andrewdotcoza

Having been mocked mercilessly by Kyknoord in his comments for not being able to take a photograph of Comet McNaught, I have applied my last several evenings to correcting this situation.

Now, I will be the first to admit that Kyk’s photo is a lot more impressive than mine. Kyk, however, was working with his professional quality Mega-Gasmatron 2000 chunk of SLR goodness of the same sort that the CIA uses to read your license plate and that NASA wishes it could get so that it could strap it to a space-probe and crash it into Mars.

Having realised that my cell phone camera was not going to cut it, I dredged out my old HP C200. It comprises 1.3 mega pixels of late 90s greatness which would, had technology not eclipsed it over the last 7 years, still be a damn fine digital camera. Everyone I know who owned one of these still speaks of its wondrous flexibility. Sadly, it was designed and conceived when mainstream digital cameras were still toys. They did, however, fit the devil’s own auto-focus system to the thing. Occasionally you get sharp photos but you usually land up fighting with what seems to be an early beta of the software that runs Data on Star Trek, except this version was rejected because it made him criminally insane.

After 35 photos, I came up with this:

The trick turned out to be ensuring that a certain level of ambient light entered the camera, but not enough to drown out the comet. If the light levels are too low the camera produces photographs of the noisy blackness of some alternate universe.

I cunningly crafted a mask of black cardboard which I used to shield the lens at the bottom and right of the photo. You can still see the shadow of the mask on the right side margin. Then I neutralised the street lamp in the frame using my trusty Heckler & Koch PSG1.* With the camera’s exposure time set to maximum, I managed to get this one relatively good shot, as well as two dozen bad ones.

Nevertheless, the mission is accomplished. Kyk, that will be Haw-lee, thank you very much!

*: No, not really. The light has co-incidentally not been working for the last two nights, and I don’t own any firearms at all.

Whatever first made mankind stare up at the heavens in awe is lost in the midsts of time. Perhaps it was the great fiery ball that gives heat and light during the day. Yes. That probably seemed fairly significant. Perhaps it was the ever changing face of the moon, gently coasting across the sky night by night. That was probably quite noticeable too.

I think, however, that it was probably the truly exceptional things that really involved mankind in a study of the sky. The things that don’t appear every day but dance briefly across the firmament, all the more obvious by being transient and unusual. Comets, in short, were probably the visitors that filled ancient man with the greatest awe.

Tonight I rounded up my posse and dragged them to the beach front to see Comet McNaught, or “C/2006 P1″ as the scientists know it. The wait was windy and cold, and included being accosted by a card carrying schizophrenic armed with incomprehensible jokes. The reward, however, was unspeakably beautiful.

Visible low in the Western sky and being very bright, the comet seems to float on top of the residual light of the sun. Its tail is truly enormous, stretching upwards from the horizon in a most impressive plume. This is a phenomenon that you won’t be forgetting in a hurry so I would strongly encourage you to go out and see it.

First you will need to figure out where and when the sun sets. The first part should not be a problem and, for the second, simply go here. Wait until about 20 minutes after sunset, taking great care to avoid eye contact while your schizophrenic tells you about Jesus clapping his hands, and you should see the head of the comet appear to the left of where the sun went down, just above the dusk light. For me, it was about 1 thumb above the horizon when I held my hand out at arm’s length.

The only other object visible in the sky during the start of my observations was the planet Venus, which should be very obvious. It will appear to the right of where the sun set, more or less the same distance from that point as the comet will be to the left. We had about 20 minutes of comet watching but you could get more if the sky is completely clear.

You should do this as soon as possible because the McNaught is currently moving towards the sun. This means that it will appear lower in the sky each night and be visible for less time. Furthermore, the lower it appears in the sky, the greater the distance its reflected light has to travel through the atmosphere of Earth, meaning that it will be dimmer.

Because it appears so low in the sky after sunset, it was extremely difficult to photograph the comet, even using my high-tech gear consisting of a Sony-Ericsson W800i cell phone and a 2000 vintage, 1.3 Megapixel camera. At the best of times, these suck utterly for anything in the night sky. A friend had his Sony-Ericsson K750i with him and, between the two of us, we managed to produce a few noisy pictures of a white smudge. Despite my best intentions, I’m therefore unable to illustrate this post with anything meaningful.

