dr_phil_physics: (a-man-in-the-moon)
For twenty plus years we've been in West Michigan, I cannot tell you how often the West Michigan weather has conspired against me seeing anything of an astronomical nature (DW) (LJ). So with a lunar eclipse coming up this morning with the setting Moon and the rising Sun -- it seemed impossible. Still, Mrs. Dr. Phil had a workshop at GVSU today, so we got up at the normal work time. And at 6:40am, I was able to peek out the bedroom window and lo and behold, there was a chunk of the Moon missing.

Even better, it turned out that the neighbors to the west didn't seem to be in the way. Now it was a race between the darkening Moon and the Sun coming up as the Moon went down.

Once I was assembled for the day, with the leg brace and all, I dragged out the heavy duty Nikon D1H. It goes up to 1600 ISO sensitivity -- and not too bad in color. More importantly, the 24-120mm f3.5-5.6G VR AF-NIKKOR. At 120mm (180mm FX equivalent) that's the longest lens I have right now with VR Vibration Reduction. I ended up shooting at 1/20th of a second and 1/25th. The heavier mass of the D1H over the D100 adds to the stability. No point in putting on the 70-300mm non-VR or the giant 200-600mm f9.5 AIs Zoom-NIKKOR (DW) (LJ), without a tripod.

The significance of VR is that the usual thumb of rule states that the slowest handheld shutter speed you can hand hold is 1/(focal length), so that should be 1/120th of a second for a 120mm lens. We're roughly 2½ f-stops slower than that here, with the lens wide open. But this lens promises 2-3 stops of extra stability with the little "jiggle" elements in the VR system, compensating for the movement of my hand. I could have set the D1H to HI-2 (6400 ISO) and gained two shutter speeds, but the cost due to noise in the image wasn't something I wanted to try. Someday I'll spring for a D3 or D4 FX fullframe or a later generation DX digital camera which work better at high ISOs -- But This Is Not That Day.

(Long ago, I was the master of "available darkness" handholding, and 1/20th of a second at 120mm would have been no real problem -- one or two out of four shots should have been usable. Alas, between my leg and less stamina, I cannot hold that steady any more. I'm always shocked when I look at the EXIF data from shots with either of my VR lenses and see "how low I can go" and get great or acceptable images.)


Picture 4. Leaning on side of garage, looking just south of west. 120mm 1/25th sec f5.6, tweaked focus manually. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)


Inset of full size version above at 300%. With the full moon at max totality some time later -- unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are slow and long -- you would not see this configuration of light and dark at this hour just at sunrise. As an interesting aside, TIME Magazine was running a live stream of the lunar eclipse, and the images from the Australian observatory were reversed. As they should be. (Turn your head upside down to know why. I am not talking about the normal telescope reversal, they had already corrected for that.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

I did no corrections to the images -- no brightness, contrast or color adjustments. One thing I did do was switch the meter from centerweighted to spot. Probably the first time I've used any of the Nikons so equipped in spot mode (F4s, Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n, D1, D1X, D1H, D100).

These are not great pictures, but they are the first time I've tried to take a lunar eclipse picture with a modern camera ever. Lens too short, only a 2.7MP image, a lot of noise at 1600 ISO from a first generation DSLR. But I got the picture. Yay me.

Here's the rest of the set:


Picture 1. All the first three were at 1/20th of a second and 120mm, autofocus. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)


Picture 2. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)


Picture 3. (Click on photo for larger.)
©2015 Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon (All Rights Reserved)

Anyway, given that most of the show happened later, below the horizon, I am pretty pleased to have been up, dressed and equipped on an early Saturday morning and had anything to show for it.

Dr. Phil
Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal
dr_phil_physics: (massive-stars-carina-nebula)
Night Vision

Every night before I go to bed I take a seat in the bathroom and look up into the sky from the gap between the blinds and the cafe curtains. This being Michigan, many nights I don't see a damn thing due to gray overcast skies. But in February I was pleased to see something recognizable -- Castor and Pollux of the constellation Gemini.

