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.

Dam, That's a Lot of Water

That's 19,000 cubic feet per second of water from 4 of 24 floodgates at the base of Mansfield Dam, plus another 6,600 CFS from the turbines. For comparison, 100,000 CFS go over Niagara Falls during the day, and 50,000 CFS at night.

Irish Bar, Part II

A middle-aged woman stops into a pub in Ireland for a beer. She tells the barkeeper she'd like a pint of draft.

"Certainly ma'am," says the barkeeper. "Anheuser-Busch?"

"Oh, it's just fine, thank you. And how's your pecker?"

Irish Bar

Said the Scotsman: "I still prefer the pubs back home. In Glasgow there is a little bar called McTavish's. The landlord there goes out of his way for the locals so much that when you buy 4 drinks he will buy the 5th drink for you."

"Well", said the Englishman, "at my local, the Red Lion, the barman there will buy you your 3rd drink after you buy the first 2."

"Ahhhhh, that is nothing", said the Irishman. "Back home in Dublin we have Ryan's Bar. Now the moment you set foot in the place they will buy you a drink, then another, all the drinks you like. Then when you have had all you want, they will take you upstairs and see that you get laid, and it is all on the house."

The Englishman and Scotsman immediately scorned the Irishman's claims. But he swore that every word was true.

"Well tell me," said the Englishman: "Did this actually happen to you?"

"Not myself, personally, no," said the Irishman. "But it did happen to my sister."

As Bad As It Gets

I guess I could take up radio astronomy.

Michael

My neighbor's oldest kid.

Ugh

7:05 a.m., 79°, 95% humidity. Welcome to summer.

Traffic

So you think you have crazy drivers where you live?

The Leader of the Free World

Nice socks. They go well with the skirt.

M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy Returns

I added another hour's worth of exposures (12 x 300 sec) and worked over the noise some for a nice improvement. This is the first time I've combined shots from 2 nights, but it was easy enough in Nebulosity to align using rotate, scale and stack.

M13, The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

Info from Wikipedia:

With an apparent magnitude of 5.8, (M13) is barely visible with the naked eye on a very clear night. Its real diameter is about 145 light-years, and is composed of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which is the variable star V11 with an apparent magnitude of 11.95. M13 is 25,100 light-years away from Earth.

Nice to catch a few photons after the long cloudy spell.

10" LX200 @ f/6.3, 20 x 60 sec, EOS 350 D @ 1600 ISO

The Big Guy Is Back

This is going to be a crappy year for Jupiter. It just barely clears the roof, so I'm shooting through a whole bunch of turbulent air.

Carbon Fiber

Finally got around to this little project, and it's cool! The ST-80 looks like a completely different scope. Still need to get a couple of bubbles out, and the photo looks rougher than the actual wrap, but I think it was worth the $12 roll of vinyl from the local auto parts store.

Train Wreck

LONDON (AFP) - The "iconic" logo for the 2012 London Olympics was unveiled here on Monday, but critics immediately condemned it as "hideous" and a waste of money.

Or as my friend Sone put it, "It's a good logo … FORMETOPOOPON!"

I mean, I know I'm not an award-winning logo designer, but come on; you're starting with a logo with 5 rings--including a red one--and your city's best known logo includes a red ring, and the year, 2012, has a character with a circle and you give me a train wreck? WTF?

Follow-Up: BBC News website readers have been sending in their alternative 2012 logos.