Two Celestial Bodies; One Ring

Here is something you don't see every day: a Moon ring encompassing the planet Jupiter. (Click on the image for a bigger view.) Moon rings, also called "winter halos," are a refraction of the moon's light in cloud-hosted ice particles. Last night, Jupiter was serendipitously close to the Moon in the sky, well inside the latter's winter halo.

Speaking of rings and Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet actually does have a faint ring, akin to the vast rings of Saturn. It was discovered in 1979 from Voyager space probe images.

Unfortunately, we cannot see Jupiter's ring from earth, so we will have to be content with the Jovian planet sharing our Moon's icy halo in the sky.

Galactic Forest Fire

A few miles away from Sunriver, the Central Oregon sky gets very dark at night -- at least it did last Wednesday after the crescent Moon had set. A one-minute exposure at ISO 1600 and f/4 captured the scene. Overhead, stars of the Milky Way blazed a path of light arching upward, reminiscent of fire engulfing the nearby tree. But instead of flames and smoke, the "fire" was the cold glare of a trillion distant stars in our galaxy. Its center is partially hidden by massive dust clouds between our Milky Way suburb and the galaxy's crowded "downtown."

In another direction that same evening, the stars performed a dance above this tree (click for a bigger version of the sixteen-minute, ISO 200, f/4 image):



In perfect circles, their dance took them around the North Star and its attendants:



Well, almost perfect. You'll notice that they were slightly off-center from the apparent focus of their dance, since the North Star is not exactly in line with Earth's axis. However, it's close enough for most uses of the word "North."

Near the North Star, the Big Dipper presided over Mount Bachelor, both of them framed by the faint reddish glow remaining from the sunset hours before:



A closer look at the "star" just above the mountain shows it was not a celestial object. Apparently, we humans felt compelled to decorate the beautiful peak with its own nighttime beacon:



The snow adorning the mountain was quite visible during the day, but at night the starlit scene required a two-minute time exposure at ISO 1600, f/4 (click for a bigger image).

None of these shots would have been possible in a location with city lights sprayed up into the air. Unfortunately, dark skies are getting harder to find in the United States, especially on the East Coast. This night-time satellite view shows the situation quite vividly. I'm glad we live in a place like Oregon, where there are still many places to "see" darkness! :-)

Heron' There

One disadvantage of having a boss whose office is in a different building is that you have to walk five minutes to get to his location for staff meetings. But when you work for a company that has a pond in the middle of its campus, you sometimes encounter amazing wildlife along the way.

In this case, it was Blue Heron perched on the handrail of a picturesque walkway. Unfortunately, I did not have my DSLR with me, but I did have my handy iPhone. As I watched, he (she?) became distracted by a nearby goose call, and sprang away from the railing.



His/her destination was the pond grasses to the left in this photo:



Every once in awhile, I'm just blown away at the privilege of working amid such incredible surroundings! :-)

Half Moon, Halfway There

For the second attempt at astrophotography through my telescope, I shot 600 photos of the Moon in two pieces (1024x768 each), taken at 15fps using my new Orion imaging camera. When I first viewed the resulting photo streams as videos, I figured it was a failed attempt. Most of the time, the images are blurry, and air turbulence causes them to undulate and wave:

http://youtu.be/_an5BVe-Vlg?hd=1

But every once in awhile, there is a brief moment of image clarity. When I submitted the collection of photos to Registax, the software found that there are, in fact, 3 sharp frames in the lower half of the composite, and 7 sharp frames in the top half. I guess that 10 out of 600 total frames isn't bad, right? (I used Microsoft ICE to stitch the two halves together, for the whole Moon image.) Here is a full-res portion from the top half:



I figure I'm about halfway there; I'm still learning and adapting technique. For example, I think I would get a higher yield if the telescope is allowed to cool longer in the frigid Oregon "spring" air. Also, my equatorial telescope mount, although better than what I've had in the past, is not exactly high-end -- but I think maybe I can stabilize it better.

Even so, much to my surprise after viewing the blurry video, this turned out to be my best Moon image so far. And, there is much room for improvement despite having very modest equipment. If anyone cares, I'll be posting results from my continuing astrophotographic journey. :-)

First Light

If you hang around with anyone who does astrophotography, you'll recognize the term "First Light." This is an affectionate name for the image of the first "real" subject photographed with a new piece of equipment, after testing and calibration. The Moon photo above is the "First Light" image taken with my new telescopic camera -- for my birthday, Kathy gave me a telescope eyepiece imager.

This solves a problem I have been struggling with, i.e. how to connect my camera to the telescope. There are two options: 1) Placing the camera, sans lens, at the telescope's prime focus; 2) Placing the camera, with a normal lens, pointing into a regular telescope eyepiece. Unfortunately, #1 creates a small image with my telescope (not much better that what I could get with a regular telephoto); #2 requires near-perfect alignment, has vignetting, and focusing is very problematic. Both methods make it very difficult to aim the telescope since the camera is in the way, hindering normal eyepiece viewing.

Over the years, serious hobby astrophotographers have solved these problems with custom cameras designed for telescopes, connected to a computer via a data cable. Recently, quality telescope imagers have come down in price for mere mortal astrophotographers like me. Well, "quality" is relative of course. For $100, you can get a 1024 x 768 resolution sensor in a 5mm eyepiece, resulting in a magnification (for my telescope) of 100x or 200x -- enough to get me started on imaging objects in the solar system -- starting with the Moon.

