View allAll Photos Tagged Variance
Pato de la Florida, Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors)
Status Migrante Comun (Mc)
pato de Florida o yaguasa aliazul, también conocida como pato media luna, pato de alas azules, barraquete aliazul, es una especie de ave anseriforme de la familia Anatidae nativa de América.
Es pardo manchado y punteado de negro, con diseño alar como el del pato pico cuchara sudamericano, cabeza y cuello ceniciento oscuro, notable medialuna en la cara y mancha blanca en los flancos, en los machos. La hembra no tiene la medialuna en la cara, pero tiene una leve ceja loreal clara.
sta especie de pato vive en lagunas, lagos y pantanos de agua dulce. No teniendo preferencias durante el invierno habita aguas salobres. Se alimenta de vegetación, insectos, y crustáceos acuáticos. Complementa su dieta con semillas, incluyendo las de campos cultivados.
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The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America. The scientific name is derived from Latin Anas "duck", and discors, "variance", which may refer to the striking face pattern of the male
The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs
Blue-winged teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Anseriformes
Family:Anatidae
Subfamily:Anatinae
Genus:Anas (disputed)
Species:S. discors
Binomial name
Spatula discors
Most plant foliage appears white in my infrared processing. This cluster in the middle doesn't reflect the same wavelengths at the plants around it and showed up a faint pink.
Finished this top... over the summer sometime. There are 168 stars total - I planned to make closer to 220, but man I got sick of sewing these teeny stars. I started this quilt in 2010!
Each star is 4" finished with a 1" sashing. I didn't trim down most of the half-square triangles, so there's quite a bit of variance in the finished size of each star. It felt pretty sloppy during assembly, but I don't think it's as noticeable in the photos.
Pato de la Florida, Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors)
Status Migrante Comun (Mc) NoIG
pato de Florida o yaguasa aliazul, también conocida como pato media luna, pato de alas azules, barraquete aliazul, es una especie de ave anseriforme de la familia Anatidae nativa de América.
Es pardo manchado y punteado de negro, con diseño alar como el del pato pico cuchara sudamericano, cabeza y cuello ceniciento oscuro, notable medialuna en la cara y mancha blanca en los flancos, en los machos. La hembra no tiene la medialuna en la cara, pero tiene una leve ceja loreal clara.
sta especie de pato vive en lagunas, lagos y pantanos de agua dulce. No teniendo preferencias durante el invierno habita aguas salobres. Se alimenta de vegetación, insectos, y crustáceos acuáticos. Complementa su dieta con semillas, incluyendo las de campos cultivados.
##################
The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America. The scientific name is derived from Latin Anas "duck", and discors, "variance", which may refer to the striking face pattern of the male
The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs
Blue-winged teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Anseriformes
Family:Anatidae
Subfamily:Anatinae
Genus:Anas (disputed)
Species:S. discors
Binomial name
Spatula discors
Blue-IMG-1629
Pato de la Florida, Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors)
Status Migrante Comun (Mc) NoIG
pato de Florida o yaguasa aliazul, también conocida como pato media luna, pato de alas azules, barraquete aliazul, es una especie de ave anseriforme de la familia Anatidae nativa de América.
Es pardo manchado y punteado de negro, con diseño alar como el del pato pico cuchara sudamericano, cabeza y cuello ceniciento oscuro, notable medialuna en la cara y mancha blanca en los flancos, en los machos. La hembra no tiene la medialuna en la cara, pero tiene una leve ceja loreal clara.
sta especie de pato vive en lagunas, lagos y pantanos de agua dulce. No teniendo preferencias durante el invierno habita aguas salobres. Se alimenta de vegetación, insectos, y crustáceos acuáticos. Complementa su dieta con semillas, incluyendo las de campos cultivados.
##################
The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America. The scientific name is derived from Latin Anas "duck", and discors, "variance", which may refer to the striking face pattern of the male
The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs
Blue-winged teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Anseriformes
Family:Anatidae
Subfamily:Anatinae
Genus:Anas (disputed)
Species:S. discors
Binomial name
Spatula discors
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I absolutely love the huge variance of colours that the night sky can provide, especially for those that dare to brave the cold and the mosquitoes. Not only the colours from the galaxies and nebulae, but even the horrible light pollution can completely change the look and feel of the entire night.
This was taken while lying down in the field next-door to my parents place.
My first and only diving excursion for 2016 (so far) was to San Miguel Island. It was nice to see the variances between San Miguel and my usual diving at Anacapa. I was also excited to find a bunch these spectacular blue-ringed top snails.
The scenes in this trio of posts were taken the other day during a bike ride to Sheboygan's North Point. It was my first lakefront ride since we'd moved into our apartment.
How you interact with any bit a water is a matter of style. I have been on Lake Michigan as a passenger on both modes shown here and prefer the sailboat, even though I know little about sailing.
I like the variance in water colors that I saw during this outing.
For #MacroMondays -- this is a trinket from where I worked before retiring fully (The Emmes Corporation in Rockville, Maryland). A little blue metal D-ring with a keychain. I experimented today with my cell phone -- the overall length is 2 3/4 inches. The light was from the window (indirect) and the background was a very expensive paper napkin. So, just for fun. Processed in Snapseed on my phone. Not publication grade but it worked! The Emmes Corporation is a biostatistics company conducting medical research. The symbols are the delta (change) and sigma (variance), perfect for a company that does advanced statistical analysis. Hope you enjoy -- HMM!
