Chicago Museum Rounds!

In the nearly 12 years I've been coming to "Ketelsen East" to visit Melinda, we only went in to what most consider "downtown" a few times, mostly when visitors were stopping by. There was a trip to Adler Planetarium, once to Navy Pier and Millenium Park, once or twice to Wrigley, that was it! The western suburbs were good enough for us! My friend Karen has intended to broaden my horizons somewhat, plus I've given 2 talks at Adler the last 5 months! So last weekend we took public transportation down to the Chicago Art Institute for a few hours, then in a lovely blizzard, took in Millenium Park. A couple days later (President's Day) we risked being over run by kids out of school to take in the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). I still remember a long bus drive from Iowa when I was in 7th grade (!) to visit not only MSI, but Natural History Museum, Shedd Aquarium AND Brookfield Zoo. THAT must have been a day! My highlight of the entire day was the Nazi U-Boat on display at MSI. Would love to see that again - missed it this week! It is impossible to see anything close to a majority of the displays in a few hours, so repeat visits, better yet, annual memberships are well worth it!


I'm thinking I'd been to the Chicago Art Institute before - I remember the lions in front if not what I saw inside... I know that Grand Wood's "American Gothic" usually resides there, though is currently on a tour of Europe. We saw some sketches from war-torn Syria, a photography exhibit, a gallery of glass paperweights and Marc Chagall's "American Windows" in the couple hours we spent there. We spent a good amount of time reading about "Chagall's Windows", which were created for the Bicentennial and tell the story of America, but unfortunately, I evidently miss most of the symbolism in the story told in the glass. As someone who has previously dabbled in stained glass, his use of making images without the standard caming techniques is somewhat foreign too... Case-in-point is what I thought was a dove - a symbol of peace at right, but turns out it is an eagle, a symbol of strength... You can also see where he does not use the standard lead caming division between colors and textures but somehow incorporates it into the glass - a little strange to me!

As we returned to one of the galleries that overlooked an open space, we saw it was snowing heavily. It seemed disconcerting to be looking at Italian sculpture from millennia ago with heavy snow falling in the background!

There was Byzantine sculpture and mosaics from what is now war-torn Syria that was absolutely beautiful. Originally found in public places, the leopard mosaic at right was just stunning! It would be fun to try to replicate this on some smaller scale! Make sure you click on the image to see the details in it!





I think I've seen the glass paperweight gallery in a previous life too! There were some beautiful objects - the line of various sizes at left immediately jumped to mind as a focus-stack - 7 individual frames at various focus setting combined to extend the range of the in-focus setting. This particular design is known as millefiori - or "thousand flower", the effect of using hundreds of colored canes to create the effects of colorful flowers.

Likely the most impressive "paperweight" was the huge 30cm diameter one at left that had to have weighed in at 60 pounds or more! It was huge, yet very nearly perfect as I could make out!  There were other amazing examples too - what looked like real bees buzzing around what looked like real flower buds was one standout...




We were just about to leave as they started kicking people out at closing time, walking out into the evening blizzard.  But the temperature was moderate and snowfall was manageable - quite pleasant to be in, and perhaps some interesting photos would come of it. Of course first we had to photograph one of the "guard lions" with a fresh coating of snow.  They do not have names, but this north one was indicated to be "on the prowl" by the artist... Millennium Park is just a block to the north, so headed that way. The first public art we came upon is known at "Crown Fountain", a pair of 50 foot tall towers faced with LED displays that randomly shows few-minute videos of about 1,000 Chicagoans, ending with a "kiss" that results in a water spray during the Summer months. It is quite striking, especially with snow falling, surrounded by people and the Chicago skyline.

The other highlight of Millennium Park is the incredible sculpture "Cloudgate", commonly called "The Bean"! I thought it would be interesting in the snow, but it likely detracted from the reflecting surface...

If you can't find photos to take at "the Bean", you aren't trying hard enough! We weren't there very long, and even with the perfect reflective surface partially blocked, it was a fun time. We ambled a bit, and I snapped the shot at left of another fellow snapping it, then walked around to the west end where there was an ice skating rink. The Bean from that angle does reflect the rink, but is tough to spot with the snow partially blocking the reflections.

