Happy Birthday Liz!

It's Liz' birthday today!  Since she is in Los Angeles, we called her with Facetime and we got to wish her "Happy Birthday" in person, so to speak.  It sure is nice that things like Facetime and Zoom now exist. Not only is it good for birthdays, its good for seeing grandchildren as well!  I photographed this scene because it seemed incongruous, the electronics in the middle of some nice candlesticks.

 

The Sun

I spoke to a small group of students at the school where I gave the talk about light pollution a couple of weeks ago.  About six students were interested in telescopes and their design and how they work so I said I would come by and we would talk during the lunch hour.  It was a nice meeting.  As the students were leaving I saw this sun stitched on the left sleeve of one of the students!  I saw it and said "Did you make that?  It's really cool!"  He said he did and he is going to make the moon and put that on his right shoulder!  How cool is that, and look at his workmanship!

 

How Cool Are We!

OK  we are ALL SET for the Eclipse!  AND we look really cool!  Today, my friend Grace gave us three pair of these plastic eclipse glasses.  Usually these glasses are made out of cardboard, and don't stay on easily.  She is a photographer and will be traveling to upstate New York to photograph the eclipse from Buffalo, and so she decided to order some of these glasses so they would stay on while she was shooting during the eclipse.   So she was generous and ordered us some too.  I am glad that they are not boring colors!

 

The Flower Expert, Again...

It was only two days ago that I introduced you to the fact that I am an expert in flower identification!  So today I am showing you another flower, called "The Little Purple Flower."  Isn't it nice for all of you to have a friend as knowledgeable as I am?  I photographed these  blossoms in the garden right next to the house.  It was late in the day and it was raining.  So two things in my favor - the overcast light generally gives you better colors because bright sun can create too large a brightness range which is hard for the camera sensor to handle.  The other thing is, and you may have noticed this, that colors are brighter and more saturated in the rain.  That's what attracted me to these blossoms.

 

A RAINBOW!

After dinner tonight I left the house at about 6:30  It had been raining most of the day.  As I drove by the harbor, I saw the sun break through some clouds as it was close to setting.  "Looks pretty amazing" I thought because there were rain showers around a a beautiful atmospheric effect.  Then I turned the corner down by the old power plant and started to climb the mile long hill.  I didn't get far before I saw the most spectacular rainbow I have ever seen in my entire life!  It was a perfect bow - 180 degrees of rainbow.  I quickly pulled over and grabbed my camera but realized the rainbow spanned a huge area of the sky, so used my new iPhone 14 with it's wide angle setting to get this photograph.  I didn't like all the wires so got back in the car and drove a few blocks more, and took some more photos, with both my iPhone and my Sony camera.  And then I did a really smart thing.  I just sat in my car with the wipers on - it was raining - and decided to just take this all in, so I sat there quietly and carefully observed the beauty of this spectacular rainbow!  No photos, just looking.  After a couple of minutes, I drove on, but stopped at two more places as I drove east where I took photographs.  But I hold that image in my mind, where I just sat quietly and observed.  What an incredible experience.  So here are a few more photographs because I just could not make up my mind which were my favorites!  These photographs are a bit darker but that way you can see more detail in the colors of the rainbow.  OH, and look for the double bow - another much fainter rainbow outside the main bow.  It is very faint but can be seen in some of these photographs.

The Flower Expert

At the start of my walk today I had only gone downhill a few hundred feet before a saw an area to the side of the road with these pretty flowers in it.  There were hundreds in this patch of weeds and wild grasses.  These blossoms are called "Little blue flowers" and I just thought you would like to know their name.  How do I know this?  Because for almost half my career I did garden photography for the magazine and for a couple of garden books and for three garden calendars.  So it is clear I am an expert! OK, you got me!  I haven't a clue what these are called.  And after all my garden photography, I can probably only name perhaps six flowers.  Busted!  Clearly I am hardly an expert!  I hope my silliness made you laugh.

 

The Birds!

I went for my usual three mile walk today and looked for something for the blog.  I wasn't having much success exactly.  But when I was almost back to the foot of our street, I saw maybe a dozen Gulls sitting in a line on the railing.  So I stopped and they didn't fly away.  I brought the camera up to my eye and just watched.  Suddenly a bunch of gulls from out of the frame swooped in and some sat on the railing and others took flight again.  So I kept watching and that happened over and over again.  It was cool trying to press the shutter at the exact moment to get a nice composition.  I had a really tough time picking the best photograph.  So maybe this is the best.  I hope.

