Posts in category "Daily Life"

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. [↩]

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”…

CITY AIRLINE FLIGHT STATUS

Whenever I trav­el to the States, I can’t help but won­der if I could live here. Or any­where out­side of Canada, for that mat­ter.

But I know it’s nev­er more than a pass­ing fan­cy. I’m always hap­pi­er to touch down at home, than any­where else.

flight status board

Never, ever, ever fly through Philly. I’m pret­ty sure the air­port is in cahoots with the restau­rants and hotels, and they delay you every time you fly in to get you to spend mon­ey.

To the person who broke into my car last night

You stole:

  • My Apple ear­buds, which I did­n’t care much about, cause they’re shit­ty and feel like stale muffins in your ears. The only rea­son I had these in the car was to talk hands­free while dri­ving. Which was prob­a­bly only three times a year, but very use­ful when need­ed.
  • About $20 in change, which is more than I need for park­ing, but this was also the spon­ta­neous junk food fund.
  • My GPS charg­er, which was in case the bat­tery dies on the road (cause I hate dri­ving with it plugged in). I don’t keep my GPS in the car when it’s cold to pre­serve the bat­tery, and I haven’t need­ed it since the win­ter. I’m pret­ty sure you would have stolen my GPS if it was in there.
  • My iPhone charg­er, which was brand-spank­ing new, and used for long road trips.
  • My aux­il­liary audio cable, which I use to play my iPhone tracks over my car stereo. I was think­ing of replac­ing it any­way cause it was way too long and the bunched cable looked like clut­ter, but I was still annoyed by the fact that I had to dri­ve 10 min­utes to the near­est Circuit City to buy anoth­er with­out being able to lis­ten to the music I want­ed.

You did­n’t steal:

  • My wheel locks, which would have been no use to you with­out the key, and annoy­ing for me to replace. So…thanks?
  • My assort­ed music CDs, which I need­ed an excuse to clean up any­way, so you not tak­ing them did­n’t do my any favours. They were also real­ly good songs, and not steal­ing them prob­a­bly means your taste in music sucks.
  • My mod­el cat, which I keep in the back seat and has been get­ting mixed reviews late­ly. About 50% of peo­ple are fine with it, and 50% are real­ly creeped out because they think it’s real and refuse to sit in the back unless I put it in the trunk. But it was a present from my uncle in Hong Kong, so I’m real­ly glad you did­n’t take it.
  • My emer­gency blan­ket and can­dles, which I felt like you should have tak­en, because I can’t imag­ine you being very warm if you’re a pet­ty crook.

I have to won­der if you were so upset about not find­ing any­thing valu­able that you decid­ed to steal things that aren’t even worth sell­ing or fenc­ing, out of spite. It was­n’t enough to make a claim on my insur­ance, so I have to buy this stuff again. But I don’t real­ly need any of it, except for the aux­il­iary cable, which I replaced with a fan­cy new retract­ing set and with which I’m much hap­pi­er.

Just this week I was read­ing about that colonel being charged with a string of break-ins to steal under­wear, and how the peo­ple in that neigh­bour­hood felt shak­en at the news. I empathized with them, and felt lucky that it did­n’t hap­pen near me.

But when I came out of my house and found the con­tents of my glove com­part­ment spilled onto the pas­sen­ger seat, I was remind­ed that this is a fact of life every­one is forced to accept, because no one is immune. It’s a nec­es­sary evil, to remind peo­ple that putting too much val­ue in our pos­ses­sions means we only have more to lose.

The only thing that both­ers me is that I feel vio­lat­ed. I’m pret­ty sure I locked my car, but there’s no sign of forced entry, so I won­der how you got in and whether you now have free access. I can’t change my park­ing spot. My car will always be there, so now I need to keep any­thing valu­able out of it. Not that big a deal real­ly, but it’s less con­ve­nient to have to remem­ber to bring change any time I want to park down­town. Also, in the spring I like to keep all the win­dows of my house open, and now I won’t feel safe doing that when I’m sleep­ing on a dif­fer­ent floor.

But I still con­sid­er myself lucky. Lucky you did­n’t make out with more than $100 worth of stuff. Lucky my first expe­ri­ence with theft was rel­a­tive­ly minor, and an inex­pen­sive les­son learned. Lucky I’ve been feel­ing good late­ly and that this inci­dent is only a small blip on my radar.

I can only hope that you used the change to feed your­self, because if you’re steal­ing ran­dom shit from cars, you prob­a­bly need the mon­ey more than I do.

But, please, don’t do it again, cause to be hon­est, I’d rather it was me eat­ing those McDonald’s french fries on Friday night.