Fleeting Fame!

When I logged on last evening to post about "Trumping our cats", I noticed something peculiar going on with the Blog. On the statistic page there is a plot of readership and there was a huge spike on 1 February - for some reason, we were suddenly popular! The question was why! Shown at left, we hit nearly 500 page views on the 1st. So far as I knew, we hadn't been linked to any UFO posts, and Phil Plait, Mr. Bad Astronomy similarly hasn't linked anything to us, so had to look elsewhere...

Down at the bottom of the page, there is a gadget called "Feedjit". Clicking on the "live view" link below it brings up a page showing the last 50 folks who have looked on the blog - usually those 50 go back a day or more. But even now, those 50 only go back about 5 hours, so are still getting traffic linking to us. Examining those lines reveals where the readers live, what operating system they use, and whether they come to us directly (like a bookmarked link), or from a link from another website. In this case they were coming from the 1 February posting of Astronomy Picture of the Day!

Now the APOD website is the Holy Grail of any amateur astronomers who points a camera skyward. It is the equivalent of a musician getting his picture on Rolling Stone! I've forwarded them more than a few pictures, notably Melinda's accidental fighter jet silhouetted against the sun just before the solar eclipse of 2012, and various versions of the sun setting behind the outline of Kitt Peak National Observatory, but the most they will commit to is "we'll think about it". No, to this point they've not been interested in any images, but why folks were suddenly coming to the blog was because the astronomers who run APOD liberally use links to provide detailed descriptions of what they are trying to explain, like I do in the clickable links here. In the 1 February APOD, they were pointing out the faces people sometime see in the moon. Down in the description, they linked to my similar blog post pointing out a woman in the moon! So I'm getting closer to APOD fame - at least the Blog is on their radar and who knows - someday I might get a photo credit there!

Cats, Trumped!

Trump our Lucy - the donor!

Ever since Donald Trump has been in the news, seemingly forever, his coiffed comb-over has been the butt of jokes and comments. Take the classic Letterman bit "Trump or Monkey" that got laughs for years. Well, recently, with his running for POTUS (President Of The United States), derision has returned in full force. And while we've been doing this for years (really - WE invented it!), "Trumping your cat" has been all the rage the last few months!

Well, midway through our Winter season, our youngest cat, Lucy, needed some severe combing, so got out a handful of fur, so she was our donor kitty this time. "Collect, shape, place - and now document" is our new mantra! So at left is Lucy, Trumped! Pretty good, she tolerated it better than I expected, and the shade, of course, matches pretty well. There was an extra curl or two in the hairpiece, which was reworked for other volunteers...

Sugar Pants - not quite natural...

Squeeky - our winner!

Sit still very long in our house, and one-by-one, they all come by for attention! So with our lil' hairpiece set aside, we patiently waited. Next up was our "pretty boy" Sugar Pants, who also tolerated it well and doesn't look too uncomfortable with the rug. While the shape is good in this case, the contrasting color just doesn't do it for me.

It wasn't too many minutes later and our newest adapted feral, Squeeky (or Squeeks, Mr. Squeeker - you get the idea) came by and got in the fun for the first time. Ladies and gentlemen - I think we have our winner! Not only did he wear it well, but he had a bit of attitude and did a great job!

As the opportunity presents themselves, you might see more of this - they don't hate us for it, so it makes their owners smile, so why not?

Notes From The Battlefield!

If it seems like it has been a long time since we've blogged about Melinda's cancer battle - it has! After 2 PET scans that showed impressive improvement in decreasing both the size and numbers of tumors of her small-cell lung cancer, her oncologist gave her the month of November off treatment to recover, and restarted another set of cycles in December. Just today we got official word from the latest PET scan (taken every 2 cycles - about 2 month intervals) from a week ago.

And the word isn't good... Increased metabolic activity, and more tumors are visible. Dr. Garland is quick to point out these spots aren't "new", even though they haven't been visible the last couple scans. Going back to the Summer, these are old spots that are coming back. This is now the second time we've seen this - a drug that initially worked well slowly becomes ineffective as the cancer develops an immunity. While some might wonder what would have happened if we hadn't taken the month off, you can't ask that question - water under the bridge. At the time we didn't argue with the decision, though I do recall asking the question. All we can do is trust the doctor's recommendations and we will continue to do that.

