A Clip About the 2012 Prophesy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGPcjMe6Qlw

Here is a clip about the "astronomy of 2012" - descirbing a bit about the science behind the Mayan prophesy that the Earth will end in 2012, hence the new action movie 2012. My undergraduate degree is in Latin American Studies so I think that the Mayans are a fascinating people.

I liked the clip because it is a fairly understandable discussion of a facet of astronomy which I ha not considered, and it had some good graphics and even some astrophotography of our own galaxy.

Pix from Flickr

This was posted to Flickr in AndyRob's photos, "Astronomy for beginers" - very nice, really detailed. This is the sort of picture I have been trying to take! Not too easy if you do not have the right equipment. I tried to look for the meteor shower last night but it was TOO windy in Boulder. Saw 1 meteor than got SO cold I had to get home.

Day Two of the Blog: computer zen

It was snowing and raining yesterday evening and all day today, so no meteor shower for us. I will offer this picture of the Pliades instead. It was taken a few months ago while learning to use my camera.

I think that some things in digital and other technology are fairly universal, you have to get into the "computer zen". Upload, export, import, rip.... you learn the language to learn what the word means and then what the particular command is supposed to do. Think about what the word "export" means, for example, to know what "export" means to the computer user.

Learning the camera was like learning to use another computer program (we will not mention that I was trying to learn f-Stops and apertures also but hey that is only the picture part of digital photography). Instead of learning the chemical part of photography, developing a picture, I learned the digital part of it. In either case you are manipulating the light and clarity of a picture to coax out a result. Having that background language made this blog fairly easy for me.

I am enjoying todays' blog - it is the daily or weekly follow up that I like on newspapers that I read. One article may be interesting, but it is more interesting to follow a columnist for a while and get to know them over time. It is interesting to follow up and blog more today.

Learning to blog with some comments about astronomy

Hi everyone. I am learning how to blog, so I am going to take this chance to get to talk about one of my favorite subjects, astronomy. As you can see from this picture of the moon, I am also learning a little about astrophotography.



What got me into astronomy? I have loved it ever since I was a kid, what else can I say...



The book "Galileo's Daughter" is so well written that it also had an enormous influence on me. Suor Maria Celeste was an incredible, smart woman who kept up a close correspondence with her father during her whole lifetime, sharing his discoveries and his his trial and its aftermath. Eppur si muove, eppur si blog.

Tonight the Orionid meteor shower should be happening but I think it will be obscured by snow - I will keep you posted.