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beautyintheuniverse uploaded a new video
(1 month ago)
Highlights of the 2009 road trip.
Was thinking of putting this in as an entry for the 'lonely planet competition'.
-We shall see what they make of it...
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Highlights of the 2009 road trip.
Was thinking of putting this in as an entry for the 'lonely planet competition'.
-We shall see what they make of it!
Many thanks to visiblepulse for the headsup about the competition
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beautyintheuniverse uploaded a new video
(2 months ago)
Okay, so the titles a pun on Witch mountain.....
Saturday 29th Woke up at 5, but went dozed till 5.30 (start of astronomical twilight). Orion risi...
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Okay, so the titles a pun on Witch mountain.....
Saturday 29th Woke up at 5, but went dozed till 5.30 (start of astronomical twilight). Orion rising, dominantly visible. Sorting stuff out from the previous night was a big help in a relatively fast getaway. I was on the trail by 6am. Me some other guy who was doing Buck. He was stunned at how much gear I was carrying, esp. the 5+ liters of water. I was also carrying a pump as I wasnt sure of the water conditions, but really had reservations about using it (not knowing how effective such things are). He soon took off as he was traveling much lighter and faster than me. The trail was fast, well maintained and graded. I was just entering Death Canyon at sunrise, and a beautiful sunrise it was too, reflecting off Phelps lake. Then began the long ascent of the steep side of death canyon. I stopped frequently, and found that my mixture, which was ~25 % vodka diluted with fizzy water, was an excellent stamina maintainer when combined with the trail mix. Its a bizarre thing that when you are doing huge workloads, alcohol has (apparently) almost none of the effect that it does for recreational drinking, that is to say, when the metabolism is going into the red.. any alcohol that shows up in the blood stream is seen as just a ready source of energy, not unlike sugar. Made good time going up and everything seemed to be holding up well. There was also some could cover, which didnt have the appearance of lots of building to it. The trail was very quiet, and for the whole day I probably only saw 10 people. First and only folk to pass me going up, did so about an hour before getting to the summit. The spine of the Tetons is spectacular, and its always funky to see Jackson airport, a mile beneath you. You can watch the planes taxi on the runway, then watch them roll to the end of the runway and almost take off before you hear the roar of the pilot putting the engines on full throttle. Its just really weird seeing this thing from a mile up! Got to the summit about 12.30. There were two parties on the summit, and I figured I would bide my time to fly the plane. However as things go on the summits, conversations kicked off, and before long I was showing them the plane I had carried up from the valley. The wind conditions were fine. Landing was obviously going to be hard on the plane (no smooth open areas) but the scenery was FUCKIN A! After one of the parties left, it was just me on the summit, and I decided to go for it. I wired the whole thing up but just a black screen. Checked it all, still a black screen!? Then I went into fault finding mode, and it too me full second to find the torn black wire. AG! NOOO! On inspection I decided I could still get it all to work. Then I found the torn red wire, for which I had zero chance of mending. Bollocks! I did briefly consider just pulling off all the video gear, and just flying the plane with the aiptek. Gave it some though and even tried moving the stuff around, but eventually I did the cost benefit analysis. Even IF I could get it all working, that would entail a mainden flight in fairly windy condition, and if I lost the plane it would also mean the loss of an almost new, 200 bux aiptek recorder. I decided that I just couldnt justify the risk. The place was still fantastic and a great place to visit, plus I had done the recon should I ever want to return. There are some interesting flight potentials here! Especially if you are willing to go fully FPV!
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beautyintheuniverse uploaded a new video
(2 months ago)
Prelude to the ascent of Static Peak.
Even going up Static early in the season requires an ice axe (or a degree of gusto) in places. Fortunately th...
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Prelude to the ascent of Static Peak.
Even going up Static early in the season requires an ice axe (or a degree of gusto) in places. Fortunately this was late in the season. Still a damn long way up there though!
