Category Archives: Space

January 4, 2024 · 23:36

About 25 Years Apart

Looking for something to share tonight, I ended up back in the pictures I took on my iPhone 13 just after Thanksgiving. We were visiting the Science Museum, primarily to see Endeavour, but also to see an IMAX film.

One of the pictures I took there reminded me of a picture I remember from just a month or so after I got my first digital camera, in 1999.

640 x 480 pixels. 100,512 bytes. Taken with an Epson digital camera that my dad gave to me. (He worked at Epson, got an early peek at these newfangled devices).

This is the entryway between the IMAX theater and the main museum lobby. Purple tinted skylight, several hundred gold balls hanging down.

It was July, 1999 and my three kids were with me, ages 9, 12, and 14. I was doing the single dad thing and it would be almost another year before I met The Long-Suffering Wife.

(There was no building out back with a Space Shuttle in it.)

4032 x 3024 pixels. 4,705,344 kbytes. Taken with an iPhone.

It was November, 2023 and two of my three kids were with me, ages 33 and 38.

The museum has grown considerably, and is quickly growing even more as the annex to hold Endeavour, the last flight-rated external fuel tank, and two flight ready solid rocket boosters, all combined into a vertical stack just like they would be when ready for launch.

The photographic resolution has skyrocketed. Today’s “older model pocket-sized supercomputer” (i.e., an iPhone 13) has forty times the resolution of yesterday’s cutting edge next big thing.

Welcome to the future!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Space

December 5, 2023 · 23:40

Endeavour

Did I mention that on the day after Thanksgiving I went down to the California Science Center near the USC campus and the Coliseum in downtown Los Angeles and saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour?

It’s just a tiny little bit freakin’ awesome.

Scorched tiles on the belly above us.

The business end with the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs).

Twenty-five missions, from May 1992 until May 2011.

It’s on display until December 31st like this, then it will be off display for a couple of years. There’s a huge new building under construction next to this one where it will be displayed in the upright, “ready to launch” configuration.

In addition to Endeavour, the museum also has the last surviving flight-rated external fuel tank, and two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs).

Once they put it all together in a vertical configuration, it will look just like it did on the launch pad, ready to go to space. When you first come in from the parking lot you can see the two SRBs standing up, peeking over the top of the outside walls of the new building.

As you leave the exhibition, over yonder you can see the orange foam of that final external tank.

It’s going to be spectacular to see!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Space

November 24, 2023 · 21:55

Not NaNoWriMo, 11/24/2023

Normally, like, for the last thirty years (or more!), the evening after Thanksgiving our house would be lit up with the first wave of Christmas lights.

Tonight, the 94% illuminated Moon and bright Jupiter will have to do. The lights will start to go up tomorrow, but today was better spent with two of our kids.

Endeavour is at the California Science Center but will be going off display for a couple of years after December 31st. The new building is well under way and you can see the last existing external tank out in back, while the last two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) are now upright and visible over the construction barriers. When it’s all said and done, Endeavour will be displayed in a vertical position with the external tank and SRBs all assembled in launch position. It’s going to be freakin’ awesome! But for now, I hadn’t seen her yet and wanted to before she went off display, so the kids made sure that it happened. (I have no idea why everyone else in the picture was dressed in dark colors while I stood out like a KC Chiefs peacock…)

After that my son and I went down to Hawthorne to see the SpaceX flight-proven booster that’s on display there. Also an incredibly cool thing.

Priorities, baby!

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Filed under Family, Photography, Space

October 23, 2023 · 21:48

Falcon 9 Launch From Vandenberg

I’ve shared a number of pictures and (I think) one or two videos from when SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base, 115 miles to the northwest. They’re amazing when they’re right after sunset, pretty cool in the middle of the night, and a “challenge” to capture on film or video.

But I have a Nest security camera looking at the front porch. What does it see?

Here’s your generic, normal, daylight view, looking northwest-ish. Where’s Vandenberg? On the lefthand side, in the distance just to the right of that support pillar with the flag, you can see the northern flank of Castle Peak. There’s a bit of sloping hillside there between the pillar and the trees where the red-tailed hawks hang out (and attack me).

Watch there…

First a full-frame view, then zoomed in.