#MacroMondays #Trinkets
This is the little zebra jumper I found in my parents' sink (no idea what my parents had planned for it). Adorable, no?
The grainyness is because I switched from Helicon Focus to Combinezm for stacking. Combinezm does a better job all around but it doesn't handle variance in brightness as well.
2013 Pride Parade, Halsted Street, Chicago
Nikon D5100, Tamron 18-270, ISO 320, f/6.3, 270mm, 1/1000s
Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
-Sir Thomas Browne
Explored - Jun 26, 2009
Wanted to show a somewhat complete shoot...We always show a single nice image from the shoot but what do the rest of your images look like? Is there a wide variance doing the small non money shot bedrooms and baths? I strive for a uniform level of quality thru the entire shoot.
Vigilant Vulture Veers to Verify Voltage Variance..... :)
(obviously 'V' in the Weekly Alphabet group--- and Telegraph Tuesday-- and I did it on purpose .... :))
Turkey Vulture
(Cathartes aura)
Battered, Devonport. Another image from my recent trip to Tassie. I love the way the tree has been shaped by the coastal winds. #australia #tasmania #Devonport via 500px ift.tt/2Fwsxr7
One of the things that continue to amaze me in the mosaic called: 'Jerusalem' is the huge variance in the things that take place at different neighborhoods, at the same time:
It was an evening at the Jewish feast of SUCKOT. In most of the town the streets were silent and empty, people closed themselves at their homes. But if you dived into the specific streets of Me'ah-She'arim, the Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, you found yourself in lanes that were so crowded with celebrating people, that it was hard to walk in them; needless to say, that vehicles were, practically, blocked. And in the 'beth midrash'-es (Jewish study halls located in synagogues) the men (and only the men :-() were celebrating very energetically: by singing and dancing in a great enthusiasm and joy.
One of the things that bothers me, from many aspects (ecological, as well) is that our world becomes flat: We all become tiny America. A lot of variance is lost.
For example, a few years ago I could take photos of Palestinian women with face tattoo. Not anymore… You don't see it anymore : (
Is it good that it disappeared? Maybe…
To gather is to seek and bring closer. Water has this uncanny ability to draw us closer, to bring us in, to mesmerize us and calm us. This scene offers many variances of water visuals, if only you could hear the variety in sound as well. We take water for granted on many levels. The next time you're around water, take in more than just the visuals. Hope you enjoy. Comments welcome.
Woolly Hollow State Park, Arkansas.
Photo # 9525_KS10055-67abws. May, 2009.
(c) Kelly Shipp Photography.
Continuing with this relaxing little chase here's another from my time out following the Mass Bay RRE's Narragansett Bay Special which made a round trip over the entire thirteen mile length of the Newport Secondary
The train consisted of two GE centercabs, Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad numbers 14 and 66 and the five car regular dinner train consist.
Leading the way is the former still dressed in yellow paint which is a GE 80 tonner built in July 1941 as the 5th of the model off the production line. Originally numbered GE 14 it worked at the company's Schenectady plant until being sold and rebuilt in the late 1980s to serve at Northeast Utilities' West Springfield power plant. However, after coal and oil fired units 1 and 2 were shut down in 1999 the locomotive had no purpose. It sat on site there for more than two decades until the NNBR purchased it in 2023 and shipped it to Fall River on a flat car and then had it trucked over to the island and set back on the rails and put back into service.
Immediately behind her is the generator car, former USAX 89657 was built by St. Louis Car Company in 1952 for the US Army as a kitchen car and then later served Amtrak as a baggage car.
The train is approaching the Pheasant Drive crossing as it passes the luxury private Newport Beach Club community. This is about MP 9.9 which would have been about MP 20.1 as measured from Myricks and the junction with the New Bedford mainline back in PC and early CR days. Rising above the train can be seen the rather jarring 22 story Carnegie Tower which opened in 2009, and at 242 ft it is far taller than any other structure anywhere on the island. It is built exactly on the footprint of the former Kaiser Aluminum plant's extrusion tower where coated aluminum wire was produced and hence fell under the zoning variance for the former manufacturing facility.
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Saturday May 17, 2025
Studies in Berlin: Science, Torah & Quantum Theory
1928-1932
By Eli Rubin
Rabbi Menachem Mendel’s studies at Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelm (Humboldt) University coincided with Erwin Schrödinger’s tenure as Professor of Theoretical Physics.
Many years later, in conversation with the American mathematician Paul Rosenbloom, the Rebbe recalled that he enjoyed Schrödinger’s lectures very much.
During this period Schrödinger was embroiled in a debate with other leading physicists over how to interpret the counterintuitive and paradoxical findings of quantum mechanics. Light was found to behave like particles and like waves, depending on the kind of experiment set up to observe its behavior.
According to Werner Heisenberg, this showed that objective reality is actually an indeterminate spectrum of possibilities; only subjective observation forces any one of those possibilities to materialize. Schrödinger disagreed. The indeterminate findings of quantum mechanics, he asserted, simply mirrored the incompleteness of the current theory.
