Thank Ya, Marvin

When I was 13, I flew from Houston to Austin to visit my sister. We were late in getting me back to the airport, so I was rushing through the airport as fast as I could (and being 13, trying very hard to keep my shit together over the real possibility of missing my flight).

Anyway, I remember passing a familiar-looking white-haired man trying to get through security. It wasn't until later I realized why he looked familiar--that was Marvin!

All I can say now is that I hope God keeps a clean kitchen, or he's gonna hear about the sliiiime in heaven's ice machine!

Cave Man

I just read where I'm joining the cast of Cavemen; I didn't realize I'd been so busy!

See Threepio

Took the family to Ft. Worth to see Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination. Had a bit of a setback getting out of town, but once we got there had a great time at the exhibit. More pictures here.

Jupiter & Europa

Waaayyyy over-processed, but I wanted to see if there was any detail in the GRS.

M5, A Globular Cluster in Serpens

From Wikipedia:

Spanning 165 light-years across, M5 is one of the larger globular clusters known. The gravitational sphere of influence of M5, (ie. the volume of space where stars would be gravitationally bound to the cluster and not ripped away from it by the Milky Way's gravitational pull), has a radius of some 200 light-years.

At 13 billion years old it is also one of the older globulars associated with the Milky Way Galaxy. The distance of M5 is about 24,500 light-years away from Earth and the cluster contains more than 100,000 stars up to perhaps 500,000 according to some estimates.

A Week Late

Supreme Edition Darth Vader Costume From Original Molds Really Wheezes



Well shoot, where was this last week when I had a birthday coming up? Now I have to wait until Christmas, which is like a million years away.

The Supreme Edition Darth Vader Costume is the full package: you get a jumpsuit complete with fake leather pants and sleeves (though the codpiece is real leather), Darth's signature cape, and all of his armor cast from the original Lucasfilm molds. Our favorite part: the suit has a custom apparatus to mimic Darth's breathing. It can be toggled off if you want (but why would you?) And on top of that, it will only cost you $850 and comes with a cool freebie.

Bumper Sticker Idea

Fourth of July

On the Edge of 42

Google: "the answer to life, the universe, and everything"

Jupiter, Io & Ganymede

These shouldn't have even been possible--I was working late and went outside to see what the weather was doing. Jupiter was shining brightly through a pretty good-sized sucker hole, so I brought the 6" dob out onto the driveway for a look. When I saw both the GRS and the shadow transit, I hustled out back and opened the roof on the observatory. The sky actually cleared up enough for me to get several streams shot, and these are the best two:


The black dot is Io's shadow on the planet. If you look to the right of it, close to the limb, you can see the moon about to pull away from the planet. I've never actually been able to see the moon in front of the planet like this, so that's pretty cool.


And here we are about half an hour later. Io has cleared the limb while its shadow is still on the planet. That's Ganymede at the bottom, about to pass behind the planet.

Seeing was pretty awful for these, so I'm surprised they processed up as nicely as they did. I do like the SPC900NC vs. the NexImage for sure.