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Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Star Gazing
I mentioned previously that this is an interesting week to look at the night sky. Tonight was particularly good because
both the space shuttle Atlantis (STS-117) and the international space station (ISS) flew over around twenty past nine. The shuttle undocked the day before yesterday or so, so it was following the ISS
in the same basic orbital path.
Right on time, a bright spec appeared in the sky. This is the ISS. This photo is looking roughly NW from Robbin's Farm Park in Arlington. The ISS is approaching having just appeared.
Not to be outdone, the shuttle follows. This photo was taken almost directly up. On this particular path, both craft
traveled basically directly overhead. The direction of travel is up. The upper trail is the ISS and the lower trail is the
shuttle.
You may notice that the photos get darker from first to last. The first photo was shot to the northwest, the last to
the southwest. The reason is simply that as the shuttle/ISS moved through the sky, they were moving away from sunset.
The reason I went to Robbin's Farm Park is that if you stand on the top of the hill there and look at the Boston Skyline,
both the ISS and STS should fly over the town. And they did. But clouds and atmospheric interference got in the way of a skyline
shot. Before they disappeared, though, I got one more shot of them flying away. In this shot, the lower trail is the ISS and
the upper trail is the STA.
So I'm packing up to leave and someone walks over and says, with an aire of wonder, "how did you know
to be here?"
This is the kind of question that drives me absolutely crazy. Look, if you are taking a pleasant stroll through
Robbin's Farm Park on a nice spring evening and you encounter a half-dozen stargazers with binoculars and cameras, what reaction
do you have? My reaction is, "I wonder what they're here to see."
Anyway, I answered rather abruptly, "NASA".
Then I realised I was being a bit mean. "They have a web site," I said.
"Oh, NASA has a web site?" came the reply.
Time to go home.
Once in a Blue Moon
OK, I've talked, complained and generally beaten to death the subject of taking pictures of the moon, and yet I was strangely compelled to address it again this week. Why? The answer
is simple: astro-photography. This is a really interesting week to look at the night sky if you are in the New England area.
First of all, the moon is a beautiful crescent right now and it is setting during the extended period of twilight that is developing as summer approaches. That means the contrast conditions are also quite good.
But there is another catch: the space shuttle and international space station. Kara and I saw the two, docked, fly over
the Boston area a few nights ago and it was spectacular even with the naked eye. It's really, really bright. In the Boston
area, there are several more passed that will be visible before the shuttle lands.
Last night was a two pass night, so I took the camera and tripod and headed off to try to catch a photo of this event.
Unfortunately, it was too cloudy. But I did take the opportunity to get a basic, solid shot of a crescent moon. Enjoy.
The other thing about this story is that whilst researching where to look in the sky and so forth, I came
across NASA's Science site, which I hadn't seen before. From there, I learned that I had just missed the blue moon.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
ManTown®
I have this friend named K. OK, that's not his full name, but it kindof is. Anyway, that's not the point. K lives in
western Massachusetts in the beautiful town of Worthington. Now, I'd go and visit K even if his house wasn't sort of exactly 3/7 of the way to Rochester, New York. However, on this
particular day, since I was traveling to Rochester, I decided to stop in with the family for a visit. OK, we called
first. Maybe sent email a few days before.
Now, one of the things I love about K is that he has a way with things. It's hard to explain, he just does. Words too.
I mean, he has a way with words too. Anyway, once the pleasantries were over with and such, K had to show us his favorite
part of the house: ManTown®.
Please note the disco ball in the upper right corner. That is for DiscoTown®, of course.
K is a chef, amongst other things and put together an awesome barbque for us. It was a really hot day and the flies were
swarming, so we decided to eat in man town. K was very proud to set the table saw for us and we had hot dogs and hamburgers
and such.
OK, so while we're all eating lunch in ManTown®, let me tell you a story about K. K lost an eye years back in an accident.
I wanted to see if there would be a marked difference in the appearance of his eyes as seen with my infrared camera. K was
game (he reads the blog from time to time and knew about the infrared camera). Unfortunately, the difference was pretty much
the same as in visible light, at least in the photo I took. So I took a few other photos with the infrared camera, including
this, of K's driveway.
K has a fair amount of property as you can see, and his backyard is full of butterflies, mostly Western Tiger Swallowtails. I spent about ten minutes chasing them around the backyard trying to get a nice, sharp photo of one. The photo below is
not a very good specimen, but I did manage to capture a nice sharp image. The really nice ones had beautiful blue circles
near the 'tail' of the wing, but this guy is a little ragged.
By the way, if you ever need to identify a butterfly, Discover Life has a way cool method for doing it.
Oh yeah, there's another picture below the butterfly. K took that photo. You know, there's a
really interesting story that might occur really shortly involving that picture, so you might want to stay tuned.
ManTown® and DiscoTown® are registered trademarks of, well, K.
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