So since the Irinotecan is no longer effective, we were concerned the doc might be running short of drugs to try - but not to worry! She always seems to have something to give us - in this case she wanted a drug that worked substantially differently from what was just abandoned, and chose Navelbine - a drug normally used for non-small cell cancer. We've already given the drug a pet name - "navy-bean". It works by inhibiting cell division, which is what causes cancer cells to grow unchecked. We're currently awaiting her insurance to approve treatment (Melinda has changed insurance 4 times since September, and she just today started Medicare - now THAT is an epic story!). We expect that to get approved and she'll receive chemo on Thursday, and go in for the normal weekly infusions for 3 weeks, then a week off for her normal cycle. Two more cycles and another PET scan - so we'll know if it is working come the first week of April.

The other complication is that the most recent PET scan showed a speck in her brain, while the brain MRI taken 4 weeks ago to look for such things didn't show it... So they are repeating the brain scan also on Thursday. If confirmed, they'll likely do radiation to zap it, but will learn those plans once we get to that point... Stay tuned - the battle continues!

My Favorite Roadway Art!

Do much driving around Tucson and you will soon spot some art or something that LOOKS like it might be art! They seem to sprout from road expansion projects, and thus the funding source is found - the Federal Transportation Administration requires that 1% of transportation projects using federal funds be spent on art or enhancements. I think it is a good idea to get away from the raw concrete and steel and soften the edges a bit. It is tough to find a single source that shows the variety of work and artists, but there is a small gallery in this newspaper article...

But I do have a favorite! I go out of my way just to pass by it - fortunately it is almost on my way home if I'm going north on I-10. It is on one of the underpasses on the Miracle Mile exchange, installed when the interchange was re-aligned 20 years ago. Local artist Gary Mackender did all 6 of the huge (35 feet wide, 9 to 20 feet high) mosaics after hand-painting the 18,000 tiles. My favorite is the first one you see as you go north on the right (east) side. Shown at left (slightly fuzzed as to not reveal the surprise!), it appears to be a lizard (Gila Monster) in the desert overlooking a beach and body of water with perhaps a rock or small island offshore. It reminds me of the desert down near the Sea of Cortez, where the desert runs right to the shore. When you drive past it at 70+ miles per hour, that is about all the detail you see.

But slowing down to the speed limit or lower (65mph at that spot) you pick up more details, as shown at right. What was thought to be a body of water is a flood of urban sprawl extending outwards into the desert, with the lizard looking aghast at what is happening. I think it is a great statement the artist makes in preserving what is left of the desert before it is gone. Don't worry - I didn't take it while driving like some people on Long Island I know! Melinda drove the last leg back from our Christmas trip to Rocky Point, and I shot out the windshield as she drove the speed limit. The last shot of the 3 I took cleared the ocotillo plant that shows in the upper shot. I love the colors and the theme, so spreading the word here is what else I can do...

Official End Of The Holidays!

The holiday season officially ended the other day with the arrival of the last card! Why was it delayed so much, nearly a month late after 5 weeks in transit? Well, it came from our friend Sergey Karpov, via air mail from Krasnoyarsk, Russia! It is a very long way away - almost exactly opposite us in Longitude (93 degees east), though closer to us if we headed due north over the pole (56 degrees north latitude). Sergey sent a Christmas Eve e-mail, telling me the card and desktop calendar the astronomy club put together from astro-photos they had taken would be late as he had suffered from flu and didn't get it off till mid-December. Still, 5 weeks for air mail seems slow!

The story of Sergey and "our Russian children" is pretty simple - as then-president of the Tucson astronomy club in the mid-90s, he wrote to me asking for help in arranging a tour for a few members of his astronomy club. I jumped at the chance, and one youngster came, along with 3 chaperones! Over a decade later, Sergey again contacted me and wanted to do it again! This time he had 11 teenagers and just him to keep an eye on things! Melinda and I had a great time spending 8 days with them as we kept them busy every day with activities from attending an American high school, touring Observatories at Mount Graham, Mount Lemmon and Kitt Peak, Pima Air Museum, then a trip to northern Arizona to Meteor Crater, Grand Canyon and finally Lowell Observatory. And after each of our long days, I would post a blog about our activities so their parents could keep an eye on us from around the world! It was great! They are considering another trip in August of 2017 to observe the total solar eclipse that occurs in the middle part of the country. I hope it happens!

