September 12, 2014 #139 - New Camera

My Canon EOS T1i bit the dust after many great days of providing sterling service. This was my first DSLR after using film with a Canon F1 from the early 1970's. I still have the F1 and just like my old tobacco pipe have periodic yearnings to pick it back up again after 40 years or so. To scratch my photographic itch, I purchased a Canon 70D Body and began the long learning curve to become proficient with the camera that wants to be a computer.

In my later years I have forsaken the darkroom. Instead of chemicals, negatives, and photo paper under red lights, I now work with a 64 bit processor, learning digital processing. RawTherapee is my processing program of choice. It's one of the best free Raw Processors I've tried, but it's not for the faint of heart. Most Raw programs deliver excellent results but mastering them takes much effort.

We are now on the shores of Lake Superior and just beginning our 6th. year of travel on the road, hauling several telescopes, in search of dark skies.

On the evening of 9/11 I used the 70D to catch the moon rise over the lake. The combination of the nearly full moon, water, and broken clouds held my awe for almost 3 hrs. before the 40 degree temp entered my bones.

 Clear Sky - Rich

December 16, 2008 #066 - First Lunar Eclipse

As I was watching the full moon rise a couple of days ago, old memories began to float to the top and burst open like bubbles in a brook. It is always amazing to me what our minds retain of our early lives, hidden below the surface, waiting for the proper eddy to bring them up. For some reason that seems to occur more and more often these days. Dare I say old age.

Anyway, I remembered that a childhood friend "Bob" and I began a project in art class during early grade school that consumed many days of work. We decided to draw and color a 36" map of the moon. The teacher supplied us with a large white poster board to produce our masterpiece on. Remember, this is many years before the space age. We worked diligently drawing and coloring in craters, rills, seas, and mountains. What inspired this project is not clear anymore, maybe a lunar map in the back of an atlas of the earth or a magazine article photo in possibly Look, Life, or the Saturday Evening Post. We completed it over the coarse of many art class periods and it was quite impressive for a couple of young budding space science students. After completion it was hung in the class room by our teacher for the rest of the year. When summer vacation came we had a problem. How to divide one artwork by two boys. Being best friends we compromised and each kept it a month. Over the years it fell into disuse as boyhood things do, and one of our mothers probably decided to clean our rooms and the moon was lost.

This memory lead to another. A year or so later Bob and I decided to watch our first lunar eclipse. My parents had just purchased an old farm house, their dream home. No more rentals with Dad fixing the landlords properties for rent credit. It was a great place out in the country for astronomy. We rode the school bus home Friday evening and set up my Edmund 3" reflector for our observations late in the evening Saturday night. It was clear and cold with about an inch of snow. There was an old fuel platform out behind the smokehouse. This had once held a metal tank secured for gravity flow of fuel to the farm equipment. We decided that was our observatory. I can not explain why it was any better than on the ground!

Two boys went to bed that night but didn't sleep much. In anticipation we were up well in advance of the start of the event, bundled in heavy clothes. As the eclipse progressed we eagerly watched, one at the eyepiece and one eyeballing the moon and then switching places. Every once in awhile we would go inside to warm up. We survived the night on mutual excitement and eyes full of wonder at the moons changing aspect and seeing the earths shadow move through space. We were two tired boys when Bob's parents came to get him at the end of the weekend, but we had seen our eclipse!

NOVEMBER 18, 1956

Clear Sky - Rich

December 14, 2008 #064 - Amazing Full Moon

I hope you went out and took a look at the amazing full moon last night. This full moon was close to it's orbital perigee and as such was the closest, largest diameter, and brightest in about 15 years. I watched it rise through the woods to the east of our house until it cleared the last of the branches and floated into the clear sky.

As I left for work at 3:15 am the sky was hazy which dimmed it's overall brightness. A half hour later I was standing where I had an unobstructed view for miles in every direction. It was at an altitude of about 15 degrees past the zenith. A ring appearing to have a faint rainbow hue with a wall thickness the same as the moon's diameter circled it at 23 degrees. Contained within this ring were six stars near mag 3 or brighter. I stood and took in this beautiful view for a while. There are some rewards for going to work at this time of the morning!


Clear Sky - Rich

August 19, 2008 #033 - Moon Gazing

I was awake at 3:30 am this morning. One of those times when you awake and can't find sleep again. I decided to take a walk outside as the moon, just a few days past full, was casting shadows in the yard. The sky was clear but few stars were bright enough to overcome our impressive satellite. The Big Dipper and the Queens Chair were visible in the north but the stars of the Little Dipper were hard to discern. Brilliant Jupiter had set in the west. Not a good night for anything but Lunar Walking either with a telescope or a stroll through the yard. A few hours later as I was driving to work I noticed the moon was about 35 degrees above the western horizon, again very clear and trying to compete with the sun, up for about an hour and a half. I was drawn to something that I have not noticed before. There was a distinct impression of the moon appearing three dimensional to the naked eye, much as it appears through an optical instrument. What was interesting was the fact that I didn't observe this effect during the night when the sky was monochrome. I have never seen anything in print about this effect so I speculate it may be a result of color, the bluish illumination which surrounds and colors the darker features which produces this effect. If anyone else has read anything on this, I would be interested in hearing about it.

Clear Sky - Rich