tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-112182932024-03-21T12:41:14.654-07:00Ask Doctor VectorDr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.comBlogger210125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-23214015630355372632009-12-21T19:14:00.000-08:002009-12-21T19:20:21.784-08:00Sacked out<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGbApdioSlJ11zhjj2yYb_N6MXlrvIDS1YNoLaOLIAR0y8eNXLJeVA-Jij7EFQFnOGnVP7dhOKqHsTWWnSMBfmXIuc9VfalaK3MxvDHajyaU3XMvt_FwL6GjJZmWvrACmQrnar/s1600-h/2009-12-19+zoo+and+museums+135.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGbApdioSlJ11zhjj2yYb_N6MXlrvIDS1YNoLaOLIAR0y8eNXLJeVA-Jij7EFQFnOGnVP7dhOKqHsTWWnSMBfmXIuc9VfalaK3MxvDHajyaU3XMvt_FwL6GjJZmWvrACmQrnar/s400/2009-12-19+zoo+and+museums+135.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417894101121067282" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Male red kangaroo, LA Zoo.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-41484823670123384542009-12-10T00:35:00.000-08:002009-12-10T01:03:13.062-08:00Walter the squirrel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXEtGsfmB_489zsgVPrIpiDENlSMpvr6G-KcDzfqM6iYSaxEWIpTKbNgnV1Qy2XYNqpsFlnoSfLBcqyhfBQhGNkqh-BWFEaFCwke517hPSCv0e-aRuAZgISkg7wMbP3b0vWYgV/s1600-h/2009-12-08+mjw+042.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXEtGsfmB_489zsgVPrIpiDENlSMpvr6G-KcDzfqM6iYSaxEWIpTKbNgnV1Qy2XYNqpsFlnoSfLBcqyhfBQhGNkqh-BWFEaFCwke517hPSCv0e-aRuAZgISkg7wMbP3b0vWYgV/s400/2009-12-08+mjw+042.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413528770079904018" border="0" /></a><br />We have this squirrel that lives around our house. He's kind of a doofus. It's a good thing this is a predator-free environment, sometimes he makes enough racket in the trees that you'd think a couple of sasquatchi were getting it on. I call him Walter, in honor of Walter Sobchak. He's fat, noisy, but basically harmless, and if that isn't enough to earn the name, check this out:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGwqz6Ao3dlaXpDFWiCJNoauLjVEWIXtdzZwuVFPoJIK14hfT6XHVw7OijZSAtW9ibE6D-Sx1TvZxKDrLzFeeRChQJhReRrNrSYuHTt5b6drnVeJ1_9LdrNRjuSegRUpHO-pFA/s1600-h/2009-12-08+mjw+072.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGwqz6Ao3dlaXpDFWiCJNoauLjVEWIXtdzZwuVFPoJIK14hfT6XHVw7OijZSAtW9ibE6D-Sx1TvZxKDrLzFeeRChQJhReRrNrSYuHTt5b6drnVeJ1_9LdrNRjuSegRUpHO-pFA/s400/2009-12-08+mjw+072.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413529110390837474" border="0" /></a><br />He's also curious and if I'm out and about sometimes he'll just plunk down and watch me. Which affords me the opportunity to practice digiscoping if the birds aren't cooperating--which, lately, they ain't been.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7pVCfq40mrdVhmIzLBH-mDzRDIVjZ65md_dos2AOi0KnxKWvWeWmU-3UHjyBuDpdeEVyZuVhfZgy-ymH301DeA8V_7axfdxsBB6l104Aw_K-ntNgnusqtmA-zLRY0d8XqoOG/s1600-h/2009-12-08+mjw+100.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7pVCfq40mrdVhmIzLBH-mDzRDIVjZ65md_dos2AOi0KnxKWvWeWmU-3UHjyBuDpdeEVyZuVhfZgy-ymH301DeA8V_7axfdxsBB6l104Aw_K-ntNgnusqtmA-zLRY0d8XqoOG/s400/2009-12-08+mjw+100.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413529377655480146" border="0" /></a><br />Last Sunday afternoon, he was up on top of the telephone pole next to the driveway, chittering away at me in between breaks to groom his fur and--I am not making this up--scratch his pits. I hauled out my little scope and started snapping.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkhFGOkXlzMRrNkGJe_JH5W9e4OmUCPBXfP-Ai8-qrgHrUr6f1aISv80Mw69Jt5kLvcuc1EJUriLXLakrqfFnBe-Nc-dAwe29V58EoS_OnAq0in8OitQGzw8c-K3TlUo39vzcC/s1600-h/2009-12-08+mjw+153.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkhFGOkXlzMRrNkGJe_JH5W9e4OmUCPBXfP-Ai8-qrgHrUr6f1aISv80Mw69Jt5kLvcuc1EJUriLXLakrqfFnBe-Nc-dAwe29V58EoS_OnAq0in8OitQGzw8c-K3TlUo39vzcC/s400/2009-12-08+mjw+153.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413529662668663682" border="0" /></a><br />The lowest useful magnification my scope will do is 30x. To get this last shot, I had to open the gate to the back yard and go all the way to the end of the property just to get a wide enough field of view. That's a good problem to have.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-56453477063832042882009-11-02T09:54:00.000-08:002009-11-02T09:59:37.684-08:00Rocket, manLondon is totally into rockets and space right now. Like, he knows more about the US manned space program than I did two months ago. For Halloween he wanted to be a rocket. And not just any rocket, but specifically the Mercury Redstone. And he was _adamant_. I admit to trying to deflect him onto a path that would be simpler (for me), but he stuck to his guns.<br /><br />Thank goodness for posterboard and black duct tape.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8mIWZPpoTacb8fE3L14qDEcz0a1-HsI7A_KHd823h7YwrmKSFdzrIMud67kKM3ZguCseRf2O2zmo9xZg8ixNGPrSOq5ci97ewHFYuQFndiGQ8EqMVe-bJZJz7Y8uytH9xpK2A/s1600-h/2009-10-30+Halloween+039.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8mIWZPpoTacb8fE3L14qDEcz0a1-HsI7A_KHd823h7YwrmKSFdzrIMud67kKM3ZguCseRf2O2zmo9xZg8ixNGPrSOq5ci97ewHFYuQFndiGQ8EqMVe-bJZJz7Y8uytH9xpK2A/s400/2009-10-30+Halloween+039.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399566606306495778" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNyi3T8Dl0hGmRHS64oqb8F-B_lyky_70rUwmQeM2VfzUpTHk-eETUO3Y5AXM5urXiuEMsyPJ16SRD9i7dFTyxkDn03Z195UfUXhAejkv4I821UvqxGMlqX_EiLcg_31wXdT4k/s1600-h/2009-10-30+Halloween+043.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNyi3T8Dl0hGmRHS64oqb8F-B_lyky_70rUwmQeM2VfzUpTHk-eETUO3Y5AXM5urXiuEMsyPJ16SRD9i7dFTyxkDn03Z195UfUXhAejkv4I821UvqxGMlqX_EiLcg_31wXdT4k/s400/2009-10-30+Halloween+043.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399567010236496258" border="0" /></a>Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-59749832555541712202009-06-03T15:47:00.000-07:002009-06-03T16:46:56.246-07:00Oklahoma tetrapodsThis one's for Darren. The poor guy is working on at least two books, several technical papers, and keeping up <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/">two</a> <a href="http://svpow.wordpress.com/">blogs</a>, not to mention being a <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/11/condors_teratorns_both_big_.php">husband </a>and <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/06/its_all_about_me_actually_its.php">father </a>with an <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/02/hello_emma_naish.php">infant </a>to take care of.<br /><br />So here are some tetrapods for ya, Darren, from my recent vacation to Oklahoma. I think we've seen that my skillz at identifying non-sauropods are <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/04/theropods-of-claremont-or-learning.html">definitely sub-1337</a>, but I will do my manful best. Everything is arranged in accordance with the Great Chain of Being, of course.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIQx48WuO5MFLQsxria3fWotHZ_7Rf3g5O4GJSyxHu2PIjpGFg-vekGxkwdV_6mK8oha4g6yc_xtkWUoFIPZB4ZnY6wjDT8M08pk6SScaaRxcHzHpxYto2m11wmcK-4IwiW6y/s1600-h/2009-05-21+Oklahoma+152+1000.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIQx48WuO5MFLQsxria3fWotHZ_7Rf3g5O4GJSyxHu2PIjpGFg-vekGxkwdV_6mK8oha4g6yc_xtkWUoFIPZB4ZnY6wjDT8M08pk6SScaaRxcHzHpxYto2m11wmcK-4IwiW6y/s400/2009-05-21+Oklahoma+152+1000.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238944794940098" border="0" /></a>I reckon, given the brown coloration, the light spot on the eardrum, and the north-central Oklahoma locality, that this is a Plains Leopard Frog, <span style="font-style: italic;">Rana blairi</span>. I can say for certain that it was too fast for me to catch.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtwTr8U5TRn53fx-2aVkr2v3AgP45TjARb32xGaFXUTIp5l5uYyzhbuX3zpsVFeF3OWx-Ai1bBwkOliQp2hpSLw3GTUHCYdEm-mlaPKGlDq8WQ0nG6oFbml39WIjGkWRtNM-6B/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+026+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtwTr8U5TRn53fx-2aVkr2v3AgP45TjARb32xGaFXUTIp5l5uYyzhbuX3zpsVFeF3OWx-Ai1bBwkOliQp2hpSLw3GTUHCYdEm-mlaPKGlDq8WQ0nG6oFbml39WIjGkWRtNM-6B/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+026+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238832809476786" border="0" /></a><br />Bullfrog, <span style="font-style: italic;">Rana catesbeiana</span>. We saw this dude sunning himself every day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzlqckZBkFx1sl1EgRxtDZ04CZxHpdwjSqlxP2ZlMw52X-ZHfXFvif8hROMaS1jZEv1jZtv7884921HZWunEbfOai8ND3vGRNiXlw-ZGPNFifspS9llk9mUEhBQgR7oi9yC5c3/s1600-h/2009-05-24+Oklahoma+026+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzlqckZBkFx1sl1EgRxtDZ04CZxHpdwjSqlxP2ZlMw52X-ZHfXFvif8hROMaS1jZEv1jZtv7884921HZWunEbfOai8ND3vGRNiXlw-ZGPNFifspS9llk9mUEhBQgR7oi9yC5c3/s400/2009-05-24+Oklahoma+026+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238747025435650" border="0" /></a><br />The same, or at least a very similar, frog on a different day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqY5y2SPI-nQ3vo2WaqwQAVsIP28phuz_W-4Kh0UVzUnEOje8ldg8fCFOH_NHWQoHrt9gZ6esuQxRzzE3evJATX0xQkWUf9S_2f70K_mcApwpkpHT-7y1q33-JzOHeIRsc6Wmo/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+115+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqY5y2SPI-nQ3vo2WaqwQAVsIP28phuz_W-4Kh0UVzUnEOje8ldg8fCFOH_NHWQoHrt9gZ6esuQxRzzE3evJATX0xQkWUf9S_2f70K_mcApwpkpHT-7y1q33-JzOHeIRsc6Wmo/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+115+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238617254792706" border="0" /></a><br />A juvenile watersnake in the genus <span style="font-style: italic;">Nerodia</span>, but no tellin' what species. Note cow poop for scale.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevll34-y9NLxOedlJbSxUOSbTywV3fAJVW6e0p8bP5-JYJwYXoS5O_Y6xur1gVUthOxs1jg2DCCMZVbP8vKoDYr5aNhWell-ZjFlHY9X71n3kGZW16WB_9KTKR3dqMV20epW6/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+114+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevll34-y9NLxOedlJbSxUOSbTywV3fAJVW6e0p8bP5-JYJwYXoS5O_Y6xur1gVUthOxs1jg2DCCMZVbP8vKoDYr5aNhWell-ZjFlHY9X71n3kGZW16WB_9KTKR3dqMV20epW6/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+114+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238505408367538" border="0" /></a><br />Shed skin of an unidentified serpent.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmd9O5CfLaG3W8pR0knVtfjr_20vJ8baKGyAgjip2hDNeG0EOCTY0AWcUaOE936ePa93xwC4UzrX2d0u-n9k-_-VX2zHDWawfUn47Q6nz8TbACgQKK4orRCK-sPbEN7FT-f5bw/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+066+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmd9O5CfLaG3W8pR0knVtfjr_20vJ8baKGyAgjip2hDNeG0EOCTY0AWcUaOE936ePa93xwC4UzrX2d0u-n9k-_-VX2zHDWawfUn47Q6nz8TbACgQKK4orRCK-sPbEN7FT-f5bw/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+066+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238374935583170" border="0" /></a><br />My brother and I were walking along the creek near the house when we spotted this subadult raccoon, <span style="font-style: italic;">Procyon lotor</span>, moving upstream.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigsgmDC6cpXQ9TQQ2lE1UerWbHDz65MIL3ZPfHUrZ2AN6LqMy24ZnnY11G74dY16TuxrN1gAlOEDbwBVz59t5V8ht7D5Ssm5gZjwRHJFPhXiQuV8cucV0cPgtFcxhJ0Gg2Dfax/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+065+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigsgmDC6cpXQ9TQQ2lE1UerWbHDz65MIL3ZPfHUrZ2AN6LqMy24ZnnY11G74dY16TuxrN1gAlOEDbwBVz59t5V8ht7D5Ssm5gZjwRHJFPhXiQuV8cucV0cPgtFcxhJ0Gg2Dfax/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+065+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238281334630002" border="0" /></a><br />It didn't seem unduly exercised by our presence, so we tailed it for thirty yards or so until it disappeared into some brush.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5I99__BLamRSQDSPE9uHPuuIUB7TRzpLv3mttGRuhhaYKtgLaUH6L4CsUKKFz_lzhH6LBCoBSXW1_6y5kY3UAxuqtxvkfmDCI65BM2NGbpquLRzpYZ4Jmd31UsM7uqFbPUVSW/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+118+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5I99__BLamRSQDSPE9uHPuuIUB7TRzpLv3mttGRuhhaYKtgLaUH6L4CsUKKFz_lzhH6LBCoBSXW1_6y5kY3UAxuqtxvkfmDCI65BM2NGbpquLRzpYZ4Jmd31UsM7uqFbPUVSW/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+118+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343238055797868434" border="0" /></a><br />Nearby we found this skeletonized paw from a nine-banded armadillo, <span style="font-style: italic;">Dasypus novemcinctus</span>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis0E-j04myCVJioHZIMdG645dN8vCkGP8agb449FtSrV4GTImp5XqX3VmzOkLs9cK1MCMK7zfp4um4EZpXSpAocyx78E2-56prv4BkWGQi4gBtZUBoFNAkWMuW0bR5tLLxcSNf/s1600-h/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+058+1200.