Wallpaper Of The Day

Still busier than a one-armed paper hanger, so there's no Sunday Photo yet again. Still, you can go to today's APOD offering for some lovely wallpaper. It's one of those photos you could wait your whole life to be able to take.

Enjoy.

Those Other Mountains

The last week or so I've been involved in a project that seems to consume all available time and energy, which is one reason for the recent lack of posts here. Today, on my way to that project, I managed to snap this photo of the Olympic Mountains out the window of my vehicle as I was waiting at a traffic light:

Image credit: Photo taken and processed by Cujo359

Click to enlarge. I was in a hurry, so it's not a great photo, but it will give you some idea why this is one of my favorite intersections in the area.

The Horsehead Nebula

After 23 years on the job, the Hubble Space Telescope is still taking some amazing pictures. Here's one that was featured in yesterday's APOD:

See the link for a full size version of the image, and for the caption that explains it all. The short version is that this is a composite image of the Horsehead Nebula, with infra-red and visible light represented.

Happy Twenty-Third, Hubble.

Sunday Photo(s)

Today's Sunday Photos are not of something I photographed, though I did take the screenshots. They're screenshots of today's launch of the Antares rocket, a joint public-private project aimed at making it possible to resupply the International Space Station using privately owned spacecraft.

Today's flight was a test of the rocket itself, and was successful. This is a montage of views taken from ground-based cameras before and during liftoff:

Image credit: Screenshots of NASA TV broadcast taken and processed by Cujo359

This is a montage of views from onboard cameras. The first few show the rocket engine exhaust and the Virginia coast below. The rest are of various stage separations:

As always, click on the pictures to enlarge, and have a good Sunday.

Afterword: NASA has put up a Flickr set of Antares launch photos.

Sunday Photo(s)

For various reasons, this wasn't a good year to photograph the fruit tree blooms. Some of that had to do with the weather, which was generally miserable during the two weeks or so the blooms were out. It also had to do with the fact that on the rare days when it wasn't miserable, I often had things to do.

Nevertheless, I managed to catch a few. Here they are. The first three are from last week.

Image credit: Photos taken and processed by Cujo359

I don't know what kind of trees these are. Three years ago, the blooms were white. Now they're pinkish. Here's a closeup of the blossoms:

These are from the end of March. Some mountain managed to get itself in the background of one of them:

The not-quite world famous Climate Change Cherry tree was in full bloom that day, as were its neighbors:

Click on the pictures to enlarge. Have a good Sunday.

Mt. Rainier In The Sunshine

Haven't felt much like writing lately, as you might have guessed. By way of apology, here's a photo of Mt. Rainier on one of those extremely rare clear spring days:
Image credit: Cujo359

It's been a crappy day, both in the news and otherwise. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who want to tell you about that, but today I'm not one of them.

Click on the picture to enlarge. Have a good weekend.

Sunday Photo

If it weren't Sunday, I suppose I'd have called this "Shooting the Moon". Today was a busy day, which is often how things work out for me. I shot this photo toward the end of the day, because the sky was unusually clear for this time of year, and the Moon was almost full:

Image credit: Photo taken and processed by Cujo359

I enhanced the contrast of the raw photo a bit, which makes the sky look blacker than it actually was (it was early evening, so there was still a bit of sunlight).

Something I'm noticing in these pictures is how different the Moon's features look depending how full it is. For instance, compare it to this photo that I took on March 18:

See how the craters are most visible near the terminator in this photo? In the new one above, they're most visible near the "edge" of the Moon. That's not really surprising. In the first photo, the Sun is almost directly overhead of the craters near the middle of the Moon, so they don't cast as much shadow.

Of course, some of this is due to the limitations of the camera - how much light it needs to see in order to provide a good contrast, etc. Plus, there's probably some performance issue with the photographer, too.

I suppose if I take enough photos, we'll be able to see all the craters on the near side.

As always, click on the picture to enlarge. Hope yours was a good Sunday.

Spring Is Here

It's spring in the Pacific Northwest, so I thought we should take a break from hard science and just stop to enjoy the flowers. I saw these at one of the local gas stations today. At first, the flowers looked like azaleas to me, but when I looked at the leaves and the structure of the plants, it seemed pretty clear that they were rhododendrons. Both flowers tend to be among the first perennials to bloom here. So we'll call them rhodies, though opposing viewpoints are welcome.

More importantly, they're magenta:

Image credit: Photos taken and processed slightly by Cujo359

Here's a closeup that includes buds, flowers, and leaves:

As always, click on the pictures to enlarge.

Climate Change Update: March 19, 2013

The measurements are in, the science done. Here's photographic proof:

Image credit: All photos taken and processed by Cujo359

Sunday Photo(s)

As I think I've mentioned before, I wasn't too interested in my new camera's big zoom lens when I bought it. I was really more interested in having better low light performance, and a bit better anti-shaking performance as well. Of course, now I use the zoom lens all the time.

Last weekend at Redondo, I saw a lot of airplanes passing overhead, since SeaTac Airport is a few miles north. Thanks to the zoom lens, I was able to photograph some of the bigger airliners in high enough resolution to see their registration numbers.

