EGAD
or, (de)mythologizing the fetish of placewherein our unlikely hero composes a series of
empirical geo-anthrospatial dispatches, aimed at establishing just where
he is, and perhaps even why it matters
Took the whole weekend off, more or less. Worked a bit on the garden, lit lots of fireworks -- apparently I'm already slated to be pyrotechnics man for next year's July 4th party -- got in a couple of longish bike rides. Graded lots of papers, which was a little bit like work. Fed my roommate's fish.
Tonight I took more of my students up to the roof to look through the telescopes. I'm finding that, while the optics in our little 8-inch scopes are decidedly superior to those in the 10-inch refractor, the massive refractor is a much more stable platform for astrophotography. This week I'm experimenting with image stacking. So you get more of that. Combining two images is easy, even with something like the Gimp, simply using layers and opacities. At low magnification and high light levels you don't gain a whole lot, though, so consider this a proof-of-concept.
