Lunar Eclipse Part 2

This is where I need a real tripod, not my little table top tripod.   But this first shot - actually it was taken last - is relatively in focus.  But that's because I upped the shutter speed so I could use a faster opening.  And I lost resolution in doing that.  It looks fuzzy.




These are better, but the shutter speed is much slower and I couldn't keep the camera still enough to keep it sharp.

This post began with Shooting the Moon.
Then Lunar Eclipse Part 1.

Lunar Eclipse Part 1

Shooting the Moon

The full lunar eclipse begins in about 30 minutes.

The sky is clear here in LA.  The moon is hanging right off my mom's front porch.

And it was way past time for me to figure out how to use my no-longer-that-new Canon Rebel.  Well, I can do a number of things with it, but taking pictures of the moon was problematic.   On the last flight home I did go through the manual and learned how to do a lot of things, but I was still having trouble figuring out how to set all the features.

I took a couple of pictures.  Great white circle, totally washed out moon.

Opened the manual and tried some things.

Then I decided to do what I do with so many other things - google, "How to take picture of eclipse with Canon Rebel" and bingo, there were a number of websites.

http://www.ehow.com/how_12284202_use-canon-rebel-dslr-moon-eclipse.html was the one I needed to finally get this.  It's not hard.  I just needed someone to show me.  It was finding the A/V button and then spin the little dial on top.  So easy.  So hard to figure out.

I went back out and did some more tests.  I think I'm ready for the eclipse.  This is WAY beyond what I could do with old cameras and eclipses.

An it's warm enough to be outside in shorts and a t.  

Moonlight In The Woods

The film festival awards ceremony was over, I took Benz to the airport, and then took the long way home to check out Campbell Airstrip in the post snow storm moonlight. 

Took New Camera To Mariners Game - They Won, But Modern Cameras Can Be Creepy

Went to the Mariners game with Minnesota Thursday night.  It was balmy and shirt sleeves were comfortable even on the ferry ride back.  I also brought my new camera on this trip - my daughter's request - and I'm figuring out more things I can do with it.

But I've also concluded it can be a lot more clinical, almost forensic.  We were in the upper bleachers. Though this photo of the strike was a little closer.  R wanted to see what things looked like from the top of the bleachers in right field. I took this on the way back.

Strike

Safe at first

This was the beginning of the game.  I haven't been to a major league ball game in probably 15 years or more.  I remember when ball fields were named after the ball team - like Dodger stadium.  Nowadays companies buy the right to put their name on the stadium so every time you refer to it, it's a mini-advertisement for the comapny.   I don't do advertising here - though sometimes I'll tell people about something I thought was really good - so I won't mention the name of the field.  I'll just call it Mariners Field.

Seattle started scoring early.  They got six runs in the second inning.  This one is the first or second run. 

I took these pictures from up in the bleachers.  This camera takes really sharp pictures.  I have to learn how to make this less about sharp and more about beautiful.

When R and I went to check out right field, I saw how intrusive this camera can be.  Look at this:

 

The people in the bubble - upper right - were blown up from the little circle in the stands.  You can take pictures with cameras anyone can buy and get sharp enough pictures to id people from about a quarter of a mile away.  The right field was 326 feet from home plate and we were in the upper upper bleachers. It's a little creepy.  

It was knitting night at the game and we were sitting in the middle of the knitting section.  My son had his knitting with him.  More on that in another post.

R made sure he got some blue cotton candy before we got back to our seats.

And I made sure I got this picture of Mt. Ranier in the evening sun before we got back to our seats.

We left in the 6th inning.  It was 8-0 Mariners and we'd promised to try to get the 10:05 ferry back to Bainbridge so R could get to bed by 11pm.  Here was the view as the ferry was pulling out of downtown Seattle.  The Ferris wheel was more like the blue in the water, but I couldn't figure an easy way to get the right color.

And as we got into Bainbridge, they announced over the loudspeaker that the moon had just risen over Seattle.  So I went out and got this picture.  Other than using a telephoto lens and boosting the exposure - after the fact - of the city lights, this is pretty much undcotored and what it looked like.

Thanks J, it was a fun night out. 