 

Practicing for the Eclipse

Stan says that for the the eclipse, we need to practice, practice, practice.  The time in Rochester for  totality is only 3 minutes and 40 seconds, so when totality starts I have to do everything exactly right to start photographing because totality will be over before I know it.  The important thing is to do some photography through my telescope quickly, and then stop photographing and then just LOOK at the eclipse with my eyes! So many people get caught up in photography, they forget to actually watch the eclipse!

While I was testing the telescope today, I took a few photographs of the sun's disk, and was amazed at all the sunspots on it today.  I should mention that the equatorial mount I am using is complicated to set up because I need to level it carefully and then align it with true north.  It has two motors in it that follow the sun while I am taking photographs.  I need to have the setup of the mount down pat so I can set it up without any mistakes.  Practice, practice, practice.

 

Fun in a Puddle

We had heavy rain all day today.  The water was running down our street like a river, as it always does during periods of heavy rain.  So I decided that a walk in the rain would be fun and maybe I could find a photo for the blog. I put on my hiking boots and my biggest raincoat and got a large umbrella for the walk.  I was not disappointed when I got to Shore Road!  In heavy rains there is usually something like 12 to 18 inches of water on the main road.  The first car that came by surprised me.  Most cars see all the water and maybe come to a stop and then decide to proceed slowly.  Not these cars!  The speed limit is 30 MPH but no one goes that slow.  These SUV's and trucks were hitting the water at 30 MPH or faster!  I couldn't believe it!

In the "old days" if you made this much of a splash by driving through water this deep usually the water that splashed up inside the engine compartment would short out the distributor and the engine would quit right in the middle of the puddle!  I guess these new electronic ignitions are well sealed against water and none of these cars and trucks seemed to be affected.  I couldn't believe it!  One truck saw the water and actually accelerated!  I thought they were driving in an unsafe fashion.  One thing that can happen to tires when there is maybe half an inch of water on the road, is that the tires can "hydroplane" like a speedboat and suddenly the driver can't steer at all because the tires at high speeds are not in contact with the road, they are "water skiing" on the water on the road.  In this case, a car could drift across the road and have a collision with an oncoming car.  But everyone was lucky today.

This car wasn't speeding really but he sure was going through some deep water as he turned up Laurel Avenue.  I did have a fun time watching and shooting this, and I am glad I can give you a bit of excitement on the blog for a change.

 

The Fallen Tree in Infrared

When the Dogwood first fell down, I started photographing the scene with my infrared camera.  I thought that it would stand out more because the infrared shows plants with chlorophyl in them as white because chlorophyl reflects infrared light.  But in the end I thought it didn't separate the tree from the ground, which still has dormant grass on it, or  or from the hedges.  But it is kind of spooky looking so I thought I would show this photograph now.

 

Shootout at the OK Corral

Last night's astronomy meeting was one of our quarterly parties where we have the whole evening to talk with each other and eat chips and desserts.  This time of year the party celebrates the "Vernal Equinox" which heralds the arrival of Spring.  So here is a photo of me, taking a photo of the photographer who is photographing me, and I am outside my jail cell, which you can see in the background...   :-)  The orange light is my camera focusing on the person taking my photo.

This is Victoria and she and her parents are members of our club.  I have known them all for about three years.  She is a senior in high school and a brilliant violinist who has won musical competitions. Her mom wanted to get a photograph of us together.  Notice I have my camera up, so I could shoot a photograph of her!

So then she was photographing me and se were having a shootout!

I am not sure who won, but we ended up laughing.  Victoria and her mom are really great iPhone shooters, and they are shooting all the time, like last night!

Here is a photograph of the whole family.  So they had some exciting news for me. Victoria has been accepted at and will be attending Yale University next year!  She will be studying Astrophysics!  She is such an astounding student and a brilliant musician.  I am so happy for them all.  What was funny was when they said "Yale University in New Haven."  I said "I was born in New Haven!

 

A Film Still

I arrived in the parking lot of the Vanderbilt Museum and parked my car to attend our astronomy meeting.  Then I saw that old fashioned lamp post, and the overcast clouds in the sky with clearing skies below.  I grabbed my camera and framed the photograph when another car pulled in and parked right in my picture!  Oh no, my photo is ruined.  But I shot it anyway, and when he turned off his lights the car hardly showed, so I shot some more photographs.  So I come home after the meeting and load the photographs onto my laptop, and I am stunned to realize that THIS version with the car tail lights and the headlights on is so much more interesting than without a car!  I'm a jerk!  Well, at least I recognized it in the end.  As I look at it now, it seems as if it could be a still image from a film that might be a mystery or a spy story.  I love this shot, car, lights and all!

