Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
June 5, 2020 · 17:35

A Red-Letter Day!

There won’t be photos of tonight’s pretty decent ISS pass – it’s cloudy with a 20% chance of rain out there. If you know anything about SoCal it’s that we get rain in June about once every other blue moon. Fate, man, it’s a bitch.

But it’s a red-letter day!

I needed to use shampoo on my hair this morning! Granted, not a lot given the circumstances, more like I just sort of opened the bottle and let some of the fumes waft over my scalp – but it’s a start!! And I can now use a towel to dry it again instead of using a squeegee!

Big doings here!

What are your plans for the weekend?

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Filed under Farce, Paul

June 4, 2020 · 23:02

ISS Pass & A Bonus

The weather’s better, there’s a nice, high, bright, ISS pass… Let’s see if I can avoid screwing this up two nights in a row, shall we?

(Image – Heavens-Above.org)

It was sweet, especially with a little contrast cleanup in Photoshop.

There was a bright, almost full moon rising, so I kept the exposures shorter, just 2.3 seconds each.

Then I tried to shift to another location to catch the rest of the pass as the ISS swung overhead and headed back toward the southeast where the moon was rising. The rabbits covering the lawn didn’t appreciate it and tried to trip me going down the hill.

I finally made it and got set up to see it fade into night as it got down near the moon (that honkin’ bright thing at the lower left edge).

As I pulled the tripod and started heading home (I had moved a couple houses down the hill to clear the street lights and trees) I noticed another satellite straight overhead. I quickly put the tripod back down and started shooting again.

It was MUCH dimmer than the ISS – this is a single frame and you can see it in the center top, heading down and slightly to the left.

Why not a combined file like with the ISS? When I tried to combine these images in StarStaX the satellite trail vanishes. It’s too dim and therefore too thin and each segment gets overwritten by the other layers where it’s dark.

But… I learned a new trick and I’m not afraid to use it three days in a row.

In a GIF format, you can see the unknown satellite moving down toward the horizon, before it too goes into darkness.

The fact that it went into darkness at about the same distance to the east of us means that it was probably at a similar height to the ISS. If it were higher, it would have stayed in sunlight longer – lower and it would have gone dark sooner. Beyond that, I have no idea what it was.

Keep looking up. You never know what you might see!

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Filed under Astronomy, Paul, Photography, Space, Video

June 3, 2020 · 22:37

Back In Focus

There was a so-so ISS pass tonight – there’s a much better one tomorrow. This one was low, not the brightest you’ll see (M-2.5) but not terrible, fading into night only 30° above the horizon.

(Image: Heavens-Above.com)

However, it was only partly cloudy tonight after several frustrating, cloudy nights, so it was time to test my theories about focusing my new lens.

(Images stacked using StarStaX)

The good news is that the focusing issue seems to have been resolved.

The bad news is that I was shooting with a honkin’ huge street light just off to the left, the neighbors’ yard lights directly across the street, light haze, scattered clouds, and a nearly full moon that that the haze lit up light a neon light. Plus, you know, the usual godawful light pollution in LA.

So I shot shorter exposures, eight seconds instead of ten or fifteen.

The next cover of  “Sky & Telescope” magazine? Hardly. A solid proof-of-concept test of my new lens, or more accurately, my ability to correctly use it? Pretty good.

Wait, what was that trick I learned yesterday?

Just remember, if you go out to look for yourself (like, maybe tomorrow!) it’s going to be a bright pinpoint, not a line, and it’s going to move at about fifty times slower. In real life this video took about two minutes and fifteen seconds.

But I do like making these little GIF’s!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

June 2, 2020 · 21:30

Frustration

So much frustration right now. *waves vaguely at everything*

There are little things that make me think that the gremlins are just rubbing it in.

For example…

I’ve mentioned that I had to get a new “normal” lens for my Canon Rebel XT. The original lens is flaky, at the wide end of the zoom it won’t trigger, just locks up the camera mechanism. The new lens I got is much more new and faster and wonderful, but might be too new and wonderful for the old camera body. It auto-focuses like a dream, but for manual focus like I use all the time in astrophotography it’s just been a nightmare.

I thought that I had figured it out, right up until I didn’t.

One trick from when I had “figured it out” was to go out a few minutes early and take a test picture which I could review on the spot in the camera. And I got this. Recognize the Big Dipper? Maybe? Kinda? Yeah, if you say so…

Ten frantic minutes trying my new “trick” over and over and over – same results. Finally it’s time for the ISS and Dragon to rise, so set up one more time and take my chances.

