Lotus leaf

This striking geometric pattern is actually a shed leaf from one of the plants in Cathy's lotus pond. The lotuses are of course thriving.

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A cloud

Melody "creative-directed" this picture of a cloud over Alps Shopping Center on July 5; I actually took it and edited it.

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Cream and black and white and gray
The drab colors of the Mid-21st Century

We are almost — not quite — as close to 2050 as to 2000, and I think I know what the mid-century is going to look like: Drab!

Here is part of the "new look" that is taking over Athens, Georgia:

These buildings were originally other colors; many were red brick.

Recall that all the old wooden houses got painted white in the 1920s, and that's how I remember them from the 1960s and later, even though in Victorian times they had been multicolored.

Similarly, commercial buildings are getting painted drab colors now. The usual colors are cream, black (surprisingly common), gray, and white, but sometimes a dark drab grayish-green or grayish-blue is permitted. I suppose someone felt that any other colors would clash with each other. We are certainly a long way from the colorful 1970s.

I thank Melody for taking some of the pictures as we drove around.

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Farewells to two businesses

We are now in what might be called the post-COVID cleanup, the time when businesses that were weakened by the pandemic have, in some cases, failed to recover. Yesterday Athens said goodbye to the Beechwood Cinemas, a fixture of the town since the shopping center opened in 1962. I think the last time we were there was to see The Incredibles with our daughters in 2004. Melody and I didn't keep track of where we saw movies when we were dating, but I'm sure we went there several times, and I had also been there before she came on the scene. At the same time, if I haven't been to a cinema in 20 years, maybe it's no great loss for me. DVD rental and then the Internet brought movies into our homes. Many other movie theaters around Athens have closed recently.

We will also miss Jason's Deli (140 Alps Road), which closed a few weeks ago. It dates from, I think, about 2010 if not earlier; Melody and I have enjoyed eating there many times, but it was showing the effect of budget cuts in recent months.

And Red Lobster went out of business recently. We were not regulars there, but we had eaten there several times and enjoyed it.

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42 years

Today I thank Melody for 42 years of marriage and nearly 49 years of love and friendship.

Readers of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will recall that 42 is a very important number. I also note in passing that we have lasted 3,817 times as long as Romeo and Juliet.

Melody is the only person I've ever had in my life who actually understood and appreciated what I was trying to do with my time, energy, and talents. (As opposed to just encouraging it without understanding it, which several teachers and relatives have tried to do.) I have tried to be the same for Melody. Crucially, we take it for granted that we ought to know a lot of things, and that nothing is too specialized for us.

Melody became the first friend I had ever had with whom I did not have to set aside, as an interest not shared, anything that I really cared about.

As for how to be a good spouse, I think there are two levels to it. One is, of course, being good to each other. But on a deeper level, each of us makes a lifelong project of being the kind of person who can be a good spouse — wise, mature, and trustworthy. We did this consciously even before we met.

Practically my very first impression of 17-year-old Melody was that she was unusually wise and trustworthy. She has borne that out. I hope I have been the same for her.

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The world's largest-ever computer outage

Numerous businesses have had to stop in their tracks for more than a day because their computer servers were taken down by the CrowdStrike failure. (Click on that link for updated details.)

The failure affected computers that were running CrowdStrike Falcon anti-virus/anti-hacking software. The CrowdStrike product is an extension to Microsoft Windows but is not a product of Microsoft.

The vast majority of the computers affected were servers belonging to large corporations, housed in data centers and accessed remotely. When the computers crashed, it was not possible to connect to them remotely to fix things, and technicians had to work on-site.

The PC or laptop on your desk isn't at risk from this. Nor are most small- to medium-sized businesses.

I want to echo these key points made by Susan Bradley in AskWoody, a newsletter for which I also write:

• The flaw was in an antivirus definition file released by CrowdStrike.
• Microsoft is not at fault. (Contrary to what I suspected earlier, this did not expose a flaw in Windows. Windows is supposed to shut down when something like this happens and its operating-system kernel appears to be seriously damaged.)
• It's hard to see how this could be caused by anything other than a complete lack of testing. CrowdStrike should have tested the file on one server, then a few servers, before deploying it everywhere at once.

