The xRez team was at Domefest this past weekend, showing a spectacular timelapse and gigapixel desert piece that eclipsed the computer generated 3D extravaganzas. Beautiful work. Here's their page of Tikal images, scans, and movies.
A Posterous website for easy posting of (mainly) iPhone photos relating to the Center for Community project. The photo albums are done with the PicPosterous iPhone app.
Community Base - Building the Center for Community
Released yesterday, provided to the White House. Some say it looks bleak for humans in space. More work for robots.
Gonna need some parts, and they won't be at the local hardware store. I'll be a riveting (and de-riveting) maniac.
Vintage Trailer Supply - Vintage travel trailer parts and supplies!
HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Hubble Opens New Eyes on the Universe (09/09/2009) - Release Images
Realtime updates on Space Station sightings. Next two nights should be good times to see it with the naked eye, at around 7-9pm. Check the applet on the page - SkyWatch 2.0 - for your location.
Human Space Flight (HSF) - Realtime Data
Pointers to recent interesting space stories.
The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » Fly me to the moon
Good overview of the novels and current NASA thinking. Warning: some spoilers.
Red, Green, and Blue Mars | h Magazine
I am reaching the end of "Red Mars", wondering if anyone has done a map overlay for Google Earth's new Mars feature that follows the travels in the novel. Along the way I found this.
The Ares - Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson by TE Williams - Google 3D Warehouse
Cool NASA Stuff: International Space Station Viewing, NASA TV, Videos and More
Mission specialist Stott and her six crewmates will deliver 33,000 pounds of equipment to the Space Station, including science and storage racks, a freezer to store research samples, and a sleeping compartment. Stott and fellow astronaut John Olivas will conduct a spacewalk during which they will remove an empty ammonia tank from the Space Station and gather materials from various experiments for return to Earth on Discovery. As a flight engineer, she'll live and work aboard the ISS for three months, catching a ride home in November on Space Shuttle Atlantis.
Astronaut Nicole Stott to Launch on Space Shuttle Discovery for Her First Journey into Space
Astronaut Bio: Nicole Passonno Stott (03/2009)
And she is going to blog about it.
My Journey To The Stars - MORE Magazine
Yes, that gets you the satellite kit and the launch to orbit. Wow.
Interorbital Systems - TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit | International Space Fellowship
Panel Wants Deep Space, Not Landings as U.S. Goal - NYTimes.com
A flyby of the moon might be followed by more distant trips to so-called Lagrange points, first to the location where the gravity of the Moon and the Earth gravity cancel each other out, then to where the gravity of the Earth and Sun cancel out. There could also be visits to asteroids or flybys of Mars leading to landings on one or both of the low-gravity moons of Deimos and Phobos.
This approach, Dr. Crawley said, would provide "the most steady cadence of steady improvement."
Great shots, full resolution. Of course our (parents') tax dollars did pay for them. Where do we go next?
Edwin Aldrin Jr. Moon Walk on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Funny, I was just thinking about those peepholes for doors. Here's a video showing how to hack a fisheye lens with one.
YouTube - $5 Fish-Eye Fun - Make A Wide-Angle And Fisheye Photo Lens
UPDATE: I got one, and there are some tricks to using it effectively.
- Hold peephole against rim of camera lens.
- Set camera to “macro”. (the image is actually displayed on the inside face of the convex lens of the peephole. The camera must focus on the foreground image rather than the background image.)
- Zoom in to the point that the viewable “circle” is framed almost evenly.
- For best results, brighter lighting will avoid unwanted noise (grain)
I'll add links here that give more information or show the results.
Peephole fish eye « Flickr Blog
Flickr: The World Peep Hole Photo Association Pool
Looking forward to the 2009 Domefest in Albuquerque. Here's an online version of the show I saw last year at the Adler Planetarium.
DomeFest 2008: The Juried Show on Vimeo
Considering building a small hemisphere for projection, I wondered about the geometry of the sections of a dome. This tutorial, while applying to parachutes, has the formulas for the sections of the hemisphere - a triangle from the pole to the equator has more than 180 degrees total in its angles. I knew that, but not the formulas.
And here's someone who tried to do the same thing for a dome.