So it is always nice to hear from Sergey. The card was beautiful - the front (at left) had some holographic printing to outline parts of the image of Snegurochka (more on her in a moment). At right is part of the inside. Of course, it is in Russian (duh!), and while I do not speak (or read) Russian, our neighbor across the cul-de-sac Cheryl does. She even brought it to school to show one of her native Russian students who seemed awfully interested in how such a card made it to Tucson! My thought of the card's cover girl was sort of a knockout Mother Nature, but Cheryl immediately recognized the image of Snegurochka, the Snowmaiden, daughter of Spring and Winter. She even supplied the legend of Snegurochka, who is eventually melted when she falls in love with a mortal. You should also check out some of the impressive images that Google turns up!

Cheryl's supplied translation:

For New Year's:
When the clock
strikes twelve,
we are given again
the gift of childhood,
We dream & dreams are realized,
and wonders/miracles occur!

May all in life
be wonderful,
May you find yourself
believing in wonders
and the amazing anew,
May this coming year
be like an amazing fairytale!

Stereo Microscope Shootout!

It's Dick's fault! I've mentioned him several times in the blog - we've been friends for a few decades and share an interest in most things that have lenses or other optics in them. A few weeks ago he forwarded a link to some he thought might be interested in a source for stereo microscopes for only $25! He was amazed that you could get any sort of a working microscope with glass lenses for that price. After it came, he was so impressed he ordered a second (holiday season, you know!). After the second was ordered they sent him an e-mail noting that he was such a good customer, they offered a 10% discount on a third - which he promptly ordered!

Now no one needs 3 stereo microscopes unless you plan on giving them away, but he was also interested in noting not only their optical quality, but there uniformity of quality. He had me over to look thru the first one and I had some issues with combining the images into a single image - what you might expect looking through a $25 optical instrument.




After that first session with him, I was reminded that I had a stereo microscope too! It is an antique, or at least old Bausch and Lomb... I obtained it about 3 decades ago - an estate willed to the Optical Sciences Center where I worked at the time. Many of the items the family didn't want was up for silent auction, and I bid on some books, the microscope and a card table which served me well for nearly 2 decades (and still does!) to hold the slide projector at the Grand Canyon! I don't recall what I paid for all, but it couldn't have been much - a few bucks for the books and card table, perhaps $50 for the microscope. After using it perhaps once in those 30 years, I got it out again after Dick's piquing my interest again.

It is a great little system - a stereo microscope that has a full optical system for each eye (called a Greenough-type). Designed for lower powers, it runs from 7X to 112X with 6 objectives (5 of which can be swapped in/out of the turret), and 2 sets of eyepieces (10X and 15X).  At the lowest power its field-of-view is about the size of a quarter, and you get a true 3-D effect, since each eye sees a slightly different angle. A prism cluster atop the turret housing allows for inter-pupillary adjustment and also erects the image. The patent numbers (the earlier one for the turret design, and the second for objective mounting design) indicate the designs were granted to Bausch and Lomb in the mid-20s and mid-30s, so the microscope could well be up to 80 years old.

While the optics seem to be simple singlets or doublets and all are in need of some cleaning, they perform very well! The eyepieces are simple 2-element Ramsdens, and I can't tell about the objectives. At left is a view of the high-power 7.5X objective that shows how the lenses have flat spots in them so that they can be mounted closely enough to operate at higher power... And at right is a close-up of the turret and the 3 positions of the objectives - a built-in 0.7X and two changeable dovetail-mounted ones.

Well, Dick wanted to do a close comparison of my B&L, his brand new version from Explore One, and likely a 40s or 50s vintage Zeiss version that incorporates a zoom system too. Dick also had a new pair of 15X microscope eyepieces - of modern multi-element design to try as well. Unfortunately, I had some photos of our "stereo microscope Shootout" but accidently erased them after assuming I'd downloaded them (first time that has ever happened!). But we took careful note looking at pocket change through them all. My 80-year-old B&L certainly wasn't left in the dust by newer designs, and when paired with the new 15X eyepieces were just as good. Dick even had an Ebay link to a fellow selling the very same eyepieces if I decided to jump into updating my older system.

3D Anaglyph - get out your red/blue glasses!

I was really impressed by the 3D effect demonstrated by all the microscopes. True, all coins have a non-flat surface, but I was just surprised by the depth. Looking at the Connecticut quarter, the big old Charter Oak was an amazing 3D view of intertwining branches. Being the 3D nut that I am, I tried to take images thru my microscope to make an anaglyph, but failed miserably. Even using a macro lens, I had difficulty, the image shown at left my best effort of the quarter for the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge quarter - the newest-minted. Using the red/blue glasses you can see some depth - a raised rim, with stamped letters, and the bird raised above the background. Almost as good as with the microscopes. I don't know if I'll get into microscopy as much as Dick has, but if I do, I know who to blame!