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis0E-j04myCVJioHZIMdG645dN8vCkGP8agb449FtSrV4GTImp5XqX3VmzOkLs9cK1MCMK7zfp4um4EZpXSpAocyx78E2-56prv4BkWGQi4gBtZUBoFNAkWMuW0bR5tLLxcSNf/s400/2009-05-22+Oklahoma+058+1200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343237961343047522" border="0" /></a><br />Also this mostly skeletonized bobcat, <span style="font-style: italic;">Lynx rufus</span>. I boiled and peroxided the skull and it is now sitting on my desk at work, distracting people who come by to give me more work. One of the ribs was broken and healed.<br /><br />At last we come to the pinnacle of evolution, the saurischians.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYH2vm7RxLX2uO5IxZxr1suIkmZ1WlgU3UKhkQ0cNas-swFdEj5_3ouJxU9EewNa62QyEjvTEB-sM8xppD2i507jAaw8NoLYAvQw3r1ejuCWtIjC71QOYDoA3SOBkeVNQkoRmi/s1600-h/2009-05-17+grackle+2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYH2vm7RxLX2uO5IxZxr1suIkmZ1WlgU3UKhkQ0cNas-swFdEj5_3ouJxU9EewNa62QyEjvTEB-sM8xppD2i507jAaw8NoLYAvQw3r1ejuCWtIjC71QOYDoA3SOBkeVNQkoRmi/s400/2009-05-17+grackle+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343237822173376002" border="0" /></a><br />A Common Grackle, <span style="font-style: italic;">Quiscalus quiscula</span>. This one was in the top of a tree at my in-laws' place in Oklahoma City. Interesting bird to watch but irritating to listen to; it sounded as if it had eaten a squeaky wheel and dying cat and was trying to vomit them both out at the same time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhog1j4FcU_NSdm373ol4rjKXXJ-_odVNkuMs3AVVNL3TwsBtYBUSKZM8ACfiKPkHGAIorLcrRpcQOLDbypDmEsXCesmGLw0b8-1gQgIpTmMmj7sOMwa1Ch2L6UPIBM09oaXYoM/s1600-h/2009-05-20+Hillsdale+046+1000.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhog1j4FcU_NSdm373ol4rjKXXJ-_odVNkuMs3AVVNL3TwsBtYBUSKZM8ACfiKPkHGAIorLcrRpcQOLDbypDmEsXCesmGLw0b8-1gQgIpTmMmj7sOMwa1Ch2L6UPIBM09oaXYoM/s400/2009-05-20+Hillsdale+046+1000.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343237741018206466" border="0" /></a><br />A red-winged blackbird, <span style="font-style: italic;">Agelaius phoeniceus</span>. The wheat fields around my parents' place were full of these things.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOLrZE74PeuK7zWygiPOatgsYf9RxdBm3GwR49GpVxR7K8W97FzAtfmF6IiHEO_DSG151433EcHXUHczdxuYT9Fg4srdXwl8YV1gwdbE2jH_7-sPVcUDZwtA4_zNqXO1sHEiU/s1600-h/2009-05-20+Hillsdale+053+1000.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOLrZE74PeuK7zWygiPOatgsYf9RxdBm3GwR49GpVxR7K8W97FzAtfmF6IiHEO_DSG151433EcHXUHczdxuYT9Fg4srdXwl8YV1gwdbE2jH_7-sPVcUDZwtA4_zNqXO1sHEiU/s400/2009-05-20+Hillsdale+053+1000.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343237675816207458" border="0" /></a><br />Arf. I saved the best and worst for last. Best because this was the toughest photo of the bunch, and therefore the most satisfying. Worst, because I am probably going to choke on the ID. But here goes anyway. At first I was thinking that that the beak was too thick for it to be anything other than a finch. But further reflection (i.e., randomly thumbing through Sibley's) suggests another, more likely alternative: a Dickcissel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Spiza americana</span>.<br /><br />That's all I got. Coming soon: selected tetrapods from the LA Zoo.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-54131942380240590372009-04-27T11:18:00.000-07:002009-04-27T11:50:48.556-07:00The ratite clearing house post<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxmqntOXQWLT5THFYpPOgzAdY383VzneF2M_Il5VRteFT6CxG6Ng4uStN_meYbn5WOGxAwOWSYy7opUBmY10swJ43EEK54lBk7pwzn9uqFBMwY4ZrTg4OeKuxUT4NByPS_1fT-/s1600-h/Merced+Zoo+-+emu.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxmqntOXQWLT5THFYpPOgzAdY383VzneF2M_Il5VRteFT6CxG6Ng4uStN_meYbn5WOGxAwOWSYy7opUBmY10swJ43EEK54lBk7pwzn9uqFBMwY4ZrTg4OeKuxUT4NByPS_1fT-/s400/Merced+Zoo+-+emu.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329444134301501186" border="0" /></a><br />Darren's <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/04/dissecting_an_emu.php">post </a>on my emu dissection pictures inspired me to bring all of my ratite blogging together in one place, for the convenience and edification of all.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8L6xQi5MiBOYpfCQoIQJueSFArL-F9cKA_jHsXclfuFg6rqnXop_B54qLXFdhY7vZtNipZnocJPmKKll1PDlJ3Dv6YB1CQx9iZbLLgiPmw_BXQbxf-Hdj6Jdup542D4CIc4tE/s1600-h/Emu+wing+skinned.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8L6xQi5MiBOYpfCQoIQJueSFArL-F9cKA_jHsXclfuFg6rqnXop_B54qLXFdhY7vZtNipZnocJPmKKll1PDlJ3Dv6YB1CQx9iZbLLgiPmw_BXQbxf-Hdj6Jdup542D4CIc4tE/s400/Emu+wing+skinned.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329443987535783874" border="0" /></a><br />There's the original emu dissection <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2006/12/emu-dissection.html">post</a> and and the immediately subsequent rhea <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2006/12/rheality.html">dissection</a> <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2006/12/rhealize-foo.html">posts </a>(two links). Note the striking difference between the comparatively large, normally-folding wings of the smaller rhea (below) and the silly twig-wings of the much larger emu (above).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiASfZ1wGf22pKphzvD-8Jv45VsdzlwUOpQt2eDKsuUGHFUe1f8mJo81MP-S9hCvE4hYVObiZKc7pu-ocqKr-cmFYLEMsOg2w-SG0Jva-uIqSQrLgE0SvArpFyFXpI4LP-Meeig/s1600-h/2006-12-14+Rhea+part+2+wing+sans+feathers.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiASfZ1wGf22pKphzvD-8Jv45VsdzlwUOpQt2eDKsuUGHFUe1f8mJo81MP-S9hCvE4hYVObiZKc7pu-ocqKr-cmFYLEMsOg2w-SG0Jva-uIqSQrLgE0SvArpFyFXpI4LP-Meeig/s400/2006-12-14+Rhea+part+2+wing+sans+feathers.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329443739107213298" border="0" /></a><br />Emus use their inflatable throat pouches to make booming calls. I was fortunate enough to witness this and engage in a bout of reciprocal burping with an emu at the Merced zoo, which I covered <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/07/another-trip-to-another-zoo.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE4KxQhLxgmEKME6a0449ji29n9upeyghIac5pBE6QHq5BCRmrFEUN9sq9dwiceUKHTTyYifULBi3Q99cdwypbfckVGSaYU2vlkYdAakFMuHEgjdhk3Lm-tjLENDGkzrTcC8hH/s1600-h/MVZ+Apteryx.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE4KxQhLxgmEKME6a0449ji29n9upeyghIac5pBE6QHq5BCRmrFEUN9sq9dwiceUKHTTyYifULBi3Q99cdwypbfckVGSaYU2vlkYdAakFMuHEgjdhk3Lm-tjLENDGkzrTcC8hH/s400/MVZ+Apteryx.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329444190518983394" border="0" /></a><br />Later on I posted <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2007/02/my-afternoon-with-apteryx.html">briefly</a> about kiwis. Also, people loved the gross photos enough that I felt compelled to share pix from dissecting a <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2007/01/hyena-dissection.html">hyena</a>, which is not a ratite but also flightless and still pretty cool.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6P1ek2qns7xrcoeVrug5Z2YsOx7WPbhNb4ZpgVU4zVxONXB__TfDgj19Pr-sYUJWqLKhWDm1xXbupq653Qequ6hfYehsUKLO7rv-s_hyo7qstBzrfZla_H1O9sgYtHsvqO0vx/s1600-h/planet+step+8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 382px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6P1ek2qns7xrcoeVrug5Z2YsOx7WPbhNb4ZpgVU4zVxONXB__TfDgj19Pr-sYUJWqLKhWDm1xXbupq653Qequ6hfYehsUKLO7rv-s_hyo7qstBzrfZla_H1O9sgYtHsvqO0vx/s400/planet+step+8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329444408952601938" border="0" /></a><br />Finally, I bought together my <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/search?q=animals">biological </a>and <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-to-get-started-in-amateur-astronomy.html">then-nascent</a> <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/search/label/Amateur%20Astronomy">astronomical </a>obsessions and turned some of the emu gore into a <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2006/07/dr-vector-maker-of-worlds.html">planet</a>.<br /><br />If you find anything <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/03/how_to_rot_down_dead_bodies.php">dead</a>, or get to cut something up, or have some other cool interaction with the natural world, post it and tell the world!Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-52323556907472101592009-04-23T00:00:00.001-07:002009-04-23T08:55:38.903-07:00Theropods of Claremont, or, learning ornithology in front of a live audience<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFZsFxrBRlRqeIxLwLQhqsqC5PHj_DnVCzuEUcY_oku5plCuSqFQgj-vew7PK3N4G0qnAO5TJDJ-6suVEjtYSarlhXoixII03KSst5KoCXLisge0cyne80M5gGpgDHQSQd4pQ4/s1600-h/2009-04-22+the+observatory+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFZsFxrBRlRqeIxLwLQhqsqC5PHj_DnVCzuEUcY_oku5plCuSqFQgj-vew7PK3N4G0qnAO5TJDJ-6suVEjtYSarlhXoixII03KSst5KoCXLisge0cyne80M5gGpgDHQSQd4pQ4/s400/2009-04-22+the+observatory+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327779139345742210" border="0" /></a><br />Every day between about 5:30 and 6:30 PM I have no scheduled obligations, my driveway is out of direct sunlight and there are lots of birds about. And, as luck would have it, I have a small Maksutov-Cassegrain which functions as telescope by night and a spotting scope by day. So I started photographing birds.<br /><br />I won't lie to you: this started out as basically onanism with a telescope. You know, I couldn't get what I wanted (<a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/02/onward-and-upward.html">moon</a>, <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/02/dr-vector-visits-other-tethys.html">planets</a>, etc.), but I could still get something.... But against all odds I started to get interested in who's around. I finally knocked the dust off my copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America</span>, which until the past couple of weeks had gotten about as much use as my copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare (i.e., it looked nice on the shelf, and implied erudition I don't actually possess).<br /><br />This evening was particularly good; in an hour I saw and photographed five species. That's nothing by the standards of real birders, but for me it was a record. All were perched at one time or another in the top branches of a tree three houses down, or on the power lines at the end of the block. The tree is 70 yards from my driveway, and the power lines are a bit farther. I took all the photos with an Orion Apex 90 scope, Orion Sirius Plossl 25mm eyepiece yeilding 50x, and a handheld Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera. Many thanks to Alan Shabel for help with the identifications. Here they are:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgziW9AC4OWA6ABannUY10QaDddCeLdnjOBzI5VMnz8vge4FJi7Qie7-Cqq90f5v339mXNAN4UFiPlEf2i0RScybFjiSAmPcwvF3RO-yi_9O42WzNkLjbVB-a92klnk-abFIeEI/s1600-h/2009-04-22+mockingbird+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgziW9AC4OWA6ABannUY10QaDddCeLdnjOBzI5VMnz8vge4FJi7Qie7-Cqq90f5v339mXNAN4UFiPlEf2i0RScybFjiSAmPcwvF3RO-yi_9O42WzNkLjbVB-a92klnk-abFIeEI/s400/2009-04-22+mockingbird+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327779036397535938" border="0" /></a><br />A Northern Mockingbird, <span style="font-style: italic;">Mimus polyglottos</span>. One of several in the neighborhood. I see them mainly when they come perch in the top of the target tree and scare off my intended quarry (see below).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKj7zcugri5O2FA39HBXx4siTVvAEgo7MDEAWKGGNSLtQVeF259SJMXvgH6G09NYWJKb7mgwWsZZnMJxT824nkhgfMW1ZJBZmbc_FQ2IJLuDuTGQV5q1wCuC7SMrluvw58xEdp/s1600-h/2009-04-22+band-tailed+pigeon+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKj7zcugri5O2FA39HBXx4siTVvAEgo7MDEAWKGGNSLtQVeF259SJMXvgH6G09NYWJKb7mgwWsZZnMJxT824nkhgfMW1ZJBZmbc_FQ2IJLuDuTGQV5q1wCuC7SMrluvw58xEdp/s400/2009-04-22+band-tailed+pigeon+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327778945299509026" border="0" /></a><br />A Band-Tailed Pigeon, <span style="font-style: italic;">Columba fasciata</span>. I didn't know this was anything other than a feral Eurasian Rock Dove (i.e., regular pigeon) until I checked <span style="font-style: italic;">Sibley's</span>. A strikingly beautiful animal, for a pigeon. I've seen these before, and just didn't know what I was seeing.