In conversation with the American mathematician Paul Rosenbloom, the Rebbe recalled that he enjoyed Schrödinger’s lectures very much.“There is a difference,” he wrote, “between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”
Albert Einstein, who was also on the faculty in Berlin at the time, but didn’t teach, shared Schrödinger’s concerns. It was his correspondence with Einstein that helped Schrödinger formulate the cat thought (gedanken) experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of Heisenberg’s position.
Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” can be interpreted in various ways and has been supplemented with various theories, leaving the discussion open until today.
Together with Einstein’s theory of relativity, according to which phenomena can no longer be measured in absolute terms, the uncertainty principle thoroughly undermines the classical notion that the empirical observations of science can provide a precise account of objective truth.
The Rebbe’s position, formulated in various letters over the years, might be seen as a mediation between the two poles articulated by Heisenberg and Schrödinger. But more importantly, it constitutes a mediation between science and religion. The Rebbe accepted the uncertainty principle as a scientific self-description of the limits of scientific investigation, but not as a conclusive statement about the nature of reality. This position rested on his surprising assertion that the Torah view of science is actually “at variance” with science's newfound self-circumscription:
“Where in the past scientific conclusions were considered as natural ‘laws’ in the strict sense of the term, i.e. determined and certain, modern science no longer holds this view. Parenthetically, this view is at variance with the concept of nature and our own knowledge of it (science) as espoused by the Torah, since the idea of miracles implies a change in a fixed order and not the occurrence of a least probable event.”
The Torah perspective is predicated on divine revelation, which asserts a foundation of absolute certainty. In contrast, scientific scrutiny of its own foundations "The Halacha accepts scientific findings, in many instances, not as possible or probable, but certain and true..." arrived at the uncertainty principle, generally regarded as the best candidate for a universal description of the physical world. For the Rebbe, this did not undermine the legitimacy of science but rather crystallized the terms of its relationship to Torah. In his view, the assumption that science should dictate those terms was fundamentally flawed. On the contrary, it was only by virtue of Torah’s authority that science too could be endowed with a measure of certainty:
“As a matter of fact, the Torah bestows upon science - in certain areas at least - a validity much greater than contemporary science itself claims. The Halacha accepts scientific findings, in many instances, not as possible or probable, but certain and true... In the light of what has been said above... modern science cannot legitimately (and I mean ‘legitimately’ even from the viewpoint of science itself) challenge Torah from Sinai.”
Accordingly, the Rebbe insisted that a religious Jew, even a professional scientist, should not have any qualms about accepting a literal reading of the Torah’s description of creation, or any other Torah deviation from commonly accepted scientific theory.
The developments in quantum theory during the years that the Rebbe was in Berlin deeply impacted his perception of the relationship between Torah and science. In a 1962 interview with the Israeli journalist Shlomo Nakdimon the Rebbe remarked:
"The discoveries in the laws of atoms shake up the very foundations according to which science worked until now. Until now, they said science is stable, but Torah is no more than belief. Now we see that the premises of science and technology do not have lasting truth. These revelations were made specifically through the study of the atom….”
The scientific method is an excellent tool in the hands of humanity, but none of its hypotheses such as "The discoveries in the laws of atoms shake up the very foundations according to which science worked until now." warrant apologetic reinterpretation of the Divine word. Such apologetics were characterized by the Rebbe as “the outmoded legacy of the 19th century and before.”
It was precisely the advances made by modern science that rendered them obsolete. With the old confusions cleared up, he argued, Torah and science are today free to progress in collaborative harmony.
The function of Torah, and especially Chassidism, is to reveal the unity of G‑d in the world. Previously, scientists thought that the universe was composed of many different elements, but modern science reduces everything to the union of energy and matter. Science itself, the Rebbe said, is discovering the underlying unity of all existence.
When talking about photography texture refers to the visual quality of the surface of an object, revealed through variances in shape, tone and color depth. Texture brings life and vibrance to images that would otherwise appear flat and uninspiring.
Here is my prototype of the Mark 50 suit, which I have planned since movie released but only be able to finish now. There are variances of weapon based on movie. I also created 2 types of wings which is based on movie and another popular concept design which has been used in many other customs.
High Park, Toronto.
What a masterpiece is a leaf, just a simple blow away thing, but on examination, one can see variance in colours that for an artist would take a while to mix.
Variance Set
👑8 Separate Colors
👑Fatpack Available
Sizes: Reborn, Waifu, Legacy, Lara X, Kupra, Muneca
Available NOW!! @ Anthem Event
Pato de la Florida, Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors)
Status Migrante Comun (Mc)
pato de Florida o yaguasa aliazul, también conocida como pato media luna, pato de alas azules, barraquete aliazul, es una especie de ave anseriforme de la familia Anatidae nativa de América.
Es pardo manchado y punteado de negro, con diseño alar como el del pato pico cuchara sudamericano, cabeza y cuello ceniciento oscuro, notable medialuna en la cara y mancha blanca en los flancos, en los machos. La hembra no tiene la medialuna en la cara, pero tiene una leve ceja loreal clara.
sta especie de pato vive en lagunas, lagos y pantanos de agua dulce. No teniendo preferencias durante el invierno habita aguas salobres. Se alimenta de vegetación, insectos, y crustáceos acuáticos. Complementa su dieta con semillas, incluyendo las de campos cultivados.
