Monthly Archives: May 2010

Audra's 34th

For Audra’s birth­day we head­ed to the Savana Cafe, with some choco­late ice cream cake at the William’s res­i­dence after leav­ing the very rude ser­vice we were giv­en.

I also got to meet Jesse’s dad, Jim. He reminds me very much of his son in terms of their intel­lect and inter­ests, and I found it quite nov­el to talk to an old­er ver­sion of Jesse with a soft voice and grey facial hair.

Dinner table

Across the table is Jesse, Caitlyn, Ariel, Ira, and Jairus. Jesse’s dad to my right.

Continue read­ing “Audra’s 34th”…

Photographing stars

Capturing the night sky with a dig­i­tal cam­era is a dichoto­my of lim­its and capa­bil­i­ties.

So much more is revealed when you use a cam­era than with the eye, because a long expo­sure allows you to col­lect a lot more light. It’s an entire world we don’t get to see oth­er­wise. The prob­lem becomes the fact that the stars begin to blur as the Earth rotates (although the effect is some­times nice).

10 minute star trails

This was a 10 minute expo­sure at 16mm, f/4, ISO 100.

Since most Canon SLRs sup­port a long expo­sure noise reduc­tion fea­ture (which clos­es the shut­ter, takes a sec­ond expo­sure, and dig­i­tal­ly removes the remain­ing noise from the orig­i­nal), expo­sures with this fea­ture actu­al­ly take twice as long. I can’t imag­ine doing this kind of stuff back in the days of film cam­eras, with­out any kind of imme­di­ate feed­back.

The faint glow on the bot­tom right is light pol­lu­tion com­ing from Ottawa.

Looking at pic­tures of stars with­out con­text is bor­ing. I was nev­er inter­est­ed in plain star maps because they’re so abstract com­pared to neb­u­las and galaxy shots. I did­n’t under­stand what I was look­ing at, and I could­n’t pos­si­bly appre­ci­ate what I was see­ing.

Messier 13

Messier 13 — 6 sec­onds @ f/2.8, 100mm, ISO 3200.

Rated as a Class V glob­u­lar clus­ter, which is right in the mid­dle of the Harlow Shapley scale, and the most spec­tac­u­lar type because it’s the best com­pro­mise between rich­ness (low­er on the scale) and resolv­abil­i­ty (high­er on the scale).

Take this pho­to of M13 for exam­ple. M13 is a Messier object, which is a cat­a­log of astro­nom­i­cal objects Charles Messier doc­u­ment­ed to ignore because they resem­bled comets1, but did­n’t fol­low tra­di­tion­al comet’s paths.

M13 is in the Herculeus con­stel­la­tion. I could­n’t see it but I knew where it was, so I took this shot and zoomed in. On my screen was one fuzzy dot in the mid­dle of a bunch of sharp dots.

This fuzzy dot is actu­al­ly a huge glob­u­lar clus­ter, con­tain­ing sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand stars. When I saw it through some­one else’s (much big­ger and more expen­sive) tele­scope, I could see a dif­fuse haze of white, and resolve dozens of indi­vid­ual stars around it. It was beau­ti­ful, like a series of dia­monds set on a glow­ing jew­el, and there’s no way I would appre­ci­ate a shot of Hercules if I did­n’t see M13 like this.

Due to the large con­cen­tra­tion of stars in this glob­u­lar clus­ter (and pro­por­tion­al­ly greater pos­si­bil­i­ty of extra-ter­res­tri­al life), it was select­ed as the place to send the first mes­sage into out­er space.

It’s all these lit­tle details that make space so fas­ci­nat­ing. These are celes­tial objects of such vast and incom­pre­hen­si­ble sizes, but at the same time, they’re bare­ly seen by the naked eye on a night with even the best of con­di­tions.

  1. Messier was known as a comet hunter. []

29 6/12: The Arrival

I haven’t had much to say late­ly. Suffering has always been a pre­req­ui­site for my cre­ativ­i­ty, as I only need to write when unful­filled or unhap­py, and late­ly I haven’t felt either.

The real­iza­tion that I was hap­py only came when some­one asked how I was doing; I respond­ed with my usu­al, gener­ic, “I’m doing well, thanks”, and for the first time in as long as I could remem­ber, I did­n’t feel like I was lying.

Self portrait at 29 6/12

 

Not that the desire to write has left me com­plete­ly. I still want to, though only because it’s an enjoy­able exer­cise in itself, not because I need to get some­thing off my chest. The world final­ly makes sense, and I won­der if it’s nec­es­sary to have this blog a place to sort out my thoughts any­more.

I’m sat­is­fied with the per­son I’ve become. I’ve stopped try­ing to change, or con­stant­ly fig­ur­ing out how to improve. I like me.

The seren­i­ty is get­ting bet­ter still, almost to the point where it’s an uncon­scious state-of-mind. Things don’t both­er me the way they used to. I can dream with­out desire, I can live with­out bias, I can give with­out expect­ing, I can think with­out wor­ry, and I can enjoy with­out guilt.