The Twins.

The Eyes of the Night. ***

When Spring Break came, the combination of staying up later and the rotation of the Earth took away my nightly viewing. But then break ends, the DST2007 law comes into play and suddenly the last few nights I have my bright points of light in my little sliver of sky.

Nice.

Dr. Phil

*** The name comes from the near human spacing of the Twins. It is as if the night sky is looking into your soul.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
dr_phil_physics: (massive-stars-carina-nebula)
The History of the World in Two Hours
History Channel, Thursday 6 October 2011, 9-11pm EDT

An ambitious project, given all of history in two hours, especially when you start at the Big Bang and spend the first 14 minutes or so doing cosmology and the creation of the world. But part of the logic is that the makeup of the universe in part controls what elements and materials are available and in what scarcity. Copper is three elements past Iron in the Periodic Table. That means that like everything past Iron it cannot be built up in the cores of stars by fusion alone -- it can only be created in the fury of supernova explosions. So advancing from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age not only made stronger materials, but more common ones.

So what is civilization? What does civilization move around the globe from peoples to peoples? Apparently it's dark magenta smoke. (grin) At least they used smoke trails snaking through the Silk Road and crossing the Atlantic, billowing from the sacks on camels, pouring out of smoke stacks, etc. But... all kidding aside, the metaphor is a good one.

I suppose one could criticize the animations of representations of morphing and construction and development, which might give some people the wrong idea. They get shown repeatedly in recapitulations to remind the viewer of their point, probably because they really are trying to create a coherent and complicated weaving together of facts and influences. Images get inlaid and expanded in things like the representation of the Big Bang and expansion -- again, a metaphor rather than literal. And for my tastes the space program and modern communications and computers get short shrift. But given that they don't get to the 20th century until 14 minutes left, there's only so much you can include.

After all 14 minutes was enough to cover the first 10 billion years of history. (double-grin)

So Who's This Good Looking Guy?



This is our friend Craig Benjamin. Transplanted Aussie, professor at Grand Valley State University and the most energetic True Renaissance Man that I know. He teaches, among other things, a History course which covers this whole scope of the Universe sort of thing. And he's one of the talking heads used in this show.

We knew he'd worked on this project, but Mrs. Dr. Phil found out during a noontime water aerobics session today when Craig was in the pool that it was on tonight -- which is why I didn't get a chance to post advance warnings out there. But I think it'll be run again on the History Channel.

It's a cool show. And it's so very cool to know somebody who's in it! Thanks, Craig! I wish we could spend more time talking... about everything.

Dr. Phil
dr_phil_physics: (jodie-foster-vla)
Just A Small Planet In A Big, Big Universe

Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] jaylake, here's a link to a remarkable fisheye + wide angle sky image of the Parkes radio observatory in Australia, from APOD -- the Astronomy Photo of the Day. I should go to that site every day, and do when I'm teaching an Astronomy course, but I fear filling my hard drives with all the great and wonderful high res pictures they have. (grin) But this is the current wallpaper on my home computer:



Already A Star

Parkes Observatory, you may remember, was the location of the lovely 2000 Australian film The Dish, about Parkes' role in receiving the signals from the Apollo 11 moon landing. Among other things, it's a nice movie about how scientists work.

Dr. Phil
dr_phil_physics: (writing-winslet-1)
Ticking Off The End Of Semester Tasks

The Final Exam for PHYS-1060 was back on Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Friday, had people coming in to take late Finals and very late Exams 2 or 3. Amazing what studying for a final can do to give a good result in a regular exam. (grin) Maybe I should give the Final Exam first. (evil-grin)

Most of the quizzes processed. I still have a few I have to input into the spreadsheet.

That leaves the papers.