##################
The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America. The scientific name is derived from Latin Anas "duck", and discors, "variance", which may refer to the striking face pattern of the male
The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs
Blue-winged teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Anseriformes
Family:Anatidae
Subfamily:Anatinae
Genus:Anas (disputed)
Species:S. discors
Binomial name
Spatula discors
P-florida_Salcedo26Apr19-IMG-5336
I spent last week in Brisbane, reacquainting myself with a city I once called home. And to be honest, I really liked what I saw. Here is an image taken from below the Riverside Expressway. In the foreground you can see a recent (opened in 2009) addition, the Kurilpa Pedestrian Bridge. If you would like to purchase this photo you can contact me at: hello@aperturevariance.com.au via 500px ift.tt/1MSZsaK
On the highly remote and rugged northern Kimberley Coast region of Western Australia, whilst flying on a seaplane to a location near Talbot Bay, we flew across these wonderful mangrove forested bays shaped by the amazing turquoise waters into land areas that resemble ferns from the air.
These warm-water mangroved inlets of the far-north are home to many fish species including large numbers of salt water crocodiles and endure tides variances, some of which are the largest in the world, of up to 10.5 metres (or 33 feet) each day.
Image taken with Sony A7r and Leica Summicron 50MM f2.0 ASPH.
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My Family and I are taking a year out of work (and school) and travelling around Australia in 2015/16 with our two young boys teaching them a thing or two about life out of a big city and into the outback.
I have set up Flickr Album "Australian Outback" and every week or so I will upload new 'worthy' landscape images mainly of our trip - link is below if interested.
www.flickr.com/photos/geoffhunter/albums/72157658012661708
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Excerpt from thestar.com:
By Jason Miller Staff Reporter
Fri., Aug. 16, 2019
If the point of public art is to stir debate, then a new piece by a St. Clair W. condo development is a resounding success.
The 25-foot bronze and stainless steel sculpture, which depicts a towering man in a white button-up shirt holding up a tall condo building while standing on a foundation of multicoloured blocks, lit up Twitterverse this week, with users debating: what does it mean?
One user mused the statue was a dig at condo developers, another tweeting that it represented “a certain class’ dominance over the society that is supposed to be diverse and multicultural.” Added another, “Never has Toronto been captured so perfectly.” One user called the display “a public art sham,” with “no public benefit.” While some saw getting such a high-profile artists as a coup, and others expressed shock about the sheer size of the towering structure.
Others just called it ugly.
“One can never anticipate how people will respond,” said David Moos, lead consultant for the installation, commissioned through the city’s Percent for Public Art program, which encourages developers to contribute 1 per cent of their gross construction costs towards art dedicated for the public realm.
The piece, by revered contemporary German artist Stephan Balkenhol, was assembled in Europe before shipped to Toronto where it was unveiled Aug. 10, part of the development being built at the former home of the Imperial Oil building.
Moos, a former curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, says his own personal impression is that the subject is standing on an unstable foundation that “might support him or shift,” while holding a “tower that’s heavy and might topple.”
Moos said Balkenhol received zero esthetic input or direction from the selection team, in what Moos called a free creative process.
“He has ideas about Toronto and he proposed this work,” Moos said.
According to the Percent for Public Art Program website, “The privately-owned art is intended to make buildings and open spaces more attractive and interesting and to improve the quality of the public realm.”
In its bid to grow the city’s collection of public art, the program uses a clause in Ontario’s Planning Act known as Section 37, which lets developers trade community benefits for zoning variances.
It is the first of two works to be incorporated into the Imperial Plaza development spearheaded by Camrost Felcorp Inc. City documents about the project from 2014 suggest the estimated budget for the work was $675,000 — of which about 85 per cent was to go directly to the creation of the artwork.
Imperial Plaza is already home to other works of art.
Last year, Camrost Felcorp hired Toronto artist Anthony Ricciardi to create seven murals splattered with bright paint and a rainbow of drip marks for the lobby of the One o One condos in midtown.
Balkenhol was selected over five other artist invited to submit proposals. A note posted near the statue indicates the committee selected the piece as it embodies the “present moment in the city’s evolution and invites deep contemplation.”
Pato de la Florida Hembra, Female Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors)
Status Migrante Comun (Mc)
pato de Florida o yaguasa aliazul, también conocida como pato media luna, pato de alas azules, barraquete aliazul, es una especie de ave anseriforme de la familia Anatidae nativa de América.
Es pardo manchado y punteado de negro, con diseño alar como el del pato pico cuchara sudamericano, cabeza y cuello ceniciento oscuro, notable medialuna en la cara y mancha blanca en los flancos, en los machos. La hembra no tiene la medialuna en la cara, pero tiene una leve ceja loreal clara.
sta especie de pato vive en lagunas, lagos y pantanos de agua dulce. No teniendo preferencias durante el invierno habita aguas salobres. Se alimenta de vegetación, insectos, y crustáceos acuáticos. Complementa su dieta con semillas, incluyendo las de campos cultivados.
##################
The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America. The scientific name is derived from Latin Anas "duck", and discors, "variance", which may refer to the striking face pattern of the male
The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs
Blue-winged teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Anseriformes
Family:Anatidae
Subfamily:Anatinae
Genus:Anas (disputed)
Species:S. discors
Binomial name
Spatula discors
Take two at filling this in with the whole commentary as for some reason the original disappeared Wednesday night/Thursday morning.