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmR6P0fZZ1rDwp8RB7JrBErr1Qy4Ztnry61TB3JxT1oMj-7P507gnJ7FXrpOgs0PP1aehMMfKizXQjrffXKa_gXSEEc2UOH6kLh0fArTaLvqGK87lAsFgNHIanKAat4FGveeSH/s1600-h/2009-04-22+acorn+woodpecker+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmR6P0fZZ1rDwp8RB7JrBErr1Qy4Ztnry61TB3JxT1oMj-7P507gnJ7FXrpOgs0PP1aehMMfKizXQjrffXKa_gXSEEc2UOH6kLh0fArTaLvqGK87lAsFgNHIanKAat4FGveeSH/s400/2009-04-22+acorn+woodpecker+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327778855357904194" border="0" /></a><br />An Acorn Woodpecker, <span style="font-style: italic;">Melanerpes formicivorus</span>. Today was the first time I'd actually seen one of these things around here, or ever identified a woodpecker to species. He spent quite a while tearing up our municipal infrastructure. Maybe I can score some stimulus bling for <a href="http://wonkette.com/406564/bobby-jindal-enrages-volcano-monitoring-people-by-mocking-volcano-monitoring-people">something called woodpecker monitoring</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0kTg2CYW39hr7Fo5ky0a8d1q17rDq0_nKAWZSKp-RnnUrT4eEcKWhVuM0MftbiwRt1nqTWZ2rQyNKfuPmK3o_v2_pDhtR5tbMxJn6yQOhLHLYwDx9cb2ZaJJXAnsNIC8yTV83/s1600-h/2009-04-22+red-throated+pipit+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0kTg2CYW39hr7Fo5ky0a8d1q17rDq0_nKAWZSKp-RnnUrT4eEcKWhVuM0MftbiwRt1nqTWZ2rQyNKfuPmK3o_v2_pDhtR5tbMxJn6yQOhLHLYwDx9cb2ZaJJXAnsNIC8yTV83/s400/2009-04-22+red-throated+pipit+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327778790319311714" border="0" /></a><br />Oh, now this little fartskin was a whole 'nuther kettle of fish. Didn't even sit still long enough for me to get the scope properly focused. Wham, bam, what the hell was that? I <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span>, based on the reddish throat and face and black-and-white striped breast, that this is a <strike>Red-Throated Pipit, <span style="font-style: italic;">Anthus cervinus</span></strike> House Finch, <span style="font-style: italic;">Carpodacus mexicanus</span> (thanks to <a href="http://microecos.wordpress.com/">Neil</a> for the save, and for making my secondary title even more appropriate). But for all I know it might be a Rosy-Bummed Sky Kiwi or a Uruguayan Yaksucker, neither of which are covered by <span style="font-style: italic;">Sibley's</span>. Perhaps I got the expurgated edition.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4gsObox07dVGZZTZ4ilHBvk6PjnKJSfFgr_NsRTONl-TFW9YZ6r2KCEBaNzJfPoXsTCUw0QeRAxELyjrMVHG0-ryQl00fvGcwfWJdjokXEy4TaafzeJEb1shKY6lWhuekBXQ1/s1600-h/2009-04-22+annas+hummingbird+01+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4gsObox07dVGZZTZ4ilHBvk6PjnKJSfFgr_NsRTONl-TFW9YZ6r2KCEBaNzJfPoXsTCUw0QeRAxELyjrMVHG0-ryQl00fvGcwfWJdjokXEy4TaafzeJEb1shKY6lWhuekBXQ1/s400/2009-04-22+annas+hummingbird+01+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327778620197460994" border="0" /></a><br />Those are all great birds, but the one that got me into this crazy pursuit is this little fellow, this particular individual, a male Anna's Hummingbird, <span style="font-style: italic;">Calypte anna</span>, whom I spotted a couple of weeks ago buzzing about like a tiny helicopter or a slightly-larger-than-average bumblebee. Belying his clade's reputation, he does sit still from time to time, almost always on this exact spot on this exact branch of the same exact tree three houses down. You'd think that regularity of habit would make him easy to photograph. But he has a couple of traits that I'd never read about which make him a frustrating target. First, he's psychic; if I raise the camera to the eyepiece or, heaven forfend, call someone over for a look, he's gone. Sometimes for the rest of the day. Second, he's happy to show me his iridescent green back all day, but only rarely will he turn around and flash the iridescent red feathers that cover his face and neck.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf_7FS6JkYAJUsfTv2L2RbTi6pcZEX0nYwmtokRD4kepEV-Xeb_8GSc1RscsM3TYixOfmolxikKyOEq9nf2Q3guolz287xYmwCWSGGPeGInSl6Ke25Tfk60tDhlsWK0foeAJWk/s1600-h/2009-04-22+annas+hummingbird+02+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf_7FS6JkYAJUsfTv2L2RbTi6pcZEX0nYwmtokRD4kepEV-Xeb_8GSc1RscsM3TYixOfmolxikKyOEq9nf2Q3guolz287xYmwCWSGGPeGInSl6Ke25Tfk60tDhlsWK0foeAJWk/s400/2009-04-22+annas+hummingbird+02+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327778358173917778" border="0" /></a><br />Finally, finally today I got this shot. This is the same bird as in the shot above, about two minutes later. When the sunlight catches those feathers, the effect is unbelievable. One look at that and you might start to understand why a grown man would spend an hour every evening looking through a thermos-sized telescope at a thumb-sized bird half a block away. But when he turns around, away from the late afternoon sun, the effect is lost, and the feathers are a flat dark red, a bit like dried blood.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNNNop3u_3PhLBiAEn4SqP7EgPms37LIesbxEEZXJHSxhxJ5NyU6UeV6X_LAMNkSU9h64Dsze1_FsatvbtcJosoapjNzkl7B9MjdTBAqbgKHy3MmEmVrO9z45NJHOdIEE7rPO/s1600-h/2009-04-22+annas+hummingbird+03+-++800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPNNNop3u_3PhLBiAEn4SqP7EgPms37LIesbxEEZXJHSxhxJ5NyU6UeV6X_LAMNkSU9h64Dsze1_FsatvbtcJosoapjNzkl7B9MjdTBAqbgKHy3MmEmVrO9z45NJHOdIEE7rPO/s400/2009-04-22+annas+hummingbird+03+-++800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327778286503104498" border="0" /></a><br />And like that, poof, he's gone.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-69691645603903993302009-04-12T22:31:00.000-07:002009-04-12T23:11:43.378-07:00Starscaping<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjzQOpHHdsErkhNgl1fM5oEKMEdEQ36ycgXUy538OCIX_WDHy5MlTJQEHbn5-5lXJo8Foq2rKIoes2qK6H5FqcqdsjXJyMnD9wW69wVawwOVPf7VZhVtWtC51KpQdbnADDpQrk/s1600-h/Star+Formation.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjzQOpHHdsErkhNgl1fM5oEKMEdEQ36ycgXUy538OCIX_WDHy5MlTJQEHbn5-5lXJo8Foq2rKIoes2qK6H5FqcqdsjXJyMnD9wW69wVawwOVPf7VZhVtWtC51KpQdbnADDpQrk/s400/Star+Formation.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324048485621264914" border="0" /></a><br />Hoo boy, you are ska-ROOOOD! Because it's either the morning, and you need to get to work, or you're at work, or it's the evening and you need to do chores/spend time with your family/stalk people online, and here I am pointing you toward the <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2009/interactive/star-formation-game/">Star Formation game</a>, which in its addictiveness makes the infamous <a href="http://chir.ag/stuff/sand/">Falling Sand game</a> look like <a href="http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=271">eating your boogers</a> in public (i.e., pathetically easy to kick...not that that's an <a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060809064158AAr7euQ">actual habit</a> anyone would ever need to break...no sirree, just trying to turn a humble phrase here...).<br /><br />They could have called this Herding Hydrogen. Theoretically, you set off supernovae to compress clouds of interstellar gas so that they become gravitationally bound and collapse into massive short-lived stars which themselves go supernova. Basically though, you Nuke Stuff until it glows, and then it goes BOOM and Nukes other Stuff and the eternal cycle of Blowing Stuff Up rolls on. I submit that this is scientific evidence that the Creator exists and that He is a dude.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3HHPr5Hgauk-JX9IH3PLsNfAD9SQV8WDGNUDxaOO2myott86MYBTa42S4oBkGLo-EjOIbYm1rdeLc0oHNIiEG-T_XPsRBa082Q3Nt50CbtBUCEtuASsJj8vb_c7w1IIvImYZ/s1600-h/Saturn+2009-04-11.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3HHPr5Hgauk-JX9IH3PLsNfAD9SQV8WDGNUDxaOO2myott86MYBTa42S4oBkGLo-EjOIbYm1rdeLc0oHNIiEG-T_XPsRBa082Q3Nt50CbtBUCEtuASsJj8vb_c7w1IIvImYZ/s400/Saturn+2009-04-11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324048600637101538" border="0" /></a><br />In not-completely-unrelated news, last night I got curious about what would happen if I held my camcorder--literally<a href="http://dealnews.com/Pure-Digital-PSV-351-Flip-Video-30-Minute-Digital-Camcorder-for-60-free-shipping/267276.html"> the cheapest commercially available model</a>--up to the eyepiece of my thermos-sized telescope. The answer is that I got something that is pretty crap on any objective scale, but at least recognizable and therefore a smashing success personally. I'm posting this not to brag--oh hay-ull no--but as a reminder that the night sky is accessible even to those of modest means.<br /><br />Clear skies!Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-73907722287973719702009-04-08T00:12:00.000-07:002009-04-08T00:32:25.452-07:00Messier A and B<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7rxGdwHUtJUga8fSWIGJhOm2LyVJo-wCOet5Co7_nOsx4xOJK6cXSYpwAN1EsyHsMldMAwMNd7kWwUZzb8oQIcbQJWbak2YESoKowrBpfj17VXqQa_-RibtUh-TM5KSorwKYO/s1600-h/Messier+craters.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7rxGdwHUtJUga8fSWIGJhOm2LyVJo-wCOet5Co7_nOsx4xOJK6cXSYpwAN1EsyHsMldMAwMNd7kWwUZzb8oQIcbQJWbak2YESoKowrBpfj17VXqQa_-RibtUh-TM5KSorwKYO/s400/Messier+craters.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322217362562791442" border="0" /></a><br />Two of my favorite destinations on the moon are the double craters <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_crater">Messier A and B</a> in <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-moon-map.html">Mare Fecunditatis</a>. The impact or impacts (read on) must have happened at very low angles because the rays--twin ejecta blankets--point nearly straight west. The hypothesis has been floated that the two craters were produced by a single impactor diving into the lunar surface and then bouncing back out. I'm no geophysicist but that sounds pretty unlikely. Another hypothesis is that a single impactor hit and bounced. Looks like a pretty short bounce for something traveling many miles per second, and it doesn't explain why the two craters have such similar geometry. Given the number of asteroids that are turning up with moons these days, and the frequency with which comets fall apart, a good ole <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101764/">double impact</a> seems much more plausible to me. But that's just my $0.02.<br /><br />Anyway, it's a pretty sight in telescopes big and small, and well worth a look if you're out<a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/phases-for-earthlings.html"> looking up</a>. I took the top photo a year ago today, using a 6" reflector and Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera. The photo below was taken this April 1 using the same camera and a 90mm Maksutov Cassegrain at a magnification of only 39x, which goes to show that you don't need a big telescope or high magnification to catch this pair of gems. Click photos to embiggify.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxI0PAvtKC-KAdwj45U5yqoCB6st9glo9GEV0-OaIMKFVugQiusMP01Ai6wvVN-DmLySZgDDN1XOjeWf4OKoVaTajUBtY7KIiUy7bcYCXyQ-khwL96tN-wQZY90ytQnsOYNYVC/s1600-h/Messier+craters+2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxI0PAvtKC-KAdwj45U5yqoCB6st9glo9GEV0-OaIMKFVugQiusMP01Ai6wvVN-DmLySZgDDN1XOjeWf4OKoVaTajUBtY7KIiUy7bcYCXyQ-khwL96tN-wQZY90ytQnsOYNYVC/s400/Messier+craters+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5322217240139610946" border="0" /></a>Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-58696135445230706012009-04-04T00:13:00.000-07:002009-04-04T01:57:40.613-07:00Live-blogging the 100 Hours of Astronomy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_rkpo6YoRkDZajfAxWZbtl0p6_zu-GLmgs9gKhFKy56OmV0iswUGVhAQZNpopwIR9lvZZ0gR8fej81dAHR6C_rMXALUvHoH9UmBSofnkkOZSqouPzo7aUS3c8QxBoRgIx-S0g/s1600-h/Waxing+moon+from+Claremont+Village+-+April+3+2009+-+correct+image.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_rkpo6YoRkDZajfAxWZbtl0p6_zu-GLmgs9gKhFKy56OmV0iswUGVhAQZNpopwIR9lvZZ0gR8fej81dAHR6C_rMXALUvHoH9UmBSofnkkOZSqouPzo7aUS3c8QxBoRgIx-S0g/s400/Waxing+moon+from+Claremont+Village+-+April+3+2009+-+correct+image.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320747865699875874" border="0" /></a><br />I didn't think this was going to happen; until about sundown tonight the LA part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy had been more like the 50 Hours of Holy Crap It's Overcast and Sprinkling. But then the sky just magically cleared, so I took my little travel telescope to downtown Claremont, set up near the fountains, and started offering passersby a look at the moon. In two and a half hours, a staggering 144 people had a look.<br /><br />Overall, I was pretty impressed with the general level of knowledge of my visitors. Several of them knew that the <a href="http://www.astronomy2009.org/globalprojects/cornerstones/100hoursofastronomy/">100 Hours of Astronomy</a> was going on, thanks to coverage on NPR (link goes to the IYA 2009 page about the event; the actual <a href="http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/">100 Hours page</a> has been mostly shut down by high traffic, but the webcast is still active). Even at low power, the moon drifted out of the field of view in about 3 or 4 minutes, and almost everyone who noticed this knew it was because of the Earth's rotation (which of course carries the telescope along with it, but not the moon). Lots of folks noticed that the view of the moon through the telescope was flipped left-to-right by the right-angle diagonal mirror in front of the eyepiece. Many, many people of all ages told me it was the first time they'd ever seen the moon through a telescope. Until a year and a half ago, I would have been in the same boat. Now I'm just happy to be able to give other people that experience.