I was doing some reading on its installation, and they did a LOT of work in the construction, from welding 168 pre-formed stainless steel panels together. The panels are 3/8" thick and in total weight about 100 tons. The tough part was in polishing the stainless steel, including the welded seams so that the joints are totally invisible. After looking closely, I can say they did a very good job!


Two days later we did a post-brunch visit to the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) on President's Day. While risking hordes of running schoolchildren, since school was NOT in session, it seemed to be mostly families, so wasn't a bad day! First up was transportation, where some time was spent investigating a 727 on display! One of the best things they could have done was put a pilot there to talk to - which is what they did! Scott worked as a pilot for both Midways and United Airlines and had some great stories to tell. He truly made it sound like it was the best job in the world! Even the story of how it got there was interesting. Since even Midway is 10 miles away, they landed the 727 at the old Meigs Field, a small, single-runway airport. Once landed, the 727 was stuck there as the runway wasn't long enough to take off again. It was transported the mile or two to the MSI, split along it's length for easy access to the interior and displays in the museum. That is the 727 hoisted to the second floor at left, and at right is Scott, eager to talk all about flying it!

The weather section had lots of displays too, highlighted by a 40 foot tall vortex, looking for all the world like a miniature dust devil like you would see in Arizona. Operators had some control over it, including the air speed and the angle of injection of the input blower. In the vortex photo at left, you can also see the Foucault Pendulum at right, a closeup of which is shown at right. It is a simple demonstration of the earth rotating. If mounted at the north or south pole, the plane of the pendulum would sweep out a full 360 degrees in 24 hours. At the equator, it would stay in the same plane. At Chicago's 42 degree latitude, seems to me it would go about 2/3 of the way 'round, about 240 degrees... With the pendulum's slow swing I took my selfie in the reflective ball at left...





While there were ample opportunities for kids to be running around like wild Indians, it was gratifying to see lots of them actually paying attention to the displays and principles being taught, especially young women. From the electrical to more vortices, they seemed to be outnumbering the boys at paying attention!



All the museums visited are worth further exploring, since only a small part of each were seen. I stand by my wish to go thru the Nazi U-Boat again, after my first visit 50 years ago!

The Atwood Sphere!

While my last post stated that Adler Planetarium is America's oldest planetarium, there is an older device for visualizing the sky, if not an actual planetarium in the usual sense! Known as the Atwood Sphere, it is a 17 foot diameter sphere made out of thin gauge (1/64 inch thick) metal, made by a windmill company in 1913. Originally installed at the Chicago Academy of Science, it was carefully drilled indicating the positions of nearly 700 stars, and when viewed from the interior, provided a reasonable approximation of the night sky from light coming in the holes. Over the years the exterior was actually painted to resemble a globe of earth with continents, oceans and even the vertical relief of mountains pounded out from the interior. It fell into disuse after Adler came into being in the 1930s with it's state-of-the-art Zeiss projectors and massive dome, but the Adler acquired it in the mid 1990s, restoring the sphere to its original design, color, and construction with a motorized drive approximating the rotation of the stars overhead. The photo at left shows the "car" that will move up to 10 friendly people up into the viewing area of the sphere interior, at right, my finger points out one of the stars drilled into the surface...

The guides do a great job with a batch of visitors moving through the Sphere every 8-10 minutes. Besides the light coming into the holes from the upper illumination, there are constellation lines put on with luminous paint, kept bright with dim UV illumination. The image at left shows a view of the interior - if you know your way around the sky, you can see the late winter northwestern sky with the "W" of Cassiopeia at center, Andromeda at left, and Perseus on top. I thought the holes-in-steel worked remarkably well - well enough evidently that during WW2 they offered lessons in celestial navigation to flyers undergoing training at local bases!

At right is the drive mechanism that rotates the sphere around the viewers in the "car" to provide a leisurely tour of the entire sky in a few minutes...

Edge of Atwood Sphere - remind you of anything?

At left is a Gif of 6 frames that I took as the guide took a new group up into the sphere. As a joke, he stated that the short ride was the "world's slowest roller coaster"! Note the sphere starting its rotation in the last frame... It is a remarkable display of the ingenuity and inspiration of Wallace Atwood, who served on the board of directors of the Academy of Science. And it is remarkable today that Adler got it out of mothballs and made it into such a popular display!