Anchorage Nearing Solstice

People frequently ask about the winter darkness in Anchorage.  The shortest (darkest) day of the year in the northern hemisphere is this Friday, December 21. We're actually more than a 500 mile drive south of the Arctic Circle.  And we have a fair amount of light, even on the shortest day. 

Yesterday the Anchorage Daily News said our official sunrise was 10:11am and the official sunset was at 3:40pm, but at this latitude we have very long twilights (if it's clear.)  The sun at noon is very low on the southern horizon at noon. 

Here's my shadow at 1pm today.   Time and Date says the solar noon yesterday was at 12:56 pm and the altitude of the sun was 5.6˚.
See table below for more details.

Here's the southern horizon at 4:45pm, over an hour after the official sunset time.

I remember being in Hawaii with our kids watching the sunset over the ocean and  warning them it would be dark in ten or 15 minutes and they were really amazed at that.

So, even though the official "total daylight" was listed in the paper yesterday as 5 hours and 26 minutes, we had more than an hour of twilight before sunrise and after sunset giving us seven hours and a half.  Of course, that's not true if it's cloudy in which case it gets dark very fast.

I love the soft velvety blue of the winter evening sky.  And even though it was around 0˚F yesterday, walking around in the clean, crisp air was totally invigorating.  (I didn't play with the colors of the photo, it's really that color. The trees a little off white due to the street light tint.) It is helpful to be properly dressed though. 

Here it is as background to this icy birch with the crescent moon caught in the branches.  It's about 5pm here.








Here's a post-sunset view of the Chugach mountains from Rasmuson Hall on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus.  Looking east here through the glass which caused the darker shadow on the upper left. 

The paper also says we lost 50 seconds of daylight Monday from Sunday.  For a while we were losing over 5 minutes a day, but we're slowing down as we get to the end of the earth's tilt and then we'll start to tilt back.  Soon we will be gaining time quickly again.


From Time And Date:

The December solstice occurs when the sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees. In other words, it is when the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. Depending on the Gregorian calendar, the December solstice occurs annually on a day between December 20 and December 23. On this date, all places above a latitude of 66.5 degrees north (Arctic Polar Circle) are now in darkness, while locations below a latitude of 66.5 degrees south (Antarctic Polar Circle) receive 24 hours of daylight.

Time and Date also calculates our sunrise and sunset schedule for this week a little bit differently from what the Anchorage Daily News has:

			Length of day		Solar noon
Date	Sunrise	Sunset	This day	Difference	Time	Altitude	Distance (106 km)
Dec 17, 2012	10:12 AM	3:41 PM	5h 28m57s	− 49s	12:56 PM	5.6°	147.204
Dec 18,	10:12 AM	3:41 PM	5h 28m19s	-37s	12:57PM	5.5˚	147.191
Dec. 19	10:13 AM	3:41PM	5h 27m54s	-25s	12:57 PM	5.5˚	147.179
Dec. 20	10:14AM	3:41PM	5h27m41s	-12s	12:58 PM	5.5˚	147.167
Dec. 21	10:14AM	3:42PM	5h27m40s	<1s	12:58 PM	5.5˚	147.157
Dec. 22	10:15AM	3:43PM	5h27m53s	+12s	12:59 PM	5.5˚	147.147
Dec. 23	10:15AM	3:43PM	5h28m17s	+24s	12:59 PM	5.5˚	147.137

HTML Tables

				Data from Time and Date.

Night to Day - LAX to ANC

Leaving from the Lower 48 in the summer at night flying north to Anchorage always gives that bizarre experience of flying from dark to light as it gets later at night.

We left LAX at 8:55pm.

Leaving LAX 8:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (PDT)

Still light to NW - 9:01 PDT

12:25 am PDT (11:25 Alaska DT)

Looking North 12:26 am PDT (11:26 ADT)

Over clouds 1:01 am PDT (12:01 am ADT)

Over the Chugach Range 12:34 am ADT

Approaching ANC at 12:47am ADT

Waxing or Waning?

The crescent moon in the western sky looked like a backward C.  So, was it moving toward fullness or newness?



Taking the picture with my little camera is tricky.  I played around, but mostly I kept getting too much light and so you couldn't see the crescent.

I finally got it by setting it on automatic, night.

So, is it waxing or waning?