<br /><br />People's responses were overwhelmingly positive. Almost everyone thanked me, lots of people shook my hand, and a handful told me it was the highlight of their evening. That felt pretty darn good.<br /><br />The total number of people who walked by while I was set up was probably closer to 200. My usual greeting was, "Would you like to look at the moon? It's fast and free." It's funny, you get that many people coming by and you start to notice patterns. Here's what I observed:<br /><br />1. Women of all ages were far more likely to come over for a look than men. Many couples came by because the woman wanted a look and basically dragged the guy over. I don't know if that has to do with (stupid) male aloofness vs. a tendency for women to be more personable, or a vast untapped astronomical curiosity amongst womankind*, or what, but the difference between the sexes was pretty striking. However, out of the people who actually looked through the scope I'd say the questions and complements were about evenly distributed. In parting, women tended to, "Thank you so much, that was really wonderful!", with a ten-thousand-watt smile, and men tended to a quick but heartfelt, "Thanks", with eye contact, and a handshake.<br /><br />*Sadly, I'm not joking about this; I do think that contemporary society and the educational system tend to steer women away from math and science, and it would not surprise me if the pool of people who would engage with science if it were more approachable was skewed toward women.<br /><br />2. Willingness to look was basically inversely related to age. I did get plenty of young people to look, from tweens up to young marrieds, but the accept rate was a lot higher in middle-aged and elderly people. I think this is because--and I say this as a former teen and twentysomething whose memory is not perfect but still too sharp for comfort--most people in their teens and twenties have their heads up their butts. It's an ailment that is usually fixed, if it's fixed, by living long enough to get over yourself. (If you find that offensive, wait until you're in your mid-30s and see if you're still offended before you take me to task. And in the meantime, get off my damn lawn!)<br /><br />3. Among the ethnically diverse passersby I didn't notice any patterns in terms of who would look and who wouldn't. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever, most people were curious and openly so.<br /><br />4. Smart-alecks were rare, and they were all young men (to a man, as it were). And they all said the same thing.<br /><br />Me (pointing to telescope): "Hey, would you like to look at the moon?"<br />Them (glancing skyward): "Nah, I can see it just fine."<br /><br />I would have thought that would really get on my nerves, but it didn't. I was offering a free service, and if people didn't want to look, okay. If they wanted to get a quip out of it, okay, poor choice, but not my loss. Plus, it was really easy for me to be the bigger man (cuz I'm fat--ha, Mike, said it before you!) <span style="font-style: italic;">because </span>about half the time the dude who smarted off would get dragged over to the telescope by his wife or girlfriend and end up looking anyway, and watching the battle between gratitude and embarrassment in his demeanor afterwards was, I'm sad to say, extremely satisfying.<br /><br />5. Anyone who asked more than two questions would eventually ask, "How much does a setup like this cost?" And with only one exception, everyone who asked was shocked--shocked I tell you!--to learn that the scope currently goes for <a href="http://www.telescope.com/control/product/%7Ecategory_id=cassegrains/%7Epcategory=telescopes/%7Eproduct_id=09820">less than $250</a>. The one exception was a group of starving students who were impressed by how much better the view was than that given by their telescope, which reportedly cost $30 but "didn't work". The old rule--don't buy a telescope anywhere that also sells underwear--<a href="http://www.scopereviews.com/begin.html">still applies</a>. And, yes, Toys-R-Us sells underwear. You've been warned.<br /><br />Final thoughts: man, I had a blast. Any time you can single-handedly make 144 people happy in less than three hours counts as a big win (har har, obligatory Annabel Chong joke, etc.). If there are any raging egotists out there (on the internet? Nah!), sidewalk astronomy probably has the highest people-saying-nice-things-about-you-to-effort ratio of any conceivable activity. I had not considered this as a potential draw before; I just wanted to show some people the moon.<br /><br />Here's the bottom line: every time I look through a telescope, I am blown away. Every. Single. Time. We spend so much time and money on devices that bore us or frustrate us or piss us off. It's nice to use one that doesn't just tickle my sense of wonder, but smacks it across the room Hulk-style. The only thing better than that is sharing the experience with others--the more, the better. That's what the 100 Hours of Astronomy and the <a href="http://www.astronomy2009.org/">International Year of Astronomy</a> are all about. So happily for me there is a global initiative to do what I was going to do anyway.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />Photo taken from downtown Claremont, about 7:45 PM on Friday, April 3, by afocal projection, using an Orion Apex 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope, Orion Sirius Plossl 25mm eyepiece, and Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-77775236524094774752009-03-31T00:52:00.000-07:002009-03-31T02:06:44.640-07:00Phases for Earthlings<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI-ZAUfWbb2yBy1CBPxrRagMcetdVwsw1MUHRzCOBHI13YKuP-UUU2X_AteNIoNzr0fCRAgt_1STyixe051Kosv9i7UGXt4Vd9HCZBYzJhbt88m_awCzSTC0d52NP3-dvbVyVt/s1600-h/Crescent+moon+and+Venus.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI-ZAUfWbb2yBy1CBPxrRagMcetdVwsw1MUHRzCOBHI13YKuP-UUU2X_AteNIoNzr0fCRAgt_1STyixe051Kosv9i7UGXt4Vd9HCZBYzJhbt88m_awCzSTC0d52NP3-dvbVyVt/s400/Crescent+moon+and+Venus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319263537653263074" border="0" /></a><br />This is fake. A bit. It's a composite of two objects taken on two different days using two different telescopes. The moon shot I took this evening. The tiny crescent is Venus, which I photographed on March 17. Venus is below the horizon now, so if you're looking to replicate that shot you'll have to wait a few weeks and then catch it on the upswing just before sunrise. I put them together because they're both in crescent phase, which tells us something.<br /><br />Until I got into amateur astronomy about a year and a half ago I never gave the moon a second thought. Occasionally I noted that it was out in the daytime; like most cosmic provincials I did not realize that the moon is "out" during the day every bit as much as it is at night. I also did not understand that Venus is both the morning and the evening star, just not both at once. These things are obvious, though, if you think about them for even a few minutes.<br /><br />When the moon is full it is opposite the sun in the sky, which means it rises when the sun sets and sets when the sun rises. Conversely, the new moon is "new" because it is between us and the sun and therefore the side facing us is lit only faintly by Earthshine, which is not nearly enough light to make it show up next to the sun. Occasionally the new moon gets precisely between the Earth and the sun and we get a solar eclipse, and occasionally the Earth gets precisely between the sun and the full moon and we have a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses may start at any time of day or night but they can only occur when the moon is full, so you can only <span style="font-style: italic;">see </span>one at night.<br /><br />In between new and full moons the moon is either ahead of the sun or behind the sun in the sky (from our geocentric point of view), and by the end of one cycle the time the moon has spent in the sky during our days will equal the amount of time it has spent in the sky during our nights. If you don't believe me, go outside and look, and report back in a month.<br /><br />If you see a thin crescent moon in a dark sky it will always be fairly close to the sun, either at sunset (waxing) or sunrise (waning), and the horns of the crescent will face up into the sky and not down toward the horizon. Again, this is obvious after a moment's reflection: if the sky is dark, the sun is below the horizon, and if the moon is above the horizon then the side that is lit is the side that is "down" (horizon-wards) to an Earth-bound observer, so the horns of the crescent have to point up. It can't work any other way.<br /><br />It should also be obvious that you can only see a crescent phase if an object is closer than the Earth to the sun. Think about Mars, the next planet out. Mars looks completely "full" when it is behind the Sun as seen from Earth (or would, if we could see it in the glare), and when it is opposite the sun in our sky (i.e., at the two planets' closest approach). When it is a quarter-orbit ahead or behind, it looks gibbous, but we will never see a "quarter Mars" or a "crescent Mars" as long as we are on Earth. The only objects we will ever see in those phases are Mercury, Venus, and our own moon. It should have occurred to me sooner, back at <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2007/09/dr-vector-discovers-universe.html">the beginning of all of this</a>, that it is impossible to see a crescent Jupiter from Earth; such a view can only be had from a vantage point that is farther from the sun than is Jupiter!<br /><br />If you like, you should be able to prove all of this to yourself by drawing some orbits as concentric rings, drawing in some planets, and thinking about what phases you would see from various vantage points in different orbits. Better yet, you can go outside, look up, and watch it happen. Best of all is when you can look up and understand what you see, because you've made a little <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery">orrery </a>out of paper or <a href="http://www.orrerymaker.com/">brass </a>or <a href="http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/">pixels </a>or in the theater of your imagination. Now you have a little piece of the cosmos whirling around in your head, and though you may forget some details or have to look up to check the phase of the moon, you will never be entirely lost in the sky again. (You may get very irritated with movies and books that include the moon for ambience, because they almost always get it wrong, and in doing so violate not just physics but also geometry.)<br /><br />Why this, why now? It's the <a href="http://www.astronomy2009.org/">International Year of Astronomy</a>, and all over the world stargazers are gearing up for <a href="http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/">100 Hours of Astronomy</a>. One of the goals is to get more people looking up than ever have in the history of our species--and, more ambitiously, to help them understand what they see, and where they are in the cosmos. It's all in honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo turning his telescope to the heavens, which brings us back to the crescent Venus, seen at top through the roiling chemical stew of the LA basin.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaaHLP-SZlbrOo1bmr0vmkmhp-uehWIwVI2CYGq4WwsfCeFtS-jBzqBVoJGBuD-GwAm08gYWpLoCWRp45jNFFa1E1kdNSRubjoRcS5LvnjwkUKtkfSdF13QqEV_pmy1X-_JZ6_/s1600-h/Phases+of+Venus.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaaHLP-SZlbrOo1bmr0vmkmhp-uehWIwVI2CYGq4WwsfCeFtS-jBzqBVoJGBuD-GwAm08gYWpLoCWRp45jNFFa1E1kdNSRubjoRcS5LvnjwkUKtkfSdF13QqEV_pmy1X-_JZ6_/s400/Phases+of+Venus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319269813866680370" border="0" /></a><br />Galileo was the first to see that Venus goes through a full set of phases like the moon. From this he deduced that Venus must circle the sun (right); in a geocentric cosmos it could only ever be "new" or a crescent (left); to be full in such a cosmos it would have to appear opposite the sun in the sky, like the full moon, which it never does for reasons that the diagram on the right makes clear. Galileo's discovery that four little points of light near Jupiter are in fact its moons and circle Jupiter rather than the Earth or sun often gets more press (immortalized in the name of the <a href="http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/">biggest Jupiter mission ever</a>, for example), but the phases of Venus are easier to see and more immediately understood, and were arguably more important in sealing the coffin of the geocentric cosmos.