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I spent 16 years in DFW and never knew about the statues in Deep Ellum. Neat!

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wow, only 60sec subs? I wouldn’t have expected so much detail…

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So when you say “It’s so flat here I can stand on a beer can and see Toronto”, you ain’t kidding.

/except for that little draw called Palo Duro

Oh, actually that’s one of the things to go see here if anyone passes through. It tends to be rather hot in the summer, but it’s dry so it’s not miserable…just carry plenty of water… and the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River (yeah, long name) is never far away if you want to cool off. If you hike out past the end of the park’s road system, there is quite a bit of wildlife to see as well.

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I spent part of the day talking on the phone yesterday with our NOC. Between troubles I was pumping him for info. All our stuff survived, and our trans-atlantic fiber facilities all stayed up, though without commercial power (which is ok, there’s deisel fuel for over 3 weeks on-site for the generators). Verizon didn’t fare so well, though… their Manhattan central office has 5 sub-basements now full of seawater. The building is dark, and they have crews welding plates down for new energency generators and fuel tanks. I’ve worked a flooded office before (not nearly THAT large!), and will say from experience that those crews are going to be there for the next week sleeping on the concrete for an hour or two when they just have to drop and getting back up and starting back in. I was in a small office and was still there for 56 hrs straight.

On the upside, any OT beyond 9 hrs is doubletime and they’ll be on the clock 24/7 until it’s all fixed. These guys/gals will be making $10K/wk until the lights are green.

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Oh geez, if you go by there, holler. I live 3 miles from Cadillac Ranch. I’ll drag the wife out and we can all go to dinner somewhere.

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Quite an improvement over a year. Very nice detail in the dark, dusty areas.

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Ya can damn near see the footprints on the moon! 😆 Very nice composite. And you got the central star in the ring, as well…I’ve been jonesing lately… it’s supposed to 37 and clear fri/sat nights here. I may get out and shoot some. I’m tempted to run off a bunch from inside the city, just so I can see what I can do with LP and gradients.

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Sometimes, there is no substitute for focal length… I’ll never be able to capture that with a telephoto lens. Looks great, and if you want more subs combine from several nights’ shooting!

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flew on an ultralight

Awesome! That’s on my bucket list.

Very much ditto. Been ages since I flew (soloed at 15) and I’ve been looking for a cheap way to get back in the air…

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I used that as an example, so no pic… I haven’t had time lately for any fun 🙁

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Oh! Something that’s been bugging me about the whole number of exposures vs S/N for a while that I finally articulated upstairs.

When dealing with targets with a high dynamic range, a larger number of exposures carries the day… try shooting the Horsehead with fewer, longer exposures. You’ll find that Zeta Orionis completely blows out it’s little corner of the sky. We’re still limited to the rules of regular photography; don’t blow out your highlights. So you choose multiple exposure durations and combine a la HDR or go with mad shorter exposures and brute-force the noise into the dirt. Going the HDR route costs you detail on the low end of the histogram, while doing the insane number of shorter subs costs you time but gives you a seriously smooth final to stretch levels on without the glare from brighter stars.

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Nice! I remember you posting that one here before… I liked it then, too!

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for only 14 subs, that still looks remarkably good.

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realized for the first time why they’re called the Finger Lakes.

My first realization on them came while flying home from Phoenix to Albany; while flying over PA I had a seat on the left and watched them drift past.
*ding!*

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Add a 3rd error to the tracking train (rav touched on this above): periodic error. It’s due to manufacturing imperfections in the worm or circular gears in the drive. Most good quality drive systems these days come with Periodic Error Correction (sometimes they just say PEC in the description), which “learns” where the irregularities are and compensates accordingly.

And I hear ya about weather… I often get clear skies (dry desert air/4000ft elevation), but I’m on the edge of the caprock here and the wind rarely slows down enough to shoot off subs.

Oh… something to keep in mind regarding drives: http://www.explorescientific.com/telescopedrivemaster/
I’m waiting for the prices to come down on these… which shouldn’t be hard, since it’s likely to be a while before I ever put my money where my mouth is and build that scope I’ve been wanting.

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