Morris "Mojo" Jones

Sky full of planets and lightning

Morris Jones — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:33:17 +0000

These cumulus clouds were nearly stationary all evening, making quite the light show with an electrical storm

Observing report, August 7, 2010

Chuckwalla, CA

We hadn’t expected to be able to observe during this part of the summer from Chuckwalla Bench in the High Colorado desert south of Joshua Tree, but this August night’s forecast at Desert Center looked very inviting. The forecast high there was 101°F with a low of 74°F. I believe our actual location is at a higher altitude; it always seems at least a couple of degrees cooler.

It was forecast to be breezy though, and that can make it uncomfortable to observe as well as blow telescopes and tripods around. We did have some periods when the wind was a nuisance, but for the most part it was pleasant t-shirt and shorts weather all night long.

I caught this great lightning bolt from the distant electrical storm, with the camera on a small tripod and the bulb left open for a while.

We had crystal clear transparent skies overhead all night, with a great sugary Cygnus Milky Way transiting high overhead mid-evening, but there was an interesting weather phenomenon happening some number of miles north-northeast of us.

As the sun was setting, we had this great view of some towering cumulus clouds catching the sunset glow to the northeast. Over dinner I thought I saw a lightning flash in the clouds. As it turned out, throughout the evening all the way to 2:00 a.m. we were entertained by a sometimes massive electrical storm that seemed to be nearly stationary. I caught this one good lightning strike off in the distance. The full-res version is a crop from the center of a very large picture.

It was also to be a fun evening to see a planet grouping in the west, following the sun to the horizon. I caught this great shot of bright Venus, with Saturn to the upper right, and Mars to the left. To the far left is the bright star Spica. Click to see the great full-resolution picture. In binoculars, Mercury was also visible, but deep in the red sunset glow well out of the field of this picture. In a few days the crescent moon will join the trio for another good picture.

Bright Venus grouped with Mars (left above) and Saturn. Click for the full 4MB experience.

I did take a couple of interesting piggyback Milky Way pictures. My focus wasn’t perfect, and the white balance doesn’t seem quite right. They are mostly untouched except for some slight darkening of the blacks. They are both five-minute exposures on my stock Canon 20D. I think if this camera were modified to remove the deep red filter, the red hydrogen-alpha glow of the North America nebula would show more.

Cygnus Milky Way, north with bright Deneb to the lower left from center.

And here is a late-night shot of Cassiopeia.

Cassiopeia reclines in the summer Milky Way. The "double cluster" is visible near bottom center.

And of course I did some exposures through the Astro-Physics Traveler as well. Here is the Swan Nebula, M17, four ten-minute exposures, ST-4000XCM one-shot color camera. Click on each for the full-resolution image.

M17 also known as the Swan Nebula or Omega Nebula.

I knew that the Ring Nebula, M57, would be an almost silly target for a telescope with this wide field of view. It would appear as a tiny donut swimming in a field of Milky Way stars, just as it often does visually in a telescope. Of course that made it irresistable. Here is the full field:

There's the Ring Nebula, M57, just right of center.

And now as you can see in a crop at full resolution, it’s not a bad image at all. This is three ten-minute sub-exposures (30 minutes total).

Full-resolution crop from the wide field above, M57 the Ring Nebula.

Finally I wanted to get one of Jane’s (and my) favorite Cassiopeia star clusters, one discovered by Caroline Herschel, and known as the Magnificent Cluster, NGC7789. This scaled down version is not terribly impressive, but the full-res image is a treat to swim around in.

The Magnificent Cluster, NGC7789, in Cassiopeia

On a techy note, for the first time I started to have some issues with haze forming on the chip. Given the presence of those nearby cumulus, I guess I can’t always count on the desert air to be completely water-free.

Besides the great deep sky and planets, of course we also had lots of meteors from the forward edge of the Perseid meteor shower. Jane did some great counts, and I enjoyed some bright meteors while the shutters were open.

‘Til next time …

Just another full moon

Morris Jones — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:54:44 +0000

Almost-full moon rising over I-210 in Pasadena at 8:00 p.m., July 24, 2010.