Of Course Now I'm Sick

Everybody else, it seems, came down with H1N1 or whatever during the semester and amazingly I did fine. And now that I've had both seasonal and H1N1 vaccines, now I come down with... well, something. Mainly it's a sore throat, sometimes a dry tickle that makes me cough. Some sinus clogginess, but I've been able to breathe and smell (and taste), so go figure. Haven't felt particularly fevery. Tired and achy from time to time. You know, like when you're sick.

The Final Grind

Friday I got the Finals back from the Scantron center, entered them, put in a curve and then did my "Bad Test Day Rule" magic for those who blew one of the hour exams, but pulled back up for the final.

So what I mainly have left to do is read the hundred and twenty odd science literacy book-or-movie reports. The class roster grading sheet I printed is some 2 pages plus. First objective met and the short page 3 is done. Need to put real damage in page 2 tonight and page 1 on Sunday. Grades are due on Tuesday at noon. Complicating things are that some company is coming in for a day or two. I've bought online tickets to the 3:30pm showing of Avatar in 3D IMAX on Monday for all of us. It should be spectacular, if nothing else. (grin)

Still, I'm pretty happy one to have the one class this semester. It makes all this endgame stuff so much easier.

All this means I'm likely to be scarce for the next couple of days in terms of new long posts.

Dr. Phil

School Starts

Wednesday, 9 September 2009 00:27
dr_phil_physics: (wmu-logo)
Road Traffic Up

Tuesday was the first day of public schools in Michigan -- they set up a law the other year to help out the tourist industry over Labor Day -- and also the first day of classes at WMU. Though I missed driving through any of the School Zones with their restricted speed limits, definitely the case that there was a lot of traffic on the roads today.

On the news last night was a story about a horrific fiery crash on I-196 over Chicago Drive in Grandville, right in the construction zone. Semi-truck filled with pies versus a Chevy Tahoe. People with fire extinguishers managed to save one of the two in the Tahoe. Most of the damage on I-196 was at the road's edge and they'd put up some concrete barriers to patch where the guardrails had been. Scary. Actual Michigan Labor Day weekend death toll down two from 2008.

Jerks

Sometimes you're driving along and you can see a spray engulfing a vehicle and you realize that it's running its windshield washers. So this morning, there's this silver Honda sedan which had passed me -- 70mph not being sufficient apparently -- and there was a huge spray on just the right side. About half a minute later it happened again. And again.

And I realized that there was a hand coming out of the right passenger window. And though they were ahead of me by quite a bit, I was getting a bit of spray on my windshield... and the unmistakeable smell of coffee. The bastards were dumping coffee -- a lot of coffee -- out the damned window in traffic at 70+mph.

What the hell is wrong with people? I don't even drink coffee!

Damn, The Students Are Back

Yeah, I know, that's a terrible attitude. But look at it from my perspective. It's tough coming back to the full regular semester after the summer. The Everett-Rood parking lot was FULL. Stuffed. No spaces left. There are not that many faculty with "R" stickers for those spaces. But the students know that they don't crack down and start towing for a week or two. So rather than park in the student places, they fill in the faculty spaces like mad. Eventually it will settle down, but it's stupid season right now.

Talked with a Parking Services Public Safety officer, who was busy writing tickets. He says that student infamously get indignant when told they can't park there and write letters to the President. "'Cause we paid our money!" Well, actually, you paid part of the cost of your classes. You didn't actually pay to park in those spaces, because they aren't for sale. "But can't you old fuddyduds (probably not the word in vogue today) just park elsewhere?" Sure, but we're old fuddyduds. And we're bringing stuff back and forth from home, because our workday doesn't end when we leave campus. And part of your money is paying me to teach your classes. So what good is all that if I can't get to my office and to our classroom? It's the difference between inconveniencing one person (you) from parking closer to the buildings and inconveniencing 128 people -- me and all my students.

Yay, The Students Are Back

Well, that's a better attitude. It was really quiet last week. And you never know how the first class is going to go, but I thought it went quite well. I have a few diversionary tactics to get everyone's attention in the first five minutes -- get the heart rates going and clear the cobwebs.