<br /><br />I often think of Galileo, squinting through his telescopes, which were attrocious by modern standards--"plagued by every aberration known to optics"--but nevertheless the first window into the real workings of the cosmos that science ever had, and I feel very humbled, and a little lost. Humbled because I am fantastically spoiled--the first telescope I ever owned is better by far than any telescope built in the first 200 years that telescopes existed--and I doubt if I would have had Galileo's perseverance, to just keep looking. Lost because I grew up in America in the late 20th century, with more information at my disposal than all previous generations of humans combined, and it still took me more than three decades to stop, look up, and notice the very basic cycles--phases of the moon, for example--that govern the rhythms of the living world, that have informed the calendars of every human society as long as societies have existed, and that formed the first really solid step in our species' long climb into enlightenment.<br /><br />So, stop. Just stop. Look up. Keep track of the moon for a month. Draw some orbits and think about what phases mean. Discover, or rediscover, the universe.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-76027493017325638312009-03-20T00:57:00.000-07:002009-03-20T01:04:55.796-07:00Hot volcano-on-volcano action<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDNQeobRTzEQpBYf-XnPCvm_M7KZFsGvlETJmPURP__O2zrgbA-3q-E16MKCV2aeFU12ev9D36jKeEmkocaDSLtwWgW4JNKJnbO-nQXD6MHM3rzR1xNxwxgCan8boRGKEsuJKs/s1600-h/Whammy+kablammy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 277px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDNQeobRTzEQpBYf-XnPCvm_M7KZFsGvlETJmPURP__O2zrgbA-3q-E16MKCV2aeFU12ev9D36jKeEmkocaDSLtwWgW4JNKJnbO-nQXD6MHM3rzR1xNxwxgCan8boRGKEsuJKs/s400/Whammy+kablammy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315176741538941954" border="0" /></a><br />Gotta interrupt the profundity to bring you a link to some BADASS photos of the new volcanoes being born out of the sea near Tonga. Science <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/greengabbro/2009/03/are_the_tonga_earthquake_and_e.php">here </a>and <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/03/rooster_tails_and_new_islands_1.php">here</a>, volcano porn <a href="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/undersea_eruptions_near_tonga.html">here</a> (photos) and here (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7952030.stm">video</a>--hell yeah!).Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-5182106212762188232009-03-14T23:58:00.000-07:002009-03-16T10:13:08.584-07:00Blundering toward productivity, Part 4: cranks, evolution, and humilityIf you're new to this series, you might like to read the previous installments first: <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-1-e.html">here</a> <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-2.html">they</a> <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-3.html">are</a>.<br /><br />It's pretty common for internet cranks in general, and absolutely pandemic for dinosaur cranks in particular, to argue that Ivory Tower so-called experts are all blinkered by orthodoxy and that outsiders with no technical training are better suited to having the big ideas because they are unshackled by the weight of knowing all that has gone before. These people are almost always wrong, because they keep reinventing the wheel, and the wheels they reinvent are often square. That's why I was careful to specify in <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-3.html">Part 3</a> that you hang out with people who are not afraid to look stupid (check) but also know enough to make useful suggestions.<br /><br />The advantage of collaborating with friends is that neither of you mind the occasional stupid comment on either side; laughing those off and going on is worth it for all the good ideas that you'll have that you wouldn't have had otherwise. The disadvantages of listening to cranks are that the ratio of good ideas to stupid comments is very low, that cranks almost always mistake the latter for the former, and that almost by definition cranks are immune to being corrected (if they were willing to accept logic, reason, and the weight of evidence, they wouldn't be cranks). Even if you could somehow engineer a polite crank, who would immediately and humbly accept being corrected when he was wrong, you'd still waste most of your time explaining entry-level stuff and never get to the really good questions.<br /><br />Although in retrospect Mike and I did a lot of this when we were first friends; he didn't know any biology to speak of but had a decent command of math and logic, and I knew a little biology but had never really been schooled in how to think clearly, and we both kind of helped each other up (i.e., took turns smacking each other down) until the conversations we were having anyway started to be applicable to exciting and tractable problems. So if you are an expert you shouldn't waste any time on a crank unless that crank is both potentially remediable and also your friend, and if you're a crank (or any other variety of n00b), learn how to swallow your pride, find a friend who can do likewise, and start climbing together. Maybe that is the definition of a crank: a n00b who mistakes himself for an expert.<br /><br />It's not that cranks don't know a lot of facts. Usually, they know too many facts; they are blinded by their own command of the esoterica of the field in which they are cranks. The problem is that their command of that esoterica does not automatically mean that they are capable of thinking clearly about it; usually the opposite is true. After several bitter years of realizing how muddled is my own thinking, I now think that everyone, without exception, could stand to improve the clarity of their thought, and that the surest sign of this is thinking that you already think well enough.<br /><br />This is like Richard Dawkins's definition of evolution as "the one subject that everyone thinks they understand." If you think you understand evolution, you don't understand it, and the more certain you are, the more grave your misunderstanding. Nor is evolution special: I suspect that this is true of any sufficiently rich field. That doesn't mean that there aren't lots of things that we know about evolution, like the fact that is has happened and continues to happen. It just means that we haven't solved it, in terms of reducing the whole field to anything that can be grasped in a blog post, or a lecture, or a documentary series, or a book, or even a career. Saying you understand evolution is not like saying you understand orbital motion, it's more like saying you understand physics. <span style="font-style: italic;">All </span>of it. The term 'evolutionary biology' is a misnomer: evolution isn't an aspect of a more inclusive phenomenon called biology, biology is an instance of a more inclusive phenomenon called evolution.<br /><br />The partner of useful stupidity is humility. In <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-2.html">Part 2</a> I mentioned two aspects of humility: letting your guard down enough to let out the good ideas will probably let out some dumb ideas at the same time, and sometimes your dumb ideas will trigger someone else's good ideas. Here I am talking about another, deeper level of humility. Not humility in front of another person, but humility before the universe itself. Recognizing that any commonplace object or idea that you take for granted probably stands at the end of an almost impossibly long series of unlikelihoods, most of which have never been explored. Stephen Jay Gould seemed to have a knack for asking questions that most of his colleagues could not even have formulated; he was really good at not just seeing the box and then thinking outside of it, but wondering what it was doing there in the first place. I wonder if he was a biological evolutionist rather than an evolutionary biologist; I suppose Dawkins must be. Too bad they were always at odds (when Gould was still alive), I'll bet they would have had some killer ideas if they could have ever let their guards down around each other.<br /><br />In any case, this is another way to quickly separate serious cranks from potentially remediable n00bs: cranks lack humility. Not just humility toward other people, but toward the universe. The true crank is beset by the dual delusions that the answers are all straightforward, and that he has them and no one else does (except maybe one or two of his fellow cranks; sometimes they run in packs). Look around for someone who doubts if we're even asking the right questions, and chat that person up instead. Not just instead of talking to the crank--instead of doing whatever it was you had planned for the rest of the day.<br /><br />Where am I going with all of this? I have no clue. I just intended to write a little bit about <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-1-e.html">e-mail</a> and the value of conversation. And I'm not going to find out tonight, because right now my need for sleep is greater than my curiosity to see what comes next. Stay tuned, though. I'm probably stupid enough to bring this to a satisfactory close, but it remains to be seen if I have the humility.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-88180822136250562912009-03-14T23:48:00.000-07:002009-03-15T12:18:02.176-07:00Blundering toward productivity, Part 3: smart enough to feel stupid<a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-1-e.html">Part 1</a> is about goofing off as the spawning ground of good ideas. <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-2.html">Part 2</a> is ostensibly about whether the goofing off part can be circumvented, but really about the value of working with smart people who aren't afraid to look stupid. In this post, I answer the second question from Part 1: how can the process of turning undirected play into good ideas be accelerated?<br /><br />The obvious answer, which I intended to write about: have a workshop, get a bunch of smart people from different but interacting disciplines together, and give them time to educate each other AND time to freewheel. I got to experience this for real at the sauropod workshop in Germany last November (see <a href="http://svpow.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/shedloads-of-awesome-part-1-the-humboldt-brachiosaur-remount/">here </a>and <a href="http://svpow.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/shedloads-of-awesome-part-2-mike-and-matts-excellent-adventure/">here</a>). The importance of this is not to be underestimated. This is why we talk about particular institutions having a "critical mass" of workers in a field, and it's why Berkeley was such a fun and inspiring place to be a grad student.<br /><br />Another answer, which I discovered in the course of writing the <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-2.html">previous post</a>: hang out with smart people who you are not afraid to look stupid in front of, and who are not afraid to look stupid in front of you. This is harder than it sounds, because people who know enough to make worthwhile suggestions are prone to being at least a little bit insecure or defensive about their knowledge, especially compared to others. I would be horrible collaborator with many people in my field because I would never let my guard down; it would kill me if they found out how stupid I am capable of being.<br /><br />Given that, a further suggestion would be to consider collaborating with your best friends regardless of what they work on; by being vulnerably, stupidly open with each other, you might have enough good ideas fast enough to either find something midway between your specialties, or for one or the other of you to fall in love with a problem in the other person's field. Hence the project on rabbit heads with Brian. I wasn't particularly interested in rabbit heads but I am interested in pneumaticity and we figured the project would be about rabbit sinuses. It turns out we're going to do something completely different and much more interesting, which was not on the radar for either of us because neither of us had made the necessary discoveries (you would call them observations, but for us they were discoveries), which has roots in some papers we read back at Berkeley but really germinated in the soil of undirected conversation.