It looked amazing. I’ve got that memory.

Do you see that streak in the bigger, right-hand oval? That’s the ISS. See that dimmer streak in the smaller, left-hand oval? That’s the Dragon spacecraft.

It’s more obvious in a blink comparison with the images before and after this one. (New thought, stand by – can I do that in Photoshop?)

(thirty minutes later)

YES! I can. (Remember this for a minute, I’ll be back to this in a minute.)

Here’s a three frame animation with a long pause on the third frame so you can see the looping action. Dragon shows up just to the right of the telephone pole in the middle frame.

Frustrated by this failure on Saturday night, on Sunday I sat down with the camera to figure out just WTAF is going on with this new, fancy, somewhat expensive lens that should be perfect but instead makes me want to scream.

And I figured it out.

Short version – the lens is sort of “fly by wire” in that the focusing ring doesn’t move the lens elements, so it doesn’t have a mechanical hard stop when focusing in or out. Instead the lens simply detects motion on the focusing ring and makes the mechanical adjustments to move the lens elements based on that input. BUT, and here’s the key, since this is being run off of the camera battery, in order to avoid draining the battery at an extreme rate (apparently) it shuts itself off after about five seconds. If you don’t know this (I didn’t) you can spin that focusing ring until the heat death of the universe and it’s not going to change a thing. If you do know this (I do now!) you can flick the power off and then right back on to “wake up” the lens, focus away, and then wait for it to “go back to sleep” after about five seconds.

So I was proud of my stubborn ass self. I had figured it out! REALLY really this time! Now to test it!

There was a pretty good ISS pass on Sunday! And it was cloudy.

So try it on Monday, an even better pass! And it was cloudy.

A great pass tonight! And…

Completely socked in.

As I said, the gremlins are just screwing with me because they can at this point.

Which was my original point when I started writing this an hour ago. But then my brain said, “Wait, that looks better in a blink comparison type of GIF, can I make one of those?” And I didn’t have a clue but I tried and asked the question and fought through some so-so tutorials and finally got close enough to just figure it out on my own before I fiddled with it a bit to make it better and when all was said and done, not only did I have a tiny little thing that I created myself and shared with all of you, but that made the existential angst-ish blanket of frustration lift just a little bit.

And that helped.

It also helped that this popped up on my news alerts about five minutes ago:

Change is possible. That’s one absolutely evil, ignorant, guanopsychotic, complete waste of protoplasm down, a few hundred more to go.

It won’t be tomorrow. It won’t be completely done in November or January. It’s going to take the rest of our lives, and maybe our children’s lives and grandchildren’s lives.

But we’ll get there.

One at a time.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Politics, Space

June 1, 2020 · 22:31

Never Accept This As Normal

I fear that if I start ranting there won’t be any stopping, and there will so, so many obscenities used. I want this site to be a happy, goofy, thoughtful, occasionally joyous place. There are those who are trying to turn our society into a festering cistern of hatred and chaos, because that’s all they know. We can’t let that happen. So I’ll not start that rant. At least, not tonight.

But never, NEVER believe that my deferral from that rant in this forum in any way is a signal of acceptance or agreement. Just go look at my Twitter feed.

Never accept anything that’s happening now or what I fear might be to come as normal. NEVER. Fight it, always.

And remember to smell the flowers.

You might be seeing a lot of them in the weeks to come. I’m finding less and less to say that isn’t existential screaming.

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Filed under Flowers, Photography, Politics

May 31, 2020 · 22:28

Dragon Docks At ISS

This morning, just before 07:30 PDT (i.e., “early“) the Dragonship Endeavour docked at the International Space Station (ISS).

I’m not much for video games (except for “Doom,” which reminds me that I’m probably overdue for some “wasted” time right now…) but I can get behind a good simulator. They can help pilots stay current and on their toes – now there’s one that can let you try your luck at manually docking Dragon to ISS.

https://iss-sim.spacex.com/

Remember, small steps. Slow and steady. In the sim the ISS is cruising over the Earth at 17,500 mph, but so are you. It’s the relative velocity that you need to pay attention to.