Since this is software for Windows, macOS and Linux computers were not affected, but this is not an occasion to say "I'm so glad I use a Mac" — as far as I know macOS does not presently have a server edition at all. Linux is widely used on servers and would have sidestepped this problem, but the problem is not fundamental to Windows — it's that somebody deployed an operating system modification without testing.

There is also the issue of too many eggs in one basket (and here I tip my hat to the Linux crowd). Should so many vital servers run exactly the same operating system and security software? Should so many business operations rely on communicating constantly with a server somewhere else? Microcomputers gave us computer power on every desk. The Internet was supposed to give us decentralization and diversity. Instead, businesses are using modern technology to build systems that work like the giant mainframes of the 1960s and have similar vulnerabilities.

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The Trump assassination attempt

I am thankful that, at Saturday's mass shooting, only four people were hit, and only one died (other than the shooter, shot in response). Two more were seriously wounded, and one got a minor wound. Thousands more were uninjured.

I am not eager to interpret this as miraculous protection of Mr. Trump. I am glad he came out without serious injury, but let's not forget the three who came out worse.

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Political misuse of the Bible —
and it's stranger than you imagined!

I want my non-Christian friends to know that we Christians do not normally believe the things I'm about to mention. But people are circulating them now.

Please do not assume that any of these statements are sincere beliefs or that they come from the side of the political spectrum that they seem to support. They may be intended just to confuse people or make them look foolish. Some may be failed jokes that some people took too seriously.

The strange claims I've encountered so far are:

(1) That the Trump assassination attempt is tied to Ephesians 6:11 ("Put on the whole armor of God") because it occurred at 6:11 p.m.

(The Bible nowhere indicates that its chapters and verses are numbered in Eastern Daylight Time. Anyhow, those numbers were put in after the invention of printing.)

(2) That the blood on Trump's ear is a sign of holiness like the way Aaron was anointed on the ear with blood from a sacrificial ram (Leviticus 8:23).

(Out of context. Aaron was anointed on the lobe of the ear, not the top, and in other places. The blood was from the ram, not from Aaron. No resemblance to what happened to Trump.)

(3) That Trump corresponds to the seven-headed beast that survived a lethal head wound and went on to rule for 42 weeks (Revelation 13).

(If you accept this, it's an extreme anti-Trump position, Trump as the blaspheming Beast. But Trump didn't have a lethal head wound; what wound he has, has not healed yet; and he doesn't have seven heads. I just don't see the connection.)

Please choose whom to support based on accurate information, without trying to get the Bible to prophesy about your candidate. And don't assume that the candidates or the bulk of their supporters make those strange biblical claims.

Insofar as the Bible does prophesy about future political events, how likely is it to be talking about this election in this country this year? Are we the most important people that ever lived? Don't Napoleon, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, and any number of rulers you haven't heard of get a chance?

In 2016 the Russian propaganda mill portrayed Trump as a spiritual warrior, arm-wrestling the devil, receiving blessings directly from Jesus, and so forth. I'm seeing things this year that reflect the same style. Be careful, and above all, don't be foolish.

And if you literally believe a candidate is your Messiah — I've seen it happen — then please have the decency to announce that you are no longer a Christian.

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A cloud

Taken on July 12 while waiting for the clouds to get out from in front of the sun so I could photograph sunspots.

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EXIFLOG update

For the first time in four years, I've released an update to EXIFLOG, the free software I wrote for my own use to create logbooks of digital images. It gives you a one-line summary of the exposure details of each image file. Though I use it for astrophotography, it is also useful for other photography. Click on the picture to learn more about it.

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First dark

Before I had used my new camera on the sky, before I could show anyone a "first light" image, I shared with a few people the following "first dark." This is a 2-minute calibration exposure with no light reaching the sensor.

Look at what is not there: no streaks, no "tartan," no glow coming in from one side, no bright or dark edges. It's just a random speckle of low-amplitude noise, exactly what a high-quality sensor should produce.

This is just the upper left part, but the rest of the image is just as good.

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First light with a new astrocamera

We've reached the point where a good astrocamera costs no more than a good DSLR. Although lower-end DSLRs are still the cheapest way to do astrophotography (and I'm keeping my Canon 60Da and Nikon D5300), I think that nowadays, the way to move beyond a daytime-photography DSLR is probably to get an astrocamera rather than a specially chosen or modified DSLR.