I turn 30 in half a year, and I final­ly feel like I’m where I should be.

The Turning 30 Series

Goodbye, St. Louis

Working hard and play­ing hard. It felt like vaca­tion even though I was down there for busi­ness, just because I end­ed up doing so much stuff packed into four nights. I did­n’t stop mov­ing once I touched down and end­ed up learn­ing so much, sim­ply by con­stant­ly being around the right peo­ple.

Goodbye, St. Louis. We’ll see each oth­er again soon enough.

Many, many, many more pic­tures under the cut.

Kissing on the pier

I’m not sure what the nature of their rela­tion­ship was. Both African-American girls, one clear­ly old­er than the oth­er, kiss­ing for sev­er­al moments.

Across the riv­er is Illinois.

Continue read­ing “Goodbye, St. Louis”…

Love, Eclipses, and Other Ephemera

365 days ago, you were sit­ting at a lit­tle round table in front of me. It was a cool day, with the light of the sun com­ing through big glass win­dows, and the way you were turned cast a shad­ow on the small dim­ple on your chest. How well I came to know that expanse of skin, nev­er tak­en for grant­ed by lips or fin­ger­tips.

I was filled with noth­ing but hap­pi­ness in that moment. By that point, I planned on mar­ry­ing you one day, as I had, per­haps a lit­tle fool­ish­ly, dreamed of build­ing a life with you. The only thing left was fig­ur­ing out how to con­vince you to dream a lit­tle bit too.

muse, turned

 

A few things have hap­pened since we last spoke. Nothing impor­tant enough to men­tion if I ever bumped into an old lover and tried to make small talk. Except, per­haps, that my grand­moth­er passed away, Aaron and Karen are expect­ing anoth­er child, and I start­ed pur­su­ing a life­long dream of becom­ing an ama­teur astronomer.

In one class I learned the Sun’s dis­tance from the Earth is about 400 times the Moon’s dis­tance, and the Sun’s diam­e­ter is about 400 times the Moon’s diam­e­ter. It’s the fact that these ratios are approx­i­mate­ly equal that caus­es the Sun and Moon to appear the same size when the three astro­nom­i­cal objects line up, cre­at­ing the effect we observe dur­ing a total eclipse. If the Sun were any clos­er, we would­n’t see the fierce coro­na that bor­ders the shad­ow of the moon. Any fur­ther, and a ring of the Sun’s light would still be vis­i­ble. It’s a phe­nom­e­non that’s unique in our solar sys­tem, due to the sheer improb­a­bil­i­ty of these pre­req­ui­sites occur­ring.

eclipse

(I did­n’t take this pic­ture.)

Eclipses are a rare phe­nom­e­non. Total eclipses even more so; they occur every 18 months, at dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and nev­er last more than a few min­utes as the shad­ow moves along the ground at over 1700 km/h.

Maybe this is why some peo­ple chase them, mak­ing pil­grim­ages to loca­tions where an eclipse is pre­dict­ed to hap­pen. One group even rent­ed a plane and flew along the dark­est part of the shad­ow cast by the moon as it trav­eled over the Earth, and arti­fi­cial­ly extend­ed an eclipse from 7 min­utes to 74 min­utes. Which, in my book, is pret­ty awe­some.

People who’ve been through an eclipse give sim­i­lar accounts of the expe­ri­ence; it looks like night in a mat­ter of min­utes, it feels like the heat is being sucked out of the ground, the ani­mals get all spooked out because they know some­thing extra­or­di­nary is hap­pen­ing.

But the Moon is also drift­ing away from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm a year, which means there even­tu­al­ly won’t be any more total solar eclipses. We hap­pen to be liv­ing in a time when we can still expe­ri­ence them, as future gen­er­a­tions will only have sec­ond-hand accounts from our best words and pic­tures. They won’t be able to feel the change in the atmos­phere, as the Sun hides behind the Moon for that brief moment. How for­tu­nate we are to be able to expe­ri­ence this event, which not only requires the heav­en­ly bod­ies to line up, but also requires us to be at the right place on the right plan­et at the right time.

sushi

 

I began to won­der what com­bi­na­tion of forces brought us there, to sit in the warmth of spring in a sushi shop down­town. Why fate had deliv­ered you to my office one morn­ing, for you to toss your head back and gig­gle and walk away after I made some corny joke at our intro­duc­tion.

We were two trav­el­ing bod­ies on our own paths that hap­pened to align for a few spins around the sun. It was a beau­ti­ful acci­dent, a gaso­line rain­bow, an expe­ri­ence as spe­cial as it was serendip­i­tous that left me for­ev­er changed.

Every pic­ture I took was to cap­ture what I feared I’d nev­er see again, and when our paths diverged, I kept look­ing at those pho­tos, won­der­ing what kept me drawn to these mem­o­ries.

Then I real­ized it was because I did­n’t want it to end. You were my eclipse, and I was a man on that plane, chas­ing a shad­ow.

Trying to live in your love a moment longer.