Hey, plama, welcome back; I was wondering when we’d see you again. You surely picked an appropriate contest for your return!

As Kes mentioned, file sizes have changed. On the BiblioStats side, I implemented the Normalized Place calcuation that you (and I think rav) wanted.

How’s everything in Hawaii (other than busy)?

A) Hooray for larger…Read more

OMFG! M51 is STUNNING visually through a 30″ newt. That scope is a yard cannon.

Try it through a 90″ research grade telescope. Un. Believable.

Everybody does that, right?

Not exactly that, but I will admit to thinking out A LOT of the multifarious ways I could get various forbidden items on board. It wouldn’t take much.

Have fun in Dallas-one of my roommates is from ’round those parts.

Almost sounds like my buddy that lived in Punchbowl. I cheated and took a house up the Waiau Ridge in Aiea.

That looks like a nice area. Also, from what I see online the rent is a lot cheaper than it is here. I do quite like Manoa, though. It’s nice and quiet, but just a 5 minute drive from the city.

Lights: The more the merrier.

Truth. When I’m doing photometry, I usually take a few hundred flats (or lights, I think the terms are interchangeable). I had a research colleague who would insist on taking well over a thousand for each night of observation, but she was a little crazy. There IS a point where taking more flats wastes more time than…Read more

man if I could lug a 120 lb rig to Hawaii, I could nearly afford it right now!! But ain’t gonna happen!! (I want the f/2 rig; I’m certain; money better spent.)

Please continue your digression, I was just getting into it!…

Go for the f/2 rig. My air mattress will still be waiting when you save up enough again to get out here. That goes for all…Read more

ohshit…don’t get me going… a parsec is likely the most obtuse measurement ever conceived… it’s practically arcane, but roughly equal to about 3 1/4 light years. The nearest star to Sol is about 1 1/4 parsec. I’ll leave it up to y’all to gather scale on that. Do a wiki to get the definition, it’s an odd standard for measurement, but a…

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Red is emission, hydrogen gas excited by the ultraviolet from “nearby” stars…

Red is, in fact, H-alpha emission, which is the 3-2 orbital transition which produces light at ~656 nanometers. Orion is, in fact, an HII region, where all of the hydrogen is ionized by UV continuum photons. The size of these regions can get up to about 70 parsecs…Read more

Oh, and conga-rats, rav. I expect great things…well, okay, even…Read more

Well, this thread got me to tallying up what gear is gonna cost me to assemble a tracking rig. Looks like I’ll be blowing part of my income tax refund on a geared head, a ball head, an astrotrac and the optional polar alignment scope (is this thing really optional?). Considering the camera, lens, tracker and ball head weigh in at about 10 lbs…

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Exactly 😀 It was either there or VLA, and I figured VLA would have better skies than the Puerto Rican sauna.

VLA is actually way more likely-it’s only a couple hour drive from where I grew up, and where my parents’ house is.

Shot two: Galen Rowell’s Vision: The Art of Adventure Photography, Galen Rowell, page 194, photo caption:
“Pattern, texture, and depth”
I photograph something with said qualities.

Shot…Read more

Psh, sugar is cheap, I’ll just make my own damn lens.
There are tons of lens grinding guides out there too, and since sugar is softer than glass, CAKEWALK!

Oh. My. God. Great idea. I ground/polished/silvered my own telescope mirror back in undergrad days, and it was great fun. Now I wanna make a telescope you can eat!

Damn there are a lot of great pictures in that album. Looks like you all had fun. I wonder if there are any people around here who would be willing to do a photowalk? gonna have to find out somehow.

Yaknow, we have enough folks within say, six hours of anyfreakinwhere in NM or southern CO to pull off a 2-3 day hike/camp/day/night group…

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2 and 5 are sort of in-line with what I was thinking – moreso 2

Alright, thanks for the feedback. I think I’ll sit this one out, then, since only one of my entries really fits.

So yes, portrait-style close-up photos. Not just photos of “people” in general.

Okay, now I’m wondering if any of my possible entries will work. I do have pictures of strangers, but very few are at what I’d consider a traditional portrait (maybe one or two at most). Anybody care to take a look and let me know if any of these will be alright?

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2
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5

Hmmm. Graduated Neutral Density filters. This damn hobby…three’s always something else to wanna buy. I’m looking at a softbox first though.

GND filters are my absolute favorite supplementary photography tool. I was recently looking at getting a *reverse* GND filter, but they’re a bit steep for a grad student to afford, so I’ll have to wait a…Read more

…And damn, I just looked at ennuipoet’s choices. No hope for me!
I like the…Read more

(IE, I have an ever-growing set of cokin filters)

What filters do you find most helpful in this age of digital photography?

I’ve got a cokin system also, and I’ve only got about 8-10, some of which I’ve abandoned using due to the magic of Photoshop (Speed filter, for example). I’ve had the filters and rack since my Pentax K1000 (OK… who’s…

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Awesome shots, plama. And I don’t think you even posted the best of the lot here. The Subaru Laser is really cool. And I could easily see this one accompanying a magazine article on the observatories.

Yeah, I’m oddly proud of that one. It was one of those weird ‘see it, snap it’ kinda situations as we were going in to the telescope to open up…Read more

ennuipoet: Yep, the little super guy in color.

Loki, looking at those, I would say the third is the best distillation of what I think of your style (though the first one is pretty close too).

Kes, I always liked your Rainier at sunrise (or is…Read more

It seems to me that the highest vote getter may be a nonstarter in the sense that the voting level isn’t even across all contests. I have photos with 35 votes that one contests, and photos with 60+ that were fifth. My thinking was more that we should look at each other’s entries, and say “That’s the essential lokisbong pic or that screams orioni…

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Eastern Sierra trip? I remember the set you posted in the gallery had a lot of mountains and rock formations.

You know me so well. I might substitute one pic from my time here at Mauna Kea just to add a little variety, but the entries I have now are all from the Alabama Hills in the Sierra Foothills near Lone Pine.

This. I learned 90% of what I know by asking questions here and observing how others who do well composed their shots (and inquiring when I couldn’t figure it out on my own.)

Welcome!!

Agreed. Between farktography and reading a few excellent books, I’d say I’ve been able to make some fairly nice images (that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able…Read more

Good stuff out there this week, everybody!