At right is a view of the upper edge of the sphere against the illumination from above that provides light for the "stars" punched in the surface. Perhaps faintly you can still see some of the vertical relief they punched into the globe, or perhaps it is evidence instead of rough handling in the past. Regardless, it reminds me of an image taken a couple years ago as New Horizons looked back at Pluto. It is such a lovely and amazing image, show me the edge of a sphere and I'll think back to this image often:

Looking at edge of a sphere will always remind
me of New Horizon's look back on Pluto...

Friday Musings!

Acorn Season!

Still here at "Ketelsen East", and mostly taking it easy! About all I accomplish most days is my afternoon bike ride! I've got a dinner coming up this weekend at the house, so am doing a little cleaning, but mostly watching the Cubs on TV most days, and listening for the gunfire! Actually, the reports are not from gunfire, but from acorns falling from high in the trees overhanging the house. They really do sound like gunshots sometimes, and then you can hear them bounce and rattle down the slope of the roof into the eaves, which will need cleaning at least once or twice before the snow flies.

Cavett at right with Little Richard and Helen Gurley Brown (from IMDB)

This morning, while being lazy, I was channel surfing and found one that is called "Decades", specializing in TV shows from the 50s thru 70s, as many of their ilk do. On it was "The Dick Cavett Show". I was a big fan in those days and was often the only one awake late in the evening on the farm watching it on the only TV in the living room. Seems incongruous that a farm boy was a fan of an erudite Yale man with intelligent talk with newsmakers, but what can I say... Anyway, the show today featured Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, and at one point he allowed them to ask him a question. Evidently he never talked about himself on the show, but Carol asked him what his middle name was. He hemmed and hawed a long time, eventually admitting it started with "A", then finally caving and admitting it was "Alva". My jaw dropped! That is my middle name as well, and I never knew Cavett's. He then stated he was named after his father, whose first name it was - same with me! I find it amazing that 45 years later I learn that I share a name with one of my boyhood idols!

I only know a little of the story of how I was eventually named Alva... When my dad was born October of '31, his mom had already had something close to 12 kids, and suspect she was looking for ideas for names! Thomas Edison had died just a few days before, so chose Alva for a first name. And as was one of the traditions, my middle name is taken from my Dad's first, so I'm indirectly named after, and share middle names with Thomas Edison!

My Mediocre Fireworks photos!

I've photographed galaxies a hundred million light years away. I've shot moths that pollinate flowers IN PITCH BLACK NIGHT. I've shot planets thru a telescope that has an observatory as a pretty background. But evidently I'm incapable of shooting a decent image of a fireworks display! Co-worker Steve set the bar pretty high and did a lot of the preliminary work, taking a spectacular fireworks image 2 years ago. He told me all the hints he could but warned me that to get a background of Tucson's skyline (at least what there is of it), you had to expose a long time, risking way overexposing the fireworks. But I figured it was worth a try so even though the night before leaving for the Midwest, I went chasing fireworks!


I used the same venue he did - the top level of the parking ramp next to Parking and Transportation on 6th street on the south edge of UA campus. Even an hour ahead found cars claiming prime spots - it looks like it was gonna be a party! I set up camera and tripod and used my trusty 70-200 zoom lens. Steve used 70mm, and I figured with the full-size sensor of the 6D that I'd need something closer to 100-120, so the zoom was a great choice. My first shots, that still showed some twilight glow, showed that to get a properly exposed skyline, at least 10 to 15 seconds was needed. You can see at far left some of the "wildcat" fireworks in the neighborhoods showed up nice on this exposure.

But at right, the problem can be seen! The Tucson display was held far after it got dark, not starting till about 9:15. This shot shows that even in the 4 second exposure, the fireworks were so bright that they are very overexposed and colors are blown out. I was able to stretch some of the skyline back, but you can't do much with the overexposed fireworks...

I did luck out and get some shots that were ALMOST acceptable. At left is another 4 second shot that captured some of the dimmer shots that didn't overexpose the sensor, yet, I was able to bring up the skyline a little.

At right is a 10 second exposure that again, did well on the cityscape, but the fireworks were again on the verge of being overexposed again... It is a very narrow line to balance background with the points of interest, but that is the goal! My buddy Ken who runs a "Picture a day" blog not only got a great shot, but ran it on the 4th of July! A former newspaper photographer, he is used to running on deadlines!


