Josef “Jeff” Sipek

Today is 4th of July...which means fireworks everywhere. Yesterday evening, Jackson, MI had a rather nice display. Here are some of the photos I took:

From 3 days ago:

This morning in arctic Norway, onlookers were stunned when a gigantic luminous spiral formed in the northern sky. Veteran observers accustomed to the appearance of Northern Lights say they have never seen anything like it. It was neither a meteor nor any known form of atmospheric optics. Rumors that the spiral was caused by the botched launch of a Russian rocket have not yet been confirmed.

(original)

Today being 4th of July meant that I could get some fireworks photography going. I was disappointed to find out that Ann Arbor didn't have a fireworks display (or at least I haven't found any information about one). The closest one I could find was in Romulus - about 20 minute drive east on I-94.

The fireworks started around 22:05, and ran for about 25 minutes. Since I managed to not charge up the battery before leaving, the camera let me take only about 40 photos. Below are some of them.

Today, I came across a link to a photo with a long description. I'm going to include both below:

ISS020-E-009048 (12 June 2009) --- Sarychev Peak Volcano eruption, Kuril Islands, is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 20 crew member on the International Space Station. A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev volcano (Russia's Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain and is located on the northwestern end of Matua Island. Prior to June 12, the last explosive eruption had occurred in 1989 with eruptions in 1986, 1976, 1954, and 1946 also producing lava flows. Ash from the June 2009 eruption has been detected 2407 kilometers ESE and 926 kilometers WNW of the volcano, and commercial airline flights are being diverted away from the region to minimize the danger of engine failures from ash intake. This detailed photograph is exciting to volcanologists because it captures several phenomena that occur during the earliest stages of an explosive volcanic eruption. The main column is one of a series of plumes that rose above Matua Island (48.1 degrees north latitude and 153.2 degrees east longitude) on June 12. The plume appears to be a combination of brown ash and white steam. The vigorously rising plume gives the steam a bubble-like appearance; the surrounding atmosphere has been shoved up by the shock wave of the eruption. The smooth white cloud on top may be water condensation that resulted from rapid rising and cooling of the air mass above the ash column, and is probably a transient feature (the eruption plume is starting to punch through). The structure also indicates that little to no shearing winds were present at the time to disrupt the plume. Another series of images, acquired 2-3 days after the start of eruptive activity, illustrate the effect of shearing winds on extent of the ash plumes across the Pacific Ocean. By contrast, a cloud of denser, gray ash -- most probably a pyroclastic flow -- appears to be hugging the ground, descending from the volcano summit. The rising eruption plume casts a shadow to the northwest of the island (bottom center). Brown ash at a lower altitude of the atmosphere spreads out above the ground at upper right. Low-level stratus clouds approach Matua Island from the east, wrapping around the lower slopes of the volcano. Only about 1.5 kilometers of the coastline of Matua Island (upper center) can be seen beneath the clouds and ash.

Yesterday, I went to the anual Roth Pond Regatta at Stony Brook. It's an event where different groups of people race their cardboard and duct-tape boats across a pond. (This was the third time I went, but this year, my participation was limited to taking photos.) Below are some of the more interesting ones, you can always check out the whole gallery (as well as photos from 2007 and 2006; note that the photos haven't been post processed).

The Stony Brook Computing Society's boat:

Some other team's boat...both nice looking and fast:

These folks did not have Dino around:

Gargamel (SBCS member):

Getting the head on:

Papa Smurf! (note the size of the people in comparison):

Another team had fun with special effects:

Then, the races began...

Some boats didn't make it off the starting line:

Others did extremely well:

Papa Smurf is getting old, and isn't as agile as he once used to be:

Gargamel finds it very amusing:

Paddle faster!

Trojans nearing the finish line (note that the boat looks somewhat unfinished - the legs aren't fully painted!)

Papa Smurf getting demolished (part of the rules, once you lose, you must dispose of your boat)

Mummy trying to get to the shore:

The dumpster "guardians" using power-tools on Papa Smurf's head:

This is a very small subset of the photos I took...if you want to see more (un-postprocessed) photos, follow the link near the top of this entry.

It was a dark and stormy night...wait a minute...it was a clear and calm night; the night sky glistened with the light from thousands of streetlights releasing billions upon billions of photons, only to be scattered by the atmosphere and to rain down upon Ann Arbor --- to pollute the otherwise perfect night sky. So, Jeff, a twenty-odd year old who can be best described using Dungeons & Dragons character alignment as "chaotic good," decided that it was time to escape the particle bombardment to attempt the astronomically difficult, and equally arcane, task known as astrophotography...

Anyway...Here are the exposure details and the photos (from February 24, 2009):

826 seconds
f/3.5
ISO 800
Nikon D70
18-70mm @ 18mm (35mm equiv: 27mm)
Location: McCollum Rd, MI

Here's the same photo, but with a very well known constallation outlined.

Today, I ended up in Chelsea, MI. It's about 12-ish miles west of Ann Arbor. It's a relatively tiny place (or at least it looks that way). I dropped in at the library, and there I took a couple of photos (hunting for places to take photos of things is fun!)...

The library itself:

When you enter it, you notice a staircase. Before I took this photo, I accidentally managed to turn of auto-focus, and after about 10 failed attempts at getting the photo to not look fuzzy I gave up. It took me about 10 more minutes of wondering around to figure out that it wasn't focusing :)

The best part of the library (well, I may be wrong :) ) are these lights:

I always considered libraries a generally safe place, but if they really were safe, why would they sport a sign like this one? Also, note the scratches on the sign itself! A dangerous place indeed!

Anyway, that's that for today.