Wednesday 26th slept till noon, then shook off the drowsyness and headed down to Jackson. Enroute my AC convertor that gives me 120v from the 12v of the car burnt out, and all of a sudden, within a day, I had gone from having 3 of these devices to only one (a robust one, but one that could only handle 80W (almost nothing). Processed deep sky images, and processed and uploaded Tyrell. Spent some time working out why my lights were fixed on highbeam. In the end turns out it was a loose wire. Rolled out to Gros Ventre in the evening. Headed down to the amphitheatre where I told the ranger I would be setting up the scope for outreach. They finished just in time to see the moon before it went behind some trees leading to many a gush. The crowd slowly thinned (this is of course the problem with lots of people and only one scope). Many stayed to take a look at Jupiter. The last family had a fairly smart kid which led to the exchange of the evening.
I had just shown the mother M13, a bright globular cluster. She was initially saying she couldnt see anything, to which I told her, she would know when she saw it, then there was that characteristic silence of one struck dumb with awe followed by inept vocalizations. M13 is an impressive sight even in a modest scope, and in an 11in scope it leaves little to the imaginations. Its a glowing ball that almost one instantly resolves as being composed of millions of stars. Its nice to see people experience unexpected and jaw dropping wonder such as this.
However her next line brought home the limit of her knowledge. She asked if this was being lit up by the Sun, or something else. Not being the sort of guy who would berate someone for an honest, if childish question (he (or she) who asks a question is a fool for a minute, he who doesnt is a fool for a lifetime!), and I had no intention of dampening the spirits of someone whose mind had obviously been kindled with the thirst for knowledge. I told here that they were other stars, which she didnt really seem to know were like our Sun. The kid (who seemed fairly with it) then butted in that this was the sort of thing they did in 5th grade, to which the Dad had the snappy answer that he hadnt been in 5th grade for a LONG time! Everyone laughed it was a pleasant moment.
After the last people left, I got the scope on andromeda and recorded maybe 2hrs on it with the scope tracking well. It was getting progressively cold. I then packed up the scope (while recording an hour or so of dark frames) and moved out of the park to the east where I settled down for the night in a quiet siding (about 3ish).
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beautyintheuniverse uploaded a new video
(2 months ago)
Tuesday 25th
Up and moving around by 9ish, after only maybe a few hours sleep. Back into town to pick up a fastfood breakfast, before heading on s...
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Tuesday 25th
Up and moving around by 9ish, after only maybe a few hours sleep. Back into town to pick up a fastfood breakfast, before heading on south towards Idaho Falls. Stopped enroute for another hour or twos sleep. At Idaho Falls I headed to the starbux for wifi and power to process the Jupiter footage. MUCH better than anything Ive done previously, and the timelapse of me getting the footage of Jupiter really added to it. Quite unintentionally I had got simultaneously the rotation of the Earth in the same time frame as the rotation of Jupiter! I also had the movement of three of the moons! That had a significant effect at raising the fatigued spirit.
The sky forcast looked good, so I picked up some food and headed back to the my Tetons Pass'. Set up the scope past dark and turned it to Jupiter. I could see a moon on the limb of Jupiter (about to transit) and the great red spot about to roll over the face of the disk. That settled it, I had to look at it! Got ready for another timelapse, doing 15s capture every 3minutes. Kept going till the moon was well clear of the limb of the other side of Jupiter. Orion was then rising so I spent 20 minutes on the horsehead nebula.
Wednesday 26th slept till noon, then shook off the drowsyness and headed down to Jackson. Enroute my AC convertor that gives me 120v from the 12v of the car burnt out, and all of a sudden, within a day, I had gone from having 3 of these devices to only one (a robust one, but one that could only handle 80W (almost nothing). . Processed deep sky images, and processed and uploaded tyrell. Night doing outreach
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beautyintheuniverse uploaded a new video
(2 months ago)
Monday 24th August
Headed north to Yellowstone. Came across (on the very empty roads) a cluster of 3 cars, stopped!). It was a bear!! The first o...