I have been itching to do a star trail picture for a long while and on Monday night decided to head out to Rougham Control Tower (Google Map) on a cold frosty night with aching stomach.
The set up to do this picture was as follows:
1. Camera firmly mounted on a weighted tripod. With a hot shoe spirit level ensured the camera was horizontally level. With a compass and locating the great bear ensured that camera was pointing due north towards the pole star (to obtain the circle of stars).
2. The camera, a Nikon D300, was set to manual mode, 30 second exposure, aperture wide open on the Sigma 10-20 at f/4, focal length of 10mm, manually focused to infinity and the ISO adjusted with a number of test shots until the stars would appreciably show, in this case ISO 800 (owing to the background light off nearby Bury St Edmunds and Moreton Hall). Continuous shooting mode was enabled with 100 exposures maximum batch limit. The white balance was set to Daylight.
3. Using a wired remote release the shutter was triggered and the remote release locked down. The camera will now continuously take 30 second exposures (long enough to register the stars but short enough not the significantly register the foreground and back lighting) automatically for 100 exposures.
4. Then I sat on my Karrimat with hot coffee and listened to the latest from Scott and the crew on TWiP on the iPod whilst I watched the frost build up on the grass and the stars whiz over.
5. 10 minutes in and a Muntjac deer came barrelling through a hedge and across the grass till it bounced off the tripod and me. So after some cursing, realignment and brushing myself down, I started again.
6. After the 100 initial exposures, the camera was set to f8 and focus to hyperfocal distance so that I can take one image where I light painted the control tower with a 3W LED torch (using day light white balance appeared accurate whilst giving a gentle glow to the background light in the distance).
7. Finally 1 last image was taken with the lens cap on as a dark frame for later noise assessment during post processing.
8. So after 102 images, feeling very cold and the imodium wearing off, I headed back home after completing the tedious part.
Now for the post-processing.
1. This could have been done by loading the stack of images into Photoshop and use "lighten" blending but the memory requirement would have been horrific with full size 12.3MP camera images.
2. Instead I used an application called Startrails to do the blending. The 100 normal images plus the light painted one was selected for the blending and the single dark frame one. As noise wasn't too bad for the camera a single dark frame was ok. Otherwise 3 dark frame could be used taken every 33 images just in case there is any variance. The images where blended and the result saved as a TIFF. The application can do a video of the star movement but didn't seemed to work on any of my Vista PCs.
3. The TIFF file was then imported and converted to DNG into Adobe Lightroom where a little curve work was applied to improve contrast, some luminance and saturation of colours and final output sharpening on export for the image posted here.
So the lessons learnt from this exercise were:
1. Bring a hat and gloves, it was freezing at ground level.
2. Find a location with less background light.
3. Bring more hot coffee.
All an in a very pleasing first attempt at doing star trails and surely try this again using other buildings.
Update: Looked again at using Photoshop CS3 Extended to do the merge of all 101 pictures (not including the dark frame). Easiest method is to use the Analysis script in the file menu, then browse and add all the images you wish to include, set the analysis method to "Maximum" and away you go. Let the PC chug away and after over an hour you end up with a 22GB temporary Photoshop file and a very large smart object which you should then flatten to a layer for final tweaking.
Comparing the results, the Photoshop version was a little cleaner but Startrails only took 5 minutes to produce the combined images with little memory and temporary file overheads. However if a few number of much longer exposures was used then I'd probably recommend the Photoshop Analysis script approach.
Used in TradeKing Big Dog blog's blog article Friday Community shout-out!.
Featured in Digital Photography Schools blog articleLong Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples.
Reported in Curious? Read's article Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples.
Can be found in JASON - HOUSE OF INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY's blog article Fantastic long exposure photos.
Used in The Brown Study blog 2008 Retrospective.
Featured in TheFutureBuzz's article50 Inspirational Images From Flickr Under Creative Commons.
Featured in RRut.com's feature Star Trails: 10 Impressive Photographs.
Featured in the "i tell stories" aricle On Creation: A Quarterly Report - A commitment to learning.
Featured in the WebUrbanist's article 12 Long-Exposure & Time-Lapse Photographers.
Featured in Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog's article The morning coffee is all knowing and evil.
Featured in the Slog article Sideral.
Featured in Photography Inspiration.
Used in the Clyde Street blog article 090507 Public Sphere Discussions, Canberra
Used in the Environmental Graffiti article Star Trails: Secret Paintings of the Night Sky.
Featured in Photo Mine.
Featured in Photo Tuts+ piece 50 Captivating Slow Shutter Speed Photos.
Featured in Smash!ng Apps piece 45 Breathtaking Examples of Slow Shutter Speed Photography.
There Will Be
No Miracles
Here
"The words are divided into three lines, giving it the formal appearance of a haiku. The use of white electric bulbs, together with the unusual typeface, evokes 1970s disco glamour as well as fairground aesthetics, at once elegant and tacky, and at variance with the message of the text. Coley is a Scottish artist whose work explores society's expression of itself through the environment it constructs, whether through built architecture and monuments, or through intellectual and religious beliefs and systems. This work would be sited within the expanding sculpture park of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, adding a prominent contemporary Scottish presence to others represented from earlier generations such as Moore, Hepworth, Rickey and Paolozzi."
www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/ar...
