Journey To The Edge Of The Universe and more Conjunction Images

Geysers on Triton;


and Black holes in action;


bright colored matter;


and Solar attractions;

Nebulae, galaxies, stars in between, these are a few of my favorite things, bet you'll never guess which movie I was watching the other day. Anyways back on topic, you get to see all my favs above and more on the 2 hour premiere of "Journey to the Edge of the Universe" on the National Geographic Channel.

Very cool how through cinema quality CGI and the worlds best telescopes they take you from a couple people enjoying the night sky up through the atmosphere, to the Moon, Sun, planets then galaxies and beyond to the edge of the universe, all in one camera move.

Be prepared to board "spacecraft imagination", launch date this Sunday December 7, 7 pm EST.

Again the Canadian times are yet to be announced, will let you know as soon as I hear.

Well, the last couple of weeks have been space crazy around here, first with our famous Saskatchewan meteor, which by the way they have found quite a few pieces of , to the beautiful Venus, Jupiter Lunar conjunction, imaged and viewed by millions of people all over the world, everybody was getting involved, even my wife, as I was coming home after imaging the gathering she said "I saw your cute little conjunction!"........boy........, if I had a nickel every time I heard that.


The beautiful image above of the conjunction was taken by Genie, great job Genie! When there are special celestial occasions I will post any and all images from you the readers on my blog, and issue a free pair of Hanna Montana/ Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, while supplies last. My goal has always been to get people involved in and to enjoy the cosmos, and my new goal to one day have everybody outfitted with said 3D glasses. The upcoming Jupiter, Mercury and Lunar conjunction December 28/29, not as spectacular as the one that just occurred but it will more beautiful in it's subtlety, has Mercury in it, I love Mercury, always a challenge to view and even more difficult to image, the Moon will be a very small crescent making it all the more reason to try and catch it. For the conjunction look low in the SW just after Sunset on the 28/29. Also the Geminid meteor shower peaks next weekend, look to the east around 10:00 pm for the show to start, will be a Full Moon so won't see the maximum of 60 meteors per hour but again still worth a look.


The above image was taken by Anita with a Finepix S700 camera, great shot Anita! A pair of 3D glasses are on their merry way to you and yours.



Raymond, took the above image, super job!! hope you Genie and Anita enjoy your new 3D glasses, to break em in, try this cool NASA 3D image site.

I'll leave you now with a preview clip of Journey to the Edge of the Universe.

National Geographic Mars Rovers Special

Just a heads up people, mark your calendars and get the popcorn going for this Sunday night November 2 at 8:00 pm ET for three hours of Mars, the Rovers and the search for aliens on The National Geographic Channel.

The premier of Five Years On Mars gets things rolling. Journey with the little rovers Spirit and Opportunity on what was to be a 90 day mission on the red planet that has now lasted nearly 5 years. Using computer generated high-definition photorealistic animation you'll see how the rovers conquered mechanical failures and the harsh Martian environment to send back literally 100s of thousands of images and enough scientific data to keep scientists busy back here on Earth for years to come.


Very cool, right near the beginning of the show it cuts to a scene of a bunch of scientists all wearing 3D glasses looking over some assembled 3D images taken by the rovers. Well anybody that has read this blog will know that I am one with all things 3D, ........ I so want a job where I have to wear 3D glasses, I can't imagine... well maybe a little.

Intercom system: "ATTENTION! ATTENTION! would Bob Johnson please report to the 3D mission room and bring your 3D glasses with you, there is a lot of 3D scientifical discoveries to be made that will benefit all humankind and we need your expertise and 3D glasses, thank you.... and have a nice day".


Immediately following Five Years on Mars will be an encore showing of Life On Mars, then the premier of Calling All Aliens, about how we are reaching out to the heavens in hopes of one day making alien contact, speaking of which do you remember Jodie Foster in the movie Contact?
well you'll meet the lady her character was based on, Jill Tarter the director of the Allen Telescope Array.


Partially funded by Paul Allen co-founder of Microsoft, the Allen Telescope Array is used by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), 24/7 to collect and monitor datastreams from outer space to see if anyone not of this Earth is trying to make contact.

