Balclutha

This is the square-rigged ship "Balclutha" built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1886.    It was built to haul California wheat to Europe, and in order to get there, it had to round Cape Horn, one of the most dangerous passages in the world.  She did that 17 times.  She is the only square rigged ship left in the San Francisco Bay area and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark and is currently preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco.  I have been photographing her for several days now, and finally got the shot I want - late in the afternoon, the fog moved in through the Golden Gate, and nearly completely obscured the hills in the distance - it is the perfect background for my photograph.

The Golden Gate

What a day!  I drove up from San Jose this morning and wandered around the San Francisco waterfront, touring a submarine and a liberty ship.  Then my friend Glenn picked me up at my hotel, and he had promised to show me all the best places to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge from.  Well, he did that, and more.  This is one of the classic views of the bridge from the Marin side of the bridge, and we started photographing just after sunset, and photographed until two hours after that.  This is my favorite shot from all the spots we stopped at.  Glenn was a member of the astronomy club on Long Island for a bunch of years, then decided to change everything and move to San Francisco where he got a job with a software company.  He loves the new company, and the work,  and the vibe in San Francisco, and by now is a really accomplished photographer, and self taught as well!  We had a great evening together and a nice dinner, and I have a bunch of photographs to show for it.

And I Thought I Was a Cyclist!

And I thought I was a cyclist!  Well, I guess not!  These are cyclists who arrived in the parking lot of Lick Observatory on the weekend days we were up there for our convention.  We had also passed a number of them on the curving roads that go to the top of Mount Hamilton.  The mountain is 4200 feet tall.  The trip from the bottom is 18 miles, and I asked the cyclists I talked to how long it took them.  They said between 2 hours, and 2 hours and 30 minutes!  OK, so these are iron men and iron women!

Spaceflight!

Today we toured two different observatories to see more telescopes.  The first was the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland.  We came to see three beautiful telescopes - two "antiques" and one modern Cassegrain.  After seeing and photographing the telescopes which were in separate observatories outdoors, I wandered into the Science Center and was stunned to find this Mercury capsule.  I have seen several of these original capsules in other museums around the country, but I have NEVER seen one that you can climb into.  And I was in shock when I got inside.  I didn't feel claustrophobic while in there, but when I tried to imagine one of the Mercury astronauts, all suited up, and locked in with the door bolted closed, sitting on top of a rocket, it freaked me out!  These capsules are SMALL!  I cannot begin to imagine being blasted into space in such a confining place. You certainly had to have "the right stuff" in order to do that!  I mean I was impressed with astronauts in general, but this brought my appreciation to a whole new level.  There is a photo as well of the panel in the capsule - this was clearly not a complete capsule, but rather some sort of training device.

Lick Observatory

Yesterday I showed you the views on the way up to Lick Observatory, and today I want to show you just one of the many telescopes on the mountain.  The first photograph shows the main observatory building at sundown, showing two of the domes - one at each end of the building.  The second photograph is of the Shane Telescope which has a 120" diameter mirror - it is an enormous instrument.  The third photograph gives a sense of how large it really is, when you see the fork arm that holds the telescope itself, with three men at the bottom so you get an idea of size.  The last photograph was taken when most of us took a stroll on the catwalk around the outside of the dome.  The floor of the catwalk is an open metal grating, and some people were not completely comfortable walking on that, fifty feet above the ground.  I just love the feeling I get when looking at the brilliant white dome, and the deep blue sky on the horizon.  It sure is fun being around large telescopes.

The Stunning Landscape

Three of us left our hotel in San Jose this morning, and drove in my car up to the Lick Observatory.  The minute we got out of the city, we were in a stunning California landscape, as seen during the brown time of year.  There were golden grasses growing everywhere, backlit by the sun.  It is simply a stunning landscape.  We stopped a couple of times along the way because we all wanted to take pictures.  Click on the second photograph, and in the right top of the picture, on the furthest mountains - the ones the most blue - there are tiny bumps on the top of the mountain to the left - those are the domes of the observatory we were headed to.  Lick Observatory was the world's first permanently occupied mountain top observatory, and it opened in1887.

California Dreaming

Here I am, on the road again, westbound at Flight Level 380.  I am on the way to San Francisco, for the Antique Telescope Convention.  I have not been to San Francisco in over 20 years!  What a shame.  I meant to shoot something completely different for this flying post, but I am so taken with the beauty of the United States from the air, that I am starting with a couple of photographs of the Earth.  They are in the vicinity of Utah, Nevada, and California.  I was so busy shooting that I forgot to check the moving map display.  In any case, they are stunning abstractions, don't you think?  And the last photo is something different.  On the long approach to San Francisco Airport over San Francisco Bay I watched as the shadow of the plane got larger as we got lower.  Oh well, at least it is a bit different from what I have shot before.