 

A Change in the Landscape

Tuesday is Dunkin' Donuts Day at the beach.  Imagine our surprise when we pulled into the parking spot and saw these piles of sand.  They are taking sand from the south end of the beach, and moving it up here to the north end of the beach.  Along a beach shoreline there is always a process going on that is called "Littoral drift." "Littoral drift from longshore current is a geological process that consists of the transportation of sediments like sand along a coast parallel to the shoreline, which is dependent on the angle of incoming wave direction. Beach sand can move downbeach in a sawtooth fashion many tens of meters per day.  Oblique incoming wind squeezes water along the coast, and so generates a water current which moves parallel to the coast." - from Wikipedia.  So each spring they take some sand from the south end and move it north.  We have just never seen it before.  How it changes the landscape!

 

Jupiter and the Moon for Kids!

About 6 months ago I was contacted by a teacher at an elementary school about an hour away.  She said they wanted to try having an observing session in March, and could our club show up with some telescopes.  I said "Yes" and the other night the weather was clear so two of us who volunteered to bring our telescopes went to the school.  The teacher said that maybe no one would show up, but I was a bit nervous because usually we would have three or four telescopes for an event like this.

Well...  It felt as if the whole school showed up!  We have never had this many people, both parents and students at one of our events.  One of the teachers had a telescope and he showed up, so we had three telescopes there.  I felt badly that people had to wait in three long lines to observe Jupiter and a thin crescent Moon, but everyone, to a person, was so patient!  What a joy to have such a nice group of people there.

This is Don, one of our members, watching a student look through his telescope.  The parents and students were both so thankful for the chance to look through a telescope at celestial objects, many for the first time.

It is always a joy to see how some of the students were glued to the eyepiece, wanting to look for as long as they could at the Moon or Jupiter.  We let them look as long as they wanted, and the people in line behind them were patient.

And even the teachers got to look through a telescope as well!  They deserved it, given how much work and worry they put into this event.

And this gives you a sense of how many people were there.  Don's telescope was behind me and his line is not showing.  It was such a rewarding evening, made even better by the large attendance.  When Don and I were leaving we both talked about having a "buzz" because of how rewarding it is to be able to show people our universe and some of the amazing things that are in it.

 

"Mom, There's a Creepy Guy..."

I have written before and shown photographs of the times I go to the city to meet my night sky photography friends for dinner.  On this occasion, I wanted to do some quick photographs of my Hotel Pennsylvania demolition project while it was still daylight.  So while I was shooting, I didn't realize that one of my friends was snapping these photographs!  They're great, aren't they!  I look like some kind of creepy guy, spying through fences!

Once the demolition got down to the first floor, it was behind a wooden fence and the only way I could see what was going on behind the fence was to find areas to peek through.  Not creepy at all!

 

Testing for the Eclipse

It is 23 days to the Total Eclipse of the Sun.  Kathy and I will be driving to Rochester, NY where the path of totality goes through New York State.  So today, because it was sunny, a number of our club members were getting together in groups to work together to test their equipment - cameras and long lenses and telescopes, and and also to make the calculations for the complex exposures required for the three phases of the eclipse.  It helps to work with another person to make sure what you have calculated are the correct exposures.  So my friend Grace came over to the house and we set up in the side yard and did test exposures, and consulted on our calculations.  Stan's mantra for everyone, before the eclipse, is to "practice, practice, practice..."

There are three stages of the eclipse, and each stage requires different camera settings.  The first is when the moon starts passing in front of the sun.  You have to view and shoot that with a special filter, like the silver one here, on Grace's telephoto lens.  The the next phase only lasts maybe 10 or 15 seconds, and you take the filter off with the sun about 98% blocked and try to photograph "Bailey's Beads" and the "diamond ring" which is caused by sunlight shining through the mountains on the edge of the moon.  Then the third, and most spectacular phase, is "totality" where the moon completely covers the sun, but the glow of the Sun's corona streams out from beyond the black circle of the moon, and it is as dark as night!  And it happens so fast that you have to be absolutely prepared or you will miss parts of it.  The total eclipse is magical and overwhelming and eerie and one of the most beautiful things you will ever experience.  I hope some of you get to see this eclipse!