Building an inexpensive usable projection dome. - Observatory Central
His numbers for a 10' dome are below.
10 foot diameter with 10 gores. Circumference 31.416 feet = 376.99 inches 1/4 circumference = 94.25 inches which is the length of each gore from spring line to zenith.
From the base (spring line) in inches = B (inches)
Width of gore in inches (1/2 on either side of a perpendicular line running from the center of the base [spring line] to top of gore) = W
B ~ W
0 ~ 37.699
5 ~ 37.568
10 ~ 37.177
15 ~ 36.527
20 ~ 35.624
25 ~ 34.474
30 ~ 33.084
35 ~ 31.465
40 ~ 29.628
45 ~ 27.585
50 ~ 25.35
55 ~ 22.94
60 ~ 20.37
65 ~ 17.659
70 ~ 14.825
72 ~ 13.662
74 ~ 12.483
76 ~ 11.291
78 ~ 10.086
80 ~ 8.87
82 ~ 7.6437
84 ~ 6.4092
86 ~ 5.1676
88 ~ 3.9202
90 ~ 2.668
92 ~ 1.4138
94.25 ~ point
These are the exact widths for the dome described and DO NOT allow any extra material for either overlap (if welding plastic) or a seam (if sewing fabric). You must decide what type of support structure you want. In my small experimental dome I allowed for extra material so that support ribs could be contained.
Also note that the widths of each gore get rather small as you approach the zenith. A central support core usually occupies this space and I would suggest ending the dome material before you reach this point. A circle of white poster board would cover this "hole" in the dome and the entire area where the most sewing would normally be done.
If you go back to the very beginning of this thread you will see a small experimental dome with this type of support. Actually my dear wife has sewn together a much larger one approximately 18 feet in diameter which I plan on using 1/2 inch plastic water pipe for supports. It is actually all put together in four sections of four gores each as I'm not at all sure if an entire dome could be handled at once. My thought was to erect each quarter and then have small velcro patches to hold the four joints together. All of my free time has been used up working on my projectors and I have not attacked the dome. I will need to do this just to see how well it works.
Anyway, I would add an extra two inches to both sides of each gore to allow for sewing at the proper point and then making a loop in which to slide a support strut. I will take some pictures next week to show you what I mean. Right now taxes call (ugh).
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Ron Walker
"a directory of ways to participate in space exploration. interact + connect with the space community."
Looks like a terrific site to watch for our new planetarium/science center.
Great site from NASA JPL for training astronomy instructors.
Center for Astronomy Education
The AlloSphere at the California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara
A low-cost telescope for International Year of Astronomy 2009.
The Galileoscope: An IYA2009 Cornerstone Project | Galileoscope.org
Photo by M.R. Taufik
January 26 Annular Eclipse Photos | Universe Today
Go for it.
A Cheap Solution for Getting to Mars? | Universe Today
For fulldome production. Blender is a free open source 3D graphics program, and the one I have spent the most time on.
Ott Planetarium - ProductionShare
The Lower Eastside Girls Club - A New Kind of Organization
Now we can reclaim Americana.
Remix America | America the Beautiful
And a first version of the POP Coalition's Chico/Obama/Copland remix (UPDATE - here's a final version):
VoteAmericaVoted_Final.m4v (AppleTV Format)
The $3 million "overhead projector" was never funded. Didn't stop McCain from trying to use it as a weapon - never mind our need to promote science education in this country - or the Adler Planetarium from calling out their own truth-squad.
McCain's planetarium problem - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com
Here's a posting of Mark Petersen's address from the July Fulldome summit. He plugs his website (subscription needed) but has several useful charts of information here showing numbers of domes, types of projectors, and available programming.
Loch Ness Productions: 2008 State Of The Dome Address
Here's hoping for an update to the Usumacinta watershed.
Google to buy GeoEye satellite imagery | News - Digital Media - CNET News
Video Input to QuickTime movie
And another day pondering projections and panoramas comes to an end...
VRMAG - ADVANCED PANORAMIC STITCHING - A REASONED APPROACH
Yongbo Jiang's Weblog - Brooklyn Bridge 360 Degree
A page of links to Red digital camera information. At the moment you can only offline in Final Cut, then conform in Scratch.
