Category Archives: Astronomy

Caution: could be habit forming.

I’ve told you before about the free NASA-TV app which includes the “Live HD Views From ISS” feed for free as well. If you want to know where the ISS is when you’re looking at that free video fee, use the free “ISS Tracker” app.

If you’re anything at all like me (which is somewhat likely at least a tiny little bit, otherwise why are you wasting your time reading this website?) you will be able to watch the view from the ISS for hours and hours on end. It’s very relaxing. I would love to have it displayed 24/7 in my office, like a framed, live picture into space.

For example, this series of screen grabs from about twenty minutes ago. Where are we? I’ll show you at the end. (All images courtesy of NASA,  the International Space Station program and the JSC Earth Science & Remote Sensing Unit, ARES Division, Exploration Integration Science Directorate.)

Over a land mass, coming up on a coastline, with another land mass on the horizon.

Something like the Gulf of California between Baha and the Mexican mainland, perhaps?

Probably not, this is live and it was well after 22:00 here on the US West Coast, so there’s no way Baja is sunlit.

Wherever it is, the west coast is clear, with clouds piling up along the east coast.

There’s a southern tip of wherever this is, so it’s not a continental mass approaching. Probably an island.

A big island. We crossed over the east coast of something and now there’s a big island there.

Stunning cloud formations off to the east ahead of us.

No land in sight on the horizon, so this is it for the landmarks for a while. Coastline. Big island. Lots of ocean beyond.

A nice, thin line of storms along that coast it seems. But no big cyclones or hurricanes in sight, which is good if you’re down there.

Why do we call it “Earth” when it’s three-quarters water?

That’s it, out over the vast ________ Ocean we go!

Got a good guess? Here’s the map’s view from the beginning of the run, showing our path:

Look at that! We came off of the east coast of Africa, over the southern tip of Madagascar, and out over the Indian Ocean. We should have waved at the lemurs!

And in the forty minutes since that first picture was taken, while I’ve been writing this, the ISS is now approaching the Northern California coast, headed toward Canada.

Don’t you feel better now?

Remember, the next time you’ve watched one too many news show or had one too many clowns try to kill you on the commute home, serenity is available at your fingertips. Non-prescription, totally addicting, beamed right to your phone or computer (switch to booming, echoey voice) FROM SPACE!!

I was finally getting ready to leave the office tonight when I saw the full, Full, FULL moon rising over the hills to the east.

The eye plays tricks, making it look spectacular, because the brain filters out the five-story building outside of your sixth-floor window.

All your brain focuses on is the humongous, white, perfect circle on the horizon.

The horizon illusion works like a charm on the brain, but the camera only starts to see…

…the spectacular when the picture zooms in…

…to more accurately portray what the brain perceives. Except, of course, for the top of that five-story building.

From a different perspective, on the second floor of the garage parking lot five minutes later, the full moon is still hovering right on top of that hill.

It looks all the bigger with nothing but the trees and houses in the distance, enhancing the illusion. To the eye, all the lunar features seemed to be etched they’re so clearly seen.

I guess some days it does pay to stay late at the office!

According to Wikipedia,

“In computer graphics, a color gradient (sometimes called a color ramp or color progression) specifies a range of position-dependent colors, usually used to fill a region.^[1] For example, many window managers allow the screen background to be specified as a gradient. The colors produced by a gradient vary continuously with position, producing smooth color transitions.”

Out there in what may be the biggest, baddest display of computer graphics and the ultimate simulation (i.e., “reality”) you find this:

Even in a sky that’s close to “clear and a million,” you can get a pretty decent sunset.

Those trees that look like ginormous dandelions? They prove that we’re nowhere near Canada.

Happy Yuri’s Night!

Pulling a picture from February 25, 2010, I found this:

There was a twelve day old moon, 92% illuminated, but it was being seen through a thin layer of high clouds. This caused there to be a large “moonbow” or ring around the moon. In addition, Mars can be seen just above the moon.

Pretty much what it says – I was home, getting on the computer, starting to run routine maintenance stuff (Windows update, backups, etc) when I saw a Tweet to folks in the Bay Area that there was a really good ISS pass coming up in about two minutes.

The Bay Area and Los Angeles are roughly 400 miles apart, so depending on the ISS ground path, that could mean that we would see nothing. But I checked my Flyby app and saw that it was a super bright pass, almost straight overhead, and starting in just a bit over four minutes.

For about two seconds I thought of simply going out and watching. Then my idiot brains stepped up and said, “After all, there’s no way you could get the camera set up from scratch and ready to go in just four minutes. No! Way!”

Stupid brain. (You see this coming, don’t you?)

The tripod’s in the car, the camera’s in it’s usual “ready to grab” spot, the remote shutter trigger is in its normal spot with the telescope accessories. Who says I can’t get that all together and working in four minutes flat?

Grab the camera. Grab the remote trigger. Put the battery into the remote trigger, mount it on the camera, plug it in. Grab car keys. Head out the door. Open the car & grab the tripod. Get it out of it’s bag, extend the legs. Pull the shoe off, get the shoe mounted on the camera. Mount the camera on the tripod. Close the car. Grab the phone to double check to see what direction ISS is coming from (four seconds to spare) and head toward a spot where that part of the sky looks clear. Make sure the camera is set correctly to “bulb.” Wait, that’s wrong, I’ve got that stacking software, that worked better. Set the camera to one-second exposures. Make sure the lens is set to manual focus and quickly look at the full moon to get the focus set, pray it’s correct. Look for ISS, spot it just coming up over the trees. Try to start shooting, but the remote trigger isn’t on. Fumble with the power switch, get it turned on, start shooting photos. As the ISS goes straight overhead, move the camera every twenty to thirty seconds as the ISS moves out of what I’m guessing is the field of view. Have some problems with the data on the camera not being recorded fast enough, so I can’t keep shooting every second, bang-bang-bang-bang, it ends up more like bang-bang-b-a-n-g-bang-ba-ng-bang-bang.

Fortunately I’m having a good time watching the pass as well. As advertised, extremely bright, right through the zenith, rising in the NNW and heading to the SSE. ‘Twas a thing o’ beauty.

Now check out the pictures, which were shot frantically, blind, hoping for the best. What went wrong that I overlooked?

Well, the 18-55 mm zoom lens was set much closer to 55 mm than 18 mm. While I thought I was looking at a huge, wide swath of sky and shooting thirty-five to forty pictures as the ISS moved across the field of view before moving the camera and repeating, I was zoomed in on a very small field of view, with about a third of the pictures in each set being out of sight off the bottom, a third crossing the field of view, and a third out of sight off the top. Meh.

On the other hand, the focus wasn’t too far off, so instead of getting this ultra-thin thread of light crossing the sky, when I did catch the ISS I got a honkin’ huge streak, along with a number of background stars.

Download the pictures, load up that stacking software I found that worked so well last time, and see what it does:

North at the bottom, the zenith overhead at the top. You can see a few of the brighter stars, from the Big & Little Dippers on the left, Cassiopeia on the right. The “stuttering” in my rhythm of shooting is obvious in two spots, but each segment is a one-second exposure. I need to look into getting a remote trigger that can be set to shoot on its own given some timing parameters. They’re not that expensive.

Not bad for four minutes of prep! (Stupid brain.)