 

Pencil Towers

We went to the city today to a museum.  Afterwards we walked down 9th Avenue to a diner for lunch.  When we were done we walked east on 58th street one block to the subway.  It was then that I saw one of the "Pencil Towers" - one of the newest types of buildings that have been built in Manhattan.  They are so tall and so thin they stand out dramatically, and be seen from a long distance away.  They are tall as in 1,400 feet tall!  So I took this photograph and continued walking  east, and was amazed to see another pencil tower on the other side of the street!

There was a story in the NY Times about how some of these types of buildings have some issues. This is the headline and sub head for that story: "The Downside to Life in a Supertall Tower: Leaks, Creaks, Breaks."  "432 Park, one of the wealthiest addresses in the world, faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high-rises may share its fate."  One of the issues is how the buildings can sway in really strong winds.  Yikes, do you want your bedroom or living room moving around in a hurricane?  No thank you.  The story continues: "The tower at 432 Park Avenue became the tallest residential building in the world in 2015. It has already been surpassed by a newcomer on New York’s Billionaire’s Row in Midtown Manhattan, but it remains one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the world.

 

The Last of the Dogwoods

The wind blew our last Dogwood tree down!  I stepped out on the porch yesterday and something was different.  It took a moment or two to figure out what it was.  I could see more of the neighbor's house and the sky. Then I realized, the Dogwood tree at the west end of the porch was missing.  What?  I walked over to the end of the porch and there was the tree lying on the ground.  The strong winds two days before had blown it down.  It was mainly dead, with only one branch that still had blossoms on it every spring.  But it was covered with two kinds of vines, that had loaded the tree down with their weight, and that's all the green stuff you can see in the photograph.  Those are not dogwood leaves you are seeing.

This is crazy that all these vines could completely take over the tree, and for me not to notice, but it is at the edge of the property and the only time I go by it is when I am mowing the grass.  A year or so ago, I took a saw and cut a number of trunks of vines on the tree.  One vine near the bottom was nearly two inches in diameter!  So I knew one day, the tree would have to come down, but not until the last blooming branch was gone.  Well, Mother Nature had other ideas.  So today I played lumberjack and went after the wreckage with a chain saw and now much of the tree and the trunk are in small enough pieces that I can put them in the car and take them to the dump this weekend.  When we bought our house there were two dogwoods on our property - one by the garage and this one.  And then the Gordon's had a Dogwood just on the other side of the hedge on their property.  Now all three are long gone and I will really miss them. 

 

Jupiter and the Moon

I have yet to tell the story, but I will soon.  Last night another member of the club and I drove an hour to a middle school in Bay Shore, on the south shore to set up our telescopes.  We showed Jupiter and the Moon to the people who came.  More on that tomorrow.  So tonight, after the sun set, I was driving to a friends for some computer help, and when I looked up, I was stunned to see Jupiter and the moon so close together!  Stunned!  I was not expecting that, and to see a crescent moon with the "bright star" of Jupiter so close to it was such a wonderful experience.  Fortunately the duo were quite high in the sky, so they were still up when I got home and I got out my 200-600mm telephoto and framed the two objects through the branches of the giant Hickory tree on our front lawn.  Not sure if you can see this, but if you enlarge the image, I captured the four moons of Jupiter in the photograph!  One more surprise!

 

Saving the Cliff House

Yesterday when I mentioned I had gone to the beach to shoot something and then found the sunset as well, well, this is the "something."  They are clearly done with most of the rebuilding and support of the cliff and they have saved this historic house!  The people who live there are gardeners, so I am guessing in a year or so there will be plantings on the terraces which will probably soften the structures, maybe with trees in front or ivy growing on the walls.  I will be your faithful reporter and make other posts after I see changes. But this is great news to see!

In this photograph, I walked out on the beach and the further I got from the road, the more I could see of the house.  So between the two views you get a pretty good idea of all that they have done.

 

Sunset

I went to Sea Cliff beach today to photograph something, which you will find out about in a day or two. While at the beach, I realized the sun was very close to setting and I noticed the sunlight reflecting a golden path on the water and on the wet beach.  So I thought "I guess I better shoot this, because some of my posts lately have not been very spectacular."  So this is not too bad.  Because of the high winds, the tide was way out and so I got to see these rocks which are in the swimming area.  They make an interesting foreground.  I never saw these before.

 

A Certain Slant of Light

I always leave the bathroom window shade part way open.  There are white shutters covering the bottom window, and most of the time the shade is all the way up.  But at night I pull the shade only part way down.  So in the morning I saw this shaft of sunlight coming in at an angle and lighting just one of the faucets and I thought that was a shot, because of the light.  The title for this has stayed with me for years.  It may have been the title of a book about New England, I think.  But I can't remember.  So I am using it here for my purposes.  It is kind of poetic, I think.

