More Mercury!

Coming back home from work, I was disheartened by the buildup of high thin clouds to the west.  Mercury is putting on a great show in the evening, and as an amateur astronomer, I'd always rather it be perfectly clear.  But as I've said before, clear sunsets are a little boring, and sure enough, we had a beauty as the sun hit the horizon.  Of course, at that "first" sunset, the sky was too bright to see diminutive Mercury, but 40 minute or so later, we had a "second" sunset - the thin clouds that were still around were showing all the beautiful subtle colors from earlier, now needing a longer exposure.  Of course, that is what was needed for the innermost planet too.  At left is a 2.5 second exposure with the 17-85mm kit lens set to 73mm focal length at F/6.3.  Tough to see in the small image, clicking on it will load a full-screen size and Mercury as well as a few stars pop out. 

Those stars hold my interest as on Friday night (31 January), Mercury is at greatest elongation from the sun.  In addition, the very thin crescent Moon will be a few degrees away, and for a bonus, the most distant planet Neptune will also be a bit above Mercury in the same narrow frame!  Now it was almost 11 months ago I caught Comet PanSTARRS and the Moon next to Uranus.  In the picture above, if you look at the full-size image, the 5.5 magnitude 38 Aquarii (about as bright as Uranus) is a little above Mercury's 11 o'clock position.  Neptune is fainter still and might be a tough catch, though I'm going to give it the college try.  Check here to see if I succeed!

EDIT: A pretty sunset tonight (Friday, 31 January), but way too socked in with clouds to try for the triple conjunction.  Though the moon won't be nearby the next few days, I may still try for the Mercury/Neptune conjunction...

Dawn's Early Light...

It takes a lot for us to get up before sunrise...  We're natural night owls, usually heading to bed around Midnight, sometimes later.  As a result, we usually rise about 8, long after the sun clears the horizon.  But with Melinda's regimen of radiation twice a day, we need to be at the hospital by 8am, requiring getting up at the (for us) ungodly hour of 6:30 to allow time to feed the livestock (cats), litter box chores and showers.  Fortunately we're only a few minutes from the hospital, but still...

This morning, after a warning of a Moon-Venus alignment from  Andrew Cooper's blog last night, when we cleared the bed, I grabbed the camera and stepped outside to document the morning crescents.  They weren't as close as I was hoping, but the moon next to Venus was quite pretty.  I took the wide shot at left encompassing both, then moved the zoom lens to the maximum of 200mm and cropped tightly for the shot at right.  The star just below the moon is 21 Sagittarii, a moderately bright star above the Teapot asterism, standing out here only because it is so near the moon.  Just to prove it could be done, I also shot Venus at 200mm - the tiny crescent of it still detected, indicating the planet's phase could still be seen in binoculars...

Tomorrow morning the moon will be on the other side of Venus - we'll be up again, so maybe you'll see it yet again here!

More on Focus Stacking!

First of all, let me apologize in advance because the weather in Tucson is spectacular.  I know that large portions of the country are in the deep freeze - no doubt if we were at our place in Chicago we would be bitching about how cold it was.  The local weather here in Tucson pointed out that today Tucson was 100F warmer than the current wind chill temperature  in Chicago!  And while the rest of the country is getting affected by the Arctic Vortex, or Alberta Clipper, or whatever the phrase of the week is, that same weather phenomenon is causing our temps to be about 10F to 15F warmer than average.  We've hit 80F recently while normal are in the mid 60s...

That being said, about the only thing blooming in our yard is the Rhus lancea tree, African Sumac.  Triggered by the warm weather, it has a subtle fragrance, and though it has an unremarkable flower, is thick with them this Winter.  The view at left shows a small branch full of the blossoms.  I say unremarkable because visually they look pretty blah, but in search of a blog post, I dug out the macro yesterday and wow - they are pretty cool close-up! 

In order to get a reasonable image of the microscopic flowers, I practiced the technique of "focus stacking" some more, something I've posted about twice now.   In brief, what you do is take multiple images from a tripod, and perform slight focus changes between the frames.  In macro imaging, depth of field is quite limited.  While stopping the lens down to small apertures you can increase the depth of field, it also increases diffraction noise in the image from small apertures, so while more of the image can appear to be in focus, sharp focus is more elusive.  With Focus Stacking, you stick to moderate apertures little affected by diffraction, and blend together only the sharp sections of each image with Photoshop.  At left is one of 8 frames I took of a sprig of the Rhus lancea flowers.  The central, yellow part of the flower is quite small, only about 1mm diameter, with the entire flower about 2mm diameter.   I took 7 others in quick succession with minimal focus shifts between with the focus knob.  Serious macro photographers have a geared stage for microscopic motions, but this is what I did.  There are several (free!) tutorials on the Internet, assuming you have a version of Photoshop less than 5 years old or so.  The tutorial I used is by Tony Northrup, who does a good job of explaining things and leading this neophyte through the simple Photoshop steps.  The image at right shows the result of focus stacking the 8 frames, all the little blossoms are now in focus, not just a few located in the shallow field of view of the left picture.