<br /><br />And this accounts for the feeling that I had when I started this essay, that time spent chatting on e-mail is not always a waste of time. Sometimes it's not just productive time, it's the most productive time it's possible to have. Because it is the spawning ground of new ideas.<br /><br />Chatting on e-mail with distant colleagues is better than exchanging snail-mail letters or not talking, but it's still vastly inferior to meeting in person. In the past year I have spent just over a month with Mike (one evening in LA last summer, two weeks at his house in August, two weeks in Germany in November, one day at the AMNH last month), but out of that month we've gotten two manuscripts mostly written and plans made for at least half a dozen more. A couple we had sketched out on e-mail, but most of them wouldn't exist even in concept if we hadn't had some time to just hang out with fossils. I suppose that is another potential idea-accelerator to add to the list:<br /><br />(1) have lots of wide-ranging conversations<br />(2) don't be afraid to look stupid<br />(3) collaborate with your best friends<br />(4) in person as often as possible<br />(5) with the objects of your investigations at hand<br /><br />If you're an astronomer and there is a physicist you'd like to work with, meet up at the observatory or the cyclotron or more likely the computer lab where you play with your data. If you're a paleontologist or zoologist, go on field trips and museum visits with your collaborators. Happily, that's probably something you were going to anyway. But now you know it's not just a convenience, it's a necessity. And having a few beers together at the end of the day is not a waste of time, it's an investment in your joint idea bank.<br /><br />The other implication of this last one is that if you are on your own and you've got some time to kill, you should probably go to where your potential data is and just let your mind and body wander. There is a great bit in one of David Quammen's essays in which Quammen is roaming the Montana State University library and he comes across Jack Horner sitting on the floor between two rows of shelves with journals spread out all around him. Quammen says, "Hey, Jack, what are you doing here?" Horner looks up and says, "Having ideas." The best part is that the journals weren't even paleo journals, they were ornithology journals.<br /><br />That's yet another important point: it's good to have at least a nodding acquaintance with every field that bears on yours. Which, depending on how broadly you think, might be <a href="http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/mapofscience.html">all of them</a>. And what's more, you should get more than a nodding acquaintance with the ones that are likely to be most important. Birds are living dinosaurs, so if you are looking for new ideas to test about dinosaur biology, it makes sense to camp out in the ornithology section. Crocs are also relevant and elephants are not completely irrelevant, but people have been thinking about dinosaurs as big crocs and slow elephants for a long time. The MSU library run-in happened in the early 90s, when the idea of dinosaurs as stem birds had not yet penetrated paleobiological thought (it still hasn't, fully). Even now, if you were looking to really push things, it would be a good idea.<br /><br />The downside of jumping into a new field instead of just soaking your toes at the shallow end is that it will make you feel stupid. It doesn't matter what line of work you're in, whether it's paleontology or programming or construction, there is something that you are an expert on now that you weren't when you started, whether it is taphonomy or recursive subroutines or knocking down walls. But you weren't an expert when you started, and when you started you probably spent a lot of time feeling stupid. But you learned quickly, partly because you were anxious to get past feeling stupid, and partly because trying dumb stuff is a good way to learn what works and what doesn't.<br /><br />I am starting to think that becoming an expert can be dangerous, because feeling smart feels better than feeling stupid, and the risk inherent in expertise is that you stay put and never push the field as much as you might by taking a risk, feeling stupid for a while, and mastering another body of knowledge.<br /><br />I almost hesitate to say that here on teh intert00bz, where it is often alleged that becoming an expert is dangerous for another reason, which leads to the hopefully non-trivial discussion of cranks in the <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-4.html">next post</a>.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-66026730874605151272009-03-14T23:40:00.000-07:002009-03-15T12:19:30.962-07:00Blundering toward productivity, Part 2: is there a better way to have good ideas?In <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-1-e.html">Part 1</a> I discussed the fact that, in my experience at least, good ideas almost always arise from undirected conversations with friends and colleagues (e.g., goofing off). I ended the post by wondering whether this process can be circumvented or accelerated. This post is about the first of those alternatives: is there another way to have good ideas other than gabbing with informed friends?<br /><br />I doubt it. Mike and I have both noticed that on museum research visits we get a lot more done if we're working with someone else than if we're working alone. And usually that is not because we are sharing the load, like one person taking measurements and the other writing them down. It's because we just notice more and ask more questions.<br /><br />The corollary is make sure you work with the right person. A good collaborator is curious, open-minded, and not afraid to look stupid. When I'm really in the zone on a collaborative project, I say all kinds of stupid things, and frequently have to be reminded of the obvious. And I am lenient when my collaborators say dumb things, because there is more than one kind of dumb statement. We're so used to dumb statements that indicate that someone is not thinking at all that it is hard to realize that sometimes dumb statements mean that someone is thinking <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> hard. So hard that they can't be bothered to remember little details like gravity or the fact that necks must necessarily have a head at one end and a body at the other.<br /><br />Well, why not just guard your inner monologue and not let the stupid stuff out? Because that's what you do for the rest of your time, and because that filter that you set up to catch the stupid stuff might also catch the really brilliant stuff. At the very least, it will slow down the flow. There is some necessary humility here. Not just the humility to not be afraid to look stupid, but also the humility to realize that you are not going to get to all the good ideas yourself, and even your wrong or dumb ideas might jar something loose in your collaborator's head.<br /><br />Hmm. I have read that you write reports when you have found answers that need sharing, and you write <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html">essays </a>to find answers in the first place, and sometimes to questions you didn't know you were asking. I started this section thinking that I was just going to write glowingly about the value of batting ideas around with someone else. But I think I am coming to the view that openness, verging on stupidity, is not only necessary, but also the answer to the <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-3.html">next question</a>.<br /><br />For another recent defense of stupidity as a crucial part of science, go <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/2009/03/the_value_of_stupidity.php">here</a>, and please note that the linked paper is <a href="http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/121/11/1771">free</a>.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-90984856625625027642009-03-14T21:25:00.000-07:002009-03-15T11:58:52.045-07:00Blundering toward productivity, Part 1: e-mail and goofing offAnother post inspired by someone else's post. <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/">Scott Aaronson</a> recently crossed the E-mail Event Horizon, and sent a<a href="http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=388"> report </a>from inside.<br /><br />I have not crossed the EEH, but I have been through brief e-mail storms, during which I have spent an entire working day doing nothing but answering e-mails that can't be put off. Now, when I was a grad student I sometimes blew a whole day goofing off on e-mail, but that was different. Mostly, though, I am able to plow through necessary e-mail in about an hour and get down to the day's work. Although it is still kinda shocking that, on average, I spend an eighth of my workday checking and answering e-mail. On the other hand, there is no question that e-mail is a huge productivity booster overall, at least for me, because it circumvents so many meetings and vastly accelerates the pace of collaborative research and writing.<br /><br />It is easy to get carried away and let a focused e-mail exchange with a colleague metastasize into a rambling conversation with a friend. Sometimes that eats up whole mornings. That used to bother me, but not so much these days. At least part of that 'virtual community' BS is true. In a traditional office I would be having water-cooler conversations with whatever chumps I happened to be stuck with. Thanks to e-mail, I can have those conversations with a distributed network of my favorite people, many of whom are not in the same town, or the same state, or even the same continent.<br /><br />I had a minor epiphany on my recent research trip to the AMNH. I was hanging out with Brian Kraatz and we were kicking around ideas for a project on rabbit skulls (yes, really). To an outside observer, it would have looked like the Real Work/Goofing Off split was about 20/80. But the ideas that we ended up chasing all came out of what would have looked like goofing off.<br /><br />I had a similar experience when I was visiting Mike in England in August. We'd usually end each day at the dining room table, playing games and just freewheeling. One night we got to talking about sauropod vertebrae (<a href="http://svpow.wordpress.com/">gasp</a>!) and some things that do not make sense, and after we'd scribbled up two or three pages of scrap paper with notes and diagrams we looked at each other and thought, "Hey, this could be a paper." It's in review right now; I'll let you know if it ever sees print.<br /><br />The epiphany I had in New York is not that good research ideas <span style="font-style: italic;">sometimes </span>emerge from the most apparantly random conversations. It's that they almost <span style="font-style: italic;">always </span>do. This is nothing new--when I look back, the guts of most of my papers started out as a few motes of inspiration distilled from undirected yakk sessions with friends and colleagues. When I was just starting out with undergrad research, I'd meet with Rich Cifelli in his office and we'd just bat ideas back and forth. This turns out to be a good way not just to have new ideas but to make new observations. Rich and I figured out a lot of sauropod morphology because one of us would point at some feature and say, "That's weird. Is it always like that?" and then we'd go check. Same thing with Brian and the bunny heads in New York.<br /><br />So far this is all pedestrian. What I'm really curious about is, can this process be (1) <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-2.html">circumvented</a>, or (2) <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2009/03/blundering-toward-productivity-part-3.html">accelerated</a>?Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-45454079591819713402009-03-09T14:01:00.000-07:002009-03-09T14:40:46.936-07:00Another dead snapper taleFirst, if you haven't already read Darren's <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/03/how_to_rot_down_dead_bodies.php">awesome post on turning dead animals into skeletons</a>, do so now. Look out for the amazing line, "Stig and I once microwaved a dead cat and the results were outstanding."<br /><br />That reminded me that I have told the story of <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2006/02/still-more-chelydran-awesomeness.html">one of my dead snappers</a>, but not the other. As far as I can tell, anyway. So here goes.