 

I Must be Desperate

You are going to think I am doing too much naval gazing after reading all this.  It probably looks as if I am desperate for photographs, which may be true as well.  I pass arrows like this at the entrance to Tappan Beach, the Dunkin' on Tuesday beach.  I think of these arrows as graphic elements and I have photographed them a lot, trying to see if I can make in interesting composition that is interesting out of one of these.  I think of them as two-dimensional objects, because they are.  Paint on the pavement.

But when I looked that this view of the arrow on another day with a bit of late afternoon sunlight shining on the really thick coats of paint accumulated over the years, I realized there was a three-dimensional quality to the arrow because of the paint thickness.  Suddenly the arrow became something different to me.  3-D instead of 2-D.  What does all that mean?  Nothing really except  change in perception of something I have literally seen a thousand times.  But please click on each photo to see what I am talking about.  Thanks.

 

Spring Has Sprung...

"Spring has sprung,

The grass is riz,

I wonder where

The birdies is?"

I just thought of this silly rhyme while I was thinking what to write about these crocus shoots I saw coming out of the ground in the garden right next to the house.  Of course it is not Spring yet - that doesn't happen until Tuesday, March 19th.  And this is not grass.   But it just came to me.  I do love to see signs of Spring.  These shoots are only about an inch and a half tall, but they lift my spirits!

 

Did You Get This right Away?

I am not sure if everyone will get what this is right away.  Some will, I think but when I saw this view in the camera I was so surprised at all that was going on in the picture, and even though I knew what I was photographing, I had never noticed all the complexity in the structure.  So I was photographing the water drops on the branches, and it was hard to tell how close I could get with my telephoto lens because of all the complexity of the branches.  So l I swung around and walked over to Kathy's car and aimed the camera at the tail light.  I got my answer about how close, but I also got an unexpected photo.

 

I Know My Way Around a Soldering Iron...

I just happened to find this photograph when looking for some other photo in my collection.  What's funny is that I saw it just yesterday.  It is a photograph of me in 1978, building a Heathkit Amateur Radio Transciever.  That means it both transmits and receives.  It was the first of a number of Heathkits I built over the years for my hobby as an amateur radio operator.  My call sign is N2AQQ, for those of you who are curious.  Wow, look how young I am.  I was 36 years old in this photograph.  I did a lot of soldering in the building of equipment over the years, so my adventure with our television set was not as unusual as people might have thought.

 

Raindrops

It rained last night, and I think some of the rain was heavy.  But this morning the rain was a gentle mist and when we came back from our Dunkin' Donut and coffee at the beach, then I noticed for the first time all these bright water drops on the Japanese maple tree, the tree that just keeps on giving.  I started trying to photograph the drops with a moderate telephoto lens, because I wanted the background branches out of focus.  It wasn't until I used my 200mm lens that I could make the background a blur and get the kind of photograph I was hoping for.  This won't look good until you click on it to see it larger.

 

I Took the TV Apart...

I decided to take the TV set apart today.  I was always curious how TV's work, and I thought that if I took it apart I could figure out how it works.  Great idea, right?  Actually that would be a really dumb idea, actually.  What really happened was that I had an audio cable running from the back of the TV over to the Hi Fi amplifier and speakers to hear the sound from the bigger speakers.  THEN I tripped over the cord and it yanked on the jack on the back of the TV, and broke it!  Then I could only get one channel of sound.  Bummer!  So I thought I would take the TV apart and see if I could fix the broken jack.

So I couldn't fix the broken jack, BUT...  There was another jack mounted on the circuit board, and I decided to remove the broken jack and remove the other jack, and then put the good one in place of the broken one.  The hardest part of the process, was to "desolder" both jacks from the circuit board.  You use a soldering iron and copper braid which you place on the old solder and heat both and the braid sucks the solder into it.  But this was the hardest desoldering job I ever did, for some reason.

After the jacks were off the board, switching the good one to where the old one was, and soldering it in place was trivial.  And, after all that, IT WORKED!  We now have stereo sound out of two speakers.  SUCCESS!  Whew!  What if I broke the TV completely?

This is a real closeup of the circuit board.  The jack that I replaced is the black thing which I have put a red dot into.  The 1/8" stereo plug goes into the spot where the red dot is.  There are so many delicate traces on the circuit board that I had to work around, an make sure I didn't damage anything.  I am so glad my repair worked!