All in all a great night with 3 awesome programs you won't want to miss. Right now the Canadian dates and times aren't confirmed, once I find out I will update this post.

Also as you're out Halloweening tomorrow night with the kiddies or just out by yourself, look low in the SW just after Sunset for a beautiful gathering of the crescent Moon and Venus.

I'll leave you now with an animation of the Full Moon and clouds.

Daytime Celestial Viewing

Who hasn't looked to the heavens during the day, usually to see what the weather is like, besides the weather one of my favorite daytime targets is a small crescent Moon. It's fun and rewarding if you can find it as the glare from the Sun makes it almost impossible to spot let alone image.



So here's the thing, I will give some lucky person 50 Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses if you are chosen as the winner by me, my cat and a select few other judges of the "Find and Photograph The Daytime Crescent Moon Contest", Let me tell you 50 3D glasses doesn't even put a dent in my collection. Not only will you receive the valuable 3D glasses estimated to be worth lots but I will post your images on this blog, actually I will post all submissions to my blog, up for the challenge? Hint, some dates to look out for; October 25-27 in the South West. October29-31 in the South. November 24-26 in the South West, November 28-30 in the South.



Second place winner will receive a DVD of the coolest movie around "In The Shadow Of The Moon". I can't say enough about this movie, all about the Apollo Missions and the effect going to the Moon had on the Astronaut's lives, and the soundtrack is killer. The best part of this whole thing is if you enter an image, you'll probably be the only one that does, hey, guaranteed to win.

To help you out I'll save you some time, the camera settings I used that had the Moon stand out best for the daytime shot were, ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec. To find out what phase the Moon is in just click on my Moon phase button on my sidebar, to find the location in the sky of the Moon just go to Sky View Cafe and type in your city, it will come back with the location of everything in the sky on any particular time or day for your location. Any questions and to submit your image just email me.


While we're on the topic of daytime celestial viewing back in August I got a shot of some crepuscular rays. These rays are huge shadows cast into the sky just before Sunrise or just after Sunset by the Sun's rays interfering with clouds, mountains or in the case above, atmospheric interference caused by all the forest fires here in Saskatchewan . We had around 3x the average amount of fires this year as compared to the rest of Canada. Due to the serious and far ranging implications of these fires NASA sent a 120 scientists and a couple planes to the military base in Cold Lake Alberta to analyse their effect on our environment .



I got an email from from an intern at GOOD Magazine who thought my readers would enjoy their latest movie production on satellites, I agree, it is very cool.

Make Your Own 3D Images!!

That's right you heard me, or read me right, you too can make your own 3D images. By following this simple tutorial you can enter the self made world of 3D. I know what you're thinking, "Bob that's crazy talk, how can you make your own 3D images?" Well I'll get to that in a moment, but first of all think of the possibilities, one word....... "Weddings", everyone has those ordinary B&W or color photos of that special day, blah, blah blah, how would you like to give something special, a 3D image complete with 3D glasses of the lucky couple sitting by a lake, or a pond, or on a swing, how awesome would that be? My youngest daughter is getting married next year, guess what I'll be getting them?

To start with, take a picture of something, flowers, horses, trees, Yodas, people, whatever you like, now take another picture, this time with the opposite eye, in other words move the camera over, around 3 inches, moving in parallel lines and keeping track of which picture is from the left and which is from the right, you are basically taking stereo images of the subject to combine later in your photo processing software.


Next open your images in your editing software, I have photoshop so I will be using photoshop terms from here on in.

1.Rename your photos, eg. Yoda L, for Yoda left image, and Yoda R, for Yoda right image.

2. Maximize your left image, click on 'Image' on the top toolbar, go to 'Mode' then 'Grayscale', the left image is now Grayscaled.

3. Repeat for the right image.

4. Minimize the right image and maximize the left image, so the left image is active, click on 'Image' on the top of the toolbar once again, go to 'Mode', this time click on 'RGB color', now you have your left image as RGB color and your right image as Grayscale.