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Monday 24th August
Headed north to Yellowstone. Came across (on the very empty roads) a cluster of 3 cars, stopped!). It was a bear!! The first one I have ever seen, and it was a grizzly! Watched the bear till it got spooked back into the forest by passing cars (about 15 mins) but during that time it was fascinating to watch the guy (who looked fairly small for a grizzly) foraging. He was certainly digging and licking something off his claws. My reckoning was the heavy rains of the night before had bought worms up near the surface, and the bear merely had to scratch the surface and lick them off his claws. Score to see a bear though. Up till now they have been frequently reported, and as far as I was concerned, never seen. Got up to the Geyser basin about 9ish, and had only just set up the timelapse when Ole Faithful blew. The weather was still overcast and gloomy, and the people cleared. That gave a great opportunity to fly the plane. I was nervous here, not only were there more people around than I was used to, but also in the event of a crash, its likely that the ranger sorts would be pretty humourless bastards. On the first turn I lost orientation on the plane and almost noseplanted it into old faithful.. that bought my heart into my mouth, but I was soon back in control and the nerves calmed as I was back in full control. Its clear to me that there is a lot of potential for FPV here, but I was content with a 5 minute flight, before getting my plane back with only some curious looks. After seeing that the footage had some *great* moments in it (flying through the plume of the big geyser) I was feeling pretty smug, and got a coffee from the lodge, some muchies from the car and went over to join the junior ranger buffalo talk to eat breakfast. I was disappointed by the rangers sloppy use of terms, although I said nothing (he repeatedly described winter as a predator of the buffalo). After the geyser blew a second time the weather was clearing and I thought what the heck, having it clear will look good and hung around for it to blow a third time. After that (about midday) I took a leasurely drive up the left side of Yellowstone, took the fire-hole lake scenic drive. Lots of hot pools and geysers. The geysers can be rather frustrating in that you can wait for hour and see nothing. Plus the second you leave it might blow. Indeed this is what happened to a Texan I got talking to. They geyser was meant to blow every 30 mins. He had waited for an hour. We talked for half an hour, turns out he had some VERY expensive astro- kit (probably 50 k all in). Essentially a photographic machine though. No sooner had he left, then the geyser blew (the thing had a large cone on it). Scouted on the way north for a good place for astronomy, and just short of Madison junction I found a good place (next to the amphitheater). Kipped an charged batteries till dusk. Was awakened by a ranger who gave the usual speel about if I slept during the night then I was breaking the law. Shit this is worse than Nightmare on Elm Street. you know, if you fall asleep then they get you!
The plan was Jupiter the full rotation. This time using eyepiece projection. 32mm plossl on a 4in telextender and the HD camera. Seeing in the early part of the evening was surprisingly poor. I was thinking that the proximity of the hot spot might be a significant factor (the site was chosen to not look over much blacktop). It had not escaped my attention that the refractor case which had only been left in the open had got covered in condensation in about 30 mins, and about midnight the same started happening on the corrector plate. No problem, I had my hairdryer ready for this! However even this smallest of hairdryers was a power hog (1800W) and the powertank could only cut 400. Initially it worked okay, but soon the powertank couldnt cut it. So I hooked it up directly to a powerinverter hooked to the running car battery. That would only just work with the dryer putting out only a tiny breeze of warm air, however it was enough. I was recording 15s of video every 4 mins, and that gave plenty of time to de-dew the plate. Then about 1ish, more disaster, the power inverter fried, and that was the only one I had that could hack that sort of power NOOOOOO! I figured if I put the lens cap on between each 15 s of video, that it might give me another hour or so, and it seemed to work. However during that hour it suddenly occurred to me, I had an ample heat source in the car, but no easy way to transfer that to the scope corrector. Then it came to me, what if I heated up the lens cover between frames. It worked fantastically. I could heat the plate up to 40C (full heat blast in the car) while I was taking the video. Then when I put it back on the scope, it had enough heat capacity in it to de-dew the corrector. And that how it went till Jupiter set. (cut for length)
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