Yet another post from our Christmas visit to buddy Margie's house in Puerto Peñasco. Never having been to the Mediterranean, her little development in Las Conchas (the shells), is what I expect it to look there - pretty nice whitewashed houses against the perfect blues of sea and sky. And they have one thing you never see elsewhere in Arizona - cupolas! A large percentage of them have these little domed peaks to the roof, that let in outside ambient light, and acts as a vent to let out hot air. Their exteriors run the gamut from unadorned tile or plaster to tile and mosaics. Margie's astronomy lookout on the roof is a perfect spot to look over the village, and presented here are some random shots from that vantage with the William Optics 11cm, F/7 apo - effectively a 770mm focal length telephoto lens.
This exercise in architecture also pushed me to learn a few new techniques I'll use later... Note the above image - with the long focal length of the telescope, the depth of focus is quite small, so if there is considerable distance between points of interest, one will be in focus, the other will be fuzzy. Note the upper cupola is out of focus... At left, I took 2 images, one focused on the front dome and a second on the rear, and used focus stacking techniques using Photoshop to combine the 2 images to keep both domes in focus. It is a powerful tool that I can see myself using with my macro photography in the future using multiple exposures. At right is another example, this time against a distant mountain peak - actually the Pinacate volcanic range, of which one crater can be seen to the right. The Pinacates dominate the northwestern view on the drive to Puerto Peñasco, and are here nearly 40 miles distant.
Since this blog usually contains some nuggets of astronomical knowledge, this next example can also serve as an analogy to other principles. From a fixed observation point, some cupolas appear bigger because they are closer. Some appear bigger because they are physically bigger. Sort of like star brightness - some are bright because they are close, some bright because they are intrinsically brighter. In the case at left, Margie's neighbor's house has a spectacular tiling job on their cupola, and appears large because it is close - at the inner focus range of my scope, it turns out! If this dome looks vaguely familiar - you have seen it before! It served as the early morning roost for the ringed-bill gull
a few posts back, re-shown at right...
The rest are pretty conventional, but vary from the simple red clay square version at left, to another nice mosaic of the cobalt blue tile at right. For some reason, I prefer the randomized pieces placed together better than the regular pieces of tile placed at regular locations, even though the latter is likely hard to do well without regular gaps, as the one at lower left in green tile...
That's all I've got! Of course, Margie's flat astronomy deck isn't conducive to a cupola, but there were plenty of others to enjoy from a distance, and a good target for a small telescope!
This exercise in architecture also pushed me to learn a few new techniques I'll use later... Note the above image - with the long focal length of the telescope, the depth of focus is quite small, so if there is considerable distance between points of interest, one will be in focus, the other will be fuzzy. Note the upper cupola is out of focus... At left, I took 2 images, one focused on the front dome and a second on the rear, and used focus stacking techniques using Photoshop to combine the 2 images to keep both domes in focus. It is a powerful tool that I can see myself using with my macro photography in the future using multiple exposures. At right is another example, this time against a distant mountain peak - actually the Pinacate volcanic range, of which one crater can be seen to the right. The Pinacates dominate the northwestern view on the drive to Puerto Peñasco, and are here nearly 40 miles distant.
Since this blog usually contains some nuggets of astronomical knowledge, this next example can also serve as an analogy to other principles. From a fixed observation point, some cupolas appear bigger because they are closer. Some appear bigger because they are physically bigger. Sort of like star brightness - some are bright because they are close, some bright because they are intrinsically brighter. In the case at left, Margie's neighbor's house has a spectacular tiling job on their cupola, and appears large because it is close - at the inner focus range of my scope, it turns out! If this dome looks vaguely familiar - you have seen it before! It served as the early morning roost for the ringed-bill gull a few posts back, re-shown at right...
The rest are pretty conventional, but vary from the simple red clay square version at left, to another nice mosaic of the cobalt blue tile at right. For some reason, I prefer the randomized pieces placed together better than the regular pieces of tile placed at regular locations, even though the latter is likely hard to do well without regular gaps, as the one at lower left in green tile...
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