This wild rose leaf bud almost appears as if it is bleeding under the distress of the variance of New England winter weather. 53 stacked images
Greater Scaup GRSC (Aythya marila)
Patricia Bay
North Saanich BC
DSCN6546
i did lighten this photo ...as it was taken lo light dusk
not the greatest but serves demonstratively instructive
Field Mark Cues ^i^
Center Male one may notice the patterning on the back is quite consistent as far as width
& patterning is more fine overall than is case for LESC
Head shape generally...keeping in mind variance in individuals , as well as postures and 'wetting' after diving etc.
GRSC head length is proportional to height
GRSC usually has and/or giving comparative appearance of an overall (larger) rounded head
GRSC - highest point of head is above or in front of the eye..impression is slopes toward back
(and at times even gives impression of a bit of a flat spot,top of head)
Caption: A NASA Super Pressure Balloon with the COSI payload is ready for launch from McMurdo, Antarctica.
Credit: NASA
More info:
NASA’s globetrotting Balloon Program Office is wrapping up its 2014-2015 Antarctic campaign while prepping for an around-the-world flight launching out of Wanaka, New Zealand, in March.
After 16 days, 12 hours, and 56 minutes of flight, operators successfully conducted a planned flight termination of the Suborbital Polarimeter for Inflation Dust and the Epoch of Reionization (SPIDER) mission Saturday, Jan. 18, the final mission of the campaign.
Other flights in the 2014-2015 Antarctic campaign included the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA-III) mission as well as the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) payload flown on the developmental Super Pressure Balloon (SPB). ANITA-III successfully wrapped up Jan. 9 after 22 days, 9 hours, and 14 minutes of flight. Flight controllers terminated the COSI flight 43 hours into the mission after detecting a small gas leak in the balloon.
Crews are now working to recover all three instruments from different locations across the continent. The 6,480-pound SPIDER payload is stationary at a position about 290 miles from the United Kingdom’s Sky Blu Logistics Facility in Antarctica. The 4,601 pound ANITA-III payload, located about 100 miles from Australia’s Davis Station, and the 2,866 pound COSI payload, located about 340 miles from the United States McMurdo Station both had numerous key components recovered in the past few days.
Beginning in late January, the Balloon Program Office will deploy a team to Wanaka, New Zealand, to begin preparations for an SPB flight, scheduled to launch in March. The Program Office seeks to fly the SPB more than 100 days, which would shatter the current flight duration record of 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes for a large scientific balloon.
“We’re looking forward to the New Zealand campaign and hopefully a history-making flight with the Super Pressure Balloon,” said Debbie Fairbrother, NASA’s Balloon Program Office Chief.
Most scientific balloons see altitude variances based on temperature changes in the atmosphere at night and during the day. The SPB is capable of missions on the order of 100 days or more at constant float altitudes due to the pressurization of the balloon.
“Stable, long-duration flights at near-space altitudes above more than 99 percent of the atmosphere are highly desirable in the science community, and we’re ready to deliver,” said Fairbrother.
In addition to the SPB flight in March, the Balloon Program Office has 10 more balloon missions planned through September 2015 to include scheduled test flights of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, which is testing new technologies for landing larger, heavier payloads on Mars.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility manages the agency’s Scientific Balloon Program with 10 to 15 flights each year from launch sites worldwide. The balloons are massive in volume; the average-sized balloon could hold the volume of nearly 200 blimps. Previous work on balloons have contributed to confirming the Big Bang Theory.
For more information on NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program, see:
sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820/index.html
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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I did not know about the differences between cable-stayed and suspension bridges and their variances before I looked that up for the photo description. Learned something today.
After countless hours of scientific observations and research of the Alien Artifact, the science teams have their report. The Artifact is some sort of power storage and compression device. It is capable of storing a vast amount of energy and “compressing” it at the sub-quantum level despite its size. Initial estimates indicate that it’s currently storing 1.21 Quantawatts - enough energy to power a fleet of ships!
Another interesting data point that has the team intrigued. The energy output's subspace variance matches that of the energy output of old Blacktron vessels from over twenty years ago - before their defeat. The Federation had always wondered back then how Blacktron - a splinter pirate gang - managed to upgrade their technology in such a short period of time… Had they found one of these alien devices and then reversed engineered it for their own needs? This very well may be the answer to a nagging 20 year old mystery!
To learn more about Nova Team's other adventures visit their album: flic.kr/s/aHskpavQh5
For those who are interested, unfortunately I am unable to sell the Nova Team minifigures or designs due to the use of the "Classic Space" logo which is owned and trademarked by The LEGO Group. My custom designed figures and use of the official "Classic Space" logo is for personal use only in my MOCs and photography. By the same token, I will not give away the design files and source material either. Thank you for understanding! Trust me, if I could legally sell these, I would.
About the Target
Messier 16, also known as the NGC 6611, and is associated with the popular names of :The Eagle Nebula", "The Star Queen Nebula", "The Spire", and lets not forget its most famous feature "The Pillars of Creation". It is a diffuse emission nebula associated with a star cluster in the constellation of Serpens. It is located about 5700 light years away.
