Aaron Adams’s Lame-ass Blog

You may be aware that last night a lunar eclipse occurred that was visible from North America. The last time my friend Tim Miller and I photographed a lunar eclipse was January 20, 2000, and the temperature outside was -11F. Fast forward 8 years to last night, and temperatures were much better: 3F.

Temperature wasn’t the only difference. The rig we used to photograph the eclipse was also somewhat different this time around. Here’s a picture of me with our equipment.

And here’s Tim.

Now you know the cast of characters. The towels hanging over the scope were used to shield some parts from frost accumulation as the night progressed.

The last time we took eclipse pictures, we used a 35mm Nikon film camera, the model number of which escapes me, through our Meade LX200 12″ f/10 scope (the big telescope in the pictures) with an f/6.3 focal reducer. That particular combination of camera and scope worked out well for getting a frame-filling full moon projected onto the film. This time around, however, with the LX200 and focal reducer, the image of the moon was too large and we couldn’t fit in the whole thing. So instead we had to use the Celestron SP-C80 80mm f/11.4 mounted on the top of the LX200 to get pictures. The moon fit into the frame, although it was a tad smaller than we wanted, but still acceptable. The Celestron is mounted on the top of the LX200 because the LX200 has a tracking motor that allows both scopes to follow the moon without having to move it by hand.

So why did an f/10 and f/6.3 SCT not give us a full moon picture, but an f/11.4 refractor did? I dunno. I don’t understand what I need to in order to explain what happened. I’ll have to do some reading.

To mount the camera onto the Celestron, we used a T-ring adapter and an extension tube, as such.

Here it all is from the front, just for fun.

So how did pictures of the eclipse turn out? We took about 160 pictures over the course of the evening and I haven’t had a chance to inspect each one yet. However, I have chosen a handful that stand out, from different stages of the eclipse. These images have been scaled down to fit on this page, but they have not been processed in any way except for cropping. In the future when I have a little time to adjust these images I may post some that are cleaned up. All pictures are taken with a Canon D60 digital camera set at ISO 400. I’ve noted the exposure times below each picture.

1/750s

1s

3s

2s

1/350s

1/500s

I’m pretty proud of those.

I’ve never been a giant fan of cake. I do like cake, but most cakes I’ve had aren’t great, especially those sheet cakes from the grocery store with the nasty icing. Cakes made at home are ok, but for some reason maybe 1 in 5 are really good. Pie, however, seems to be a better bet for your money. Pie is almost always good. I’ll take even a mediocre pumpkin pie over a cake any day. 

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What’s the deal with cheesecake? Is it a cake or a pie? It has the shape and texture of a pie, but it’s named cake. Why isn’t it cream cheese pie? 

Because I didn’t have a particular box checked in my site options, I missed some comments to this site that got held for moderation. I’ve now approved those comments. And as always, I appreciate everyone’s feedback here.

Thanks to my friend Todd for finding this.

Mr. Aaron Adams
departed this life
July 27th, 1804.
Ætat 27
Uncertain life, how swift it flies
To day man lives tomorrow dies.
This hour in health & strength & bloom
& the very next he fills the tomb
Ask you for proof, Behold it here
And give your friend a ?? of ??.

I spent some time this morning troubleshooting my television. It doesn’t matter how much time I actually spent trying to get it to work properly, if it’s one second it’s too much. I now add the television to my list of technologies that are getting worse, not better.

When I was a kid, I pushed the power button on the TV and turned a dial or punched in a number to select a channel and watched. There was nothing more to it, and it worked 99.99999% of the time. The only troubleshooting my parents ever had to do with a TV was, “It’s dead. We need a new one,” and, “Call the cable company because the cable’s out.” Likewise, for the first 2/3+ of my life I could pick up a phone and dial a number, and within a few seconds I was speaking clearly to the person on the other end.

Now I deal with a TV that has a thousand different connectors and options and yet doesn’t perform simple functional things that I, as a new user, discovered should be present in 15 seconds. I deal with a cable box that takes several minutes to boot, and with a remote that has a good 1.5 second delay for every action, where the TV we had 20 years ago was instant. And then I need to set all the settings on the cable box in coordination with all the settings on the TV to make sure I don’t end up with squashed faces and muffled audio.

I have a cell phone signal that’s full strength when I hold the phone one way, and completely gone when I move the phone 1/4 inch to the left. Signal strength depends on moisture in the atmosphere and whether there are leaves on the trees. 3/5 of my calls are eventually dropped, regardless of my location, and 1/3 of incoming calls never ring my phone to begin with but are sent straight to voicemail.

This is not progress. All the advantages brought to us by HDTV and cell phones are more than negated by the technical difficulties and the constant struggle to make them work properly. For all the alleged geniuses with degrees and certifications in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, why has it turned out to be so difficult to replicate the level of reliability these devices had 20 years ago? Maintaining things that work well in that same state should be their first priority.