Beautiful Dancing Ghosts!

How beautiful is this!  It looks completely homemade and is so creative!  We went driving around the village looking for interesting decorations.  Most were commercial ghosts or skeletons or dinosaurs or gravestones.  But this one stopped us in our tracks.  We happened by when the light was absolutely perfect!  There is something about the beauty of this wonderful creation.  Perfect!

 

Outreach for Long Island Cares

So this is why we were here at Robert Moses State Park, so show the Moon and Saturn to people who came bringing food for Long Island Cares food bank.  Bringing some non-perishable food as a donation, allowed you to look through our telescopes.  The wonderful thing is that at the end of the evening there were 800 pounds of food in the truck that will be in the warehouse this morning.  Here one of our members is setting up her telescope in daylight so she will be ready when it gets dark.

As it got darker, this is all of the amateur astronomers from both ASLI and also from the Amature Observers Society of New York.  We had a great turnout of members from both clubs with not only telescopes, but TV screens that were set up to show visitors some of the work that amatures have done in terms of imaging some distant objects.  Some of their photographs look like they were taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, that's how good their images are.

Here are both members and visitors viewing a TV screen in the middle of the parking lot, showing amateur made photographs of deep space objects.  I never did figure out where the power came from!

All kinds of things were set up here, automated telescopes that would display images on screens and screens showing photographs done by amateur astrophotography in other places at other times.

This is one amateur and his antique telescope, made at the turn of the 20th century.  He is about to show the moon to the person at left.  Unfortunately once visitors started arriving, I was busy non-stop showing visitors both the Moon and Saturn and I never got to walk around and see visitors looking through the telescopes of other amateurs.  All in all, it was an astounding evening and so many people were astounded to see both the Moon and Saturn for the very first time - they have never in their lives ever looked through a telescope at the night sky!

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Another Stupid Ken Trick

So tonight I was part of an outreach event with another astronomy club on Long Island, along with ASLI, our club.  One of our members got the idea of a giant outreach event where 30 amateurs and their telescopes from both clubs would have an event where we would show the Moon and Saturn to whoever came to Robert Moses State Park.  The event was sponsored by LI Cares an organzation which supplies food to needy people.  All you had to do was to bring some non-perishable food to the event.  Anyhow, I arrived at the state park and decided that I would walk over to the rest room which was 400 feet away.  After I came out of the restroom I walked down to the beach and saw THIS photograph.  Notice the tiny moon rising.  And I did NOT have my camera!  My car was too far away to try and run back and get my camera an run back to this spot.  The Sun would have been long gone! What is wrong with me that I would not take my camera to the men's room!  What a dolt.  I did, of course have my iPhone so I used it to shoot this.

Then I turned around to photograph the setting sun. I saw this woman doing the same thing so quickly went over closer to her and managed to get this photograph!  I had to crop into the wide-angle photo that my phone took to make it more interesting.  I usually carry my toy camera with me and that version of the camera I now have zooms out to 200mm.  I wish I had that with me at this moment.   At least I got something!  But. come ON!  Always bring your camera, even to the men's room!

 

A Beautiful Moon, A Very Strange Tree

I came out of the grocery store this afternoon and saw the nearly full moon in the sky and I saw the tree in a slightly different spot.  So I went to my car and got my camera out with a telephoto lens.  Then I started walking over in the direction that would align the tree and the moon.  The Moon was way above the tree but if I moved toward the tree the moon appeared closer.  Finally I found my spot and took a few images.  I was standing by the left front of a parked car, holding my camera down by my waist, looking at the image on the back of the camera I had just shot when a woman carrying a bag of groceries came right to her car - the car I was standing hear.  "Can I help you?" she asked.  "Oh, I am shooting pictures of the Moon."  She looked at me and screwed up her face into a quizical look, and then continued walking!  I am sure her thoughts were "Why would ANYONE want to take pictures of the Moon?"  That look just cracked me up!  Of course all of you here know that I have produced some really lovely photographs, photographing the moon over the years!  Please click on this to see it closer.  It is really beautiful, if a bit strange.

 

I Do Not Want One of These Cars!

I was slowing for a red light and as I got close realized that this brilliant yellow car was something completely different!  It is a Ferarri 296 GTB.  So you probably wonder what a car like this might cost.  Hold on to your seats: Base price: About $343,000–$351,950.  BUT...  With optional extras: Potentially considerably more; expensive paint, carbon-fiber components and performance packages can add tens of thousands of dollars or more.  And imagine the cost of insurance.  Years ago a doctor in our astronomy club who is a friend bought one and he said that a Ferarri had been in an accident and totalled, and my friend's insurance went up because there are not that many of these on the road!  Honestly, if someone gave me one, I would sell it right away for the money, and never drive it.  Who wants that much attention when driving it.  I would curl up and hide being embarrassed by being seen in one of these.  OH!  And I forgot to mention that believe it or not, it is a Hybrid!

 

 

Blue!

Look at all the blue sky!  Just glorious!  Such a beautiful blue!  We went to the beach for Dunkin' today, and then after having our drinks and one donut each we got out of the car, and sat on a park bench at the beginning of the beach and just took all of this scene in.  Wall to wall blue sky.  It makes you feel so good to just look at and enjoy this scene.  It did for us.  Oh wait, what is going on with this photograph?  It looks out of focus?  What's going on?  What's going on is that I AM A DOLT!  Really!  I used my iPhone to take three exposures of this scene.  I never checked the first photo to see if it was OK, I just shot two more and put the camera away.  Imagine my shock to look at them on my computer this evening to see that all three were out of focus!  Completely blurred!  Obviously the camera couldn't find anything to focus on, in the sky!  I am crestfallen that I blew this shot.  I am hoping the weather will be the same and I will go back tomorrow and do this again, and do it right!  After 70 years of taking photographs, starting when I was a teenager you would think I would have learned how to take a simple photograph and make sure it was in focus!  I guess I could say that I meant for this image to be "impressionistic."  But you would not buy that excuse, I am sure!

 

The Moon in The Trees

I was out looking at the moon with just my unaided eyes, to see how high up it would be.  In the summer the sun is really high in the sky, and it is low in the winter. The Moon is completely opposite and it is low in the winter and high in the summer. We have trees all around us so it is hard to find it.  I did spot it through the branches of some trees in other people's yards up behind us.  I was going to shoot a closeup but like this wider view with all the dark shapes of trees around it.  I think it is a really beautiful scene.  I did post a larger image so please click on this to see it larger.