I’m sure there’s an actual name for these that’s far, FAR more accurate than “vine flowers,” but I don’t know it.
They grow on these vines that cover the back patio.
They’re flowers.
You do the math.
They open up like this in the evenings. Not super fragrant, but very pretty.
The humming birds love them. So do the ants. I don’t know who’s eating the ants, but I suspect the lizards.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
Forget about that “perfect” fantasy. But practice does make things better.
My ISS photos (before last night) have recently sucked. You haven’t seen them because they’ve all be blurry and out of focus. This is because the original lens on my Canon Digital Rebel was something like nine years old, had taken literally tens of thousands of pictures on three continents, and started to finally act glitchy. I got a replacement which is new and fancy – and wants to do EVERYTHING for me instead of giving me override capabilities and control. In particular, it wouldn’t let me set the focus easily and then in the dark, when doing astrophotography, it wouldn’t focus on it’s own worth beans.
Out in broad daylight in auto focus mode? It’s a miracle, incredibly fast, some image stabilization built in, really sweet. In the dark when I simply want to set it to ∞ and leave it alone? Meh. But I’ve been working on it and finally started to get some good results last night.
Tonight’s ISS pass was much lower and dimmer than last night.
(Image from Heavens-Above.com)
Not worth the bother? Maybe I’ll just go watch it and not try to take pictures. (I can still do that, you know!) But then I realized that we might get clouds moving in for the next couple of nights when there are slightly better passes, so it might be now or wait a few weeks. I went with “now.”
I really like the results. I’m going to give you the 7.1MB and 9.7MB files (because I like you!) instead of compressing them down to under 2MB. Click on them to look at or download the full-sized images – it’s worth it.
As you can see, much dimmer than last night. But looking at the original images (this is a composite of ten 15-second exposures) you can actually see it rising from right behind Castle Peak. Very nice! And with all of the trees and rooftops lit up by street lights and yard lights and other house lights on the hilltops off in the distance, I really like the colors and framing. I like this picture a lot.
Coming around the right side of that big pine tree on the left (the first picture shows ISS disappearing behind it from my viewpoint about fifteen seconds earlier) I was able to track ISS all the way until it disappeared on the right behind our cedar trees. Most importantly, the focus is great, so I may have (“Don’t get cocky, kid!”) figured that part out.
The other really neat thing about this second image, which I take for granted but which many folks wouldn’t, is how it shows the stars spinning around the Polaris, the North Star. If you haven’t ever seen or noticed it before, blow this image up to full size and then look at the stars on the left and right. They’re all trails, little curved arcs, since the camera was fixed and the planet it was fixed to was spinning. The further you are from the pole, the longer the trails. Look at the first picture to see this demonstrated as well.
But in this picture, there are curved arcs on the left, right, top, and bottom. But near the center, those arcs get shorter and shorter and there’s one star that’s a dot with no trailing at all. You’ve found Polaris! It’s the star that’s at the “end” of the “handle” of the Little Dipper.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
As the prophecy foretold…
Rising behind the stinking streetlight in the southwest. (At the bottom of that arc is Malibu…sort of.)
Setting behind the house off to the northeast. (Toward Salt Lake City at 17,500 mph.) Currently over Africa only 35 minutes after being over LA. Orbital mechanics, gotta love them!
These are all 13 second exposures, stitched together into one image using StarStaX.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
If you live in the Southern California area, heads up for the next few evenings, ESPECIALLY TOMORROW.
We’ve gotten to the time of year where the planetary tilt and the orbital plane of the International Space Station (ISS) align and there are a LOT of excellent evening passes coming up.
(Image from Heavens-Above.com)
Tonight we saw a wonderful, bright, high pass that went right through the Big Dipper almost directly overhead and then faded into shadow.
Tomorrow night at 20:55 the ISS will rise in the south-southwest, go high through the sky, get VERY bright, and then disappear over the horizon to the northeast.
(Image from Heavens-Above.com)
There are other evening passes later in the week that will be lovely, just not as high and as bright as Friday’s.
There are also some spectacular passes before sunrise this week, but the odds of me dragging my butt out of bed at 04:15 or the like to see it are very, VERY close to zero. I’m about a thousand hours short of sleep in the last six months, unless the alien mothership is coming in, I’m staying in bed.
As Dirty Harry said, “A man has got to know his limitations!”
In posting the white rose pictures last night it became obvious that there has been a somewhat limited range of context here recently.
Flowers. Critters. Sunsets.
Yep, welcome to Day 55 of the official lockdown. I say “official” since that’s when the LA County order became official and we went to 100% work-from-home at the office, but for at least a couple of weeks before that the bars and restaurants had been closed, we had severely limited our outings, and so on.