The problem with killing the lights in the lecture hall these days is that there's too much ambient light from laptops and cellphones being used. (grin) But my TITANIC model Acme Thunderer whistle wakes everyone up.

Did have some troubles making my syllabus. Twelve pages, a little short for me, but printed as 2-ups and copied double-sided, so I'm not really killing all the trees in North America. But the humidity was running so high that (a) my office LaserJet output got "eaten" by the document feeder on the copier, and I had to peel two pages off its rollers, make one copy of the six pages to get flatter masters. By then I'd lost most of my allotted copying time, so (b) I only had 65 of 130 sets made. Then (c) we ran out in the classroom after the secretary had brought the rest in because (d) the copier had actually jammed up and so the last 20-30 sets weren't actually in the pile. But it worked out in the end.

Ah, the joys of teaching. (double-trouble-grin)

Dr. Phil

Locked Out

Tuesday, 25 August 2009 22:12
dr_phil_physics: (fence-winslet)
Office Hours Today

As I breeze into campus and wander in from the parking lot, I get to the front door of Everett Tower. And it's locked. Huh. Pull out my ID card and swipe it through the card reader -- no joy. Blinked red LED and it beeps at me.

Are they telling me something? Has the disastrous Michigan economy crashed the university?

Just about that time the department chair came out of the side door -- and I was able to snag him. He was surprised that the door was locked at 11:30am, but his ID card did open it. Turns out the office said that the security computer crashed the other day and things have been wonky ever since. And the system seems to delete people in Physics randomly in its database.

So it's not me yet.

Next week it's two office hour days, then after Labor Day it's PHYS-1060 Introduction to Stars and Galaxies on Tuesdays and Thursday -- and sabbatical time the rest of the week. Should be a fun Fall Semester!

A Few More D9 Comments

Over the weekend we saw District 9, and while I gave it a Highly Recommended, I also expressed some concern about some of the ways racism was portrayed. Was this supposed to be part of the film's message? Or too much revealed about the filmmaker?

Well, science fiction/fantasy novelist and professor of creative writing at Chicago State University Nnedi Okorafor came out with a stronger comment which I think is worth reading. Link courtesy of writer [livejournal.com profile] jimhines Jim C. Hines.

And In Honor Of Starting A New Novel

Jim Hines also had a link to a column at SF Novelists he did on That New Manuscript Smell. He encapsulates the love/hate relationship of starting with the blank page very nicely.

Both of my current novels, OAS which just went to the first novel contest and GRV just started, began as short stories, so on Day Zero of the novel there was already something to work with. But I know what he's talking about.

The Gravediggers is turning into a lot of fun after just a couple of days. The original short story is now the basis for Part II, I have a good idea of how Part I will go -- but the real fun is that Part III is turning into something very unexpected. Cool!

Had things not gone so well at the start, I'd be tempted to set it aside and pick a different project. I'm always working on multiple stories, but this sabbatical time is a gift this year and I don't want to waste any of it. (grin) I'm sure I'll be eating these words when I get stalled three weeks from now. (double-jeopardy-grin)

Dr. Phil
dr_phil_physics: (Default)
A Beautiful Fall Day

Driving in to the office today was quite striking. Huge, towering mountains of clouds -- they rapidly alternated between blanketing the sky and allowing brilliant sunshine to light up the world, almost immediately followed by heavy rain squalls. You name it, you got it. And it was still 66°F at 11am! This is the Dog Days of Summer in August?

The Usual Gassy Complaints

Wednesday, when I didn't need gas, it was running at $2.42.9/gal for regular. Thursday and Friday? $2.59.9/gal. So with a sudden 17¢ jump, my 25¢/gal discount from the grocery store was mostly eaten up. Arrgh. And what were they just saying the other day? That crude had dropped below $69/bbl?