So I am now the proud owner of a new Altair Astro Hypercam 26C. This is almost identical to a camera marketed by ToupTek, and very similar to many others that use the same sensor, but I wanted Altair's excellent user support and user community.

Also, when I ordered it last week, the exchange rate from dollars to British pounds was very favorable (1.26), but it is now 1.30, just a week later. Altair cameras are still quite affordable, especially when you remember that orders from abroad do not incur VAT. They got it to me in 48 hours via DHL Express, and U.S. Customs did not charge a duty, as they generally do not on products of types that are not widely manufactured in the United States.

Pictures below...

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First light: the Moon

I started with Altair's own AltairCapture software and had no difficulty taking snapshots and videos of the moon. Before processing, they came out green, which is no surprise because this camera is about half a stop faster in green than in red and blue, and I had not set any color adjustments.

What you see above is a stack of the best 75% of about 900 frames, processed in the standard way. AltairCapture recorded them on a .SER file and AutoStakkert took it from there.

The mystery of the moment is that the moon came out mirror-imaged! (I corrected that in processing, of course.) There is a "flip" setting in AltairCapture, but I didn't set it. I don't recall whether the moon was mirror-imaged on the screen — I think it was. Unsolved mysteries of the universe...

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First light: the North America Nebula

Then I settled down to serious deep-sky work. Using the Altair camera through N.I.N.A. is much like using any other camera, except that everything is fully supported (which is not the case with DSLRs).

Sunspots

We had a fine display of sunspots today, and nature conspired to give me an unusually sharp picture of it. Just as I was setting up the telescope, a cumulus cloud came and stayed overhead for half an hour. That gave the telescope time to equalize with the temperature of the air (95 F) without the sun shining directly on it, which would have warmed it unevenly. That, combined with air that was generally steady, and the fact that the sun was high in the sky, gave me a sharp image.

This is a stack of the best 4 out of 6 images, exposed 1/500 second at ISO 100, using my Canon 60Da, Thousand Oaks solar filter, and Celestron 5, shown here:

The images were deBayered and binned 2×2 using PIPP, then stacked using AutoStakkert 4, then sharpened and further processed with PixInsight and Photoshop.

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Three farewells

Noted sky-mapper Wil Tirion passed away just a few days ago. He is the author of most of the main star atlases used since about 1980, and I have used many of them. He continued the colorful style of the Bečvář atlases, with red galaxies and green nebulae. He will be missed.

Meanwhile, there are widespread but unconfirmed reports that Meade Instruments and Orion Telescopes, both under the same parent company, have just gone out of business. However, their web sites are still up and taking orders. We are awaiting further word.

Update: As of July 27 there is still no official confirmation, but I've heard one report that Orion is no longer taking telephone calls. This delay itself warrants concern.

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NGC 6946

Here's my third picture from the night of July 3-4, the Fireworks Galaxy (appropriate, I suppose). This is a spiral seen face-on, and there's some dust in our own galaxy in front of it, giving it a yellowish color. Stack of 97 30-second exposures, same equipment as in the previous pictures (scroll down).

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NGC 6888

Finally, here's my last picture from that session: the Crescent Nebula, a stack of 100 30-second exposures. Arguably I should stack 200 or more. Click here for the astrophysics of this nebula; it's a rather unusual object.

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M102

My second picture from the night of July 3-4 is Messier 102 (NGC 5866), an object whose identity has been disputed. Of course there's no doubt that this is a galaxy, seen edge-on, with a dramatic dust lane cutting across it; the dispute is whether it is item 102 in Messier's catalog. Many editions of the list say M102 is a duplicate observation of M101.

About a decade ago I wrote an article for Sky and Telescope (Sept. 2015, available online through some libraries) sorting everything out. I agree with European amateur astronomers that the discoverer, Messier's colleague Pierre Méchain, actually observed two different galaxies, and then Messier and/or Méchain made a mistake interpreting their notes, leading them to retract the second one as a duplicate of the first. My theory, explained in the article, is that they used a homemade chart on which one of the R.A. circles was mislabeled. See also this detailed analysis by Hartmut Frommert.

How could anybody mix up this galaxy with M101 (scroll down to yesterday's entry)? The fact is, in a small telescope, a visual observer sees only the central core of the galaxy, not the spiral arms or any other detail. So they do look remarkably alike. That is easy to verify, and I have done so.

