UnSpace

Ok, so it's not really spring, but Pittsburgh set a new record for the warmest temperature here on January 7th today: 66°F. Yesterday, I went for a walk on the Eliza Trail (photos coming!) and today I went to Piney Fork (left the camera).

Spring thaw has a smell, that smell was absent during the walk. But I'm still spoiled by today. When snow comes once again, I think it will be harder to take.

Would anyone think it odd if I painted the walls black in the bird room?

There are plenty of things wrong with this picture. Obviously, I should use a tripod when playing with the strobe. The background gets saturated in these photographs. But still, this is a cool first attempt. There are two birds that are flying in the image: a blue one and a turquoise one. The white bird in the lower center wasn't actually flying — I think it was flapping while perched.

The aperture was cranked as high (small) as possible and the shot was for .5 seconds. I don't know if I can do much better in this situation, and I really don't feel like painting the walls!

Still, it's fun!

I always keep a camera in the car, so when I caught these sundogs in the sky the other day, I pulled over and snapped a picture. These are hard to see, and if you want a better view, click the picture for a larger version.

If you'd like to learn more about them, check out the Wikipedia article on Sun Dogs.

There's a 3.9% chance an asteroid is going to whomp into Mars next January 30th at about 5:55 a.m. The rock is about the size of the Tunguska meteor. I have no idea what the science value would be; the impact would simply have a major cool factor.

I can't help but wonder, though. What if the meteor hits the one part of Mars that still has life?

Oh well, there's always Europa!

[Insert joke about crappy weather in Pittsburgh for any astronomical event I want to watch.]

Some friends came up to visit from Florida. We decided to go visit the Pittsburgh Zo. Of course, I took my camera.

Comet Holmes has brightened rapidly recently, to the point where it is about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper. Even from suburban skies, this is a naked-eye object. I got some photos using my Nikon D50 camera

This photo shows the labeled comet, with the Pleiades circled and labeled and Cassiopeia outlined and labeled. If you click on the picture, you will get a larger, unlabeled version of the image.

Here is a picture of Comet Holmes. Compared to other stars, it's obviously not a star, even in this photograph with my Nikon camera. To get this image, I took a short exposure at maximum zoom. Again, if you click on the image, you get a larger version.

Here's a trick for getting pictures of just a few stars with a digital camera:

1. Mount the camera on a tripod.
2. Take a picture with the least zoom.
3. Look at the image and based on what you see, try to center the star you're after.
4. Zoom in a bit on the star.
5. Repeat 2,3, and 4 until you are at maximum zoom.

Note: The sky appears to move because the Earth is rotating. At 300 mm zoom on my camera, stars appear as lines if the time-lapse photo is about 3 seconds or more. Astrophotographers compensate for this by either taking many short-duration photographs and adding them together (compensating for motion) or by having special mounts with electronic drives that compensate for the motion of the sky. If you just have a camera and tripod, you won't have that. If you have a telescope with mount and drive as well as a camera, you can either shoot through the telescope or duck tape the camera to the telescope. I really don't recommend the latter, as the duck tape residue is hard to get off the camera and telescope.

And yes, it's actually duck tape. It's not the best stuff for air ducts.

I tried to photograph the comet Loneos (C/2007 F1) just after sunset. A cloud that made a beautiful sunset just sat there slowly creeping up toward Arcturus. As often seems to happen, Pittsburgh weather got in the way of my astronomical viewing. This time, though, the weather provided something interesting to watch in its own right. You can click on these small versions of these time-lapse photographs to see the VERY LARGE versions:

The lowest star you can see near the sunset is Arcturus. The comet was one degree below that star, but was never visible, even with a 30 sec. exposure. The cloud obscured too much.

The Big Dipper is an "asterism," not a constellation' it's part of the Great Bear (Ursa Major) constellation. This photograph makes it easy to see.

As you can tell, I'm still having fun with the camera.

I passed the link to the story "Scientists Ask Congress to Fund $50 Billion Science Thing" to numerous friends and made an amazing discovery. Go check out the article and then read the rest of this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex, co-worker with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, died on September 7th.

African grey parrots have a quoted lifespan of about 60 years, but it is thought by many that with good care, those alive today have the potential to live to be 100. Alex has been treated for aspergillus in the past. In parrots, it's not a disease that's ever cured, although it's far more comforting to forget something like that.