<br /><br />I was working at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History as a grad student, and I had put the word out that I was looking for a big dead snapping turtle. A few weeks later, I got a hit. One of the other grad students had been on a hike at the local lake and seen a dead snapper, so he'd pushed it up into a metal culvert to hide it from scavengers, both human and otherwise. A few days later he told my friend and partner-in-crime, Julian (same Julian as in the other snapper story linked above), a few days after that Julian told me, and a few days after that we finally hopping in Julian's truck and went out to get that thing.<br /><br />Keep in mind that this was May in Oklahoma, when the temperature and the humidity were both hovering in the high 90s. And that the snapper had been up in that culvert for a week and a half by the time Jules and I went after it, and dead for an unknown additional period.<br /><br />I waded into the ankle-deep water and dragged the thing out of the culvert by the shell. It was huge, with a carapace 15 inches long and a head three inches wide. Weighed upward of 20 pounds. It was also to the "bratwurst" stage of decomposition, in which the head, tail, and all four limbs were extended and swollen up like unholy sausages (the putative existence of holy sausages is a topic for another post). I didn't want to touch the flesh, which had the texture of gelatin and the rich aroma of rotting horse ass. So I tried to gingerly pick it up by the edge of the shell using only the fingertips of my right hand. Bad idea--as I was turning it over, the entire weight of the animal came down on my right thumbnail, cracked it in half, and bent it back at a 90 degree angle from the quick. I howled, dropped the snapper back in the drink, and ran to shore where I gritted my teeth and snapped the broken nail back down over the bleeding quick where it belonged. Only then did I realize that in my haste I had run smack into a little stand of poison ivy, to which I am seriously allergic.<br /><br />Somehow we got the dead snapper into a couple of trash bags and into the bed of Julian's truck. Then we went back to my place, put it on the back porch, and took turns showering with Technu to get the poison ivy oil off. I also bandaged my thumb, but ended up losing most of the nail anyway. Not fun.<br /><br />I wasn't sure what to do with the snapper. Our duplex backed up on a big wild plot at the edge of town, and I was tempted to use ants, but I didn't want to expose the thing to scavengers, which were both diverse (raccoons, opossums, coyotes, dogs, etc.) and abundant. I had used maceration for the mummified snapper but the results were awesomely greasy. I was interested in burying it but had no experience with prepping carcasses that way.<br /><br />The upshot is that I didn't do anything with it for several days, during which it was sitting on my back porch inside two shopping bags in the 90-degree heat. Jules and I had gotten it on a Saturday.<br /><br />The following Thursday night Vicki and I were on an evening stroll about the neighborhood, about two blocks from home, and the wind changed just right and we could both smell that snapper rotting. Vicki looked at me and sternly said, "You are going to get up tomorrow morning and bury that thing."<br /><br />I did. It was simply horrific. I opened the trash bags, grabbed the bottom ends, and pulled up. The snapper slid out on its back. Or rather its remains did. All that was left was a greasy articulated skeleton, a couple of gallons of really evil greenish-black fluid, and about a million grains of white rice. Only they weren't grains of rice, they were maggots. The stench hit me like the proverbial freight train.<br /><br />I dug a hole about a foot deep in the yard, lined the bottom with a plastic trash bag, slid the snapper in with the shovel, buried it, and covered the spot with a few logs from the woodpile. I say it like I just did all that stuff. In fact it took most of an hour because holding my breath I could only work for about 30 seconds at a time, before I had to go to the upwind corner of the yard and just breathe. The stench was beyond anything I have ever experienced before or since. I didn't know that a scent could be that powerful. I hosed down the porch for a long time, too.<br /><br />All that summer I watered the logs over the burial plot daily. This kept them moist during the long hot summer, when temperatures got over 110 F for a solid month, and hopefully promoted lots of biological activity in the soil below. I flipped the logs daily to collect rolly-pollies (or pill bugs, if you insist) for my baby box turtles. In August I moved the logs and carefully dug up the turtle. Amazingly, the bones were entirely defleshed and degreased. I cleaned them up with soap and water and they came out shiny white, with no bleach or peroxide. I still have the skull, which is beautiful and impressive, and if I wasn't so lazy I would have included a photo of it with this post. Maybe next time.<br /><br />Anyway, I've been ardently pro-burial for carcass preparation ever since. Give it a shot, it's a great experience.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-27398711597421490082009-02-04T00:08:00.000-08:002009-02-04T00:12:47.490-08:00Onward and upwardThe cool thing about being on a learning curve is that you regularly do stuff that makes your <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post.html">previous efforts</a> look pretty lame. Like this (click to embiggify):<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLOZK4_FwfrJJW62dvkMvE9QBVTOGWXF0nGaF91MPHQF8cCx1mE3yfr7XhJDvJQ9iO4F3q4KqQF_FfbzzaYwxX3Cl4cBL9MDCh8QsP6kNwxql7h2LNcW5rvDQys4hvUbpWXH0/s1600-h/Lunar+Alps+and+Apennines+2009-02-03.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLOZK4_FwfrJJW62dvkMvE9QBVTOGWXF0nGaF91MPHQF8cCx1mE3yfr7XhJDvJQ9iO4F3q4KqQF_FfbzzaYwxX3Cl4cBL9MDCh8QsP6kNwxql7h2LNcW5rvDQys4hvUbpWXH0/s400/Lunar+Alps+and+Apennines+2009-02-03.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298851646604845826" border="0" /></a><br />For technical details and more like it, go <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/mathew.wedel/SBVAAAtCSUSB?feat=directlink">here</a>.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-37869858634334290842009-01-31T10:57:00.001-08:002009-01-31T11:44:06.399-08:00A big night in a big yearEveryone who is even remotely interested in the living world knows that 2009 is the bicentennial of Darwin's birth (1809) and the sesquicentennial of the first publication of <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Origin of Species</span> (1859). And this year is the 400th anniversary of Galileo first turning a telescope to the heavens and the publication of Kepler's <span style="font-style: italic;">Astronomia Nova</span> (1609), in honor of which the UN and the International Astronomical Union have declared 2009 the <a href="http://www.astronomy2009.org/">International Year of Astronomy</a>.<br /><br />There are a couple of other astro-themed anniversaries this year, too. This July 20th will be the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (1969). Bringing things right up to the 21st century, January 4th and 25th were the 5th anniversaries of the landings of the rovers <span style="font-style: italic;">Spirit </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Opportunity</span>, respectively, on Mars (2004). That's right, folks--it seems Mars missions either fail spectacularly or succeed beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The primary missions of the twin <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover">Mars Exploration Rovers</a> were only 90 days apiece, and here they are still going strong 1854 and 1833 days later (as of this morning), more than 20 times longer. Bring that up the next time some tool complains about NASA's budget.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMZm7ij_YHL-g_viXTMgYImKLYm6DZdpEjKsML5lys_03DTGZ11uyKkSABiKwJFkH4yljr4NAruw76_R5mcEFmsG7RZBmZ4ihSnaLUvepGz7Dva9DIHLiios6oOFfvfAPPewv/s1600-h/Moon+and+Venus+2009-01-30.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMZm7ij_YHL-g_viXTMgYImKLYm6DZdpEjKsML5lys_03DTGZ11uyKkSABiKwJFkH4yljr4NAruw76_R5mcEFmsG7RZBmZ4ihSnaLUvepGz7Dva9DIHLiios6oOFfvfAPPewv/s400/Moon+and+Venus+2009-01-30.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297543090127032034" border="0" /></a><br />Last night I celebrated two of Galileo's discoveries: craters and "seas" on the moon, which showed that celestial bodies were not perfect and unchanging spheres, and the phases of Venus, which confirmed the hypothesis that the planets orbit the sun rather than the Earth. Andy Farke (a.k.a. the <a href="http://openpaleo.blogspot.com/">Open Source Paleontologist</a>, who published <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004252">a paper on <span style="font-style: italic;">Triceratops </span>combat</a> just this week in--naturally--an open access journal) brought some of his excellent home-brewed beer to the traditional Wedel Friday Night Fish-Stick Picnic, and we spent a little time cruising the sky. We got lucky, too--the atmosphere, which is usually a roiling swamp of turbulence and smog, was as still and clear as I've ever seen it down here. Lately Venus has been so smeared out by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing">bad seeing</a> that it looks like a hyperactive star, but last night we could see it for the planet that it is, and in a crescent phase not to different from that of the moon.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2vsrVJVd2PGRCnFPJWf9kU0xA-oG41wFQtDIoHM3gK1rOMAqAL1Iyi1-Mk9u-PdOWRfD59GBe5bofATRAxnifbH5wBwW2RgZgwOJZ7Aps-SwJA566x5iuPTPFFiZrJYfpuZl/s1600-h/Moon+and+Venus+projection+for+2009-02-27.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2vsrVJVd2PGRCnFPJWf9kU0xA-oG41wFQtDIoHM3gK1rOMAqAL1Iyi1-Mk9u-PdOWRfD59GBe5bofATRAxnifbH5wBwW2RgZgwOJZ7Aps-SwJA566x5iuPTPFFiZrJYfpuZl/s400/Moon+and+Venus+projection+for+2009-02-27.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5297545303367739154" border="0" /></a><br />Next month will be even better. As Venus continues on around the sun toward <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_conjunction">inferior conjunction</a>, it will appear <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phases_Venus.jpg">larger and even more crescentic</a>. On the evening of February 27, just after sunset, the crescent Venus will be right next to the much larger crescent moon above the western horizon (as shown above in a screencap from the free planetarium program <a href="http://www.stellarium.org/">Stellarium</a>). Get out and take a look. It will be even better in binoculars or a telescope, so start thinking about how you're going to make that happen. I promise it will be worth it.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-80382338508563338762009-01-06T16:41:00.000-08:002009-01-08T01:42:17.875-08:00Gettin' squirrelly<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj10oJQsmB2zPFwfc4o3h062JJmGsZlMKPkqn2-hvplwpYinPWEd9UTcCL2xdRKrbFGFUQsR_2S66HKLhM6UxfMcZ0ImMwgrOc0sNtNLsLbLJikX9CwEwzSiZoAASnQUpla7YKR/s1600-h/Squirrel+through+C70+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj10oJQsmB2zPFwfc4o3h062JJmGsZlMKPkqn2-hvplwpYinPWEd9UTcCL2xdRKrbFGFUQsR_2S66HKLhM6UxfMcZ0ImMwgrOc0sNtNLsLbLJikX9CwEwzSiZoAASnQUpla7YKR/s400/Squirrel+through+C70+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288367245224188738" border="0" /></a><br />People come to things by circuitous routes. I have heard of more than one person who got into paleontology through art; they started out by drawing dinosaurs and graduated to studying dinosaurs (not everyone makes that transition...).<br /><br />I sometimes wonder if I will eventually become a birder. This thought first came to me when I was <a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2006/04/good-reads.html">ODing on natural history</a> a couple years ago. I dig watching animals, pretty much without reservation. I have a big aquarium and keep fish, for most of my life I kept turtles, and every time I've bumped into an animal--okay, a vertebrate--outdoors I've observed it with great interest, regardless of exactly what kind it is. You can go fishing and you can go herping, but those require going where the fish and herps are, and even then there's no guarantee you'll see any. You can't usually just "go mammaling" because usually mammals are either absent or laying low. But you can walk out the door just about anytime and see birds. So it seems reasonable to me that someone with a broad interest in watching critters might end up as a birder because birds are there to watch.