It was about 8:00 p.m. Saturday night. Jane and I were driving home from having just seen Salt in Pasadena. This beautiful moon was rising above the Foothill Freeway, with dark blue earth shadow just below it.

I realized in this one picture was a whole astronomy lesson.

The first thing I realized is that this moon had to be several hours away from exactly full.

How did I know that? Notice that the moon is a few degrees above the line of the earth’s shadow. If you were to see the rising full moon at exactly the moment when the moon is directly opposite the sun in the sky (full moon) it should be directly on that line.

Upon checking with an ephemeris, the moon seen is actually 22-1/2 hours away from full. It will travel about 22 diameters before reaching that moment of exactly “full.” It certainly appears closer than 22 diameters, but two things are in effect: one is the slight motion blur making the moon appear bigger, and two is that it will move in a line that’s quite a diagonal in this photo.

The next thing I realized is that about one-half orbit ago (about 15 days), this moon was eclipsing the sun in a total eclipse. That means that now this moon must again be within a few degrees of crossing the ecliptic.

That puts this moon as close to directly opposite the sun as it can be, short of actually passing through the shadow of the earth (a lunar eclipse).

At the time Jane snapped this picture, the freeway had just turned from due east to a few degrees toward the south. That would match nicely with the sun having just set a few degrees to the north. Not as far north as last month, since we’re now about one month into summer.

All fun realizations from a simple beautiful full moon rising. The geometry of the solar system is right there in the sky to see.

Short summer night

Morris Jones — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 23:24:27 +0000

Jane snapped this shot of me shortly after sunset, squinting into the bit of wind we had.

Happy Independence Day!

This weekend wasn’t our usual dark sky new moon weekend; there would be a third-quarter moon rising just at midnight. With summer sunset at 8:00, and no real dark sky until about 9:00, we were looking at a really short (for us) desert observing session of about three hours. Next week is when all the big June star parties are being held.

The weather was fair, not too awfully hot, or too awfully windy, just a little of both. The sky was brilliantly clear, and seeing was not particularly good. Sometimes we just say WTF.

This was one occasion when I was glad to be living “in the future.” I somehow managed to completely wedge the ASCOM driver that lets my laptop communicate with the telescope mount. That’s the kind of thing that really eats up the clock when the moon is about to chase away your dark sky!

Right there in the middle of the desert, I was connected to the net by USB tether to my Motorola Droid. (Thank you PDANet!) I posted a plea for help on the Astro-Physics User Group mailing list. The author of the driver responded to my post and helped me set it right within an hour.

I had time for maybe two short exposures of a couple of objects, and Jane badly wanted a piggyback shot of Scorpius. That would be my first priority, and I had fun shooting it. I used a fixed-focus 35mm f/2.0 lens on my Canon 20D, and the big constellation just barely fit in the frame. We have a fairly strong light dome to the south from the Inland Empire. I cropped the shot just below the constellation where the light is strongest.

The fishhook of Scorpius fills the frame, with lots of Milky Way and dark nebulae throughout. Some light glow to the south.

Jane had the “Bug Nebula” NGC6302 on her observing list, and I tried a shot of it myself. It’s a tiny thing relatively speaking, so there’s not much to see in the full field. There’s one interesting object in the lower left corner which could be another planetary, or possibly an artifact of my own creation. It only shows up well in one of my two sub-exposures.

That little red blob in the middle is the "Bug Nebula." There might be another planetary in the lower left corner, that or an imaging artifact.

Here’s a cropped version at full resolution of the bug itself. Jane’s view in her big dob was actually very nice.

Not very impressive, but it somewhat resembles the visual view we had through Jane's big dob, minus the red color

With only a little time left before moonrise, I wanted to see what I could get of the nebula around Rho Ophiuchus. It’s only one ten-minute exposure, and you’ll find lots of impressive images of this region out there on the net. I’m still tickled with what I was able to capture.

One ten-minute exposure of the Rho Ophiuchus region

Finally the moon put an end to the dark sky observing, but moonrise itself was quite an event. The moon was joined quickly by Jupiter to the south. Jane has a great afocal shot taken through the eyepiece of her Televue Ranger. You’ll have to see that one on her observing report!

