Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Monday, September 29, 2008

Bupkis

Another from XKCD:

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sixth Jupiter of the Year


Shot this right at dusk while Jupiter was transiting. Not too bad seeing, maybe 3-4/5. LRGB, DMK21AF04.US, 10" LX200 @ f/25

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Hook 'Em Horns

Just in case my relatives in Fayetteville missed the game: UT 52, Arkansas 10

And in case they forgot: UT 52, Rice 10

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Thursday, September 18, 2008

An Insane Full Moon Photo


Bart Declercq in Haaltert, Belgium made this 23,000,000-pixel image of the 99.74% full moon with equipment similar to mine.

He writes:
Took a while to process, at 43 separate 1000 frame AVI's, up to 35 alignment points per AVI and 128 best images per point.

Taken with Celestron C9.25 in prime focus (F/10 = 2350mm) with DMK31 camera and infrared filter.

The original image is 4820x4820 pixels and 3.9 megabytes in size (the original 16-bits TIFF is 50 megabytes) and can be accessed here.

Next goal, on a high mid-winter full moon, is to do this at F/16, which should result in about a 64 million pixel image, and will require well over a hundred AVIs.

At the theoretical limit of my scope, it should be possible to go up to F/24, which will result in a roughly 200 million pixel image, but which would require more than 200 AVI's - the biggest problem with that would be that there's not enough time in one night to shoot such an image with the DMK31...

Monday, September 08, 2008

PMILF

I just may start taking more interest in Ukrainian politics.

I Stand By What I Said

From XKCD, one of my favorite web comics:

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Fifth Jupiter of the Year (The Small One)


Drug the LX200 to Mansfield Dam last night for Dam Astronomers and shot this Jupiter. Seeing was pretty poor, so I took the Powermate out and shot this at f/10. LRGB with the DMK21AF04.US.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Talking Heads



I want to have Jon Stewart's love child.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Sunset, The Moon and Venus


The four-day-old crescent Moon and a brilliant Venus set over Cedar Park, Texas Wednesday.

<edit 5 Sept 08> I read today that this is a side-effect of Kasatochi Volcano erupting last month. We should be seeing this for a few more weeks.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

More Advice on Raising Your Child

Most of the American populace thinks it improper to spank children, so I have tried other methods to control my kid when he has one of 'those moments.'

One that I found effective is for me to just take him for a car ride and talk.

Some say it's the vibration from the car, others say it's the time away from any distractions such as TV, video games, computer, iPod, etc.

Either way, my kid usually calms down and stop misbehaving after our car ride together. Eye to eye contact helps a lot too.

I've included a photo below of one of my sessions with him, in case you would like to use the technique.