Today's pondering

I got rid of dial tone on my phone line, and just have DSL.  The phone company knows I don't have a phone... so why do they still give me phone books?

Koi-Nobori in Paris

In Japan, windsocks shaped like Koi (carp) fish are flown in the springtime, around the time of Children's Day in early May.  This year, I was sad because I had to travel to Europe during the season of the Koi, but it turned out all the flags that fly around the perimeter of UNESCO's headquarters in Paris were replaced with Koi-Nobori!  If you look carefully, you might spot the top of the Eiffel Tower amidst the Koi.

Paris with Viv

Viv and I met up in Paris for the weekend.  This time of the year, temperatures were maybe 6-8C during the day, 0-2C at night.  Not too bad for me, but for Viv's first trip north of the Mediterranean...

Best science article I've seen on a mainstream newspaper's web site in ages.

Martin Robbins totally nails it in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1

Snow in All 50

Late in the week of February 6-13, 2010, the Florida Panhandle got some snow. This led to a lot of articles in the media along the lines of "OMG there's snow on the ground in all 50 states at once!" and a similar amount along the lines of "OMG there's snow on the ground in 49 of the 50 states, with Hawaii being the only exception." Hawaii does get snow, of course - on Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and rarely even Haleakala - but there hadn't been any snowfall of consequence since December.

Having worked atop Mauna Kea for years, I know that the terrain can be conducive to snow sticking around, especially on the north slopes of cinder cones where it gets less sun. And I knew that earlier in the week, I had seen a few patches of snow remaining in a basin on the north side of the Subaru Telescope, where I work, and the adjacent W.M. Keck Observatory. On the afternoon of Saturday, February 13, between 15:21 and 15:28 local time, I was able to take a series of photos including this one, using an iPhone 3G.

Annular Solar Eclipse Time-Lapse

Although I already posted a composite image made from several exposures of the eclipse , I had quite a lot of frames, so I went back through and made an actual little time-lapse QuickTime movie of it.

If it seems that it gets brighter or less bright at times, that's mostly just due to me not being sure what exposure time to use, and generally cycling through a few of them (1/40, 1/50, 1/60, 1/80, 1/100) but forgetting to do so at some points and winding up with, say, only 1/40 or only 1/100 at certain phases of the eclipse.

Annular Solar Eclipse, 15 Jan 2010

I shot a multi-exposure sequence of this morning's annular solar eclipse from Kampala, Uganda. After thirteen cloudy mornings in a row, the sky was clear for the eclipse!

From the time the moon started going in front of one side of the sun, to the time it finished coming out from the other side, took about 3 hours. But the "ring" only lasted 6-8 minutes. 

Along with Thousand Oaks black polymer solar filters for the ends of my camera's lenses, I brought a few pairs of mylar sunglasses, so that people around me could safely get views of the eclipse.