Self-Reliant Film » Blog Archive » Red One - Information Page
I'm over my head but I'm making progress. And they couldn't make it easier - tinker toy programming. Or Legos, for the under-50 set.
Graphics & Imaging Quartz Guides
Quartz Composer: Lighting 3D Cubes and Moving them with Audio Input on Vimeo
I found a busy litlle hive of Quartz hackers working on just what I want to play with for dome projection. This and Paul Bourke's work should do it, if I can come up to speed.
The Kineme site has a wealth of Quartz plugins and patches. Christopher Wright of Kineme has posted tutorials on Vimeo. Here's the first that you'd need to use his Quartz plugins
How To Install 3rd Party Plug-Ins for Quartz Composer on Vimeo
From a link in that thread, this music-controlled graphics test is interesting:
Amoeba Dance - Caliper Remote | memo.tv
And as a side note - a realtime video manipulation program for the Mac (company based in Troy, New York)
We had a glimpse of this tool in Chicago this summer.
Domeview: A tool to preview and project dome content
Good source for tutorials and utilities.
Ponyboy's Web Pages - QTVR Links
Good source of images for viewing, experimenting.
Flickr: The Equirectangular Pool
Good tip from Dock James in the Fulldome list. Looking for a way to increase FOV past 120 degrees to 180 or more.
Official Google SketchUp Blog: Setting your field of view
I may have posted this before, but I met Hue at the Domefest in Chicago this week and saw more of her amazing work. I think I am ready now to start learning something new.
ARTS Lab - Tutorials - Hue's Beginner's Guide to Fulldome Production
And when I am really ready, I'll take the first step.
ARTS Lab - Tutorials - Making a Hemi-cubic 3D Camera in Maya
Where does Hue work?
ARTS Lab FACILITIES: The Fulldome
Point Grey Research Inc. - Spherical Vision Products - Ladybug2
Good blog of Quicktime VR and panoramic photos.
And another blog of the same:
Starting to take baby steps to making dome movies. Might be fun to preview in a Sketchup dome, as done in this site.
Good site for sky images, pre-formed for domes ( a bit low resolution for the real thing?):
Brilliant short film by David McConville, with voiceover by Alan Watts. We saw it yesterday in Albuquerque in the ARTS Lab dome, as it is meant to be seen.
ONS-ntsc.mov (video/quicktime Object) 34.7MB
A week in New Mexico seeing old friends just flew by. The last hour we were there we managed to visit David Beining and get a glimpse of fulldome programming at his lab. Looking forward to the Domefest that he is organizing in Chicago in early July.
ARTS Lab: The Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
Great tutorials and links from ARTS Lab: ARTS Lab HOW
(click for larger image)
As we take baby steps into the planetarium world, the professionals out there are making advances in shooting for domed theaters. Here is a small version of a 2304X2304 image that was taken by Planetarium Hamburg.
Here is their description: "6mm f5.6 lens together with a custom
developed linear optical relay of about 1.7 which allows the entire 220°
FoV to be used on the RED sensor".
Can't wait to try this at home. Though ours will be a little smaller. And underfunded.
A Star Is Born: Animating the Solar System’s Origin
Anthony Braun, Executive Producer.
This plant is being promoted for land reclamation and has a nutritious berry. I'll find out more about it. Not a native species but a candidate for a green roof.
PLANTS Profile for Hippophae rhamnoides (seaberry) | USDA PLANTS
Walk in a straight line on the outside (or inside) of a sphere and you will return to the place you started.
I worked for this outfit in 1980-81. Is there a dome in our future?
Now to see if Google Earth Pro (which we were awarded in a grant from Google Outreach!) includes the sky features.
Anticipating a lot of air travel this year, I was intrigued to see a link to this outfit.
Buy a Flight TerraPass | Fight global warming, promote renewable energy
...but will be again soon. Thanks to Alex Toftgaard Nielsen for the panorama he took this month in San Cristobal.
Via Slashdot
A 400-page pdf guide to every night in 2006:
Universe Today - What's Up 2006 - Download it Free
Maybe I'll live to see it.