There are lots of websites that answer that question, but most of them are pretty complicated.  Or maybe this one (below) made sense because I'd seen so many already.  This is from eudesign:

"When Coming (or rriving), it is really departing.
When Departing (  ), it is really coming."

Another way of telling is this:

L-E-FT hand curve = D-E-CREASING.
R-I-GHT hand curve = -I-NCREASING.

'SuperMoon' Anchorage

The Anchorage Daily News carried an LA Times story today about tonight's 'supermoon.'

We got a preview coming out of the Thai Kitchen last night.

But Earthsky quibbles with the word 'supermoon.'

We astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon. [The LA Times article also mentions perigree.]  The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month. But last year, when the closest and largest full moon occurred on March 19, 2011, many used a term we’d never heard: supermoon. We’ve heard this term again at this 2012 close full moon. What does it mean exactly? And how special is the May 5, 2012 supermoon?

. . . Will you be able to notice with your eye alone that tonight's full moon is bigger or brighter than usual? Astronomers say no, but it'll be fun to stand outside under tonight's full moon and know the moon is closer than it has been since March 19, 2011.  The word supermoon didn’t come from astronomy. Instead, it came from astrology. Astrologer Richard Nolle of the website astropro.com takes credit for coining the term supermoon. In 1979, he defined it as:

…a new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit (perigee). In short, Earth, moon and sun are all in a line, with moon in its nearest approach to Earth.

You can read more at Earthsky.

Tracked Down By A Blood Hound

I never know what adventures await me.  There I was tonight, against a chain link fence, somewhat behind the bushes, knowing that a blood hound was trying to find me.  The sun was just going down.   And then I heard a dog yelping. 

Our meeting today back in the Frontier Building was winding down and a woman came in looking for volunteers for an outdoor adventure.  It turned out it was Cindi of the Alaska Search and Rescue Dogs (ASARD).  She needed a body for the training of a dog.  My colleagues volunteered me.  We went to a nearby park area and she gave me a map of where she wanted me to go. [I noticed when I got home that I didn't quite follow the route in one part.  Sorry Cindi.]

The route included parking lot, grass, woods, alongside a wet area, more parking lot, and a sidewalk.  It was somewhere between a quarter and half mile.  When I got to the destination, she picked me up in her car, gave me a gauze pad to open and wipe on my hands and neck and stick in a plastic baggie.  Then back to where the meeting was and I biked home.

Then I had to return to the scene of the crime about 90 minutes later.  This time by car and I sat and read until I got a call to wait by the fence.  That's when I saw the berries and a bunch of other plants I hadn't noticed before.  I thought about different people who had been sought by blood hounds - lost children, elderly folks who wandered off, runaway slaves, criminals and thought about how each might feel in my spot.  I leaned against the fence waiting to be discovered. And then I saw the faint moon.


And then I heard the yelping.  A big floppy dog rushed to me and a happy handler followed, delighted her dog had sniffed me down.

In the video (it's real short) Cindi explains what the exercise was about.




Want to train your dog to sniff down lost kids and hikers? Here's what the ASARD website says in answer to the question "What are ASARD's expectations of me and my dog?"

"We expect the following from all new dog team members:

• Attend at least one or two training sessions per week.
• Train in all types of weather.
• Attend outside classes (obedience, agility, first aid & specialty classes).
• Work with other handlers on practice search problems.
• Volunteer to be a subject for ASARD training and tests. [I guess that was me.]
• Have a positive and constructive attitude.
• Develop/demonstrate adequate physical fitness.
• Be willing to train up to 2 years to achieve mission-ready status.
• Be willing to train independently.
• Purchase necessary personal equipment.
• Work with your dog every day outside of unit training.
• Maintain a written daily training log."

Moonlight Walk after The Illusionist

 

J wanted to see the Illusionist.  I didn't know anything about it except she told me it was animated.  I noticed the name Jacques Tati in the opening credits, and later when the Illusionist stumbles into a movie theater, My Uncle is playing.  

I remember my dad taking me to see My Uncle and then Mr. Hulot's Vacation.  It must have been when they came out in the mid-50's.  Even though they were in French, they left enough of an impression on me that I still remember seeing the movies and the bumbling Mr. Hulot.   