Moonrise with Jupiter over Chuckwalla Mountain. There's a light from the microwave station on Chuckwalla Mountain just below Jupiter to the right of the moon.

Observing report, dark desert June skies

Morris Jones — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:38:05 +0000

Mojo, Caroline, Jane, Catherine, Gary, and Todd

Update: Jane wound up using most of my astrophotos below in her July NASA What’s Up podcast. Check it out!

The forecast was for a very temperate desert evening, so six of the Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers headed off to the Colorado Desert to play outside all night. Seeing was forecast poor, but actual conditions seemed much better.

Jane packed her 17.5-inch dob, and I loaded the Astro-Physics Traveler 102mm f/6 refractor to do some astrophotography. The highlight of the evening promised to be comet McNaught 2009R1, but it wouldn’t be available until the pre-dawn hours. That left me with late spring galaxies and summer Milky Way targets. (Jane also had a great target which she’ll be writing about!)

I tried the M84-M86 region of Virgo last month with the AP180, but the field of view was too narrow. I knew it’d be a good warm-up for tonight. The grey scale version looks better to me than the color rendition.

M84-M86 region in Virgo, "the Nine Gals"

Jane and I both love piggyback pictures, taken at “naked eye” scale. This is one of “the teapot” and the Sagittarius Milky Way. The full-size image isn’t bad, but it looks better scaled back a bit. Click for the really big version. It’s fun looking through all the dark nebulae and bright clusters.

Looking towards the center of our galaxy.

Deep in the Milky Way just above the spout of the teapot is Barnard’s famous “Ink Spot” dark nebula, B86.

Barnard 86 "The Ink Spot"

I started out trying to fit M8 “The Lagoon Nebula” in the same field as the nearby Trifid Nebula, but they wouldn’t quite fit. So I did 15 minutes just on M8, and love the result.

M8 The Lagoon Nebula and cluster

I love hunting for the Pipe Nebula, a huge dark nebula best seen in binoculars. Seeing the Pipe is a portent of great transparency and dark skies. The detail photo here is centered on the Pipe, taken piggyback with the 20D. Click for the full field, see if you can find the Pipe there.

Do you see the pipe outlined here? Click for the full field.

Ever since I started doing astrophotography, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to shoot M16 The Eagle Nebula. This nebula is famous for its Hubble Space Telescope image showing the embedded dark nebulae as stellar nurseries, the “Pillars of Creation.”

I only did one fifteen minute exposure. By then it was getting quite late, and I need to catch a couple hours of sleep before getting up to catch comet McNaught. Naturally that means I had an airplane fly through the image! Should I wipe it out with Photoshop? Naaaah.

M16 The Eagle Nebula and cluster. Plus United flight 2037. (Just kidding!)

Jane and I napped for a couple of hours, with alarms set to catch comet McNaught in the early hours

This image of McNaught is made from ten one-minute exposures. They’re stacked with the comet centered, so the background stars are streaked. It looks out of focus, but it’s actually just the motion of the comet you see.

Comet 2009R1 McNaught, ten one-minute exposures stacked and centered on the comet.

I also took my ten comet pictures and made a little animation that shows the motion of the comet against the background stars over the course of 15 minutes or so.

Comet McNaught moves against background stars over fifteen minutes. The sky is also brightening with dawn towards the end.

I was also taking piggyback images of the sky where McNaught was lurking. Can you find the little green dot near the center?

This is the "naked eye" view of the sky where Comet McNaught can be found. The horizon is tilted as an artifact of the way the mount holds the telescope and camera mounted piggyback. Click for the full scale version.

Here’s a little close up of the beautiful binocular cluster Collinder 39 in Perseus with the green dot of McNaught just to the right. The color was evident in binoculars even.

This is somewhat the view in a pair of binoculars of large open cluster Collinder 39. See the green dot of comet McNaught slightly up and right of center.

What a fabulous night of astronomy! Shirt sleeves or light jacket all evening.

