the tiny blood red moon

pyko — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:38:55 +0000

Well, today was the day - total lunar eclipse - the blood red moon! I actually had class 6pm-8pm, but the lecturer was nice and let us out at around 7pm (when the eclipse started) then we all sort of went out again at 7:50pm, even though the lecture hadn't fully finished. The photos I took came out alright considering I didn't have a high-tech camera - all I have is a simple "point and shoot" type (Nikon Coolpix 4100 to be exact).

A pic of the partial eclipse (taken around 7pm):
:thumb63483312:
The interesting/funny thing about this one is the camera was placed on a temporary tripod...Marty's head! and it turned out quite well, no double moons from shaking. Thanks Marty

And of course, a pic of the full eclipse (taken around 9pm)
:thumb63482686:
Yes, the moon is miniature, again this was taken on a "tripod" - the handrails (which is why its on an angle).

What I realised is any immobile (preferably flat) surface works well as a temporary tripod - obviously you don't get the freedom, but it's better than nothing! Also, to even further reduce the chances of movement, put the timer on - that way you don't have to touch the camera when it takes the shot

luncar eclipse this tuesday!

pyko — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 10:45:00 +0000

Well, the weekend is nearly over, tomorrow is Monday the start of another week...but there is something special next week As you've probably guessed from the title (or read in the news) there will be a total lunar eclipse on Tuesday 28th, and Australians will have the "box seat for this rare cosmic event". So when will it happen? According to Australian Astronomy...

The Moon starts moving into the Earth's shadow at 6:51 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) and is full immersed in the shadow at 7:52 pm. Totality is over at 9:23 pm and the eclipse ends at 10:24 pm.

Pity I'll be in class during 6pm-8pm on Tuesday but I'm still going to see if I can get a few shots at the moon - hopefully it won't be too cloudy!

In regards to the weekend, it wasn't exactly eventful nor productive - but I did learn a thing or two. Firstly, I learnt how amazingly powerful Adobe Illustrator is! When I first learnt about vectors/paths in Photoshop I was amazed...now I'm blown away by what Illustrator can do - though it's rather annoying that Photoshop and Illustrator don't really share similar interfaces Keep trying to use Photoshop shortcuts and they don't work or end up doing something weird in Illustrator.

The other thing (which I learnt the hard way) was that for Optus pre-paid plans you don't always get the SMS that reminds you to recharge. Found out on Saturday that I had $0 credit - lost something like $30+, 30+ min free time, 100+ min myTime and 50+ SMS When I phoned up support to ask, they said that the system randomly chooses people and send reminders - so you're not guaranteed to receive the reminder SMS! I bet they do that so that you'll be tricked into thinking they will remind you each time and then one time you will randomly not get the SMS and lose all your credit. So I guess we should set our own reminders and not trust big profit hungry companies!

psychopyko » eclipse

the tiny blood red moon

luncar eclipse this tuesday!