The Illusionist is a very melancholy story. The illustrations are beautiful - the scenes when he first gets into rural Scotland reminded me of the mountains portrayed in Paxon Woelbers The Prospector. 

Here's an interview dubbed in German with the director Sylvain Chomet, who directed The Triplets of Belview, that has a number of shots from the movie.

Thanks to Lee Roy at Sketchbook where I found the YouTube video.

The movie tells a sad story that makes me want to know happened to Jacques Tati that is coming out in this movie.  And so, I had to start looking things up.  

Here's what I learned:

This is NOT The Illusionist that came out in 2006.

Wikipedia's Jacques Tati page has an explanation that works just right for me:

The Illusionist (2010) is an animated film based on an unproduced, semi-autobiographical script that Tati wrote in 1956. Directed by Sylvain Chomet, known for The Triplets of Belleville, the main character is an animated caricature of Tati himself. . .

Between 1940 and 1942 he presented his Sporting Impressions at the original Lido de Paris . There he met the dancer Herta Schiel, who fled Austria with her sister Molly at the time of the Anschluss. In the summer of 1942, Herta gave birth to their daughter, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel. Following the pressure of his sister Nathalie Tatischeff, he refused to recognize the child and abandoned the mother and his first child.

 For those of you who know history, you'll recognize that this was during WW II which began in late 1939.  Wikipedia gives a bit of explanation why this young man wasn't fighting:

In September 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War Tati was conscripted into the 16th Regiment of Dragoons. Placed into a new unit, he fought in the Battle on the Meuse in May 1940. Tati ended up in Dordogne, where he was demobilized.

The Wikipedia article also tells us:

Controversy has dogged The Illusionist. The Guardian reports,

In 2000, the screenplay was handed over to Chomet by Tati's daughter, Sophie, two years before her death. Now, however, the family of Tati's illegitimate and estranged eldest child, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel, who lives in the north-east of England, are calling for the French director to give her credit as the true inspiration for the film. The script of L'illusionniste, they say, was Tati's response to the shame of having abandoned his first child [Schiel] and it remains the only public recognition of her existence. They accuse Chomet of attempting to airbrush out their painful family legacy again.

The movie now makes sense - why it is so overbearingly sad.  It's Tati talking to his long lost baby girl and telling her there is no magic.  (Tati died in 1982)

The movie got slow toward the end and we needed that brief walk out in the moonlight after that movie.   But the movie will stick.  And now that I have a sense of what was behind it, it's very powerful.

Hurtling Through the Sky in a Metal Tube

Assume it's 1527 London and Thomas Cromwell is telling Cardinal Woolsey that he can just get into a metal tube and fly to France without having to get seasick crossing the English Channel. 


Or riding up the Congo in the late 19th Century telling Joseph Conrad  he can return to Europe by air. 

I'm still amazed that we get into these metal tubes and fly 37,000 feet above the trees and rocks and waves.  There I was flying over the US West Coast, but lost in Cromwell and Woolsey's England as I read Wolf Hall, while the woman next to me was lost in the Congo reading King Leopold's Ghost. 

Earlier we got to the airport with time to spare, the long lines at security weren't there.  We walked through at 7:50am without anyone in front of us.  That gave us time to get some walking in before having to sit for 6 hours. We figure the distance from the end of Terminal B to the end of Terminal C in the Anchorage Airport is .14 miles.  So one lap is about .28 miles, and 3.5 laps would be close to a mile.  We got about 40 minutes walk in before going to our gate.  The geese in Terminal B were decorated in Christmas garb.

The sky was rosy above the Chugach as we passed over Prince William sound around 10am.

Seattle was socked in. 

But we got to see Pat McGuire's FOOD CHAIN:  Silver Salmon and Herring as we went from Terminal D to Terminal C to catch the plane on to LA.









It was great to be picked up by my mom and son.  The rain was gone and moon is shining bright.  We hooked up with my daughter and her friend for dinner.  Good times. 






Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.  For the rest, enjoy the time off and I hope you have some family and/or friends nearby and you enjoy your time with them. 

Moon Returning

It's still somewhat cloudy, but the bright moon is visible again as the eclipse continues.

[There are five posts showing different stages of the eclipse.]