This might not be the exact program used by SpaceX to train the astronauts (I’m sure theirs has the ability to throw random failures and problems at you any time the sim instructor feels like it) but it’s pretty close, and it is direct from SpaceX, not some game designer. I’m not saying that if you happen to be sitting in seat #3 or #4 on your way to ISS and both the pilot and mission commander had the fish for breakfast and they’re disabled and the automated docking system is shooting sparks and someone has to dock to the ISS or you’re all gonna die, you’ll be able to do it if you’ve practiced this enough. I’m not saying that – but I’m not NOT saying it either.

Have fun!

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Filed under Space

May 30, 2020 · 22:21

Dragon Flies

It was a huge day for the future of our crewed space program. I’m sure you saw the news and probably saw any amount of coverage.

The launch. The landing of the first stage booster on the drone ship. (I know they want to re-use them a dozen times or so to save money, but wouldn’t THAT one look good outside the National Air & Space Museum?) The crew’s short TV event on orbit.

Tomorrow morning we’ll see them dock with the ISS and join the three crew members already on the Station, one American and two Russians. In thirty to ninety days (depending on a lot of things) we’ll see them come back down and splash down in the Atlantic near Florida. By the end of the year we’ll see the first operational flight of Dragon (this is the final test flight) with three American and one Japanese astronauts. And so on.

Tonight there was a marginal, partial pass of the ISS over Los Angeles very late. I’ve never before been lucky enough to see a cargo ship or Space Shuttle following the ISS, let alone a Dragon. It was low to the horizon, looking into the street lights, and it’s hazy out there. I went and looked anyway.

There was the ISS, not a terrible pass after all. Not great, but not terrible. And there, about 10-15 seconds behind it, co-orbital so it’s on the same path, was a much dimmer but still visible Dragon.

That made it a good day for me, personally, one I’ll remember for a long, long time.

Of course, then there’s the news. And the fact that technically I was potentially breaking curfew by going out as Los Angeles has had rioting, looting, and burning all day. As has Atlanta. And Philadelphia. And Pittsburgh. And Kansas City. And Minneapolis. And Chicago. And New York. And Denver, Seattle, Cleveland, Columbus, Portland, Miami, Rochester, and Salt Lake City.

I’m old enough to remember 1968. I think I may have made some comparisons to that year a while back.

This is worse.

So that’s the other thing that I’ll remember about today.

Some problems can’t be solved so easily, even with rocket science.

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Filed under CoronaVirus, Moral Outrage, Politics, Space

May 29, 2020 · 23:02

Beauty On An Ugly Day

The news is ugly. Our country is being ripped apart. The death toll continues to rise. Too many people continue to be more stupid by the day. Our “leadership” is actively evil and treasonous.

But these orange-ish roses are still beautiful.

I guess no one told them.

I’m not going to be the ones to break the news to them. Besides, there’s a nice new crop of fence lizards living out there.

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Filed under CoronaVirus, Flowers, Photography, Politics

May 28, 2020 · 18:00

Ridiculous – Part Deux

Yesterday I wrote about an unexpected side effect of shaving my head. This morning, thirty-six hours after the initial event, it caught me off guard again, but this time I realized what it reminded me of:

Velcro GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

I also realized what the proper tool is now for “drying my hair”:

12 in. Window Squeegee without Handle

Thank you! I’ll be here all week! Tip your waitress!

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Filed under Farce, Paul

May 27, 2020 · 23:24

Ridiculous

As in, “From the sublime to…”

SpaceX and NASA and Dragon and Falcon didn’t launch today because the weather pretty much sucked in Florida today. They’ll try again on Saturday. Or maybe Sunday. Or maybe some time next week since the weather forecast for Saturday or Sunday isn’t much better than it was today.

This isn’t a problem, just a frustration, especially in our society that expects instant gratification. But they’ll fly when they’re ready and when it’s safe and meets the established launch criteria. As has been pointed out, it’s much better to be on the ground wishing you were flying than flying and wishing you were on the ground.

So that’s not what I’m here to entertain you with tonight.

Last night, you see, there was some genuine hysteria. As in laughing so hard I could barely stand. Self-inflicted. Stupid.

Because when you’re in your 58th day of self-isolation, despite the fact that you have sufficient food, shelter, entertainment, and so on, SOMETIMES you just need to do something really stupid to see what happens.

First of all, it had been five weeks since this little slice of insanity. And while I wasn’t all that shaggy, especially compared to April, the places where it was bothering me were a result of me doing a half-assed job back then, so those spots that tickle and annoy me WERE shaggy.

It was time to try again.

