When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
A very thin crescent Moon will appear below Venus in the sunset this evening. Look for a 1% illuminated crescent quite low, only about 10° elevation at sunset. Venus will be a bit higher, about 14° above the setting Sun.
A telescope will reveal that Venus also shows a thin crescent phase, only 3% illuminated as it approaches inferior conjunction, passing between the Earth and the Sun.
A year in review article? Really? Yeah, everyone does it, and you get tired of them. I am going to do it anyway… It is a nice excuse to look back over the previous year and see what I spent the last 365 days of my life doing.
As Darker View is intended to be a web diary, in the original sense of the term blog, I can look back through a year of postings to do this. I have to admit a few surprises were to be had, things I had forgotten about!
Looking back I have to admit it was not a bad year.
Welcome to 2014!
We may be among the last to join in the new year, Hawai’i is always a bit behind, but we do it in style. I have noted that the amount of fireworks going off in the neighborhood is a good economic indicator. The size of some of the local arsenals is fairly impressive this year, in notable contrast to some previous years, there is a lot of crackle, whistle and bang this year.
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.
Tomorrow night, January 1st will see a nice conjunction of Venus and a thin crescent Moon
It was a good year…
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!
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…
Today Mercury passes through superior conjunction, passing behind the Sun as seen from the Earth. The planet will appear in the sunset later next month, reaching maximum elongation on January 30th.