When Flying Saucers Attack!

[Mike Covell]

Don't be so hasty Celesta, the thing still has to fall to Earth yet, all they have succeded doing is destroying the hazardous fuel containment unit!

Ith the fuel unit gone the hazourdous fuel will free and fly off into space, thus saving people being killed with dangerous gases.

Cue loads of whooping and high fives

The satellite still has to drop from the sky!!

Imagine if it fell into a volcano??

Anyway watch the skies....erm....guys

[Vila]

I took about 16 photos of the eclipse last night, but only one is worth keeping. The rest were blurred from my hands not being steady. I don't have a tripod, or I would have used one. In any case, here is my one salvagable photo:



I haven't done any exposure adjustments or re-sizing of the image. This is just the cropped section of the original image. I had the camera set to landscape focus, and zoomed about halfway through its range.

Needless to say, this is just an ordinary digital camera. It's not too good for night photography or astronomy photos. But it is good for the normal snapshot photos it was designed to do.

Enjoy!

Vila

[Mike Covell]

Awsome picture Vila, I watched it from the comfort of my armchair and love to see them.

In Hull it is not always feasible to see such wonders as the street lights obstruct quite a lot.

In the yard out back it is clearer, but only when the neighbours don't have lights on.

I used to sky watch from my friends shed roof, until it was burnt down in a freak bar-b-que accident!! (don't ask)

In the summer we used to visit the North Yorkshire Moors and skywatch out there, it's beautiful country but if you don't respect it, it will bit you in the ass.

Mike

[Celesta]

Vila, Excellent shot. Very nice. I took some but have not put them on the computer. They probably won't be very good.

Mike, I've been out most of the day, so all I saw was a quick shot this morning of the fuel exploding. So we still have to wait for the thing to fall. You know what they care about is that no one will get any of the pieces and discover any of their secrets and not about us earthlings.

Stan, Sorry the UFO show was a disappointment for you.

Take care All.

PS. Vila, my pictures came out itty-bitty! I also had the shaky hand syndrome. Did you use a telephoto lens or a telescope with camera attachment? We have an old telescope, but I have been hinting to get a nice one. Can't 'til we move though and get a darker sky. There's a community in the eastern half of GA composed of stargazers and astronomers. Of course it is kind of farther out (no pun meant here) than we had thought to move. Hope you and Lyn are feeling better and that this wet weather isn't magnifying the aches.

Jeff, I keep hoping we'll get some mini-meteor showers out of this!

[Mayerling]

From what I understood, the pieces of the space sattlelite would eventually drift into the atmosphere and burn up like meterorites do. Now we just have to wait until chunks begin to do just that.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Hi all,

Does anyone know what sort of device this weapon used? Several years ago, I saw a TV program where they described a kinetic antimissile system called "Brilliant Pebbles", if I remember correctly. The warhead of this weapon was essentially a canister of metal balls that were cast out shortly before the intersection with the target. As a result, a fairly wide area of pellets are hurled toward the target like a giant shotgun pattern.

[Vila]

Vila, Excellent shot. Very nice.

Thank you. But I'm not proud of my average. One good photo out of sixteen does not make me a happy camper.

PS. Vila, my pictures came out itty-bitty! I also had the shaky hand syndrome. Did you use a telephoto lens or a telescope with camera attachment? We have an old telescope, but I have been hinting to get a nice one. Can't 'til we move though and get a darker sky. There's a community in the eastern half of GA composed of stargazers and astronomers. Of course it is kind of farther out (no pun meant here) than we had thought to move. Hope you and Lyn are feeling better and that this wet weather isn't magnifying the aches.

Nope, no telephoto or telescope involved. Just a basic Kodak digital that my parents gave me a few years ago. It does have a combination optical and digital zoom function. I ran the zoom out to the limit of the optical part, but whenever I tried the digital zoom to go beyond that limit, the image in the display was just a featureless white blob.

I have an old telescope too, though it isn't anything special. I rarely use it because by the time I've managed to center the view on the moon, or whatever, the Earth's rotation has moved us past where I had the telescope pointed. I'd like to be able to buy one of those motorized telescopes that correct for the Earth's motion, but I don't have that kind of cash to use on a part-time hobby.

Lyn and I are lucky to be so far out in the countryside that we only have to worry about light-polution where one of the local softball teams is using the nearby softball field. Since it is Winter, no one has those lights turned on. Come Spring and Summer, those lights become a slight problem since they are only a mile or so away.

One thing I'd like to do is buy a tripod that I can mount my camera to, then I'd only have to worry about my finger holding the shutter button down moving the camera, rather than my arms shaking.