So now I can identify aircraft more precisely, which is good. For instance, this is Alaska Airlines' Boeing 737-800 N581AS:

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359

Even at this distance, I find it hard to tell the difference between this model of 737 and the previous generation of stretched 737, the 737-400. The finlets aren't a spotting feature, because they can be retrofitted, and often are.

Sunday Photo(s)

It was a beautiful day around the Puget Sound, so I took another trip down to Redondo:

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359

There was lots of sunshine and scenery:

Anthropomorphized Robot Photo Of The Day

This is today's Astronomy Picture Of The Day:

Explanation: What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the robotic Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. Curiosity landed in Gale Crater last August and has been busy looking for signs of ancient running water and clues that Mars could once have harbored life. Pictured above, Curiosity has taken a wide panorama that includes its own shadow in the direction opposite the Sun. The image was taken in November from a location dubbed Point Lake, although no water presently exists there. Curiosity has already discovered several indications of dried streambeds on Mars, and is scheduled to continue its exploration by climbing nearby Mt. Sharp over the next few years.

Astronomy Picture Of The Day: Feb. 5, 2013

[go to the link for expository links and a full size version of the picture]

There are a couple of things I found striking about this photo. The first is the look of Curiosity's shadow: the rocks in the shadow of the rover's camera make it look like some anthropomorphic robot's eyes.

The second is the background. It looks like parts of the Southwest do on cold days sometimes. Since Mars is really, really cold, that might just be my imagination, but it's not hard to imagine that this scene could be from a cold November morning on the Mojave Desert.

Climate Change Update

Caption: The Climate Change Cherry Tree. Like a commons that isn't really a commons, a clock that looks like a tree stump, and transmission lines, it's one of the many wonders of downtown Federal Way, WA.

Image credit: Cujo359

In yet another excursion to downtown Federal Way in which the main purpose was to get out of the house, I took some photos readings at the by now world famous Climate Change Cherry Tree. As readers will recall, we recently visited another location in Federal Way and noted, much to our surprise, that there were blooms on one of the local cherry trees there.

Three years ago, buds were starting to bloomon February 17.

Sunday Photo(s)

Since I mentioned the other day that I had been trying to photograph an airplane passing overhead, I figured I'd share a few that I have managed to capture with the new camera. Federal Way is right underneath the approach to Sea-Tac Airport's runways, so most days we can see airliners taking off or landing. Since the new camera has a big zoom lens and is much more sensitive to light than the old one, I often try to take pictures of them now.

I'm sure I'll get over it eventually...

On the day that the world was going to end, I noticed that American Airlines decided to keep flying their 737s:

No Climate Change To See Here

While trying to photograph a passing airplane yesterday, my camera caught this instead:

Image credit: Cujo359

Yes, those are cherry blossoms, in January. It's not the Climate Change Cherry Tree, but it's only a few blocks away. We can't say this is a scientific study without an official observation at the CCCT, of course, but it's sure looking like spring will be here really early this year.

Ho, Frickin Ho

It's December 25, and you know what that means - one more week before anyone with any sense goes near a shopping mall. Meanwhile, if you're celebrating Christmas, have a good one. Hey, look I even found a new photo:

Caption: A lonely snowman guards Redondo, Washington from an invasion by sea by anti-Christmas secular humanists.

Image credit: Photo by Cujo359

No recycled photos this year, no siree.

If you just got the day off because everyone else celebrates Christmas, hope you can find something to do while everything's closed.

Sunday Photo(s)

Since I needed to get out of the house today, there wasn't much time to put up the photos I'd intended to - all the airplanes I photographed after the world supposedly ended. Hopefully, I'll do that next week. Meantime, I was out at Redondo, Washington again today. I like seeing Puget Sound when it's cloudy and a bit stormy. It's rather picturesque, and there aren't as many people. Here's how the fishing pier looked today:

Image credit: All photos taken and processed by Cujo359

I'd noticed this statue on the top of the MAST building before, but couldn't tell what it was:

This time, though, I had a zoom lens worthy of the name. Here's a closeup from that photo:

Apparently, it's an owl. I suppose they were hoping this big owl statue would scare the seagulls away. Seagulls are a constant presence in the area. Speaking of gulls, I noticed one gliding along the boardwalk today, just to the left of the railing of this picture (no, the gull isn't in it, I didn't have the camera out at that moment):

Curious, I stuck my hand out over the water, just over the railing. Sure enough, there was an updraft. Crafty little buggers. Not only do they know where to find a free meal, they know how to avoid working too hard for it, too.

On the subject of zooms, here's a wide shot of Des Moines:

On the left of that photo is the Des Moines Marina. This shot is a zoomed image of it:

From several miles away, you can make out cars on the hill above the marina.

As luck would have it, a Hapag Lloyd container ship was sailing past just as I arrived. This the usual schedule - I seem to get there after a ship has almost sailed past:

Still, it wasn't a good day to be photographing a ship on the other side of the Sound. With all the mist, this is about as good an image as I could manage:

Still better than the old camera could manage, so I guess I'll be keeping this one.