Slashdot | Thoughts on the Space Elevator
Yep, the LiftPort folks have a WordPress weblog.
I've been a nut on this since I read Arthur C. Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise" but it may not be for nuts any longer. Real plans are moving ahead, supported by new materials and technology.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Elevator Going Up!
Okay, what about rivers? And trees? See Buddha, Siddhartha, etc.
Must be Science Wednesday at the Daily Glyph.
Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites
Can't get very close, but I guess that's good news.
Google Maps - "San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico"
Mike Bruno, our original Chiapas buddy, passed along this press release about SERVIR, a regional monitoring system that NASA has set up in Panama. Full press release is printed below (click MORE)
NASA DEVELOPS CENTRAL AMERICAN MONITORING SYSTEM
A state-of-the-art environmental monitoring facility in Panama is the first to
employ NASA Earth science research and space-based observations to provide
Central American decision makers with early warning about a variety of
ecological and climatic changes.
My adventures with CivicSpace led to a meetup this week and over to the Democracy For NYC website and the New York State sites. They've put out a call for help, and I'll see this week what I can do.
Meanwhile, a brief look back at the Dean campaign and the netroots movement.
Daily Kos :: Two Years Ago Today
From my archives:
The Daily Glyph: Hack4Dean hits Wired
The Daily Glyph: Dean Bio Shelved
Today:
CNN.com - Dean virtually locks up DNC chairmanship - Feb 5, 2005
Here's a report on the work that Tom Sever of NASA has been doing in the bajos of northern Guatemala. How the Maya dealt with both heavy rains and the drying of the wetlands in their efforts to feed large populations is a question that is starting to yield answers, through satellite imaging.
English:
The Rise and Fall of the Mayan Empire
No, this is not more Von Daniken ancient astronaut crap. Although the guy in South Bend is definitely out there.
First, the Mars Rover rocks, named after Palenque and other Maya words.
Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Press Release Images: Spirit
And Pakal as moon man:
SouthBendTribune.com: Man in moon may be Mayan
Our friends at Maya Exploration Center are busy doing tours of the Maya region and publishing studies in areas that no one else has tackled. One of the most important of these is the first part of a report by Alonso Mendez, Christopher Powell, Ed Barnhart, and Carol Karasik.
Hierophanies at Palenque, Part 1: The Temple of the Sun (pdf)
Thanks to Backup Brain, this link to a page at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center site. It covers everything you need to know about the celestial event. Alonso, I know you'll see it.
Total Lunar Eclipse: October 27-28, 2004
Your Spanish acronym of the day is OVNI - objeto volador no identificado.
Seen flying over a Pemex installation in Chiapas, near Tapachula. It is said that there are often sightings near the archaeological site of Izapa and the nearby colcano of Tacana.
But where are the photos?
Detectan en Chiapas objeto volador no identificado | 2004-08-30 | La Crónica de Hoy
Edición electrónica del Diario de Yucatán - Ovnis y esferas luminosas en instalaciones de Pemex
Terra - Detectan OVNI en Chiapas
Note: These 3 reports are all based on the same Notimex story, but they have some variations in details.
It's $45 a square foot, but it might be good for a demonstration project at the new, green, girls club building.
PV-TV: A Multifunctional, Eco-Friendly Building Material | Metropolis Magazine
...this amorphous silicon technology has a “three-in-one” functionality: it is able to act as a glazing element, solar panel, and video display screen.
Okay, I've read more science fiction than your average nerd. But this latest space plan is too little, wrong time, and from the wrong guy. Like his state of the union hydrogen power announcement (Can it be? Rats, he's going to use the nuclear plants to make the hydrogen!). It's an excuse to dismantle Hubble, the shuttle, and the space station while dangling a remote possibility until after the elections.
But we know all that. Here's the best rant I've read on the subject:
We are star dust and all that...
New Scientist - Space molecules point to organic origins
Lyn and I were among the hundreds of people stranded overnight on I-5 driving up to Oregon last Sunday. This poor man was apparently a few hundred yards behind us.
Man dies after night stuck on I-5 in snow
This one's for Alonso, who's studying heirophanies (love that word) in Palenque. It's a photo of an analemma, the shape traced by the path of the sun, at the same time each day, over the course of a year. 
