumia 1020 did give me a nice chunky .dng RAW file to work with.  Still, the Lumia 1020 also seems to loose definition in the craters, even at preview-image sizes and it creates noisy images.    I would be apt to blame some of these shortcomings on the smaller telescope tube but it isn't the tube, it is some combination of sensor and file-processing.  

(these RAW images were not tweaked in Lightroom aside from cropping)

Finally, the iPhone 6.   I will freely admit that when an Apple executive stands on stage and does a keynote, describing advances in photography with terms like "more photons!" or "now with focus pixels" that my general response is, "What the heck is a focus pixel?"  and I throw popcorn at the monitor.   But hey, those people at the fruit-company do make some nice things.

The straight JPEG out of the iPhone is my favorite of this group.   The bits that need clarity and definition (the craters) have it while the bits that need smoothness and uniformity, have it.    Of course, that super-low expanded ISO doesn't hurt.    

The iOS camera app hides the manual features but still gives you the power to do timer-based shooting, batches of shots and makes exposure compensation easy enough.    I wish it gave me a RAW file but that isn't in Apple's philosophy.

... Of course this wasn't a purely scientific approach in that different ISO is used, some were RAW and one was JPEG.  Different exposure times were even used and then there is the whole camera shake bit.  

But, in an anecdotal test of being out with the telescope and wondering, "hey which one of these will be best suited for near-earth-object astrophotography?", I was a little surprised by the results, personally.

Which result would YOU choose?

The Coming Squirrel-pocalypse

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Like any war, someone had to fire the first shot.   In the war of the Dodd family versus the squirrels, the squirrels fired first.    

It was more than a shot, heard 'round the neighborhood, it was an invasion.

They came in from all sides, unexpectedly.   At first, we were not sure of their intentions until they struck.   it started with a pool-net and quickly progressed to other summer-time toys in the yard. 

Their appetite for destruction was like a dark wave that passed over our community in the hot September evenings.  

 As they began to walk the gutter-line seeking the breach the attic perimeter, something had to be done.  At last we decided to fight back.   In the end it was about hearts-and-minds, about propaganda.  

I sighted in the scope on my Ruger Talon .177 pellet gun.  It had been years since I had brandished the weapon in shooting sports with the Boy Scouts but it came back to me quickly.   Frankly I was pleasantly surprised in the accuracy @ 50 yards on par with my .223 AR15 and the recoil even less than my 9mm HK94 MP5.  

(Those other weapons seemed a bit of overkill, however.)

A 11" x 14" target was left near the picnic table.   Riddled with holes, it left a clear message that this destruction would not be tolerated.  

This weekend, the squirrel nation sent an emissary to negotiate a lasting peace.   While negotiations are ongoing, we are hopeful this bitter conflict will come to an end before lives are lost.

:) 

Horsehead Nebula

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This is what the Horsehead Nebula looked like, 1,500 years ago (from last weekend).

I wonder what it looks like now?

Imagine there were habitable planets around any of these stars with intelligent species with the capability to look into the stars.   If they looked at the third planet from our star and saw our ancestors from 1,500 years ago, what would they think of us?

The Mayans were doing well for themselves but brutal sacrifice and inequality were a cultural norm.

The people of Constantinople would be rioting about now, the result of a blockade by a Byzantine General, Vitalian.

Christendom is at war with Islam and in some smaller clashes, at war with itself.   The formerly Roman provinces of Britain begins to be divided among Anglo-Saxon Warlords in the beginnings of their Feudal Periods.

If the inhabitants of a planet, circling a star within the Horsehead Nebula could see us from their world, they would have seen Human Sacrifice, War, Famine and conquests driven by religious ideology. 

1,000 years before the Renaissance, humans were even bigger assholes than we are today..  It wasn’t our finest hour.  

Still by this Period, Ancient India had gotten pretty good at Astronomy and early philosophers had started to figure some things out based on observation.    1000 years before Giordano Bruno, folks were still regarding the points of light in our sky with supernatural wonder.

I'm still learning the ropes and dealing with technical problems with my secondhand QHY imager.     This was made through 4 5 minute exposures with a manual filter wheel, Baader Planetarium 2" Filters.  I calibrated them with 3 dozen calibration frames of equal exposure.

At some point during the process, the temperature wasn't holding very well on the imager, so I started getting anomalous heat-related inconsistencies that I tried to smooth in Lightroom.

Night / Fair

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Baldwin County's Fair is in Town
 
This year they appear to have gone with a new Amusement Vendor. I was always quite partial to the layout of the old fair from a stuff-photography perspective. It was dark and made for fun long exposure shots of rides. The placement of the rides made it easy to get great shots..
 
