The Top Posts of 2013

There were over 75,500 visits to Darker View this year, a substantial increase over last year. This includes two months with about 10,000 visitors, though 5-6k is more normal for a month. Daily traffic is running about 200 visits per day. I am continually amazed that so many people stop by my little molecule of the web to read what I have written.  Perhaps they just come to view the photographs.

A few posts on Darker View attract far more attention than the rest, by a wide margin. There are certain subjects I post about that seem to be of continual interest, garnering a large number of search engine hits. It is always interesting to see what these posts are. Why are folks coming to read Darker View?

Article Views
1 Astrophotography with the EOS-M 3979
2 Snow on the Mountain 3387
3 Mauna Kea Claims Another… 3028
4 A Backyard Telescope Pier 2173
5 Soldering Small 1932
6 The iOptron ZEQ25 1596
7 Degrees, Arc-Minutes and Arc-Seconds 1236
8 SBIG ST-i Autoguider 1146
9 Repairing a Wii Balance Board 833
10 Autoguiding the iOptron ZEQ25 with an SBIG STi 767

 

A couple posts are on the list because they were linked by sites with a good deal more traffic than DV, Snow on the Mountain and Soldering Small are examples of this. A couple astro-equipment related posts continue to draw steady traffic, months after being posted. Most of the astro-basics posts are well read, appearing in the top 50.

The backyard pier post is a very old post, one that was originally written for my first website over a decade ago. The latest version was edited and somewhat updated when I transferred it to the WordPress version of DV where it continues to get a few hits every day.

There are 1158 posts on Darker View, not counting all of the old stuff still on the older version of the site. Looking through the posts and seeing what people are reading is fascinating.  Will the results change the way I write and what I write about? Probably not.  The purpose of DV is not to generate traffic.  Still, is is gratifying to see that folks stop by.

Venus Disappears into the Sunset

Crescent Venus
Venus approaching inferior conjunction, 24Dec2013
Over the next few days Venus will slide into the sunset on its way to inferior conjunction on January 11th. This evening the planet is 16° from the Sun, this decreases by about 1° each day. As the new year begins the planet will become ever more challenging to see as it orbits into the Sun’s glare.

Tomorrow night, January 1st will see a nice conjunction of Venus and a thin crescent Moon

Full Macro

One of the real advantages of the mirrorless cameras, like my little EOS-M, is the ability to mount just about any lens.  The small cameras have very shallow back focus requirements, the distance from the lens mount to the sensor.  With the correct adapter they can mount the old Canon FD, Nikon, Leica, anything! I find myself unpacking my old photo gear, and wondering about the possibilities.

I do have some really good old Canon and Nikon primes around, lenses from the manual focus days.   When I assembled an EOS-M to FD adapter, an extension tube, and a 50mm f/1.4 lens onto the front of the camera it resulted in a rather odd looking setup.  Odd looking, but it works, providing an impressive macro capability.   With better than 1:1 magnification I was able to keep a reasonable depth of field in the test shots. I need try some tests with the 100mm f/2.8 lens, for even higher magnification.

Aside from the FD to EOS-M adapter this is all gear I had sitting about unused. I never used it much in my film days. Digital is different, the ability to examine the result immediately and the elimination of per frame costs enables an ease of experimentation that was not there before. I am going to play with this a bit!

Maco Circuitry
Testing a macro setup that uses a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens, and a 50mm extension tube mounted to the EOS-M.

Keck at the End of the Rainbow

Waimea could honestly use the tagline “Place of Rainbows”. I see more rainbows here than anywhere else I know of. The trades blow the wet tropical air into the saddle between Mauna Kea and the Kohala. This creates a bank of clouds that dissipates right over the town. Clouds and rain on one side of town, clear skies on the other side, add low morning or afternoon sunlight and the rainbows appear. Sometimes they appear in convenient locations…

Keck at The End of the Rainbow
A brilliant rainbow ends at the headquarters of the W. M. Keck Observatory in Waimea

Quadrantid Meteor Shower

The first meteor shower of 2014 is the annual Quadrantid meteor shower. The Quadrantids are a reliable shower, producing 60-120 ZHR, one to two meteors per minute. The Quadrantids are named for the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, now part of the constellation Boötes.

Leonids in Orion
A pair of Leonid meteors streak through Orion
Unlike other showers where activity can occur for days or even weeks, the Quadrantids have a sharp peak, activity falls off rapidly on the preceding and following nights, or even a few hours away from the peak. Thus it is important to observe the Quadrantids quite near the peak prediction. For 2014 the peak is predicted for January 3rd around 19:30UT, or 09:30HST on this side of the globe. The best timing for observers in the islands is during the predawn hours of January 3rd, a few hours before peak, the best we have for this year. The good news is that the night will be nearly moonless, with wonderfully dark conditions for observing.

Watching meteors requires no more equipment than your eyes and a dark sky, and can be enjoyable for just about anyone. Set the alarm early?

Comet C/2012 S1 ISON Closest to Earth

Hubble C/2012 S1 ISON
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope provides a close-up look of Comet ISON (C/2012 S1). Credit:NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li
Today comet C/2012 S1 ISON will pass closest to Earth. No worries here, close is relative in space and in this case means a comfortable 0.43 AU (64,200,000 km or 39,900,000 miles) from Earth. The comet should be easily visible well up in the dawn sky as an unaided eye object in northern Hercules.

Update: Yes, this post was written and scheduled well before the comet disintegrated at perihelion. If there is anything left it is closest to the Earth today. Many amateurs, large scopes, even Hubble have attempted to recover the remains. No one has reported finding anything.