I did find step-by-step instructions on how to build a good digital camera/telescope from an old web cam and a telephoto lens one could buy at a pawn shop/e-bay. The fellow who wrote up the article said he spent roughly $40 and wound up with a telescope he could plug into his laptop! Imagine that, being able to use a laptop screen as a viewfinder, and taking snapshots by pressing a button on the keyboard. Just in case you, or anyone else, is interested, I'll paste the URL for that page here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/40-USB-super-telescope-easy-to-make-sees-crater/

It looks easy to build if one happens to be a home-handyman sort. I might give it a try. I already have a web cam I want to replace. All I'd need to buy is an old zoom lens for a 35mm camera and some PVC pipe. Check it out and see what you think. Might just be the next weapon in the arsenal of our fellow astronomy buffs/UFO hunters here on the Casebook.

Vila

[Mike Covell]

Hi all,

Does anyone know what sort of device this weapon used? Several years ago, I saw a TV program where they described a kinetic antimissile system called "Brilliant Pebbles", if I remember correctly. The warhead of this weapon was essentially a canister of metal balls that were cast out shortly before the intersection with the target. As a result, a fairly wide area of pellets are hurled toward the target like a giant shotgun pattern.

Hi Stan, i now have visions of the US troops stood firing pebbles up at the sky!
I have seen an anti-intruder device like that, it's basically a box filled with hard rubber balls, anyone cross the line and "Boom" the thing explodes, its non lethal too!
It's pretty useless for a home like mine as my front yard is only a couple of feet from the front window!!

There was some documentary on last night about squid, which looked at the animals intelligence, this was then followed by the "In Search of Giant Squid" program, were they stuck cameras on the back of a whale!!
I have seen this one so many times and didn't bother watching it.
Ghosthunters on Wednsday was billed as new but was a repeat, the guys were at the OK Coral or something.

I did watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was aired for the first time last night, I loved it, I am a big fan of the films, and was concerened it was going to be rubbish but I was pleasantly suprised!!

Mike

[Mike Covell]

Just found the footage of the satellite hit, featuring a top ranking US military guy giving a commentary.

It is clear they still don't know much when he says things like "We think...."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7250000/newsid_7256400/7256494.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1&bbcws=1

enjoy

[Celesta]

Hi Vila,

Thanks heaps for the link. It is right up my husband's alley. I am going to send this to his computer. When he looks at it, I'll let you know what he thinks. He is a natural born inventor, engineer, electronics person. Your basic neighborhood wizard. We both have old 35mm cameras with telephotos that could be used.

I didn't know about the digital zoom you mentioned. I will have to go back to my camera manual. I haven't half way explored what that digital camera can do.

Anyway, you got a much better shot than I did. I'm not unhappy that I tried, even if the moon is a tiny dot. I did blow the pix up and got a couple worth keeping.

Thanks.

Celesta

[Vila]

Celesta,

You're very welcome. I'm glad to hear that it might be useful to you and your husband. Good luck on the project and please keep me informed how it goes - Especially about any problems that crop up.

About the image size I got, one thing about my camera is that whenever I import the photos into my computer the raw image size is always somewhere around 2400x1800 pixels. My monitor is set for 800x600, so the camera gives me an image that is three times the size of my screen!

I also have to reset the exposure value every time I turn the camera on... Otherwise I have to open each image in the computer and adjust the brightness, then save the corrected image. I'm guessing that I'd have to reset the image size every time, too - If I could find the image size setting in the onboard menu of the camera.

The camera is a Kodak EasyShare C330. The lens maekings say that it is a "34mm to 102mm (Equiv) AF 3x Optical" but it doesn't say how much zoom you can get from the digital. I'm guessing that it is either an additional 3x, or possibly a 6x, but since the manual was packed up after our little fire last year, I have no way to check at the moment.

Anyone else going to try their hand at making their own digital camera-scope? I'd love to hear about it if you do.

Vila

[Celesta]

Hello All,


Vila, I wanted to tell you that once my husband saw the link he talked of nothing else all night! He pondered and planned and thought of other ways one could construct this, and whether it could be done with mirrors etc. In general, he had a great time with it, doing what he does best---thinking, designing and inventing. So once again, I want to say thanks for the link!


Everyone have a great weekend.

[plang]

Hi all. When you look through a telescope into space you are looking back in time. A star one million light years away is how it looked one million years ago.But you all knew that.
One of my favorite sci-fi films is being remade. 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still. To be released Dec. 2008. But you all knew that.

lol,
Plang

[Mike Covell]

Good day all,

My wife took me to see Rambo 4 last night, it was awsome, touching and of course total escapism.
It had all the origional musical pieces from the origional and it was like being a kid again.
Especially when Rambo is pushed to far!

It's possibly the most gruesome movie I have ever sat through, my wife hid behind her coat at one point.

It was basically about the Civil War in Burma and the horriffic atrocities that are happening over there. Cue loads of missionaries trying to right the wrongs, then "KABOOM" I wont spoil the rest but the action doesn't really let up.

Enough from me,

Mike

[sdreid]

I've only seen two of the Oscar Best Picture nominees but of those two I'd highly recommend No Country For Old Men. It has no background music which gives it a raw and realistic feeling. I also saw Michael Clayton which is good but not by comparison.