So out to the backyard I went, doing my best to basically just go evenly all over everything, concentrating this time on the odd spots behind the ears and at the nape of the neck and places where I can’t reach well and can’t see at all. I was trying to do better than last time, to learn from my previous experience.

It didn’t totally suck. (But jeez louise, those eyebrows! Anyone have any suggestions? Aside from, you know, nuclear fire?)

But this, like last time, was with the “#1 guard” on the clippers. If you’re not aware, when you’re getting a buzz cut of some sort, with the number indicating how close you want it cut. Smaller numbers are shorter. The clippers I bought came with attachments for #1 through #8. When I would go to the SuperCuts or Fantastic Sams or Great Clips or whatever, my normal was a #2. A #1 is shorter, but I figured I would give it a try.

And I thought to myself, for reasons I can only chalk up to advancing age, diminished capacity, or being cooped up too long, “What happens if you take that guard clippy thingie off completely? Do you get cut? Does it hurt? Or does it just cut your hair really, Really, REALLY freaking short?”

It’s that last one. And while it doesn’t hurt, the buzzy feeling goes right into your skull and makes your head vibrate. It’s a weird feeling. (The first of many for last night.)

Essentially this is a “#0” cut and it leaves your hair at about 1 to 2 millimetres, tops.

Well… If you’re going to do that, and then be still finding those little spots you missed that are going to be tickling, why not just go all the way?

So I shaved it.

But that’s not what caused the hysterical laughter. Granted, every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I’m surprised all over again, but not hysterically.

No, it turns out that there’s one thing that no one has EVER mentioned about shaving your head.

First, as I expected, it’s stubbly and rough. I guess somehow I was hoping for it to be much smoother, more Uncle Fenster-like, but it’s more like fine grit sandpaper.

Secondly, I expected it to be colder than it is. That may have something to do with the temps in the 90’s here in LA right now, but inside where the A/C’s going full blast it still should feel colder than it is. It doesn’t. However, going out into the sun definitely feels hotter. I can see where I’ll have to be careful to not get sunburned, or make sure I’m wearing a hat.

Third, even being really careful, little knicks from shaving a place that’s never been shaven before hurt like a son of a gun. Doing some research online I see that sites that talk about head shaving recommend shaving it two or three times a week to maintain it – that might not be happening here. I’m sure the skin would toughen up and get used to it sooner or later, but that’s too damn much work. The reason I don’t grow my hair long is because I want to spend an absolute minimal amount of time on maintenance and care – this is even worse than long hair. No thanks!

Fourth, since I don’t really see it unless I pass a mirror, it just feels weird to my hand every time I touch it without thinking. Remember, sandpaper.

But I knew those things in general and while the specific details and sensations are no, they’re not completely unexpected. And none of them cause hysteria.

No, what caught me completely off guard and caused hysteria was the fact that it’s like freakin’ Super Velcro.

When I was getting out of the shower after cleaning up and I start to rub the towel across my head, it stuck. A full 20-G emergency stop. And I was howling.

Normally, even with short hair, there’s a decent coefficient of friction. (There’s a reason that shampoo uses “silky” as a selling point.) Rubbing your hand or worse, a cloth across your hair will generally be easy because the towel or cloth will glide across the hair smoothly.

With sandpaper-grade stubble and a big fluffy towel, it’s completely different and completely unexpected.

When I finally calmed down enough to finish drying off and I went to put on a T-shirt – same thing! Pulling it over my head was like dragging the shirt backwards through a paper shredder. And the hysteria resumed.

And then I tried to put on a sweatshirt, and it was even worse. That fluffy, warm interior lining of the sweatshirt practically glued itself to my head. Plus, it’s hard to pull it loose and pull it over my head when I’m laughing again.

There was a concern that when I lay down on my pillow and then sat up, the pillow might stick. It turns out not to be the case because the force there is normal to the surface of the pillow case, but when I try to simply turn my head while my stubbly scalp was in contact with the pillow – scrrraaaaaaaappppeeeeee!

So there you have it. You’ve heard it from me. If you ever shave your head, not only will it feel funny, look funny, get sunburned, take a lot of maintenance, leave you with little painful knicks all over, but you will have the equivalent of high-grade hooks all over your scalp and every piece of cloth out there will look like a sea of hooks.

I can’t judge if you’ll look good or bad like that, but you’ll be prepared. You can still laugh when you see yourself in the mirror. And that may make you hysterical as well.

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Filed under Health, Paul, Photography