The party did develop! I ran into some very nice people there, mostly young student-types, some with kids. Some were interested in what I was capturing and were amazed at what a few seconds exposure would show - things they couldn't see with their eyes... The photo at left is a hand-held exposure with my spare camera showing some of the cars at a lower level watching the distant show.

You will note in almost all the shots above that the fireworks ignited a blaze on the lower slopes of "A Mountain" from where they were shot off. In fact, most refer to the local fireworks as the "traditional lighting of A Mountain! After the display ended, many stayed to watch the blaze grow before being extinguished. At right is a shot thru the longest focal length of the zoom (200mm). It was impressive to us and we couldn't even see the fire directly from our location!

So I'm not sure I'm gonna try this again anytime soon. It is too hard to get good results. Maybe I'm getting lazy in my old age, but you would think if you take 85 photos, you would have one or two "keepers" of which I don't feel I did. Back to photographing invisible things...

Miss November!

Today, being Sunday, I headed to Iowa to have dinner with family members that were available. I left early enough that I stopped in Fulton, IL to visit with my aunt Velma Ketelsen who is in the nursing home there. Growing up in the area, it seemed most weekends the 6 kids in our family spent time with their 7 kids at their place or ours, so more than most families, they were part of our own. I was surprised as I walked down the hall to her room that she had been named the "November Resident Spotlight", but I prefer the moniker "Miss November"! Someone from the staff interviewed her (below with minor edits) and took her picture to post with the biography, and I added a few photos of her that have appeared before on the blog. So here she is, MISS NOVEMBER!

Velma Fallesen was born on her parent's farm in rural Charlotte, IA on 28 Nov, 1927. Velma had 3 sisters and a brother. Her and her siblings went to the Fallesen Country School, so named because the school was built on land Velma's family owned. She started school there at the age of 4, but doesn't know why she started so early. I suggested perhaps she was just exceptionally brilliant and could not wait until 6.

During the depression, like many Midwesterners, Velma's family lost the family farm. When she was 11 the family moved to town (Charlotte). Her father soon went to work at the Savanna Army Depot while Velma and her siblings began a new school in town. She graduated from High School in 1944.

Picnic at the farm w/great-niece and nephew(Aug 2008)

Velma with niece Kathy (Mar 2010)

After High School, Velma went to work for a local farmer's wife. She worked very hard tending the children, cooking, canning fruits and vegetables and doing housework. While Velma worked on a farm, so did her sweetheart Arlo. They had met in grade school. They married in 1945 at age 18. Velma and Arlo had a small wedding with family as attendants, marrying at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Charlotte. For another three years Velma and Arlo rented a farm and worked it until they could at last purchase their own. They were very hard workers, Velma tended the children, cooked, cleaned, butchered chickens to sell and to eat. Arlo milked dairy cows, raised crops, and butchered cattle and hogs. Velma helped Arlo with the outdoor chores as well as doing her indoor chores. She tells me nothing went to waste including liver, brains and the cows tongue. Velma said she cold-packed a lot of meat until they got their first electric freezer.

Velma and her husband had seven children and 34 Grandchildren. Arlo came from a family of eleven siblings, so the large close family pleased them both.



We share birthday cake in 2013 (we're 3 weeks apart)

Velma and Arlo stayed busy attending sports events of both their children and grandchildren. They also met with friends and family often. A typical night out usually consisted of a good meal, conversation and perhaps a game of cards.

Velma and a friend enjoyed walking daily and would even go out when the weather was quite cold.  They met almost daily and kept their walking routine for 20 years.


She and Arlo enjoyed traveling around the United States by car, usually but not always to visit relatives. She has kept a journal for many years, and read me several entries from 1983. Velma's journal entries always contained a brief weather description. She also always mentioned the book she was reading and working on a jigsaw puzzle in inclement weather. Many of the entries talked about chores and made references to cooking and recipes.

Arlo passed away in 1998. Velma remained on the farm for many more years before moving to town (Clinton). She came to live at harbor Crest about 14 months ago. Ironically she lives across the hall from her sister-in-law (also named Velma!). She tells me she and her sister-in-law refer to themselves as real sisters. They can often be found sitting outside together on a warm sunny day.