5. With the left image active still, go the the bottom right of photoshop, click on the channels tab, next click on the blue channel at the bottom so it is shaded, next with your finger on the shift key click on the green channel, now you will have the blue and green channels highlighted.

6. Minimize the left image now and maximize the right image, with the right image active, click on 'Select' on the top toolbar, select 'All', you will see a dotted line around the whole image, now go to 'Edit' on the top toolbar, then select 'Copy'.

7. Minimize the right image and maximize the left image, with the left image now active go the top toolbar and click on 'Edit' then 'Paste', you have just pasted the left and right images together, if you go to the bottom right where the channels section is and click on the RGB channel you will see a red blue image, isn't this getting exciting?

8. It's almost done now, click on the Red Channel so it is the only channel shaded, now go to the RGB channel and click on the little side box so an eye appears in all the side boxes on all the channels, but only the red channel is shaded, this will allow you to move only the red channel to fine tune the 3D effect.

9. What you have to do now is fine tune the red and blue separation, go to the tool section on the left side and click on the move tool, I wear my 3D glasses for this part, with the move tool click on the composite image and move the red channel until you get the best 3D effect, once you are satisfied, you are done, you may have to crop any red off the image after moving that layer around, then presto, you have your very own 3D image.

If I have totally confused you, just click on the link at the top of this post, it will take you to the tutorial I followed. The guy who does 3D images for the NASA missions wrote it.


Talk about pop a doodle doo, the Moon image above and the Nyiragongo Volcano below are a couple of my favorite NASA 3D images, very cool, they pop right out at you.

So if you really, really, really want to make your own 3D images, I still have some 3D glasses to give away, just email me your address and I will send you a pair.

A late addition to this post.  Ruth one of my readers had commented that she thought I'd be talking about the "Big event", Cern's start up of the LHC, well they did successfully steer a beam around the 27 km loop but the actual smashing of the beams won't occur for a few weeks yet, so no black holes, and they go on to say in the press release that new results won't be appearing for another year, which leads me to believe we probably won't know the exact date they will be up to the  power needed to actually create black holes, kind of keeping us in the dark so to speak.  I will continue to read all the articles I can get my hands on to let you know the current happenings as they occur.

Here Comes The Sun

At one time I had really big plans for the Sun and this blog, gonna post a lot of images and such, but alas the Sun has not been co-operating, nothing going on, little or no Sunspots, flares or prominences. I took the image of Sunspot 0999 above over a month ago. The image below is what was on Spaceweather.com today, actually been the same blank Sun for going on 6 weeks now.



A little bit of solar background, the Sun's solar activity such as sunspots, flares and prominences goes through an 11 year cycle of highs and lows, we are currently on the extra long decaying end of cycle 23, in the next few months we will see more solar activity as the Sun builds to solar maximum around 2012. At solar maximum we can expect to see upwards of 120 sunspots and intense solar flares daily as well as auroras as far south as Florida.

The Phoenix lander has been drilling into the Martian surface with it's motorized rasp on the back of it's robotic arm, collecting the sample with it's scoop and then watching and documenting the whole procedure kind of like a dress rehearsal in preparation for an actual gathering and depositing in the lander's oven when they are hoping they will finally be able to get some of that ice water into an oven to scientifically conclude ice water on Mars.

Okay now for the exciting news, NASA just released some 3D stereo views of the Martian surface around the lander. You've heard me talk before about my cardboard 3D glasses, people mock me for wearing them, actually I'm wearing them right now as I type, and yes It isn't the easiest thing to do, type while your wearing 3D glasses, but boy is it ever cool, may not look cool, but the view of the images with these glasses is, well it's like you're there, get yourself some of these glasses, you'll never regret it. Before I got my professional ones I had made some up by buying blue and red gels and taping the cut out squares to my glass lenses, word of advice, you may want to do that in private, it's not like people will think anything less of you when they see you wearing them, it's just they probably won't think anything more of you.

I'll leave you now with an animated Lunar Pleiades Occultation.