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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sliding House ruins, Canyon de Chelly

There are 3 or maybe 4 sets of ruins visible in this image, can you find them? Oh, and there's a "Bahhhd" herd of sheep in the picture too.... This image was taken at 43mm focal length with an exposure of 1/30 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.
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Friday, May 30, 2008

Canyon de Chelly Native

Found this little guy not far from the canyon walls during out visit to Canyon de Chelly. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/640 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Watching the first images from Phoenix

Just 2 hours after landing, we got to see the very first pictures downloaded from the Phoenix Lander on Mars. Here, Alfred McEwen, leader of the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, examines one of the first images. This image was taken at 50mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/1.8, ISO 800.
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Monday, May 26, 2008

Awaiting word from Mars

This is the atrium at the Lunar and Planetary Lab in Tucson where I work. In this image an anxious crowd awaits word from the Phoenix Lander as it descended through the Martian atmosphere on its way to a successful landing yesterday. If you haven't seen the first pictures from this new place on Mars, check out the Phoenix Lander home page. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/30 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 400.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Cross-bedding

There were so many excellent examples of crossbedding in the canyon walls - here you can see the layering cutting across each other and can even imagine the dunes that would have been here as the material was layed down. This image was taken at 238mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1600 seconds at f/8, ISO 400.
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Saturday, May 24, 2008

White House ruins - Canyon de Chelly

Here's a view across the canyon to the White House ruins to show you the context of the previous photo - can you find the ruins? One hint: they are at the base of the canyon wall and near the center of the picture. There are actually about 3 different archeological sites that I could find while scanning the canyon from this vantage with telephoto and binoculars. It would be nearly impossible to pick them out in this wide angle view, however. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/80 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.
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Friday, May 23, 2008

White House ruins - Canyon de Chelly

These are the White House ruins in Canyon de Chelly (not to be confused with the White House in Washington D.C.). At their peak, they were occupied by about 100 people in about 60 rooms. This image was taken at 263mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

View across the canyon



This telephoto shot across the canyon shows the river and canyon walls as well as all the plant life on the canyon floor. This image was taken at 70mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1000 seconds at f/11, ISO 400.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Tse'yi' - Canyon de Chelly

This is the Tse'yi' overlook along the south drive in Canyon de Chelly on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. Many Navajo live in the canyon which is Arizona's second largest. Farmland is visible in this view with the river meandering around the 600 foot canyon walls. Jeep trails criss-cross the river through the length of the canyon and many folks take the daily tours here. Many ancient ruins can be found throughout the canyon. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/11, ISO 100.
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Saturday, May 17, 2008

Salt River Canyon

We're traveling this weekend to one of Karri's workshops in Pinon and stopped for a few minutes at the bottom of the Salt River Canyon where I took this photo. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1250 seconds at f'/3.5, ISO 100.
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Moon, 2008 May 10

I took this picture using eyepiece projection looking through a 4.5 inch refractor. I'm tempted to flip the image around so that the Moon looks like it would in the sky (a telescope flips it backwards on both axes and a right angle prism was used for ease of viewing which flips one of the axes back so this is flipped east for west). This image was taken with the lens at 54mm focal length and at f/8 with an exposure of 1/125 seconds, ISO 200. The exposure was a bit short, so I had to do some tweaking in Picasa to make the image look brighter (mostly).
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Rays of sunlight.

Here's another image from my morning hike last Friday. This one was taken from the road near our 1.8-m telescope looking east, back towards Tucson. The rays of sunlight radiate from behind the clouds with most of the foreground silhouetted. The brownish haze below the sun just above the mountains is actually smoke from the fire being blown back generally towards Tucson which is not quite visible in this image in all the morning haze and smoke. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/2000 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.
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Friday, May 09, 2008

Fire south of Kitt Peak

A new fire is burning south of Kitt Peak. After a night of rumors about the fire which caused my imagination to run away with pictures of flames leaping up the south slopes of the mountain lapping at the metal domes and glass mirrors, I decided to take a morning hike over to the south ridge and see for myself. My worst fears were put to rest quickly as it was obvious the fire is burning far south of Kitt Peak fairly close to Baboquivari (the prominent peak in this image) and will have to jump over an area burned in a much more dangerous fire last year. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/5, ISO 200.
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Thursday, May 08, 2008

See, I am 3 dimensional...

Here's an anaglyph self portrait I made the other night around sunset. On the ridge behind me are the WIYN telescope and the Kitt Peak 36 inch telescope which are too far away for stereo, but the boulder on the left and the guy in the orange jacket should stand out well. The original images were made with my stereo camera rig of 2-A570is cameras. Click on the title to visit the StereoPhotoViewer applet of this image.
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Stereo camera rig in stereo

Here's a stereo picture of my stereo camera rig - my twin Canon A570is cameras running the SDM version of CHDK. This picture was taken the old fashioned way - by manually moving my canon 20D to the right for a 2nd shot. I used StereoPhotoMaker to assemble the anaglyph. Click on the title of this entry to visit the StereoPhotoViewer applet version of this image.
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Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Moon and Mercury

The not normally so easily seen planet Mercury plays a little cat and mouse with the crescent Moon on Wednesday night in the evening twilight. Mercury is near greatest elongation in the evening sky, so if you want to see the closest planet to the Sun, now's a good time. The Spacewatch 36 inch dome is at the right of the image. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 30 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 400.
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