Wikipedia tells us the following about the Pillars of Creation:
"Images produced by Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen using the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 greatly improved scientific understanding of processes inside the nebula. One of these became famous as the "Pillars of Creation", depicting a large region of star formation. Its small dark pockets are believed to be protostars (Bok globules). The pillar structure resembles that of a much larger instance in the Soul Nebula of Cassiopeia, imaged with the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2005[ equally characterized as "Pillars of Star Creation". or "Pillars of Star Formation".[11] These columns – which resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern – are composed of interstellar hydrogen gas and dust, which act as incubators for new stars. Inside the columns and on their surface astronomers have found knots or globules of denser gas, called EGGs ("Evaporating Gaseous Globules"). Stars are being formed inside some of these.
X-ray images from the Chandra observatory compared with Hubble's "Pillars" image have shown that X-ray sources (from young stars) do not coincide with the pillars, but rather randomly dot the nebula. Any protostars in the pillars' EGGs are not yet hot enough to emit X-rays.
Evidence from the Spitzer Telescope originally suggested that the pillars in M16 may be threatened by a "past supernova". Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggested they were already – likely – being disturbed by a supernova that exploded 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Due to the distance the main blast of light would have reached Earth for a brief time 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. A more slowly moving, theorized, shock wave would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula and would have blown away the delicate pillars. However, in 2014 the pillars were imaged a second time by Hubble, in both visible light and infrared light. The images being 20 years later provided a new, detailed account of the rate of evaporation occurring within the pillars. No supernova is evidenced within them, and it is estimated in some form they still exist – and will appear for at least 100,000 more years."
About the Project
I don't know about you, but Messier 16 - The Eagle Nebula is one of my Favorite objects in the sky. I think it started when I first saw the "Pillars of Creation" shot by the Hubble Space Telescope back in 1995.
www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-pillars-of-creation
That incredible image impressed me for a long time, so when I first started my astrophotographic journey 2019, it was one of the first targets I went after. It was a pretty crude image but I could see the "eagle" so I was pretty happy with it. Last summer I revisited M16, capturing images over two nights (a first for me at the time) and I processed it with Pixinsight - which I was just learning - and got a results that was a distinct improvement. At the time - a One-Shot-Color Camera was what I had, so no Hubble Palette for me. I upped my game by gathering more subs and experimented with more sophisticated processing techniques.
This Year's Capture
But this year - I was really psyched to try m16 for a third time. This time I had a telescope platform with a slightly longer focal length and I had a brand new ASI 2600MM-Pro Mono setup - so for the first time, I would be able to shoot with Narrowband and use the Hubble Palette to render the image in away similar to seen in that first Hubble image.
Then we hit Rochester's Monsoon Season of 2021……
I began this project back on the Fourth of July and took a 2.5 hours of subs before having to shut down. Given my site's tree line, I only have about a 3 hour window where I can shoot any given target. With some luck, 3 or 4 more nights should do it and I would have - I hoped - a wonderful image.
Since then I have set my gear up twice to try and capture more subs, only to be shutdown by the clouds. Finally - on Wednesday the 14th, ClearOutside suggested I had an opening. Gary Optiz - who is not only an accomplished astrophotographer but also a real weather wiz, warned me that we would be in the smoke plume from the forest fires out west and that would certainly impact imaging. The Moon was also up as well, but not too bad yet. This would be about my last opportunity to shoot for this project this year, so I had to go for it. The captures seemed to go well but the sky transparency was very bad due to the smoke and because of the high humidity (dew was forming on the scope tubes and running off in streams!)
The Resulting Data
When I looked at the data the next day - I could see that I would have some processing challenges. First I had way fewer frames than I wanted (the story of my life!). When I scanned all of my frames with Blink I found about 25% of them had some evidence of very thin clouds passing through the frame. This would normally would cause me to cull these images before stacking - but I had so few frames this time - I was very reluctant to do so. I really fought hard for those frames and I wanted to get some value from them.
The Processing
The problem here is that the impacted images had very different gradients depending on when they were taken. This would cause what would look like a higher variance for a given pixel when sampled across the subs. This would raise havoc with the rejection algorithms and would cause the final pixel values to be off. I have been hearing about a new script in Pixinsight called NormaliseScaleGradients that does something kind of cool. After calibration and registration, you pick a reference frame and each sub is normalized to the gradient seen in THAT reference frame. This effectively removes arbitrary differences due to thin clouds, stray lights and such. Now that all of the subs look more similar - the rejection algorithms can work more effectively and the image integration can now use more subs - weighted by their noise profiles. This suggests that even pretty bad frames can add some useful data to the final integrated results.
So I keep most of the bad images in the mix, they had their gradients normalized, and they were included in the final master image, weighted by noisy they were compared to other images.
Anything that lets you keep hard-fought subs into the mix is my friend!
I also had a problem where the size of the stars were a function of when I took the images. Narrowband stars always look a little funky anyways- and this was certainly not going to help.
So processing took a lot of time. I was very careful to maximize what I could with deconvolution and I was also able to shrink some of the star sizes using the deconvolution function by taking the point spread function model created by PFSImage and trimming the outer edges a bit before application. I picked up this type from a video by Adam Bock and it did help shrink the images. But I still had mismatched between the filter channels so I spent a lot of time with star masks trying to help things out. And I did help things a bit - they were much better than when I started, but having said that - don't look to carefully at the stars in this image as they the are still a mess!