I think I'm going to get Cirrus our African grey parrot and play with her and tell her how much we love her. Nancy is doing the same right now with Holmes, our other African grey.

Bye, Alex.

As Cirrus would say…"Woooo!"

I've only skimmed the PDF "The Axis of Opportunity: The Large-Scale Correlation of Elliptical Galaxies" by Michael J. Longo (arXiv preprint, found via Slashdot) but I'm already convinced this result is startling:

I have studied a sample of 200,000 elliptical galaxies with redshifts <0.20 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate whether they tend to have their ellipticities aligned along a particular axis. The data show a 13 standard deviation signal for such an alignment. The axis is close to the spiral spin axis found previously and to that of the quadrupole and octopole moments in the WMAP microwave sky survey.

According to the standard cosmological model, there should not be any axial alignment. Summing up all the rotations ought to give zero. According to this paper, the axis of rotation is "13 standard deviation[s]." Thirteen standard deviations means there's no way this is an accidental result. This result also appears to match the cosmic ray background mapped by the WMAP sky survey, which showed a spin axis most astronomers were hoping was a chance artifact.

This result begs the question "What is the universe rotating relative to?" If this universe is all there is, then it cannot rotate as the WMAP appears to indicate.

There could be several answers:

• Bigger Than What We Can See: Somewhere beyond the event horizon of the observable universe, the universe has segments rotating in the opposite direction. It all averages out, but it's too far away for us to see it.
• The Antimatter Asymmetry Problem: If Charge Parity Time (CPT) is conserved, there ought to be as much anti-matter as matter. That the universe is predominantly matter and not antimatter means CPT is not conserved and "symmetry breaking" occurred. (Think of asymmetry breaking as putting a marble exactly at the top of a perfectly formed sphere. The marble will fall down the sphere, but in choosing a direction, symmetry was broken). One possible way to account for the asymmetry would be if the rotation of the galaxies is somehow because matter predominates. If the universe were anti-matter, the rotation would be in the opposite direction. Remember — if you were removed from our universe, flipped 180 degrees in the fourth dimension, and then replaced in our universe, you would then be made entirely of anti-matter — with the obvious and messy result antimatter would cause!
• Black Hole Theory: If every time you form a black hole, a new universe is formed, and if the black hole is rotating, then the matter inside would tend to rotate along a preferred axis. Note that there could be similar theories using this same trick: the Multiverse Theory, the Brane Theory, etc. The only requirement is that there is something outside our universe which our universe can rotate with respect to. And yes, one can argue that this is also the "Bigger Than We Can See" theory, as we all know we are inside a Schwartzchild boundary, beyond which light can never get to us nor come to us from outside.
• Weird-Shaped Universe: Some have argued that a different analysis of the WMAP data indicates the universe is shaped something like a cornucopia. The galaxies rotate weird because of where we are — near the moth or tail of the "horn of plenty." It still averages out, but the weird shape means we're not averaging correctly.
• Artificial Universe: This universe was created to have a particular rotation and the anomaly is either an artifact caused by creation or a "signature by the "builder" of the universe. Humans may be close to being able to construct a universe in the lab; the creator of the universe need not be anything we would call "God."

Along with the Billion Light Year Space Void (empty of all matter, even dark matter), it's clear that current astrophysical models are inadequate. Insert "seat belt and bumpy ride" remark here.

Mother Theresa said for years to her confessors and superiors that she no longer felt the presence of God. She was in agony and apparently they did nothing. Christopher Hitchens is equally obtuse, saying this proves she had lost faith in God.

Mother Theresa was obviously severely depressed. Duh, folks! While the depression was probably chemically based at some point, you have to admit that the things she saw and experienced would drive anyone to depression.

There's no indication the Roman Catholic Church got her any help. She was their poster girl for Roman Catholicism, and they didn't want to muck things up by helping her with antidepressants and therapy. Oh my! Someone might think she's not a saint if she gets help for depression! So they told her the symptoms were "proof" that she was loved by God and being specially tested.

Hitchens is just a wroter who engages in the very sort of shenanigans he accuses his opponents of using. I can't take him seriously.

Mother Theresa's superiors, on the other hand, had years and years to get it right and they couldn't. Their treatment of her (as their treatment of pedophile priests) shows a consistent and frightening propensity to do evil for the sake of appearing good.

I'm sorry for my Catholic friends like Funky from Ales Rarus. You deserve a better church than the ones your leaders are giving you.

Recently, my church offered me the position of Acting Director of Communications. It's "acting" because we are looking for a new head minister, and the new head minister should have the right to boot me to the curb should he need to. Furthermore, it's not exactly like they went through a hiring process — I just jumped in and volunteered for 3 months and they found out I was excellent at the job.

I told them flat out how depressed I was. I told them that emotionally, I did not feel God, and that the only reason I continued was because of what I have experienced and know logically. I hope none of you ever have to find out what it's like for an ENFP to run entirely on logic — it's not natural and it's not fun.

To help you understand, I also lost faith in Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I've done the experiments and have seen both theories proven by my own hand/eyes/really expensive equipment. I've done the photoelectric effect, calculated and measured the spectrum of hydrogen, and found peculiarities in the heat capacity of gases. I've heard the relativistic doppler shift of a radio signal from a satellite, measured the speed of light several different ways, and shown the gravitational redshift with the Mossbauer experiment where you shoot radiation upward and measure how much is reabsorbed at different heights. But I lost the feeling that both theories were right. I lost the intuitive sense that let me work with them on some bizarre unscientific (but really, really good) level. I had to run on logic and not intuition.

Anyway, I told the minister and the business manager everything up-front — and I've not exactly been quiet about the depression. Anyone who cares to know (and many who might not) knows. My depression is not a state secret.

They hired me anyway — and told me they supported me and would pray for and with me.

And, after being hired, and after working with what has to be one of the best office environments possible, I find my depression is gone. I can feel faith again — faith in God, faith in quantum mechanics, and faith in relativity.

And trust me — if you want to find stuff that is irrational, illogical, and just obviously wrong, there's no better place than Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. As far as mysteries go, religion is a piker at it. If you think you understand either of those theories — you're not paying attention! That's why they're so cool, actually…

And yes, I wonder if it's really the medicine or if having a job with such a great bunch of people is why I'm feeling alive again. I'm doing something I'm incredibly good at, using many of my talents and abilities, I'm being forced to work on the nasty part of the learning curve (my intellectual home) and I'm finding skills I didn't realize I had.

They only hired me for 6 months, with an option to renew, and it all dependent on the status of the search for a new minister.

I'll deal with that problem when I get to it.

With the job, I've not been posting as often as before. Here are some quick takes on some recent science:

1 Billion Light-Year Void

Working with the Cosmic Microwave Background, astronomers have found a 1 billion light-year hunk of emptiness. Light, as it passes through this empty space, would change if there were matter, neutrinos, or even dark matter there. There's nothing there. Zip. Nada. Even worse, all the theories of how the universe evolves say there is no way you wind up with a 1 billion light-year hole in space. The only thing I can think of is that while the universe was smaller than an atom, "sound" waves (if you call waves in the quark-gluon-photon plasma "sound") set up some funky resonance at one spot, chasing away all the matter from that area. Such background anomalies have been predicted, but nothing that winds up as a billion light-year matterless expanse in the universe. Either that or there's some nasty side-effects to testing a faster-than light drive. Oops. If you've ever looked at the WMAP map and thought "What's that blue thing there," well, now you know.

Check out the cool picture that explains how they figured this out.

To give you an idea of scale, the universe appears about 14 billion light years in radius. Now (if you can really define "now") the universe is actually about 78 billion light-years in diameter. Remember what looks 14 billion light-years away was that far away 14 billion years ago, and it's moving at darn near the speed of light away from us — and all that time, space itself has been getting bigger. Add it all up and it works out to about 78 billion light-years.

And yes, we're looking at the giant void as it was about 6 to 10 billion years ago and, as the universe expanded, so did the void — so it's even bigger today. How much bigger is an exercise left to the reader.

Claim that (Claim of (Martian Life) is Bogus) is Bogus

Back in 1976, two Viking Landers landed on Mars with 4 experiments. At launch, if any experiment gave a positive result, scientists agreed that it would be unequivocal evidence that there was life on Mars. Depending upon who you listen to, 3 or 4 experiments gave positive results — and almost everyone said that it wasn't caused by life. Personally, I think it says more about the scientists lack of imagination than it does whether there was life on Mars or not. The experiments were designed to look for typical Earth life: they heated the soil, fed it nutrients, gave it lots of water, etc. Those are exactly the sorts of things that would pretty much kill life adapted to living on a cold, fairly arid planet with weird soil chemistry.

Well, looking at the Gas Exchange experiment, Houtkooper pointed out that the amount of carbon in the soil about matches that of Antarctica's bacteria. Martian life might use hydrogen peroxide as an antifreeze, and the experiments performed would give you the exact results seen if you subjected such hydrogen peroxide-based Martian life to the conditions of the experiments — as the life died.

Pace says, in response ""Hydrogen peroxide inside cells is deadly in terrestrial kinds of cells." Yeah, it is — well, if you ignore the Bombardier beetle. But I can't help but also marvel that Pace would expect to find terrestrial kinds of cells on Mars. Wouldn't one expect Martian cells on Mars — adapted for conditions on Mars?

Lunar Eclipse

By the time you read this, you probably missed it. Oops. If you do happen to be reading this Monday night to Tuesday morning, the Moon enters the umbra at 4:51 am and totality starts at 5:32 am.

I only saw one meteor all night. Big surprise, since I tried watching from my backyard. So, instead, I started screwing around with the camera.

For example, I couldn't focus on these flowers because there wasn't enough light for the autofocus. I decided to use my little blue LED light to give me a shot at focusing, and this is the photo I got:

If you notice, there are small bits of yellow that show through when the flower petals are shadowed from the blue light. So I tried another photograph, this time using the blue light for only part of the 30 second exposure:

Pretty cool. Apparently there's a UV component to the light — notice how the blue and yellow of the flowers separate.

Never did succeed in photographing a meteor, though.

You do know this is a very tiny bee, right?

Strangely, I was trying to get more hummingbird moth photos. I don't think I got a single usable one, but I got these two great tiny bee photos. Go figure.

You can't see the tomatoes, tuscan kale, several kinds of lettuce, more tomatoes, radishes, peppers, and other vegetables in the garden. The "volunteer" sunflowers from last year are easy to spot — they don't have the large heads of their domesticated cousins and they have multiple heads. The goldfinches are so hungry, they're not even waiting for the seeds to grow! You can also pick out the red nasturtiums, the cat tails, and in the back right, the ironweed that's getting ready to bloom. There's also a little bit of Queen Anne's lace to the far right. We found that butterflies seem to like it. Because the butterfly bushes were hit hard by the winter, we need all the butterfly attractants we can get!

While talking with my mother-in-law today on the phone, I suddenly shouted "Hold on, I have to photograph something!" Perhaps not surprisingly, my mother-in-law is used to this sort of thing. I saw this female downy woodpecker ( Picoides pubescens ) at the feeder. The bird was devouring the suet as I watched. The bird flew away and then came back, hanging on the side of the pole with its sharp toenails.

This is the first downy woodpecker we've seen in our backyard. They're smaller than the usual red-headed woodpeckers we get around here.

Nancy and I were just done eating dinner out on the patio when three hummingbird moths zoomed by us and down to the bee balm. Up until today, I've been taking all the photographs of insects with a camera and no flash. I grabbed the dishes, took them in to the kitchen, and grabbed my camera…with the Speedlight 800 still on it. The sky was cloudy, and so I decided to leave it on. As I took the first flash picture, I thought about stroboscopic photography. Switching to a manual setting, I set the aperture to about 7 and the speed to 1/500th of a second (the fastest the camera will permit with a flash). The meter told me the scene was too dark, so I knew the flash would fire. It did, and I got some incredible photographs as a result!

The hummingbird moths seemed to ignore the flash, although they were more easily annoyed than before. The bees had been working over the bee balm fairly hard, so I'm not sure if it was the flash or the lack of food that made the moths irritable.

With the new photographs, I'm fairly confident that these hummingbird moths are Hemaris thysbe — the clearwing hummingbird moth, and not Hemaris gracilis — the Graceful (or Slender) clearwing hummingbird moth. Look at the brown veins in the wing as they pass through the clear area and touch the brown outer edge. This edge would be smooth in H. gracilis. Instead, it has a scalloped appearance, which is diagnostic for H. thysbe.

Here are thumbnails of the rest of the pictures. If you click on them (or the photo above), you will be taken to the full-size versions. UnSpace has become almost unviewable on a slow Internet connection, so I'll try to limit the size of the photos I post.

If you want to see the pictures but can't handle the full size ones, click on the "Read the rest of this entry »" link and you'll see 600×400 versions of the above 7 photos.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note to self: bee balm makes a great background.  The purplish-pink fuz in the background is a bee balm flower.

I had to back off the zoom lens I was so close.