Flowers, critters, and sunsets are the dominant themes when I tear myself away from my desk (this WFH thing is like doing brain surgery in boxing gloves, everything takes twice as long as it used to) and go outside for a few. It can only be that much more difficult for people holed up in apartments or living in less confined quarters.
And now the cancellations have begun in earnest. The personal ones, not the national and international ones like MLB, the Stanley Cup playoffs, the NBA, the air shows, the marathons, Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the Masters, ComicCon, WorldCon, and on and on and on.
We were supposed to be going to Detroit for a family wedding over Memorial Day in two weeks – today was the day to cancel those airplane tickets and rental car. We also got told that our “Hamilton” performance for next month has been cancelled. The LA Phil has been cancelling concerts for a while, as has the Schubert. We were supposed to have a play and a concert this last weekend – nope, nope, nope. Our performance of “1776” has been cancelled for this summer. And on and on and on.
Someday this will be behind us and there will be a new normal. I would like to say “I can’t wait,” but of course, I can. And I will. And so will you. And despite that, hundreds of thousands more Americans will die in the next few months.
Don’t be one of them. Wear a freakin’ mask! Wash your hands! Don’t touch your face! Stay home!
And enjoy the pictures of the sunsets, flowers, and critters.
Filed under CoronaVirus
I apologize in advance for the stupid and lame article title.
It’s descriptive. But that’s about all.
There’s a certain “truth in advertising” aspect to it, but since I’m not really advertising, so what?
It’s a very nice white rose. I especially liked the bits of pink around the edges of the petals.
And it was most certainly a Tuesday, although it felt like a Monday, even though I worked Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in what was supposed to be a three-day weekend, but with everyone else back, it felt Monday-ish. Which was less than pleasant.
There’s also a chunk of that “getting old sucks” aches and pains going on at the moment – nothing life threatening and considering what else is going on in the medical world these days, being sore all the time because I threw too much batting practice twenty years ago isn’t much to bitch about. But it still hurts.
So I smelled the roses – they smelled lovely, even if they were white, even it was a Monday-ish-feeling Tuesday. And I heard two new birds in the neighborhood. Something else mind numbingly boring to talk at you about tomorrow, maybe.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
I caught this rose a day or two past peak.
The petal edges are curling and tearing, turning brown. The vibrant pinks and reds are fading to white and ochre.
And yet, to me, the faded colors just serve to emphasize the bright colors which remain. The contrast reminds me of the world, living and dying, growing and fading, vibrant and decaying, all simultaneously. Above all, the melancholy of knowing that everything fades with time, tempered by the faith that it will bloom again another day.
Filed under Flowers, Photography
There he goes!! Wait for the “push ups” at the end!
Standard issue fence lizard. Now that it’s getting warm we’re seeing a dozen or so of them around the yard. By late summer it will be many dozens, depending on the attrition rate as the crows and hawks and other birds prove to be quicker than they are.
Remember the birds from the back yard? I called them “house wrens.” They’re not.
They’re “house finches.”
(The Cornell Lab Merlin App)
I don’t share this with you simply because I know that some of you, out of an overabundance of politeness no doubt, have been biting your tongues for days, knowing that they were finches and not wrens but not wanting to rain on my parade. (I know no such thing.) No, I share this because I found this really cool free app!
I don’t know about Android phones, but if you’re on an Apple iOS device, look for the “Merlin bird ID” app. It’s from Cornell Lab at Cornell University and it will ID birds with a picture, by answering five questions, and possibly (I just got it this afternoon, so maybe?) with a live photo as you’re watching the bird? It doesn’t appear to be able to ID birdsong, but if you ID your bird from a picture you can hear a sample of the birdsong for that species and confirm the ID that you just completed.
Check it out, it’s cool!!
Just like “Groundhog Day.” A truly great movie, by the way, but I never actually wanted to live it.
Another evening where I walked away from the mountain of work at my desk and the Deadlines From Hell ™ and took thirty or forty minutes to read and watch the sunset.
Do you see Venus up there? It’s right there in the clouds, but they’re not that thick, so you can see it shining through just below the three power lines, about halfway between the trees on either side of the picture. Click on the image to blow it up to full size – it’s there!
Can you see it now? Like a diamond floating up there in pink cotton candy.
The sunset two days ago was very much orange and yellow where tonight was very much pink and purple.
And as before, and as it will be tomorrow, eventually it all fades to black. I waved to Major who was walking by, disappointed by the absence of the bunnies who won’t come out when I’m sitting out there.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll sit out in the back yard to harass the wrens instead so that Major can spook the bunnies.
It’s the little things.
Filed under Astronomy, CoronaVirus, Photography, Weather
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 