Capture Information
Lights Frames
• 18 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, Gain 100.0, Astronmiks 6nm Ha Filter
• 14 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, Gain 100.0, Astronmiks 6nm OIII Filter
• 15 x 300 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, Gain 100.0, Astronmiks 6nm SII Filter
• Total of 3.9 hours
Cal Frames
• 30 Darks at 300 seconds, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 100
• 25 Dark Flats at Flat exposure times, bin 1x1, -15C, gain 100
• Flats done separately for each evening to account for camera rotator variances:
○ 25 Ha Flats
○ 25 OIII Flats
○ 25 SII Flats
Capture Hardware
Scope: Astrophysics 130mm Starfire F/8.35 APO refractor
Guide Scope: Televue 76mm Doublet
Camera: ZWO AS2600mm-pro with ZWO 7x36 Filter wheel with ZWO LRGB filter set,
and Astronomiks 6nm Narrowband filter set
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Mount: Ioptron CEM60
Polar Alignment: Polemaster camera
Software
Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, editor regret and much swearing…..
So Lego decided to introduce another shade of pink.
No, I don't like fleshies, for the simple reason that the choice of faces, and thus the variance of expressions, is so very limited. With Vin Diesel being in yet another shade, I cannot even change his head, because his arms are in the same tone.
I went grocery shopping yesterday, and the shop had the new SC kits for 20€ instead of 25€, so I spontaneously bought the Dodge Charger from... uhm... Slow and Chilled or something like that.
Toy Project Day 2563
I'm a little sad that DS didn't bother correcting his eyes, but oh well. He is still very handsome but the paint on this one is definitely grouchier than the paint on my Wedding one, but that's just individual variances and might not affect them all. His Ball attire is so nice, and just as well made as the wedding version. I love the silver embroidery and the touches of light blue. I'd really love a green coat Kit, but I'm still shocked we're getting this one, so I won't get greedy (but really, Disney Store, a third wave of Cinderella dolls would be VERY appreciated).
Pato de la Florida, Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors)
Status Migrante Comun (Mc)
pato de Florida o yaguasa aliazul, también conocida como pato media luna, pato de alas azules, barraquete aliazul, es una especie de ave anseriforme de la familia Anatidae nativa de América.
Es pardo manchado y punteado de negro, con diseño alar como el del pato pico cuchara sudamericano, cabeza y cuello ceniciento oscuro, notable medialuna en la cara y mancha blanca en los flancos, en los machos. La hembra no tiene la medialuna en la cara, pero tiene una leve ceja loreal clara.
sta especie de pato vive en lagunas, lagos y pantanos de agua dulce. No teniendo preferencias durante el invierno habita aguas salobres. Se alimenta de vegetación, insectos, y crustáceos acuáticos. Complementa su dieta con semillas, incluyendo las de campos cultivados.
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The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is a small dabbling duck from North America. The scientific name is derived from Latin Anas "duck", and discors, "variance", which may refer to the striking face pattern of the male
The adult male has a greyish blue head with a white facial crescent, a light brown body with a white patch near the rear and a black tail. The adult female is mottled brown, and has a whitish area at base of bill. Both sexes have sky-blue wing coverts, a green speculum, and yellow legs
Blue-winged teal inhabit shoreline more often than open water and prefer calm water or sluggish currents to fast water. They inhabit inland marshes, lakes, ponds, pools, and shallow streams with dense emergent vegetation.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Aves
Order:Anseriformes
Family:Anatidae
Subfamily:Anatinae
Genus:Anas (disputed)
Species:S. discors
Binomial name
Spatula discors
For Sale - (only) $2,600.000.00
Includes the “drip” in upper R. green arc.
When I inquired, about that drip, the Gallerist stated “he did that”.
I tried to negotiate a discount, 😂 like my Cheap-Ass-Clients have in the past….when they’d point out a slight variance in my work, and
I
need to assure them, like this Frenchman-from-Avignon did,
that it’s “intentionally created/left there, by the Artists!”
😎
This image is a testament to what is possible with the tools available to today's amateur astronomer. During the capture session, transparency varied between below average and poor, and seeing had similar variances. The data is so bad that some of the pieces of this 20 panel mosaic had to be manually pasted and nudged into place, because photomerge could not line up the panels. Also, the changing transparency meant that the amount of the light reaching the sensor for each frame varied. I compensated for this as best I could by adjusting the brightness, but it seems that other values probably needed to be adjusted as well.
ZWO ASI178MC
Meade LX850 (12" f/8)
Losmandy G11
1000 frames for each mosaic panel captured with Firecapture.
Best 75% of frames stacked with Autostakkert
Wavelet sharpened with Registax
Photomerged and finished with Photoshop
Processed using calibrated red, green, and blue filtered images of Saturn's rings taken by Cassini on August 20 2009. Not true color, I applied color channel balancing to show more variance in this version.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
The more I look at these magnificent birds the more I admire the diversity and variance in their flight patterns - no wonder they are such masters of the air
Portrait orientation wasn't working on this photo, so I changed perspective and presto. This waterfall is found about 20 minutes drive out off Burnie on the north coast of Tasmania, Australia. Camera Settings: 24mm, f5.6, ISO500, 30sec. via 500px ift.tt/2k1t0Xc