Click on the pictures to enlarge. Hope you had a good Sunday.

Late Update: The World Did Not End

Curious to see whether the world had ended today, I went out and discovered that it hadn't. Turns out the BPA Trail is still there. Panther Lake is looking pretty full, in fact:

Image credit: All photos taken and processed by Cujo359

The BPA's transmission lines were still there:

Birds were still flying:

And so was the Air Force:

The place that makes the closest thing to a real Philly cheese steak in this part of the country was still grilling them:

So, you're probably wondering, what about other worlds? Maybe some other celestial body's number was up today, right? The next nearest one looked like it was doing just fine, too:

So, yes, yet another prediction of disaster based on some numerical coincidence turned out to be untrue. Go figure.

If there's anyone who accidentally ended up here who is actually surprised that the world didn't end because the Mayan calendar ran out yesterday, please try this thought experiment the next time you hear the world will end because some ancient civilization didn't bother to make a calendar that went more than a few hundred years into their future:

Remember desk calendars? You know, those old pads of paper that had a sheet for each day of the year that all had clever things that Snoopy or Opus or B.C. said on each sheet? Remember how you tear one off at the end of the day and there's the next day's date on it? When you got to the one labeled "Dec. 31", did the world end? No, it didn't.

You went out and got another calendar!

Same thing here.

Glad we could clear that up.

Sunday Photo(s)

Since I still haven't done all the research I wanted to for a follow-on article to the caboose story, I thought I'd just post a few test shots from the new camera. It's a Canon SX260 HS. Its work has debuted already, and last week's "Sunday Photo(s)" featured some early pictures I took with it. The main reason I bought it was that it's supposed to have good low-light performance, and I'd say that's true. It also has a 20X zoom, which I find incredible for a point-and-shoot camera. I almost didn't buy it because of that huge zoom, figuring that the mechanism would be so complicated and delicate that it would be broken in a few years. On that point, we'll see.

Still, as you can see, I've found uses for the zoom lens. I took these photos of aircraft flying overhead in Federal Way. The airport is a few miles north of here, so I'm not shooting them flying at high altitude. It's a lot more than my last camera could do, though. Both of these are cropped from the original photo image files. Neither is retouched.

This appears to be an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-400:

Image credit: All photos by Cujo359

[All photos that appear on this page are reduced-size from the originals. Click on the pictures to see the full-size images that I'm describing.]

This looks like a Lufthansa Airbus A330-300:

The images aren't retouched, so you can see what is possible straight from the camera. As you can see in the photo of the A330, there's a bit of ISO noise, but considering that it's a photo of a moving object at high zoom on a cloudy day, not too bad. It's good enough for the web, at least.

Speaking of which, this one is also cropped, but otherwise unprocessed:

I used the night scene mode, of course, and with full zoom. The trick to getting this photo, it turned out, was to make the camera use just the center of the picture as basis for setting the light level.

Here's another night scene, a bit more prosaic but still interesting:

This was also taken with the night scene mode, and it turned out well. Both the cup and the woman in the background (who was moving, of course) can be seen without difficulty. It's reduced in size, of course, but otherwise unaltered.

Finally, I took this of Mt. Rainier around dusk the other day:

Once again, that photo was reduced, since I'm limited to a maximum image width of 1600 pixels by Picassa. I also retouched it, using a contrast-enhancing overlay of GIMP. This, however, is an unretouched section of that image:

It's a medium zoom for this camera. Even with my not-so-steady hands, it managed to take a picture clear enough to see the steps on that water tower on one of our notoriously dim winter days. There's some ISO noise here as well. The EXIF data of the image says that it was taken at ISO 200 (I had that setting on automatic), which is a bit disappointing. But, given the circumstances, it's acceptable, particularly for the automatic mode in low light.

The camera has a bad habit or two. The worst is that it takes some effort to turn it on. I don't know what it is about the ON/OFF button yet, but it always seems to take multiple presses. I'm still learning the controls, which are more complicated than the old Kodak's were. I figure once I get the feel for that little knob/button combo control I'll be most of the way there. There's an automatic mode, of course, which takes reasonably good pictures in daylight and bright indoor settings. For other settings, there are modes that let you choose either shutter speed, F-stop, ISO level, or a combination. All of that takes some getting used to, before you'll have an idea what works for you in particular light conditions.

That's about it for now. Hopefully, I'll be displaying more of this camera's work in the future. For anyone wondering, I've been getting roughly 250 photos per battery charge. I'll also recommend that you look at Radio Shack for replacement/supplemental batteries. They sell a knock-off that's about half the price of the Canon battery.

Have a good Sunday.

Sunday Photo(s)

Continuing with my "walking around and taking pictures" theme, I took some of Mt. Rainier yesterday. I'm learning to use a new camera, but already I'm able to do lots of things I hadn't before. Here's a photo of the mountain that I took with the old camera. See how little contrast there is between the mountain, some its features, and the sky?

Image credit: Photos taken and processed by Cujo359

Here are a couple shots of the mountain that I took from the same location as these.