Event Cancelled due to Clouds/Rain.

Yes, again. The past few years, TV Turnoff Week and stargazing have not worked too well due to a string of bad weather. The clouds are not expected to clear out and the local forecasters are all mentioned that we won't get to see the "super moon" tonight. Nor much of anything else except cloud bottoms.

The original announcement is below, but again, the event is cancelled.

Blech. Had to do some manual database maintenance. Gave up on default multi-site configuration as too painful, and turned off all caching. Things seem to be working, but we'll see.

I've been rather frustrated with my web site lately as I've been getting random Drupal failures telling me it can't find "settings.php." Utter nonsense; the file is there, permissions are correct, and it usually finds it just fine.So, if you've been confronted with a rather odd home page or link when navigating my site, I apologize. I think I may have worked around it, but seeing how it pops up randomly, it's hard today. It's gone right now, but we'll see about tomorrow....

Okay, temptation overtook me again . I pulled out the IR blocking filter and took an hour's worth of images, plus enough calibration frames that I should have been able to eliminate the flaws in the previous images. The results, below, are better, but there are a few nagging issues.

The weather was just too clear last night to avoid the temptation, so I dragged out my equipment and started taking pictures. Admittedly, almost anything done from here in Brooklyn, "pretty-picture" wise, has to be considered practice since it rarely works out unless its the moon or planets. But I thought I would try either the Veil Nebula or something in Cygnus with a deep red filter, which blocks most of the city lights, and use it as a black-and-white image.

I'm listening to a radio commercial about the shuttle bus to Newark Airport. They want to claim 184 passenger miles per gallon. My minivan is not particularly fuel efficient, getting about 22-23 miles per gallon (note the missing "passenger" qualifier). On short trips around town, like a run out to Home Depot, I'm the only one in the car and that becomes 22 passenger miles per gallon.

Well, they're really only free if you print your own, but you can do that by downloading the PDF from posters section on the APS web site.