Unlike Halley in 1986, Comet McNaught will not be back. It is making a once-off dash at the sun and scientists tell us that it is likely to break up in the process. Even if it makes it, it will thereafter shoot out of the solar system on a long journey through deep space. This might be contributing to its spectacular display, but that is a matter for theorists. What I am sure of is that this is one heck of a show.

Those who know me well are entirely aware of my interest in heavenly bodies. Sadly, this interest has recently been limited to the subject of astronomy. Even so, I am a shallow man, from whom astronomical bodies seldom receive much attention.

I was therefore rather surprised when, yesterday, one of my associates asked me whether I knew there was a partial eclipse of the sun organised for the afternoon. I had no idea whatsoever but, as is my custom, I felt compelled to celebrate this heavenly alignment in some way.

Immediately, I decided that I would attempt to photograph the event. Armed only with a cell phone camera and office supplies, I produced the following results. I’m rather pleased with them, but you should not expect the quality one would get from the Hubble Space Telescope.

How did I achieve this technological miracle? Well, the key to any sort of astronomical photography is a sophisticated optical system. In this case, I used a tea-bag wrapper and a blank CD-ROM.

My helpers are I first observed the partial eclipse directly. We carefully compiled a rigorous safety policy that involved all of the available pairs of sunglasses in the office, several blank CD-ROMs and the foil packet from a box of Joko tea-bags.

This is, of course, exactly what you should never ever do. Some years ago, around the time of our last total eclipse of the sun, a bunch of charitable do-gooders came round my PE office, selling special eclipse glasses. They has nicely silvered lenses, but came pre-scratched. My eyes were messed up for days afterwards. On this occasion, we used several layers of silvered items. The CD-ROMs worked pretty well, but I had a lot of faith in the tea-bag foil. I’ve read on the Internet that it was a safe way of viewing the sun, so it must be true.

I’m pleased to report that, after some minutes of this lunacy,* none of us have experienced any visual problems. Ocular observations of the eclipse seemed best through 2 blank CD-ROMs. We used Verbatim Super Azo Crystals, which are said to offer superb ultra-violet protection. The tea packet worked well too, but transmitted far less visible light.

Of course, one also needs a high-quality camera for this sort of thing. Rather than risk the expensive digital cameras offered by my helpers, I elected to use the 2 mega-pixel phone camera fitted to my Sony-Ericsson W800i. It offers 4x digital zoom, which allowed me to image the sun at a resolution of more than 2 pixels.

The CCD of a digital camera, however, has a very different optical sensitivity from the human eye. This is why you can take pictures of your TV remote control light with your digital camera, and also why, when taking a photograph through 2 CD-ROMs, the sun appears as a super-bright furry blob.

The combination of the tea packet and one CD, however, produced excellent results. Well, when I say “excellent”, I mean that you should take into account that the sun is not really shaped like a banana, that it is probably impossible to take pictures of its corona with a cell phone camera, and that most of the artifacts that you see in the images are caused by the inevitable major faults on the optical system we used.

The following action shots of the equipment we used should give you some idea of our sophisticated scientific methodology. I consider this experiment to have been a resounding success. All of our equipment survived. The phone camera still works, the foil tea wrapper is once again home to a myriad tea-bags. It only remains to be seen whether or not the CD-ROMs will hold their data reliably.

I now believe that it is possible to produce a reliable and serviceable eclipse camera using a digital imaging device and freely available materials. I hope to construct one before the next exciting solar event and look forward to posting pictures that are of a slightly higher quality.

* Sometimes I crack me up.

I’ve just seen the most amazing meteor while having my bed-time cigarette.

It appeared in the North-West of the sky and, while I have seen many meteors before, none have been quite as impressive as this. A yellow ball of fire, it left a smoke trail in its wake. I actually heard the whistling noise which, very rarely, accompanies these things when they make it to the lower atmosphere and are near enough.

The experience was very special. If I were superstitious, I’d hope that it was the harbinger of good fortune. Perhaps, for once, I shall allow myself a dalliance with this hope.

Realistically, Andrew regards the aforementioned good fortune as having been that the meteor burned up in the atmosphere and did not slam into, say, the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station with the speed of a rifle bullet. We should be cognizant of small mercies, and even large ones.