First Light images are often lower quality than the eventual results from the new device. For example, the first Hubble Space Telescope images revealed a manufacturing flaw which eventually required a Shuttle mission to apply the telescopic equivalent of eyeglasses.

In my case also, the images will get better over time. For example, a night with a more stable atmosphere will help (better "seeing"), as will getting the hang of focusing using a computer screen. With my barlow lens, I'll be able to effectively double the resolution by getting in closer. Also, I need to experiment more with the imager controls, e.g. constrast, brightness, and gain. Then there is the post-processing -- learning the Registax interface better in order to best find the "good" frames and tweak the many stacking and wavelet parameters.

But for now, I can sit back and enjoy this inaugural photograph of Earth's closest neighbor, taken through my own telescope. :-)

Emergency Flight

Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in an emergency medical evacuation for a member of a short-term mission team who suffered an eye injury. He had been cutting metal, and somehow got a small shard lodged in his eye. It was starting to rust, and the man's right-eye vision was being progressively reduced to a foggy blur. Their Fort Lauderdale physician told his team to get him to a U.S. eye specialist ASAP.

They were able to change their American Airlines ticket for an early return, but to catch that flight required them to make an emergency trip from Cap-Haïtien to Port-au-Prince on Sunday. The choice was to drive an arduous mountain "road" 151 miles -- about 10 hours, three of which has constant bumping and lurching -- or to board an MAF airplane for a smooth 40-minute flight. They chose the latter, and requested an emergency medical evac from MAF.



Since it was a Sunday, the normal MAF hanger staff was not at the airport, so someone needed to go with David to help push around airplanes to free up the Cessna 207 he needed to take. I only had to ponder a nanosecond or two before volunteering to be that person.



Besides muscling airplanes around, I was able to help the passengers get their flight harnesses on, talk with them while David was doing flight checklist duties, etc. True, someone else could have helped David on this flight. But this time it was me, participating in an activity that is routine for an MAF pilot.



This is why MAF is in Haiti. Kathy and I understood what they did before we came to Haiti, but this visit has brought it all to life for us. We count it a great privilege to have made the trip from Portland to Port-au-Prince. And after we return to Oregon, David and Christine will continue their lives of cold water showers and BYOE (Bring Your Own Electricity), in order to make a difference in Haiti. From David's flying to Christine's teaching English, they are indeed making a positive impact in a region that is close geographically -- yet very far away experientially. And that makes me a very proud parent. :-)

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Update 02-Mar-2011:

Today I received a forwarded message from the ministry that sponsored the mission team David transported on Sunday. Here are some excerpts:

"Greetings in the name of our Lord....We greatly appreciate the medical flight of February 27th -- even though not a life/death situation it did expedite the treatment of Mr. D's eye. A tiny bit of metal generally does not even come to our attention except when located in an eye over the lens. Mr. D's eye at the time of the flight had reacted to the metal causing rust and a reaction that clouded all vision in that eye. Only the Lord knows how close he was to reaching the stage of scarring and permanent loss of vision....Due to your rapid action and willingness to arrange for a Sunday flight for a less than life threatening medical condition, the removal of the metal stopping the reaction occurred Sunday night in a Ft. Lauderdale emergency room. The following day an eye doctor removed all the rust and assured Mr. D that within a couple of days his vision would clear, returning to normal. Thank you very much for your ministry. Thank you for the extra work for the medical flight."

So, God used MAF to help save this man's vision. And in this case, God used my son to save Mr. D's full eyesight. (How cool is that, for a dad to be able to say??) MAF Haiti performs many medical flights in addition to their regular work of transporting teams and supplies to outlying Haitian communities -- but Sunday's trip was a "bonus" because I was able to participate and see David in action.

I'm thankful that God has called David and Christine to MAF in Haiti. Every day, they execute on the MAF mission: "Sharing the love of Jesus Christ through aviation and technology so that isolated people may be physically and spiritually transformed."

Now more than ever, I feel a part of that great work. :-)

Busytown

It started at 4:30 am -- a cacophony of roosters and dogs making sure everyone was either awake or moving in that direction. By the time 6:00 am rolled around, the day was in full swing. Dogs were sending messages to each other like in the movie, 101 Dalmations. Big trucks rumbled along, honking routinely along with every other driver on the road. Construction noises punctuated the soundscape.

My first impression of Port-au-Prince, Haiti was a comparison to the Richard Scarry book, Busy, Busy Town. I remember reading that staple of children's literature to my kids -- it was one of their favories, describing the constant activity in the daily life of Busytown. In Haiti, I was seeing it lived out before my eyes.

Well, it is not exactly the same as Busytown. I don't recall any of the Richard Scarry pictures showing mattresses being sold on the street corner.



First impressions are often based on surprise -- things encountered that are different than expectations. After four trips to Egypt and one visit to India, I was not surprised by the street-side vending or evidence of poverty. But after hearing and reading endlessly of Haiti's ordinary life being devastated by the earthquake, I was surprised at seeing bustling normality. Of course, "tent cities" are not standard Haitian life, and it is important to do what we can to help remedy the earthquake-related problems. But in the meantime, life goes on for the resiliant Haitians, and I feel privileged to see them in action. :-)