Hmmm, how to improve this? Probably easier to move the camera than to chop down that support pillar. Besides, if I hack away at that sucker I’ll NEVER get my security deposit back!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography, Space, Video

October 3, 2023 · 22:37

Pictureless

There was a truly spectacular ISS pass tonight, the station rising in the northwest just as it got truly dark and sailing about 80%+ across the sky before fading into darkness in the west. It was amazingly bright, something like Magnitude -3.9. I noticed the time just a minute before it was set to rise, so I didn’t have time to grab my camera and tripod and gear and get it set up in time. So I went out into the front yard and simply watched. It was wonderful.

The red-shouldered hawks were at it again, something like the 7th or 8th day in a row that they’ve been in the pine trees below us on the hill. I wonder if they might be building a nest nearby. For much of the time they were being raucous outside I was on a Zoom meeting and couldn’t go out to take pictures, but I listened to them from inside. They were loud enough so that the rest of the staff could have heard them if I hadn’t been on mute. I enjoyed listening to them, even if I didn’t see them or get any pictures.

I saw several lizards in the back yard, but never when I had my camera with me. I had my phone, but they weren’t that close, so I just let it go. We had a nice conversation about how warm it was getting again, nearly 90ºF today and getting even warmer for the week ahead. They enjoyed that news quite a bit, but I had to remind them to watch out for the birds. I’m not sure the hawks would bother with something as small as them, but the scrub jays and mockingbirds most certainly would.

The hummingbirds were out, starting to complain that the feeders are getting low. I was too busy today to clean and refill them, but I promised to look at it tomorrow. They’re fine for today, but they do get nervous. No pictures were taken.

The rose bush that had given me the one fantastic pink and white bloom a few weeks ago has decided to cough up a handful more. For some reason when I went out to get the mail I didn’t have my phone with me to take pictures. Huh! That almost never happens. But it did today. The blooms will wait for their closeups another day.

I happened to be out just before 17:00 when I caught the UPS 757 banked over right over our house to turn to final approach for Burbank Runway 08. It’s a regular flight, but sometimes they turn inside of us to the east, sometimes swing in more from the Porter Ranch area. It’s a honkin’ big plane (that’s an official aviation term) and when they cross overhead they’re just extending their flaps so it looks even honkin’er bigger. I just watched, enjoyed the way it floated through the air, listened as those two big engines spooled down as the power was pulled back.

All of these things happened without any photos to share or other proof that I experienced them. I simply experienced them and held onto the memories.

Which brings me to one of the two or three best scenes ever filmed:

Today, no rain. There might still be tears.

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Flowers, Space

September 14, 2023 · 22:30

Something Launched Out Of Vandenberg

I was fixing dinner at 19:40 when I got a text from my son. “Hearing something about a launch (Unannounced?) out of Vandenberg within the last few minutes?”

I stuck my head out the front door, facing west.

Well, that would be a big ol’ confirmation, right there!

The lower part of the exhaust trail, deep in the sunset atmosphere, is orange and red, turning white as it climbs up higher in the atmosphere where it’s still fully illuminated by the sun off in the west.

It’s odd that there wasn’t any announcement or webcast, so that rules out a SpaceX or ULA launch. A Minuteman III test, possibly?

Nope, turns out to have been the Firefly Alpha 3 launch at 19:27 PDT carrying a top secret Space Force payload named Victus Nox.

Great job, everyone! Let the conspiracy theory and calls to the police about alien invasions start!

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Filed under Photography, Space, Sunsets

August 30, 2023 · 23:05

Orange Super Blue Moon Rising

We interrupt our traipsing through past Worldcon trips to bring you today’s “Blue Supermoon” rising!

You couldn’t possibly have missed all of the hype. But the short (and factual) description is that tonight the Moon was full (happens every 29.5 days, more or less), it was a tiny percentage closer to Earth than average (its orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, so sometimes it’s a bit closer, sometimes it’s a bit farther away, perfectly normal and routine) which means it was a tiny percentage brighter than average, and it was the second full moon in a calendar month (which happens on average every couple of years because our calendar is weird and irregular and lumpy), and tonight all three of those things happened more or less simultaneously. The press had a field day.

