This shot is too good not to pass along. Son Larry is spending a few months in Bisbee, Arizona, this winter and doing a little sight-seeing. Here we have in one view 50 million-year-old rocks, 100 year-old trees, a 57 year-old man, and perhaps a bunch of 20-year-old microwave and cellular towers, all happily coexisting. [...]
From today’s Wall Street Journal: Eastman Kodak Co. is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would cap a stunning comedown for a company that once ranked among America’s corporate titans. It is interesting how certain events seem to mark the ending of an [...]
Since mankind (I refuse to say humankind) has always sliced the inexorable passage of time into four-season packages, and since package #2011 is drawing to a merciful end, and since I now find myself at our Lake of the Ozarks hideaway with time to ponder, please humor me by reading a few public ponderings. When [...]
I might as well ‘fess up. It’s the glitter that gets me. Like that fraud on TV, I just like the heavy feel of a fistful of gold coins. I wish I had more of ‘em. I wish I had the Midas touch, except perhaps when reading Acts 20:33. I remember, back in the 1980s, [...]
For years I have observed a special two-season calendar with my summer starting with major league baseball spring training and ending with the last pitch of the World Series. My second season is “bummer,” which started a week ago on October 29 and will last for another five months or so. (Sigh!) I usually try [...]
I gathered these photons using a newly available telescope located near South Alpen, France. If you’re curious, it’s the center telescope picture here. For my first test of using this large telescope, I exposed “luminance” images of the Pelican Nebula (no color for now). From Wikipedia, The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC5070 and IC5067) [...]
Here is another of my practice images using raw image data generously offered by Jim Misti. One of these days I hope to be acquiring my own photons again. But in the meantime, here is my version of the Andromeda Galaxy, about the size of our Milky Way and on a collision course with our [...]
Data acquisition by Jim Misti On August 24, 2011, a supernova torched off in the Pinwheel Galaxy, only 21 million light-years away. This makes it one of the closest supernovas seen in decades. The guys and gals who track these things dubbed it PTF 11kly, a type of white dwarf detonation that usually progresses in [...]
I worked hard on processing this image, because the data was acquired on a still, dark night in New Mexico in April and was some of the highest quality data I acquired while I was still able to use LightBuckets remote controlled telescopes. I processed the data last month, finally got tired of looking at [...]
I keep plugging along, trying to get better at putting together astronomical “pretty pictures.” My raw material was acquired using the LightBuckets observatories in New Mexico, as well as from data made publicly available. I have discovered that there are two software approaches to digital processing of astronomical data. The well-traveled path uses Photoshop CS [...]