The "BIG SIX"!

It happens so rarely that I don't have a label category for "new Gear"! For the first time since this blog started, I've got a new camera - the Canon 6D! I've mentioned before back in January that I was saving up pocket change for the upgrade, and with the Grand Canyon Star Party coming up, it was time to get it and practice before some good opportunities to image came along. What isn't to like - a sensor that is twice the size of my APS-sized Canon XSi. In addition, there are about 3 generations of improvement in noise reduction (Digic 5+ compared to Digic III), and an associated increase in sensitivity from max ISO of 1600 to 25600. Not that the XSi is no slouch - obtained just before our wedding 8 years ago, it has everything I've ever wanted, and likely some features I've never used. I'll still continue to use it as my primary spare, but 8 years of constant use and it was time for an upgrade.
  

I decided to have it shipped to St Charles and it arrived yesterday. It is a hefty camera, a good 8 ounces more than the 1 pound XSi - likely as there is more metal construction over the polycarbonate plastic of the XSi. The 24-105mm kit lens is hefty too at F/4, but in initial tests seems a great kit lens for the new camera. There is a huge learning curve in little things like zooming in on an image you've just taken. There are no doubt features I'll be learning about for months - but for now, I've got a couple dozen pictures taken without opening the manual and like what I see. As illustrated above, the sensor size is about twice that of the XSi. Since most of my lenses will work with the new one, that extends the field of view, with very little loss in resolution as the pixel sizes are pretty comparable (6.5 microns for the 6D, 5.2 for the XSi). So nearly twice the number of pixels provide much more freedom to crop and compose an image once taken... Take the images of the flowers on the bush - the full frame shown at left. Of course, since the blog only accepts a max of 1600 pixels, a LOT of data is lost in reducing sampling for the blog. The image at right is a crop of the same frame, showing full resolution with the same number of pixels as at left.


One thing I'm not enthused about is the lack of an on-camera flash... I use the flash on the XSi A LOT! From night-time time-lapses of flowers and sphinx moths to even daytime macro, the on-camera flash is pretty useful, so that will likely be about the first accessory to invest in... That being said, with the high ISOs the 6D has, it should almost work hand-held in the dark! We were visiting sister-in-law Maj this afternoon and I took the image at left of Melinda by the light of the 40 watt bulb adjacent to her. I've got to admit it worked pretty well at 6400 ISO and a 25th of a second.

The same goes for other low-light level shooting - at right is a shot of some ferns in front of our house when we got home about sunset. Resolution is pretty good even as dark as it was getting with the hand-held shot.

So with the first couple dozen images behind me, I'm thinking I'm a happy camper! I'll likely even be happier when I open the manual and figure out basic stuff I used to know on my other cameras, like zooming in on exposures and using live view. I recall some issues on basic stuff like that when using Ken's 6D for some LBT shooting a year ago. I'm sure it is just a matter of training the operator! And if you think that you would get away without an anaglyph of the ferns out front, you would be wrong! At right is a 3D shot of a fern, hand-held at about sunset, assembled in Photoshop. Not bad, say I!

Vacation Swag!

Our good friend Donna recently came back from a solar eclipse trip down in the south Pacific near Malaysia. Before she left she asked about any requests for souvenirs she could bring back for us. While not a coin collector, I asked her that instead of spending her pocket change before leaving a country, to bring it back for me - and she obliged! I wasn't much interested in coins till a couple months ago when Dick and I had our microscope comparison and coins seemed to be the thing to look at - especially in 3D.

She had flown into Australia, spent some time there, then on to Darwin to catch an ocean-going vessel for the trip to Malaysia. So upon her return had a handful of coins from each country. Of the pair of countries, Australia's was my favorite, though the "heads" of all the coins are a bit dull - all featuring the profile of Queen Elizabeth II, as shown at right. The denomination has little to do with size, at least for the "gold" coins. The $2 coin is smallest at lower left and $1 at upper right. The "silver" coins do go by size, 5 cents upper left to 50 cents lower right.

