Poltrack Blog

I get very excited about astronomical phenomena. I remember walking out of a training class at Digital Equipment Corporation to watch the shadows of the leaves during the eclipse. The instructor didn't share my excitement.  We had a clear sky for this eclipse with wispy clouds, but only had about 60% coverage. I used some binoculars to project the sun onto a piece of white poster board I used some welders glass from a previous eclipse, which I believe is number 12, anything less is dangerous It helps to actually use it A kitchen colander acted like a pinhole camera I built a pinhole viewer using my favorite seltzer flavor The pinhole It's small but it works   www.poltrack.net

Are you ready for the eclipse on August 21, 2107?  I did consider traveling to a location of totality but based on my misses with the Perseid Meteor showers, I decided to stay put. Whenever some astronomical event happens, it is cloudy or rainy. I'll be outside at 14:45 with my camera, welder's glass, binoculars and a homemade pin-hole device. I won't look at the sun, or point my camera at it, burning out the sensor and my eyes. I will use the binoculars as a projector as my son did in 1994. May 10, 1994 - New Ipswich   www.poltrack.net

10 Days till Christmas Correction (01/03/2018) Most of these photos are of aircraft The Geminids and the Quadrantids  are the only meteor showers NOT originating from a comet. They are babies in the meteor shower family, only appearing since 1862. It is a great display and I caught a few on camera.  I wasn't too sure how well the camera would hold up in the cold before the lens would frost over or the battery would quit so I only took a sequence of 117 photos. I shot these with a 20mm Lumix lens which is equivalent in 35mm terms to a 40mm. Not exactly wide angle but the fastest lens I have. I chose a shutter speed of 30 seconds with a 8 second gap between shots. ISO was set at 400 which was the best quality I thought I could choose for a night sky. My neighbors Christmas lights gave me a subject for manually setting focus because this lens like so many other digital lens does NOT have an infinity marking (why not?). I hope everyone got a chance to ...

The full moon of March 19th occurred only a hour away from the point when the moon's orbit was at it's nearest point to the earth (perigee). As a result the moon appears 14% larger and 30% brighter. Having a full moon AND a perigee moon last happened in 1993. I couldn't resist taking a picture last night. I was surprised to learn that I had to adjust the exposure manually because I could not rely on the automatic settings which overexposed the shots. Check it out: