This may be the clearest evening in two months...

[yogi]

Your photograph collection is very impressive. The method and tools you used is what makes those images outstanding. I think you can be very proud of your handiwork with the lenses.

I have a Nikon Coolpix 5600 DSLR camera that I used for many years. When I acquired a smartphone a camera was included. In fact I treat the devices as being a camera with the ability to make a phone call. LOL The photographs from the phone are remarkable, but most of the brilliance behind the pictures comes from post processing. They don't use a standard color pallet, for example. The mechanical zoom is only 2x, but the digital zoom is pretty clear at 10x. The most amazing aspect of this camera is it's ability to adjust to low light levels. I've taken some amazing moon shots, but I cannot take credit for the quality. The software enhances everything. When I need to take a real picture, I use the NIkon.

[ocelotl]

The same view you have for your DSLR is the one that motivated me to get mine in the first place, to take "real pictures". I saw it on a pawn shop at Tecamac while I was returning from a service. A stock kit with two zoom lenses, A 18-55 mm and a 100-300 mm, a holster bag and battery charger at around 4,500 pesos was worth considering. Got later the T adapter and acesories to couple it to the telescope at Interastro, in Coyoacán. I'm planning to get two Crayford focusers there for both of the 'scopes that will result from these primaries.

I'm just eager to get those glass pieces aluminized to become proper newtonian primaries... Going form a 4-5% reflection from bare glass to 90% for a common first surface aluminizing will make a world of difference. I still haven't seen a time prospect for either Universum museum or the Parque Xicotencatl observatory to reopen their optics shops to take my blanks to. Hope it happens soon, and can show you the full potential of this stuff.

[yogi]

I have mixed feelings bout the phone/camera device I own. I learned about photography in the early 60's when I acquired my first Argus C3 35mm film camera. That was before digital and before SLR was invented. LOL At that time I also took an interest in darkroom techniques. Black and white film developing kits were easy to get and my uncle had an enlarger that he let me use. I can't say much about the quality of those photos, but I did learn a lot.

My next camera was the classic Canon AE-1. I don't recall the lenses I got with it, but there were three; a telephoto, a regular, and a macro. This camera, like the Argus was all manually controlled and my first SLR experience. The quality of my photography improved, but my darkroom productions did not. By that time I was fully into color photography and processing my own film was too complicated and expensive. I gave the camera to my daughter when I purchased the Nikon. By then it was out of production. When she took it to a camera shop to trade it in on a new camera, they were ecstatic to see it and offered her almost the full price of what I paid for it new. They were going to use it for parts to repair other cameras.

So, you see, I have a great appreciation for manually operated cameras. I do like and use some of the automatic functions on the Nikon, but I still prefer the feel and look of the images in spite of them being digital. Smartphones take wonderful pictures, and I would not abandon the one I have. They just don't seem "real" enough given my history with cameras.

[ocelotl]

This one was taken on August 19th, during the headwind calm 38 hours before the maximum approach of Grace's core to my location... It's a cropped part of the jpeg taken. The details are, unaluminized soda lime glass primary mirror, 126 mm diameter, 608 mm focal length. Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS at prime focus. ISO 100, 1/10 s. cropped 1/4 of the frame centered on the moon from the original JPEG. No other processing done. Was trying the giants, but that needs a projection arrangement and a more sensitive fixture to bring all the details.

[yogi]

That is a photograph of what we know to be a "Blue Moon." When we say things happen once in a Blue Moon, it means something that doesn't occur very often. Normally that would be the second full moon of the month - most months only have one full moon. That is not the case with this moon, but it is unusual in that it's a bonus full moon for this summer season which, of course, lasts three months. By definition the seasonal Blue Moon is the third one in the series and not the extra fourth one. I don't know how that rule came about, but it doesn't seem logical. In any case, I'm certain you did not intend to photograph a Blue Moon. Nonetheless, I think it's very interesting to see a picture of the moon from the eye of a hurricane.

[ocelotl]

What amazed me most was that the storm was high and wide enough to cross the 850 kilometers between coasts, climb 2 kilometers high of mountain ranges, and still have enough momentum to reorganize as a Pacific storm after being an Atlantic storm... We had almost continuous rains here in the city for 12 hours straight, a 2 hour clear between 1 p.m and 3 p.m yesterday, Saturday 21st, and then "normal" summer weather afterwards... Civil protection authorities stated that we were going to have 50 to 70 mm of rain in a single day... I heard of fallen power lanes in the Poza Rica zone, apart from the ones in the Yucatan Peninisula... Even someone was concerning about the Laguna Verde Nuclear power station... Even when unfortunatelly there have been a few lives lost, all this could have been potentially way worse. Most recent storm getting this close to home was in 2005, tropical depression José.

* EDIT *

I found a NOAA satellite image taken at around the time of the above picture, Aug 19th, 23:35 CDT.

[yogi]

It seems as if the storm affected all of Central America. For something that size a little bit of land connecting two continents is not a show stopper. I am glad you escaped without any significant injuries, and had the opportunity to photograph the lunar landscape.

[Kellemora]

WOW - We've missed all the meteor showers lately due to it being heavily overcast.
Today is clear for a change.

[yogi]

I'm reading stories today about how Tennessee is under water. I take it you are high enough in the mountains to not be affected by all the rain. Most of what I've read refers to Middle TN, which is not where you are located.

The skies have not been perfectly clear around here either and I've not seen an meteors so far this year. I did manage to see that Blue Moon early this morning.

[Kellemora]

Yes, Middle TN is what is on the news. But we've had our fair share of flooding here too, in the lower areas of course.
Water would have to nearly cover the entire state before it got up to the elevation my home sits at.

We did have a clear day yesterday, but today already the clouds have rolled back in again.

[yogi]

Yesterday evening we got about an inch of rain in less than 15 minutes. It was a relatively small cell for a storm, but it was very powerful. Aside from that kind of rain it's been fairly dry and sunny this summer. Today some folks think we will reach 100F with clear skies. Apparently the immediate area I live in doesn't have a lot of flooding problems, at least nothing severe. Some of the farm fields turn into swamps at times, but in general the water drains off pretty quickly. We feel so confident in the environment that we gave our inflatable kayak to a neighbor. LOL

[Kellemora]

Our soil here, at least in my area, is very sandy.
You can run a hose 24/7 and never get a puddle of water around it.
Nor do you know if a pipe has broken until you get a water bill.
Not like back home where a broken water pipe appears on the surface almost instantly.

Cloudy, but not supposed to get any more rain this week, we all hope!

[yogi]

I don't have a clear picture of the soil conditions around these parts. My current house is placed on a hillside that consists mainly of clay and rocks. I'm always amazed at the quantity of rock and stone I dig up with even one shovelful of soil. The amazing part of all this is that the soil seems to be quite porous. I can make a puddle on the lawn or under a rose bush, but it seeps back into the ground rather quickly. That doesn't make sense to me given the high clay content of the soil. Perhaps I have the wrong idea about the soil composition. It looks like clay, but there may be other things mixed in besides the stones. For all its porosity, the soil stays damp for a good amount of time, or at least longer than I would expect. It holds moisture for some reason unknown to me.

A good friend of mine lives in Franklin, Tennessee. He claims there is very little soil where he lives. It's mostly rock, and that isn't sandstone he is talking about. I guess I'm spoiled by all that black dirt back on my old property up north. Under about two feet of black loam was sandy soil. The foundation of that house actually was laid on a bed of wet sandy soil. The footing had to be made 48" wide in order to sustain the weight of a house, and just 11" below that was the water table. Water would stand around for several days after a heavy downpour because it apparently had nowhere to go. I don't know where it goes here in Missouri, but it does drain off rather quickly. I'm baffled by it all.

[ocelotl]

Even when the place I live is in the "dry" part of the Mexico City lakebed, we still share most of the soil characteristics. I don't need to tell you about it. It's a case study for Geology and Civil Engineering graduate and post graduate programs. Not following building regulations down here can result in life losing, and we have too many examples of that. In my opinion, we live in this city fighting with water, to avoid it to replenish the subsoil, to pump it here from across the mountains and to pump it out of here as wastewater... It's an ugly position that no other city should copy or envy.

[yogi]

There is a lot of interest in the history buried in and around Mexico City. I can understand why students would want to dig it up. LOL There are areas around here that have developed what is known as sink holes. The earth opens up for no apparent reason and swallows whatever is on the topsoil. My daughter lives in Florida and she tells me that sink holes are common down there too. I can see it in Florida because much of the southern part of that state is only a few inches above sea level. A lot of subsoil can get washed away in that situation. We don't have that problem in the midwest and I can't imagine what is going on to create those holes.

[ocelotl]

At first I was thinking about the limestone you placed a capture of in I-270, but that's too far from your location, so I did a bit of research, and found a century old study that I'm linking. Over here subsidence caused by overexploitation of the subsoil water table is the main cause of sink holes, but over there, I'd think otherwise, due to the underground tributares of the big rivers that join near where you live. Apart of that, what you say about your daughter location in Florida, it seems to me the same cause as the Cenotes in Yucatán Peninsula, being the inflitration of water streams below the limestone subsoil, washing it away and forming the sink holes, although at a smaller scale since the Yucatan peninsula is mostly a big porous limestone plate.

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_ ... MO1904.pdf

[yogi]

The Missouri River, from which the Mississippi River took it's name, is the closest river of any size. When it overflows, it floods near that area with Ameren's solar panels (mentioned in another thread). The sod farm over there is particularly vulnerable. For some reason or another the flood waters do not cross highway 79, or at least that is the case for the 5 years I've lived here. All of that is only a few miles from where I am sitting now. The sink holes to which I refer occurred closer to the Mississippi river which is about thirty miles east of here. If I recall things properly there were some events in the city of St Louis proper. I'd have to agree with you that some kind of underground erosion takes place to cause those sink holes. It just boggles my mind to think how that is possible.

That soil survey is an incredibly detailed history of this area. The most impressive thing about it is that you found it. I have to admit, Juan, you seem to know more about O'Fallon than I do, and you are 1700 miles from here. One of the most interesting bits mentioned in the document you link to refers to the first settlers of the area. Apparently St Charles was established early by the French, but the most significant group of settlers were German immigrants. Our friend Gary has documented and allowed me to read about his family's role in the establishment of the area a little to the south or here.

I'm feeling very old now.

[Kellemora]

Unlike back home where we were on solid clay down to bedrock.
Here, one area is like sand, another area solid rock, and another area soft loam which requires piers down to bedrock to build a house. Where my house sits it is very sandy and red clay. The red clay is highly compressed and full of sand also.
If you break up one cubic foot of this clay, it will fill five 5-gallon buckets. But then when you spread it out as landfill it will settle back down and re-compress after a few years.
When the ground freezes here, it makes these little pencil width columns about an inch tall all over the place where the ground is exposed. Really strange looking, to me anyhow, but normal for down here.

[ocelotl]

I'm reviving this thread, since I didn't publicize any of the pictures I could take of the partial lunar eclipse last november 18th - 19th. To keep things short, I was clouded out by the time of the second contact, meaning when the moon begins to be covered by the dark part of Earth's shadow.

Since I had hopes and wanted to take pictures and capturing the most photons I could, I prepared beforehand my small telescope, the 78 mm aperture, 750 mm focal length newtonian. I'm posting here the calibration/preparation photos I could take, with an added surprise.

First, an image I took at 18:41 CST. Moon is partially covered by tree branches and still close to the horizon. Next is an image I took at 23:34, before penumbral phase and the last is an edition of the one at 23:34, where I saturated the colors to emphasize the minerals present in the moon surface.

IMG_1685_b.JPG (267.22 KiB) Viewed 735 times

IMG_1692_b.jpg (228.86 KiB) Viewed 735 times

IMG_1692_sat_s.jpg (347.88 KiB) Viewed 735 times

[yogi]

I've seen quite a few photographs of the moon and the eclipses in which it has been involved. I even took a few of my own using my regular camera and not a telescope. Somewhere around here on some hard drive I have an entire lunar eclipse digitally documented. While I didn't get any detail at all, the phases of the eclipse were clearly visible. Given all the photos I've seen during my lifetime, I have to say that I never saw one like the last one in your series of three. That is truly an amazing photograph and I am guessing you did it all in post processing. Regardless, it has changed my entire perception of the lunar body. Thank you for sharing it with us, Juan.