It isn't till you look at it at the highest camera resolution that you get a true appreciation of the power of this technique.  Since I'm limited to images 1600 pixels across, lets look at something like the full camera resolution.  At left again is a small part of one of the 8 images, showing one or two flowers in focus.  At right is the same section of the focus stacked frame.  Not only are nearly all the flowers and buds in sharp focus now, but a multitude of sap-sucking aphids, that I was actually looking for visually but not seeing, come into plain view!  I can certainly see using this technique pretty often in my future macro imaging!  The sharp-eyed among you might notice in these and the above pictures that some flowers seem to have 4 stamens per flower and some 5.  I went back with a magnifying glass to find out which it was supposed to be, but can confirm that the number is indeed, 4 OR 5...  Anyway, fun stuff - try the technique and I'll bet you like it!  More of this as Spring develops!

The "Sun-ny" Side of the House!

Living in the desert, you get used to drab colors.  Except for short periods in the spring when wildflowers or cacti are in bloom or some greens during our rainy season, it is boring earth tones seemingly all the time.  Perhaps that is why we've both become fans of Talavera tile and pottery.  Their bright colors and designs just bring smiles to our faces!  When it was time to redo our guest bathroom, we did it around Talavera colors and tiles, and searched out a sink with the pattern as well.  We love it, and most all of our visitors do too.

True Talavera is supposed to be from the state of
Puebla, Mexico, and made only by certified workshops.  It is very popular along the Arizona/Mexico border where tourist trade flourishes, and while you can get everything from knickknacks to Talavera pigs, lizards and pots with the distinctive patterns, we've taken to collecting sun faces shapes.  Pretty much every time we cross the border and visit our friend Margie in Puerto Peñasco , we head down to one of the stores that specialize in such things and pick out a new one as souvenir.  I don't know or can't tell if they really all come from Puebla, but we love the shapes, designs, colors and patterns.  While the painted glazes are one of a kind, hand applied, even the mass-produced identical pottery faces all come out differently.  Fortunately, new designs come out more often than we go to Mexico for a visit, so there are always new shapes to choose from, and we've never had to get a similarly-shaped one with a different pattern.  We've taken them to hanging them from the south-facing wall of our house and can enjoy their combined glory as we hang out in the back yard.  The one shown at upper left is our largest at over 2 feet (60cm) in diameter, the others a more normal 12 inches or so.

And while we usually go shopping ourselves to chose a design and verify we don't have the pattern, the ones at lower right of the wide view above are special.  We got the pair of them from Margie herself as Christmas presents.  Shown at close-up here, you can see some of the fine details of each, and even though their casting shape is identical, their individuality comes from the hand-painted glazes, as they are quite different.  We love them and you will note we are leaving room for future additions to the family!

Mercury in Evening Sky

The evening twilight is a little less lonely!  While Venus departed for the morning skies a couple weeks ago, finally the innermost planet Mercury has popped above the western horizon to keep early evening observers company.  It reaches greatest eastern elongation (18 degrees from the sun) on 31 January, so should be easily observable for the next 2 weeks during late twilight in the WSW.  The photo shown here was taken with the 70-200 zoom at 70mm for just under a 1 second exposure at 6:30 local time, about 40 minutes after sunset, and is a very good approximation to the naked-eye view.  Mercury is likely the least-observed of the naked-eye planets, so now is your chance to get out and look for a moderately bright star above and left of where the sun set.  You should have a good view of the western horizon for best results.  Good hunting!

Change in Plans!

Just 24 hours ago I updated Melinda's upcoming treatments.  Of course, as soon as we've got things penciled into the calendar, everything gets upended!  The start of her radiation treatments has been moved up a week to day-after-tomorrow, and her "rumored" chemo treatment cycle has been scheduled for next week the 27th, 28th and 29th, sandwiched between morning and afternoon radiation treatments.  Monday will be a challenge - typically her two drug infusions take upwards of 5 or 6 hours, so sandwiched between two radiation treatments, it will be a long day!  I think the patient is ready, eager for this next round to get started - the sooner we get started, the sooner we'll get done!

The Path From Here...

We have Melinda news!  When her chemo ended over a month ago now, all we knew were generalities...  There was talk of radiation, but nothing beyond her PET scans scheduled for the New Year (3 January).  We saw her oncologist Dr. Garland a week later and got good news - radiologist report says: "near-complete metabolic response of the primary tumor and para-tracheal nodes and complete metabolic response of the pancreatic lesion"!  With that, Dr. Garland handed us off to the radiation oncologist Dr. Yi, and in the last 10 days she's had a brain MRI (completely normal), and she also had a chest CT to layout a coordinate grid, complete with tattoos to position her upcoming radiation.  The CT, while not as sensitive to cancerous tumors as a PET scan, showed no signs of cancer, said Dr. Yi...  The photo at left shows the patient today with some flowers she recently received.

She has enjoyed the last 5 weeks off from treatments, just diagnostic scans, but that is about to end as the radiation treatments start in 8 days on the 29th.  It sounds pretty aggressive - 2 treatments a day (early morning and late afternoon) at UMC (about a half hour each) for 5 days a week for 3+ weeks, then full-brain radiation for a couple weeks after that to zap any microscopic cancer cells that may reside there, since the chemo she's received doesn't pass the blood/brain barrier.  There is also talk of one more cycle of chemo after all the time off she has enjoyed.  That will likely happen just before or concurrent to the start of her radiation.  Hopefully, around the time of her birthday (15 March), ALL treatments will be finished and she'll have something to really celebrate!