Edit: For those curious enough, the single lamp photo was taken with my D70 + 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor @ 1/3200s, f/2.2, -1.00 EV Ex. Comp., ISO 200

This is essentially a follow up to a previous post.

As it turns out, the big gray-ish blob commonly referred to as Luna, or even more commonly referred to as the Moon, is still there. As always, it seems to hide about once every 4 weeks.

The other day, I read somewhere that the moon was going to appear bigger than usual. When I got home, I ran outside, saw that it wasn't cloudy, and took a bunch of photos of the moon. I spend a grand total of about 4 minutes outside before the -8C air got too much for my fingers to control the camera well.

Here are the spoils of war. Just as in the earlier post, these are taken at the 300mm end of my 70-300 zoom, which on my D70 is equivalent to 450mm on 35mm film.

They were all taken at f/5.6, with either 1/640 or 1/800 second exposure.

I should try to use a tripod one day, take a burst of 1/800 exposures, and then try to stack them in software. (I know people use webcams though telescopes and hundreds of exposures to get decent images, so it should work just as well with an SLR.)

It's been a month today since I moved to MI. Time flies! I know, I have been neglecting this blahg a whole lot, and I promise to try harder :)

Here are some photos of stuff from the past few days...

I like bread. This one even looks tasty:

A couple of days ago, I got myself a can of Spam. Unfortunately, it turns out, the can's seal got compromised, and the insides look quite uneatable:

Today, I was doing some more grocery shopping, and I couldn't resist but get some drink worthy of a warrior:

(Yes, that's a 40th anniversary of the IBM S/360 mug.) It's hard to identify the contents of the mug, so here's a photo of the bottle:

That's it for today's what's-Jeff-up-to post.

Today (well, technically yesterday), I decided to go explore Ann Arbor with my camera. Here are many of the photos I took - minimally edited for your viewing convenience.

It was a sunny day; not many people around - quite strange actually.

The Lurie bell tower is a hard to miss feature of North Campus. It has 60 bell clarion.

Unfortunately, I did not have a tripod with me, so the source images for this panorama weren't as good as they could have been as I was forced to hand-hold them. You can see the Duderstadt on the left, the Lurie tower next to it, then you have the CSE building, the Dow, and then the EECS building. I will probably go back with my camera and a tripod to take some good panorama source material.

I've climbed up the bell tower at Trinity church in NYC enough times, but not even once did I consider the fact that a bell tower could have an elevator. Well, the Lurie tower does!

And another shot of the tower, from the other side now.

Then it was time to head to Central Campus and explore things there. By the bus stop, I noticed these two guys...

Once on Central Campus, I didn't have to go far to see this sign (which I saw few days ago, but didn't have a camera with me then). It just reminds me of XKCD far too much.

The university runs a bunch of buses to get the students between the North and Central Campuses, as well as the hospital that is located right between the two. My understanding is that they are called Magic Bus. I can't help but wonder if it is in any way related to The Who song...

A fountain...pretty self explanatory. I took a bunch of photos with different exposures to see how each would look.

The Rackham Graduate School building. I actually took enough for a panorama shot; I'll create it and upload it some time later.

This sign was above a door to a shop of some sort, that was on the second (possibly third) story of the building - you know, the kind that has a enough of the building's ground floor for a staircase and nothing more. I do not know what it is that they deal in, but something tells me that I'm not going to go check it out.

Edit: I did some searching on the internet, and it seems it's a smoking-related supplies shop.

Few minutes later, after being surprised by a stream of people that did not seem to end for at least 15 minutes (after a few minutes I realized that it was the result of people pouring out of the football stadium after a game), I ran into Bruce hanging out with his juggling buddies. Well, before I ran into them, I took a bunch of photos for a high dynamic range photo. I haven't done the combining ... yet.

Then I headed off toward North Campus. Since the buses were full of the crowd I mentioned before, so I decided to go on foot. On my way there, I saw a parking lot for bikes:

Few minutes later, I noticed a sign by a parking lot:

Just a few dozen meters later, I got distracted by an entrance to an arboretum. I entered, and not long after, I noticed this sign. It's actually nice, they have a bunch of trails that are quite manageable in a wheelchair (I haven't tested it myself), or with a stroller - more on that in a bit.

Almost a mile of walking later, I came across a more "vehicle" friendly path. There was even a nice rest area.

I wouldn't have taken a photo of the rest area if it wasn't for this label on one of the railing-type things:

After exiting the arboretum, I had to walk past the hospital. Since it is a major one, they had helipads - I counted 3 in total. They were all fenced off, with these assertive signs all around.

Then, I found a pretty sweet spot to take a photo of the hospital. Unfortunately, as I already mentioned, I did not have a tripod. I tried anyway, hand-holding the shots. When I got home later, I tried to combine them to get higher dynamic range. It turned out ok, not great, but ok. The following are the 5 source images (left 3, and first 2 on the right), and the resulting HDR image on bottom right.

Here's a larger version of the resulting HDR. The ugliness with the clouds is because they moved enough during the 20 seconds I spend on taking the source images.

Since I had the app (qtpsgui or whatever it is called) all loaded, I tried to tone-map the HDR image. Here are the two I liked the best.

Some walking later, I got back to North Campus. Here's another view of the Lurie tower.

You may have noticed this already in the panorama, if not, then surprise! There's a 9-10ft ground to tip Rubik's cube in front of the Duderstadt. It doesn't actually work, but as far as I know, the base allows it to rotate - one degree of freedom is a good enough start, no?

I ended my exploring with a shot of the spiral staircase in the CSE building. Definitely a great place to have a sword fight!