3D Extravaganza!

I often have a blog post in mind, but gets misplaced in the shuffle of life. Such is was in a trip back from Illinois way last June. I even mentioned in that post that 3D shots were on the way, but then, here we are in 2016 and I'm just remembering to post them! So grab your red/blue anaglyph 3D glasses and come along for the ride!

Just as a review, while you are moving along on a jet plane at 600 miles an hour, if you take a couple images a couple seconds apart, your baseline is defined by how much you have moved. Entered into Photoshop, the images are aligned, and verified that the scale is the same - the procedure to convert to a red/blue image to view with anaglyph glasses in about a 4 step process. I'll describe it in detail if anyone is interested, but so far, no one has asked. I had a great, high, quality window on that trip, so was a joy to sit with camera and nose pressed against it. When converting to anaglyph, sometimes color tints come into play, so most on that return trip were taken with B&W images from my IR-modified camera. It cuts through the haze for better contrast, turns the sky and bodies of water dark, and vegetation comes out very light or white. Then, when viewed through the red/blue glasses, the images stay B&W without introducing weird color shifts in a color image. But just to prove it works with color, this first image is a color image pair shot in northern New Mexico somewhere. The sinuous landforms and the depth in the clouds and their shadows are quite dramatic! This was shot in color on the trip up to Illinois, the rest are on the return ride...


There is an optimum spacing for revealing the depth in an image. Too large a baseline and it is difficult for your eyes to adjust for the nearest and farthest points of an image. If you restrict the near/far distance, keeping the baseline large exaggerated the depth of the image. Any baseline larger than your eye spacing are defined as "hyper-stereo", but with upwards of a mile separation, these would be considered extreme hyper-stereos! Case in point is this view of a canyon at left that I think is the Middle Gila River in SW central New Mexico. I cropped off the near/far distance so that the large separation would exaggerate the stereo effect.

At right, coming into Tucson, we passed low over the Rincon Mountains, and because of the low altitude, caught lots of details in the terrain and individual Ponderosa pine trees at the high elevations of Mica Mountain.

As is normal, we circled counter-clockwise over the north side of Tucson to land towards the SE at the airport on the far south side of town. I already posted a picture of our cul-de-sac on the earlier blog post. But as we passed the full length of town with the Catalina mountains out my window in slow review, I couldn't help but take a huge series of images pairs. First up is a great stereo pair from the peak of Mount Lemmon at nearly 9200 feet, down to Thimble Peak (5200 feet elevation) at lower center. The ridgeline it sits on divides Bear Canyon on the near side, Sabino Canyon beyond. I love how the few clouds provide a dappled surface that shows up so well on the 3D image.

The next pair at right was taken a few seconds later, and is very similar, but I like the slightly wider shot that shows the clouds at the top of the image. I couldn't decide which I liked better, so you get them both!


One of the nice things about the use of a zoom lens is that you can switch quickly between fields-of-view to vary the coverage. At left is a wider shot as the parade past the "front range" of the Catalinas continued. At left, nestled against the mountain slopes is the white-appearing Ventana Canyon golf resort, with its namesake Ventana Canyon to the left and Esperero Canyon to the right. The black spot at right center is the parking lot at Sabino Canyon. This image pair that made up the anaglyph was shot at 50mm focal length.

A fraction of a minute later, the narrower shot at right resulted. Shot at 85mm focal length, it shows Ventana Canyon in much more detail, with Cathedral Peak at right and Window Peak at left. I'm a big fan of documenting Window Rock, easily seen from around Tucson, and while Window Rock can be seen just left of Window Peak, the window itself can't be seen from this angle or magnification...


The parade of the Catalinas continued with this great view of Finger Rock, barely picked out of the profile top at left center. In front of it is Finger Rock Canyon. Following it uphill, the trail eventually reaches Kimball Peak at the far right.

We finally ran out of mountain ranges out my window, and I also shot our house about then. We banked around towards the south and I also got a few of the popular viewpoint of Gates Pass over the Tucson Mountains on the west side of town. This is one of the "shortcuts" over the range to the west of Tucson - in fact, one of the popular attractions, western movie studio "Old Tucson" is visible at the far upper right corner.

Well, you are now up to date on our June trip! Sorry about the delay, but I'm thinking these 3D anaglyphs are pretty spectacular and glad I finally got them out there!