The picture above is at higher magnification than I usually use; here is one that matches the scale of yesterday's M101:

And here it is annotated:

Stack of 46 30-second exposures (again, I wanted more, but a tree was in the way), with the same equipment as yesterday's entry. Note that six more galaxies showed up faintly in my photograph.

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M101

Messier 101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, is a spiral seen face-on. In the outer regions of its arms, many of the star-forming regions are so bright that they have received NGC numbers of their own, including the compact bright one at the far left. These are all part of the same galaxy. Here's an annotated version of the image:

You can also see another galaxy, much more distant, at the right edge, well above the middle; it didn't get annotated. It is PGC 49919.

This picture is, if I may say so, quite presentable for something done in less than an hour with an 8-inch telescope under a town sky. It's a stack of 69 30-second exposures (I was aiming for 100, but a tree got in the way) with my Celestron 8 EdgeHD, f/7 reducer, and Canon 60Da camera (ISO 800) on a Losmandy GM811G mount autoguided with an iOptron iGuider (yes, that works as well as larger guidescopes, in my experience) using PHD2 and N.I.N.A. software.

Readers will wonder if I'm using all of my own latest techniques. Yes: shorter exposures to minimize differential flexure, dithering, spectrophotometric color correction, and BlurXTerminator (which made only a slight change).

The camera's sensor reached 35 C on this hot summer night; it is always warmer than the surrounding air because of its own electronics. Canon DSLRs report the temperature but have no way of altering it. At 35 C (95 F), the thermal noise level is perhaps 100 times what it would be at freezing (0 C). So I need a cooled astrocamera; that is the next step, because the place to strengthen a chain is at its weakest link. And one is on the way.

That picture was taken on the night of July 3. I decided to stay up nearly all night, and Melody kept me company. Most of the time, we were indoors, remote-controlling the camera and telescope from another laptop. I got three more pictures from the same session; you'll see more tomorrow.

I want to briefly note the passing of Yetta Jane (Sanderbeck) Burrell, 1928-2024, who was one of my middle-school teachers at St. John's in Valdosta and, arguably, one of my biggest fans — she certainly gave me a lot of encouragement for my intellectual pursuits in a town where so many people were inclined to do otherwise. Lux aeterna luceat ei.

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Presidential immunity and panic

I'm not joining in our collective, competitive national panic attack. I do not think our republic is dead or doomed. It will right itself. Considerations:

• The president can still be impeached. Impeachment is the normal way of dealing with crimes committed by presidents.
• The immunity granted to Trump has also been granted to Biden. Some people on the right wing are panicking at this thought.
• The immunity is only for official acts. It's pretty clear that the crimes Trump is accused of were not official acts. (Do I recall that part of his defense in the Stormy Daniels case is that he was not acting officially? Can't have it both ways.) I think we are going to see some court cases that will quickly show how narrow the immunity really is.
• Hearings to determine whether actions were official will in effect be preliminary trials that put presidential misdeeds, and the evidence for them, before the public sooner than the actual trial.
• Only the president is immune. For everybody else, obeying an unlawful order is still illegal. And while such a person could perhaps be pardoned by a corrupt president, it would be a mark of shame, a career-ending move.

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Artificial intelligence is not omniscient, omnipotent, or necessarily superhuman

It is a serious mistake to think that if computers model or emulate human thinking, they will necessarily do it with superhuman speed and accuracy, or that "artificial intelligence" can do the impossible.

Computers are certainly superhuman at things like arithmetic and routing and delivering messages. That's because they're machines. They don't do these things the way humans do; they use their special-purpose mechanisms.

It is quite possible for a computer to model a human capability with sub-human performance. Think of speech recognition and face recognition. What if "artificial general intelligence" arrives but has an IQ of 70?

Sometimes AI techniques have inherent limits. ChatGPT is trained to model the way words are used in context. People use it as a repository of knowledge — and it gives inaccurate output because it paraphrases things in ways that are grammatical and natural but not truth-preserving. This would be the case even if the entire training corpus were carefully screened for accuracy. A bigger, faster computer would not change this.

And AI cannot do the impossible. Someone asked me when AI was going to give us perfect forecasting of the weather and the stock market. Never — because those things can't be done! The information needed is simply not available in full. And AI does not somehow omnisciently get information that there is no way to collect.

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