<br /><br />Any committed birders out there are probably appalled at my lack of passion. In which case, hold on, you ain't seen nothin' yet.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jAtsjnS6XgE_BBY57ig3CoFyPAWBgKZJ3262HzSaZhjliKfnYSxj06jpUtJ8cdaFv8_1BvyzA3oxpzvgZzARgNcImfOdbezDiqx5tHfs4ORsLf0TD6A2ei8e2TLqZ9caHycu/s1600-h/Squirrel+head+on+-+800.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3jAtsjnS6XgE_BBY57ig3CoFyPAWBgKZJ3262HzSaZhjliKfnYSxj06jpUtJ8cdaFv8_1BvyzA3oxpzvgZzARgNcImfOdbezDiqx5tHfs4ORsLf0TD6A2ei8e2TLqZ9caHycu/s400/Squirrel+head+on+-+800.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288368014715490482" border="0" /></a><br />Over the holidays I blew a hundred bucks worth of Christmas money on a spotting scope. Partly because I'd always wanted one, partly because I intended to use it as a travel telescope for those dark Oklahoma skies (a successful venture, I might add). Today I was just monkeying around with it and decided to try taking some pictures of birds in the back yard. I didn't get any birds, but I did get some good pix of the neighborhood squirrel. If I do ever become a birder, it will be at least partly because I enjoy--in the immortal words of Mike Taylor--<a href="http://drvector.blogspot.com/2008/05/shoot-moon-digiscoping-101.html#7095073618879770053">badgering around with telescopes</a>.<br /><br />UPDATE: I'm not alone! <a href="http://www.birddigiscoping.com/2006/01/why-i-bird.html">"I took my very first bird photograph through my astronomical telescope in 1998."</a><br /><br />Taken by afocal projection using a Celestron C70 spotting scope, Orion 32mm Plossl eyepiece, and Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-41579755837230664352009-01-05T23:13:00.001-08:002009-01-05T23:36:02.084-08:00Craters all the way down<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQzVtZpP6sD2rPzMkWkIBplqG_kWKgmbV2Y-hJo8qnZBnzPhn1qzpuN38671vO-GfHb1XpM5gIjFQUDtLDxr1R3ZpvBP9LcpYrzkDY_abscBudEpURuWDwTRacR3MlqkrTjmL/s1600-h/Southern+highlands+2009-01-04.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQzVtZpP6sD2rPzMkWkIBplqG_kWKgmbV2Y-hJo8qnZBnzPhn1qzpuN38671vO-GfHb1XpM5gIjFQUDtLDxr1R3ZpvBP9LcpYrzkDY_abscBudEpURuWDwTRacR3MlqkrTjmL/s400/Southern+highlands+2009-01-04.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288075669267181346" border="0" /></a><br />Believe it or not, there are a few features on the moon that are not direct products or epiphenomena of asteroid and comet impacts. There are some small, fairly obscure volcanoes, some lava-carved valleys and collapsed lava tubes, and a few scarps produced through faulting. But these are all dwarfed, physically, in number, and in importance, by craters and impact basins. To a first approximation, everything you see on the moon is a crater, part of a crater, a crater flooded with lava (the maria or lunar seas), part of the rim of a crater since buried under lava (the lone mountains from the previous post), ejecta blown out by a crater (the bright rays extending from "young" craters (i.e., those less than a billion years old), valleys gouged by impact ejecta (the valleys from two posts ago), or in some other way a consequence of an impact. This is especially obvious in the southern highlands, which were never flooded by mare lavas and are thus just piles of superimposed craters, like the oft-rebuilt Troy of Schliemann.<br /><br />The biggest crater visible above is Clavius. It's 140 miles across, 2 miles deep, and about four billion years old. It is also the site of Clavius Base in <span style="font-style: italic;">2001</span>. Speaking of, last year was the 40th anniversary of <span style="font-style: italic;">2001</span>, this July will be the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, and this December will be the 37th anniversary of humans not going beyond Earth orbit anymore. The most optimistic projections for NASA and the Chinese space agency do not put people back on the moon before the 50th anniversary of the first landing, and it may be much later.<br /><br />I wonder what future generations will think of our half century of going nowhere. Recall that the original point of the space station--the only reason anyone wanted one to begin with--was to be a launchpad for the moon and Mars.<br /><br />Mega sigh.<br /><br />Taken by afocal projection with an Orion XT6 Dobsonian telescope and Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera, through an Orion Sirius 25mm Plossl eyepiece and Orion Shorty 2x Barlow lens.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-31785068224290835362008-12-19T06:18:00.001-08:002009-01-01T15:49:27.763-08:00Sunset on the Sea of Rains<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihzPgKcxBgW05R3uWFDlF6D0IgnvOgFbt75tuaDjP84iZJvDh2TjjqvwdqEfdWOKDjVJtgbC4l1WbbdBbr9a3T2woAUBi89ThRMn7g395LIifKS-GU0TbQ_9ZWq-j6G7vn-xQE/s1600-h/2008-12-19+Mare+Imbrium+close.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihzPgKcxBgW05R3uWFDlF6D0IgnvOgFbt75tuaDjP84iZJvDh2TjjqvwdqEfdWOKDjVJtgbC4l1WbbdBbr9a3T2woAUBi89ThRMn7g395LIifKS-GU0TbQ_9ZWq-j6G7vn-xQE/s400/2008-12-19+Mare+Imbrium+close.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281506413868559138" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRYRZk6TK6LIe7cKfba31cTB16s61oQsWSkF4181NLY8ZGhrfElUmYQLQOgkmWc0mxs25Q8ODeYwFVRSjNdt7noAGqjHT7u3FjQDrXfuI1ALl3lsic_BtOkjlebEVz4qoNt7y/s1600-h/2008-12-19+Mare+Imbrium+full.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRYRZk6TK6LIe7cKfba31cTB16s61oQsWSkF4181NLY8ZGhrfElUmYQLQOgkmWc0mxs25Q8ODeYwFVRSjNdt7noAGqjHT7u3FjQDrXfuI1ALl3lsic_BtOkjlebEVz4qoNt7y/s400/2008-12-19+Mare+Imbrium+full.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281506326837760226" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy8kEVzk1M_QGd1R8D2_czHig9pFa1A6jF_-fz2x5nTg-ZAGTES_BnQXBfwdATnzDo7dg2GKVTXTglqeQKWXx49bCwAyv_1ZLILtzE77hij9wv1yhEyTUXTXM_fmDcVAJgwEZ/s1600-h/2008-12-19+Last+quarter+moon.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfy8kEVzk1M_QGd1R8D2_czHig9pFa1A6jF_-fz2x5nTg-ZAGTES_BnQXBfwdATnzDo7dg2GKVTXTglqeQKWXx49bCwAyv_1ZLILtzE77hij9wv1yhEyTUXTXM_fmDcVAJgwEZ/s400/2008-12-19+Last+quarter+moon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281506219191852530" border="0" /></a><br />All of these pictures were taken by afocal projection with an Orion XT6 Dobsonian telescope and Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera. The first two shots were made through an Orion Sirius 25mm Plossl eyepiece and Orion Shorty 2x Barlow lens. The bottom shot was made through an Orion Sirius 32mm Plossl.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-12942461006783256692008-12-14T01:21:00.000-08:002008-12-14T02:05:03.956-08:00Sea of Crises<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSDecQfEdDZl7Hun2wzEbVd7vgEk-ozbOuRfwoIh6EXtpP0-AnU5uUchMLTUL6-uzqGa30Xv3wWtDaHv9nOwCkWRMqmzghCcHkWhVHh8y3kQ60BEyOnA8hutluJq3MoULo6Sx/s1600-h/Mare+Crisium+2008-12-13.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSDecQfEdDZl7Hun2wzEbVd7vgEk-ozbOuRfwoIh6EXtpP0-AnU5uUchMLTUL6-uzqGa30Xv3wWtDaHv9nOwCkWRMqmzghCcHkWhVHh8y3kQ60BEyOnA8hutluJq3MoULo6Sx/s400/Mare+Crisium+2008-12-13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279574974041436626" border="0" /></a><br />a.k.a. Mare Crisium. A basalt-filled impact basin 376 miles in diameter and more than 3.8 billion years old. It's got some killer mountains around it, and it's a good place to go exploring right after a full moon, when the rest of the moon is still washed out in direct sunlight.<br /><br />Conditions were suboptimal tonight. It was windy so the atmosphere was just roiling through the eyepiece, which makes for less than crisp photos. But it's supposed to rain all week so I gave it a whirl anyway.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhla5unIT9nDTnK6JiuLomVcQZm6eV18a7R-KgH_VguKlq2vhTCSSXrIJKkPUgcfFLZbu7WrVAYpbkq4_rJuZtThU3PZ1BM-VtMQHAJQy6DeAOrouBk3boyaTa_-SLJgyrlqFuQ/s1600-h/Furnerius+Petavius+Vendelinus+Langrenus+2008-12-13.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhla5unIT9nDTnK6JiuLomVcQZm6eV18a7R-KgH_VguKlq2vhTCSSXrIJKkPUgcfFLZbu7WrVAYpbkq4_rJuZtThU3PZ1BM-VtMQHAJQy6DeAOrouBk3boyaTa_-SLJgyrlqFuQ/s400/Furnerius+Petavius+Vendelinus+Langrenus+2008-12-13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279576498585022994" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNhUMZbeKLxQI4XD-SOd78SUx-UbVihZgAOA9yGhU_p0oQk-gPw-s1hXVD5fxZLTNHb4TPCFWNycQZou2X2BkT9vZ0EMLmw_pcjX4ah_4LF1546QyFvMbpDpHYxdavHB71bpb5/s1600-h/Furnerius+Petavius+Vendelinus+Langrenus+2008-12-13+labeled.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNhUMZbeKLxQI4XD-SOd78SUx-UbVihZgAOA9yGhU_p0oQk-gPw-s1hXVD5fxZLTNHb4TPCFWNycQZou2X2BkT9vZ0EMLmw_pcjX4ah_4LF1546QyFvMbpDpHYxdavHB71bpb5/s400/Furnerius+Petavius+Vendelinus+Langrenus+2008-12-13+labeled.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279579886321129298" border="0" /></a><br />Southeast of Mare Crisium are four big craters in an arc: Langrenus, Vendelinus, Petavius, and Furnerius, in order from closest to Crisium to furthest away. There are also a couple of cool valleys, Valis Palitzsch and Vallis Snellius. There are no true water-carved valleys on the moon. Some lunar valleys formed by faulting, some were carved by flowing lava (strange but true), and some are collapsed lava tubes.<br /><br />Valles Palitzsch and Snellius formed another way: they were gouged out by immense chunks of crust blasted away from the impacts that formed the maria. <a href="http://the-moon.wikispaces.com/Vallis+Palitzsch">Vallis Palitzsch</a> is 82 miles long and 25 miles wide at the fat end. For reference, Mount Everest is less than 6 miles tall and Mauna Kea is just over 6 miles tall if you measure from the ocean floor. Neither would amount to much compared to the block of crust that dug out Vallis Palitzsch when it landed.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cityastronomy.com/rheita-snellius.htm">Vallis Snellius</a> is another secondary impact feature, created by a chunk of debris from the impact that formed Mare Nectaris. It is narrower but longer, 367 miles long in all. Imagine a piece of rock several miles wide rolling from LA to San Francisco (actually some puritans would probably like to see that happen).<br /><br />I wonder about the mountains, craters, and so on that were in the way of those juggernauts. I would like to have been around to watch them get flattened.<br /><br />Some fun, huh?Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-77854901251234200752008-12-13T12:03:00.001-08:002008-12-13T12:07:54.466-08:00Happy holidays from Hubble<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz197Mf46sYRAUwZ6F2WXVNnvu8tZgdCicoG4vweYnwnLuaVXTgDzO06ZQT6xFudGwzpTiPC749zaCMcArdXBlBHtfqtxDQYs-Lj4iulzj8fknH522Y2wnb4E6083JV0NU2NTz/s1600-h/hubble+ring+galaxy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz197Mf46sYRAUwZ6F2WXVNnvu8tZgdCicoG4vweYnwnLuaVXTgDzO06ZQT6xFudGwzpTiPC749zaCMcArdXBlBHtfqtxDQYs-Lj4iulzj8fknH522Y2wnb4E6083JV0NU2NTz/s400/hubble+ring+galaxy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279368679707001346" border="0" /></a><br />If you've never had one, an advent calendar has 25 little boxes to open, one for every day of December through Christmas. Boston.com has a virtual advent calendar of Hubble's greatest hits. This is a ring galaxy, from Dec. 6.<br /><br />Hat tip to Jarrod, and Merry Christmas to all!Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-43986611120281299792008-12-12T01:12:00.001-08:002008-12-12T01:14:15.330-08:00Howl, baby<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRFItXypRQPveIjIzgiY62DskpBjft27luysNzHWw0J79TIuYXi9ymvo2Q8fAiFDRMhe55_mpeQ-5bwftPWrwkbjD1LGg-Dj7ZXHoe0l1dplfJLw7QKNR6G42ZpMxipelk4p5/s1600-h/2008-12-11+full+moon+1600.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRFItXypRQPveIjIzgiY62DskpBjft27luysNzHWw0J79TIuYXi9ymvo2Q8fAiFDRMhe55_mpeQ-5bwftPWrwkbjD1LGg-Dj7ZXHoe0l1dplfJLw7QKNR6G42ZpMxipelk4p5/s400/2008-12-11+full+moon+1600.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278829215895776002" border="0" /></a><br />Taken by me, from my driveway, about two hours ago.Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11218293.post-31796691419508469252008-12-03T11:03:00.000-08:002008-12-03T11:06:56.849-08:00Quote of the day: Ebert on Bubba Ho-Tep<a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031017/REVIEWS/310170301/1023">Bubba Ho-Tep has a lot of affection for Elvis, takes him seriously, and -- this is crucial -- isn't a camp horror movie, but treats this loony situation as if it's really happening...Assuming that elderly versions of Elvis and JFK ever really did do battle with an Egyptian Soul Sucker, this, I am forced to conclude, is more or less how it would look.</a>Dr. Vectorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01257878915555113427noreply@blogger.com2