Here's another example
Today is Bastille Day for the French. Something about their revolution (help me out here, they stormed the prison, right?).
It is also the day in 1958 of a coup against the British-backed monarchy in Iraq. It is celebrated as their National Day.
And today marks the one-year anniversary of this weblog. My thanks to everyone who has helped me, and to all who hiked with me on this trek through jungle and technology.
Busilha Falls - Usumacinta March 2003
Sam Churchill at DailyWireless has outdone himself with an off-topic Mars link extravaganza. I have to say, my best moments working in television include "Mars Live" for the Discovery Channel in 1997. Those were the days. What am I saying, THESE are the days! They're going to webcast this one. And we're still sending great little robots out into space, in spite of our muddle here on Earth. Humanity...we'll find a way.
DailyWireless - Missions to Mars
There will be a total eclipse of the moon this week. Here is the page from the U.S. Naval Observatory that computes data for your location:
Boston Globe Online / Health | Science / Microbes latest members of the mile-high club
My friends at Palenque had cloudy weather yesterday for the winter solstice. As a result, they could not do some of the observations of building alignments they had planned. I'm remembering sunset on summer solstice, 2001, when I went with them to the tower of the Palace. There I saw what Alfonso had discovered as a boy - the projection of a T-shaped Ik character in a special niche, designed for that day.
Today in the New York Times (free registration required) there is an interesting reflection on sun alignments in several buidings, from as many cultures, including a complex in Uaxactun in Guatemala. Jean Gardner of Parsons School of Design in Manhattan is quoted, "The last 150 years is the first time architecture has not related to the universe. We have no sense now where we fit in."
A step towards spybugs, seebees, whatever you want to call them:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Butterflies point to micro machines
Another, better article on something I posted before: NASA's involvement in anti-gravity research. This one's a profile of the guy behind it.
Feeling Antigravity's Pull - Can NASA stop the apple from falling on Newton's head? By Adam Rogers
BBC News online has an article describing the work of David Hodell at the University of Florida. He has found a correlation between drought cycles and a 208 year cycle of brightening and dimming of the sun. This could be another factor in the so-called Maya collapse.
BBC News | SCI/TECH | Sun key to Mayan misery?
So I posted my doom and gloom entry yesterday, then went up on the roof of our Adirondack shack with my oldest son, Mick. We got half of the corrugated metal roofing finished before the rain blew in again. Now I feel a little better about the world. Thanks, Mick.
"When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads..." The Beatles
NASA has given Seattle-based Highlift $570,000 to continue work on a space elevator. Arthur C. Clarke anticipated this (as he had with geosynchronous satellites) in his 1979 "The Fountains of Paradise". Here's a review and a link to the book at Amazon.com.
Thanks to Slashdot for jogging my memory.
.
A story at CNN.com - Europe begins building Mars lander - shows that the Europeans are getting serious about finding life there. The craft is being built in clean room conditions to avoid contaminating its landing site, the better to "probe rocks, dig into the soil and sniff the air, checking for organic matter and other life-related compounds."
As posted today on Slashdot, scientists are more certain than ever that a meteorite from Mars contains evidence of bacterial life. Here's the press release from NASA.
You can find photos of the ALH 84001 meteorite on this page.
Boeing has confirmed that it is working on "propellantless propulsion" which is their term for an anti-gravity device. You can find the non-subscriber version of the story in Jane's Defence News.
It seems that a recent coronal mass ejection has blown a solar wind towards earth that may push auroras farther south than usual. Doubtful my pals in Mexico will see any, or that I will in New York, but here's a page with some photos of auroras, and another one with more information about the solar weather.
I don't know whether to post this under "Sky" or "Watery Way" but the Jet Propulsion Lab has released a story about an Interplanetary Superhighway discovered by a NASA engineer. Looks like looping between Lagrange points is the way to go.
Makes me nostalgic for my little half hour science news show that we did in the late 90's, the last time that the country seemed to care about space and had the optimism to explore it. Waaaah!
Turns out there's a word for what I'm feeling. I found it thanks to the weblog that cyberwriter Bruce Sterling has created - The Infinite Matrix.