Revving Up For Semester 53

Fall 2009 semester starts late this year because Labor Day is so late -- and WMU is actually following the public schools which are required by Michigan state law to open after Labor Day, to help eke out the last tourism dollars -- so classes actually begin on Tuesday 8 September 2009. My PHYS-1060 Introduction to Stars and Galaxies astronomy course is a Tuesday/Thursday course, so the 8th it is! You are supposed to be able to link class webpages to the registration pages. This didn't work the other year, but I decided to give it another try. Unfortunately, as faculty I get a different view than the students, so I don't know if it worked right.

Been getting a steady stream of emails about whether one has to buy the 5th edition of the textbook. Well, actually, yes. Now sometimes I am honest and have pointed out in other classes in other semesters that if they are one or two editions behind, it probably won't hurt them. Most of the introductory physics courses are well-established and I don't teach "out of the book" and I don't assign specific homework problems, so that's all right. But astronomy has been very dynamic, what with the amazing array of new tools, upgrades, methods and theory which has blessed the field, especially since the Hubble Space Telescope first flew. So yeah, the 4th edition won't cut it.

"But I was told in the other class (PHYS-1040) that we'd use the same book!" True, but upon questioning I found you took the course three semester ago, so it wasn't adjacent semesters. Sorry. Buck up and spend the bucks.

Updated a number of class webpages, so things are well set up for Fall. Will work on my authorly webpages at dr-phil-physics.com over the weekend and bring them up to date. If I have the time.

Next Novel

I have an ending to a short story to revise for Abyss & Apex -- I haven't actually officially announced that yet -- so I am planning on starting the second sabbatical novel project on Monday. I think I'm going to spend some time expanding my short story "The Gravediggers" to a novel. This was my first story to appear in print, but as an Honorable Mention in the CrossTIME anthology contest it earned no money. It's 2009, which is 2004 + 5 years, so the short story should be released. But I'd have to rewrite it to bring it up to current 29th century universe specs (grin) and if I have to do that, why not look at the novel length? Note: I haven't actually done anything to the story, just taken the word count as the short story stands.

GRV Project

Due Date: none

Away!

And now I should probably back up my files and pack up for home. Maybe I won't get rained on heading out to the Blazer. (double-trouble-grin)

Dr. Phil
dr_phil_physics: (perfect-winslet)
Second Century B.C.?

You simply have to see this. Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] 14theditch Jeff Ford for the link!

The Antikythera mechanism is a gearworks computer showing the phases of the moon and the location of the planets in a geocentric universe. They used to think it was 1st century B.C., but now they're thinking 2nd century B.C. Either way, it's a thousand years ahead of its time, even if they are thinking it was more of a rich guy's toy than an astronomical tool.

Impressive, young Jedis.

Now For The Speculative Twist

If the Antikythera mechanism is considered to be a thousand years ahead of its time, what piece of tech -- or tech hiding as a toy -- would be something a thousand years ahead of its time today?

For me, it's easy. In my 29th century SF universe we have interstellar travel, accidentally discovered in the 2200s. But even that isn't really a neat little clockwork simulated universe box... (grin)

Dr. Phil
dr_phil_physics: (lifesavers-winslet)
Or Why Facebook Is A Very Strange Place

A friend of ours was listed as having written on The Universe's wall on Facebook. Naturally intrigued, we had to check this out:

1 album
Universe Created about 8 months ago

The Universe wrote on its own wall.
August 14 at 12:40am

The Universe updated its profile. It changed Location.
July 6 at 10:14pm

Universe - 5 new photos
July 6 at 10:09pm

The Universe joined Facebook.
July 6 at 9:55pm


Apparently there is no time Before Facebook. (grin) The Universe is about 8 months old? Huh. And The Universe writing on its own wall? Would that be the Great Wall of Galaxies perchance?

But I particularly liked that in updating its profile, The Universe changed its location.

Facebook. It has a language all its own. Not saying it's right. Not saying it doesn't sound stupid. Just all its own.

Dr. Phil

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