That being said, this year's fair-company seems different in some ways that I believe fair-goers will appreciate. For one, the grounds are considerably brighter, which makes for a safer-feeling environment. I noticed handheld photography was quite possible as reasonable ISO settings.
 
One huge improvement - I didn't notice cables pulled everywhere along the grounds like I have with previous years.
 
I think I struggled a bit this year finding cool shots while we walked around but I think all things considered fair-goers seemed to enjoy the new digs.
 
I do miss the photography opportunities of the gigantic rope-swing-thing, though.
 
..And as you can see I did take a little time to Fly around the grounds to get some aerial video. I normally don't fly our camera drones in potentially crowded spots.
 
I have plenty of confidence in my ability to fly it reliably but I do not wish to in any way contribute to the hyperbole associated with camera / quad copters in the public eye.
 
If you notice, I chose a rather unpopulated time to do the aerial work.
 
Plus I never actually flew directly over the fair / so no chance of a crashing quad interfering with ride safety.

Go Outside, Look Up

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I don't think we do this enough.   Just go outside and look up (especially at night).

On this our first night of autumnal equinox, our first night of fall, the humidity is lower and it's quite comfortable out.  When I was a kid, we grew up on ten acres amidst a forestry in Indiana.  

The phone-quality for my 300 baud modem wasn't so hot but our night skies were pretty epic.  So epic, in fact many of my parent's friends swore to have had a number of 'close encounters' with other-worldly beings in flying frisbees.    It freaked me out a little but I also kinda realized they were on drugs.  So, there's that, too.

When we moved in Alabama, it isn't that our skies are all that different but our small subdivision had plenty of light pollution from the surrounding neighborhoods and near by football stadium.    Not the place to stargaze. 

(But, the modem speeds were faster! - a whopping 14,400kps if I disabled error correction.   (ATN0 on my USR Dual Standard modem - not the full 28,800 but a good speed, nonetheless)

We built a small house on 2 acres with significantly improved skies.   Then, a neighborhood came to occupy the 40 acre farmland across the street.   Some good folks moved in (at first) but the stargazing did diminish.

At our current place, the lots are about an Acre with plenty of trees.  To the South is a retail area, Bass Pro Shops and some Malls.  To the North, not much but other neighborhoods, lots of hills and plenty of Civil War history. So, as I go out on the back deck and look up, tonight, I'm happy to see what is pictured here.  A pretty decent night sky!

I can get by with Planetary imaging here.   For deep sky stuff, the objects need to be high in the sky and towards the North or I will need to go camping.

Which brings me to my question.  What's your favorite stargazing site?   Is it somewhere that won't mind the presence of my tent and telescopes this winter?

Delta Sunshine

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At one point, last year around this time, I had three drones. They were named Alvin, Simon and Theodore. ;)

Alvin(a heavily modified Phantom), went for a swim in the bay towards the left side of this shot, Simon (A FlameWheel 550 HexRotor) found a new owner on eBay.

That leaves Theodore, who so far has been quite the trusty little quadcopter :) 30 minute flight time, FPV Goggles makes filming an enjoyable experience.

I'm not really thrilled with flying any of these around people, so I'm excited that the summer-tourist season is over and take back to the air.

I found one other, sort of silly use for Theodore. I was flying down the gutter-lines of the house to see if they needed to be clean. The prop-wash effectively removed all of the loose debris in the gutters.

.. Gutter cleaning by drone. I can see the hyperbolic news cycle, now..

Beach Day

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Had a nice time in Orange Beach & Gulf Shores today with the family.  It had been too long since we had last made our way to the epic beaches in Orange Beach.

(Since I don't work in Orange Beach anymore, I have less opportunity to spend time on the beaches with my cameras.)

Speaking of cameras.   This is that silly little iPhone 6 camera again.   I have to say, for a camera on a phone, it is quite an impressive combination of software and hardware.

The burst mode, is a parents dream.   The built-in in-camera app editing features have gotten much stronger since I was last in the IOS camp, as well.

Staring at the Sun

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I imagine for the early people on our rock, the change of seasons and the movement of the sun, moon and stars across the sky really was quite scary.  

No one told them not to stare in the sun, at least not formally, they just somehow knew - maybe through experience, that it was a bad idea.   

No sunscreen but I suppose sufficient quantity of mud and leaves provided a high enough SPF level to prevent burns on some.    

Meanwhile, the sun seemingly flopped back and fourth through the sky day after day, unaware that the silly people on the 3rd planet had anthropomorphized it into some kind of vengeful deity that was hungry for sacrifice.

What's a giant plasma ball of hydrogen and helium gonna do?