First of all, the camera (and hidden image processing software) in the iPhone 13 doesn’t quite know what to do with an bright orange super blue Moon on a dark-ish, dusk-ish background. It does its best.

The good news is that it did better this time on focusing on the Moon instead of the telephone pole and trees. Not great, mind you, but better.

The good camera (Canon Rebel XT DSLR with a 300mm Tamron lens) is lousy in full auto mode being even older and more computationally primitive than the iPhone. But put it in manual mode and shoot a series of pictures with varying exposures and manually focusing, then something in that series is going to get close.

This is a LOT like what it looked like in terms of color and contrast. And yes, just coming up through the turbulent, hot, pea soup atmosphere over downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley it does look that distorted and misshapen.

As it gets up a bit and we’re not viewing it through quite so much icky atmosphere, the Moon rounds up and starts to get bright. Like really, really bright.

Which confuses the crap out of the camera, which sees all of that black and wants to do a 1/2 or 3/4 second exposure. Knowing (a little bit) better, I overrode it for a 1/250 second exposure. Still too bright! Should have gone for 1/1000 second. Or shorter.

The iPhone never gets over that and constantly overexposes the scene. But it does a decent job of catching the city spread out down below.

Now that it’s way up overhead, even a 1/1000 second exposure would be way, way too long. I don’t think my older (13 years? 15 years?) DSLR will do an exposure short enough to show detail on any full moon, not just a super duper blue Moon. Not without going to some sort of neutral density filter to cut down on the light.

Regolith is reflective as all get out, especially for just vacuum cured grey dust and pulverized rock!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

August 10, 2023 · 23:58

Doing Its Best

When I was out watching and filming the Falcon 9 launch the other night, I also had my DSLR with the big lens, just in case the opportunity came up to use it. I tried to take one picture but it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t going to work. Because it was so dark the camera automatically tried to take about a 60-second exposure, I didn’t have a tripod, the handheld shot was going to be blurred and useless, so I just let the camera go and hang by the neck strap for the final fifty or so seconds.

It turned out remarkably interesting and even borderline beautiful!

The brave little robot camera, having been given an order by me, its mentor, boldly went forward to do its very best to comply and produce what it had been asked to.

In the upper left corner, I believe that’s the Falcon 9 rocket. And all of the arcs and lines? I have no clue. Probably street lights, maybe a plane overhead, maybe lights on nearby houses as the camera swung. Who knows?

But all together? Sublime.

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Filed under Art, Paul, Photography, Space

August 7, 2023 · 22:00

Tonight’s Falcon 9 Launch Out Of Vandenberg

I was hoping that tonight’s Falcon 9 launch out of Vandenberg would be soon enough after sunset so that we would get a spectacular “jellyfish” effect. That’s when the huge cloud of turbulent gas being released by the rocket engines is high enough to still be in the light of the sun, while down below we’re in darkness already. It’s really, REALLY cool! (Like this one from December, 2017!)

Tonight – close, no cigar.

Oh, I saw the launch, it was great! Clear as a bell here, so I could follow the second stage for over five minutes as it headed toward the southern horizon, out over the San Fernando Valley:

And the video I got as it came up over the mountains to the west and climbed toward MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) was decent:

But it would be nice to get to see a couple of launches close up. Like, as close as I can get without either being arrested or pulped by the acoustic energy.

Of course, ultimately I would like a seat on the pointy end… One step at a time.

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Filed under Photography, Space, Video

July 1, 2023 · 23:35

Pick Your Exposure

The 98% full moon (the 100% full moon is at 04:38 PDT on July 3rd, about 28 hours from now) was rising over the house tonight while I was out for a brief walkabout.

The iPhone sees that everything’s getting dark in the dusk and exposes the image appropriately, which leaves the Moon horribly over exposed.

But you can manually override the iPhone’s automatic settings and see detail on the Moon! But you won’t see much of the house and flag and trees.

There seems to be a LOT of things in life that are like that, which is a real pain in the ass when you really, REALLY want BOTH!

(And if you see a really nice professional photograph that shows both in this particular instance? I’ll about 99.99999999% guarantee that it’s two pictures photoshopped together.)

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space