The reverse sides are much more interesting, featuring native Aussie creatures, as shown at right. On the 50 cent piece at upper left, the Aussie coat of arms is flanked by the kangaroo and emu. The 20 cent piece has an amazing depiction of a swimming platypus. The 10 cent coin has a lyrebird, and the 5 center has an echidna, a spiny anteater. The gold dollar coin at lower right is a commemorative coin from the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in 2007...

My favorite Australian coin has got to be the $2 coin. Not only does the reverse side feature a portrait of an aboriginal elder, but also features the Southern Cross, only visible from the southern hemisphere - at least from Central America southward...




By comparison, the Malaysian coins are a little more Spartan, but still pretty. The Hibiscus blossom is the national flower and is featured on the front of all the coins, along with the denomination. The reverse sides were a little more obscure, so had to look up what I was seeing on the coins, shown at right. The 5 sen coin at upper right shows 14 dots, 5 stripes, pea tendrils and a cloth pattern of an indigenous tribe. The 10 sen coin shows a Congkak game board. The 20 shows jasmine flowers with the 5 lines, 14 dots and another printing motif in the background. The older "silver" 20 sen coin below right shows a sirih and kapur container that holds betel leaves and other items used in ceremonial and social gatherings. Finally the 50 sen "gold" coin at lower left contains the 14 dots, pea tendril motif and fine lines as a security measure.

Anyway, cool stuff! U.S. coinage was so boring until they started the 50 state quarter series, and continue it into the "America the Beautiful", but seeing what other countries are doing with their coinage is impressive too, so thanks to Donna for scratching that lil' itch! Oh, and interestingly enough, shooting these coins with macro lens at an oblique angle, I couldn't keep the front/back of the coins in focus, so all the group shots above are 3-frame focus stacks to assure they are all in focus!

Ok, Now I'm Officially Excited!

You've got to pick your milestones carefully! The other day, our 1,000th post, was a milestone. But over the last 14 months, since getting the van, I've been carefully watching the prices of crude oil and gasoline climb and fall slowly. Seemingly the jumps are due to far-off excuses - a car bomb in Iraq, or a refinery fire in Jersey. Of course, the price can climb 20 cents a gallon overnight, but take a long time to recover. It helps that since getting the van, I record the mileage and prices along with gasoline consumption, so a record trail exists... At left is the price of gas since driving the '05 Van off the lot last year. Some of the jumps are due to buying gas outside Tucson, which enjoys some of the lowest prices around. For instance the big peak in the center is from a couple fill-ups in Flagstaff on the way to the Canyon last June. Smaller ones are from Why, AZ on the way to Mexico and the other in Willcox on a trip to Mount Graham last Spring.

So what should be the benchmark at which time I'll feel some satisfaction at low prices? I used to compare it to the price of milk, but that too is never very stable - one of the first things the store drops to an unheard-of price for a loss-leader to get customers in to buy more expensive items. And remember too that I'm as old as dirt and remember price-war prices from the '60s where it wasn't unheard of to get gas for under 20 cents! No, something else...


Finally, it came to me - since I stop in most days at Quick Trip for my "Thirstbuster" -sized 44 oz Diet Coke to bring in to work, that was my benchmark - a gallon of Diet Coke!  Of course, it didn't help that they recently lowered the price for a gallon refill to $1.39 from $1.69, where it used to sit. I thought it would NEVER get down below $1.39, but before I knew it, it did! Just the other day I found it at $1.37, and it is still dropping, even though the price of crude oil has been stable at $30 for the last couple months, and half price from a year ago... At right is the listed price for a gallon of fountain soda, and believe it - some people bring in HUGE containers for their drinks, so know that folks buy them. I recall once at Circle K (a QT competitor) they once listed a 5-gallon container refill - likely for large thermos containers for Gatorade or sporting events...

So how low will it go? Who knows, but it is interesting that now that gas prices are low, the economic pundits are complaining on how hard low energy prices are for the economy. Well, for once I'm glad to see us keeping a few dollars in our pockets after filling up, or for the folks back east not spending their entire income on heating fuel. The low oil prices are an obvious ploy by OPEC to drive the US oil processors to collapse, which can't pump for such low prices. And I feel sorry for alternate fuels (solar, wind) which can't compete at these prices either. But you just know that they won't stay here for long and gas will be back up to $5 a gallon before you know it. All it takes is another Middle East war and the oil producers will get their wish again...