Mojo setting up his "desert office" for some astrophotography

Equipment notes: The telescope shots were taken with an SBIG ST-4000XCM one-shot color CCD camera, at prime focus of an Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm f/6 refractor. The mount is an AP Mach 1 GTO on a wooden tripod. The piggyback photos were taken with an unmodified Canon 20D digital SLR camera.

Update: Be sure to see Jane’s A Ten Planet Night report from the same evening!

Finding the test that corrupts the suite

Morris Jones — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:59:03 +0000

(Finally a tech blog post …)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before!

The web application has excellent coverage in unit tests and integration tests that run continuously, but some time ago (weeks actually) some number of tests began failing with strange state errors. In our case, out of 138 test classes and 1176 tests, 82 would error out.

The errors were all strange platform related things, like:

org.springframework.transaction.IllegalTransactionStateException: Pre-bound JDBC Connection found! JpaTransactionManager does not support running within DataSourceTransactionManager ...

Or:

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.hibernate.cache.CacheException.

Naturally the failing tests all work when they’re run individually. Heard that one before?

I started out trying different combinations of tests. I could make a list of all the running test classes by grepping for “^Running ” in the test output log. I started out using the maven option “-Dtest=TestClassOne,TestClassTwo,…” to try tests in different combinations. Most of the time, the erroring tests would work perfectly. When they didn’t, the errors would occur in different tests or be different errors.

The failure now was non-deterministic! One of the difficulties is that Maven/Surefire would run the tests in whatever order it wanted to. That approach wasn’t going to work at all.

From studying the Spring references a little, I understood that Spring would cache the application contexts created for unit tests in order to improve the run time of tests. Wiring up a large application is slow when it’s done once — multiply that by 138 test classes and a slow test suite becomes glacial.

Clearly some test class being run prior to the error tests was corrupting the cached Spring context, and ruining the downstream environment. Spring provides a @DirtiesContext annotation specifically to label tests that require Spring to reload the application context. The problem is finding the test doing the dirty work!

I needed to make the test runs deterministic — run the test classes in the same order, and start eliminating classes one at a time from the top of the order. Surefire doesn’t have a property to exclude a test on the command line, so it required editing the POM file to exclude each test class in order from the top.

It was a tedious task, as many hidden software problems can be. I had to keep careful track of the list of test classes, and change the TestClassExample element for each test run. Fortunately each test run only required about two and a half minutes. After each test with one class excluded, I would examine the final result line for any change.

I was pretty confident that the culprit had to be an early test in the sequence, so I should only have to go about halfway through the successful test classes. Finally thirty-four classes into the list, I had my culprit.

Ironically enough, the test class causing all the problems was named TestSpringConfigurations. It had two tests that would simply verify that all of our wiring would successfully produce an application context. Marking the tests with the @DirtiesContext annotation made all of the following error tests run successfully.

Actually the @DirtiesContext annotation wasn’t necessary: The tests themselves included one fatal line: context.close(). By not closing the contexts after the test load, the cached application context was just fine for all the following tests.

One might argue that this class is pointless when run as part of a large test suite, since earlier tests have already loaded the application context. When Surefire arrives at TestSpringConfigurations, it is only using the already-cached context rather than loading a new one. Good point. But having the test in the suite also gives us a quick way to verify changes made to the application context configuration without running the whole set.

And finally the punch line: When the Spring configuration errors were finally vanquished, four test failures were revealed that were legitimately testing application code. Those test failures were completely masked by the Spring context corruption error.

Oh yes, that TestSpringConfigurations class has been in the suite for many months. Why did we only recently find it causing this corruption? No one here is quite positive, but the only major platform change we can point to is a switch from Java 5 to a Java 6 runtime. Maybe that triggered the original problem, and maybe sometime I’ll be interested enough to test that proposition.

A galaxy from the inside

Morris Jones — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:02:38 +0000

Sometimes it’s the simplest thoughts that have the most profound effect on your visitors to the telescope.

This past weekend we spent two clear dark nights in Mojave National Preserve sharing our big telescopes with about fifty park visitors and the MNP Conservation Association.

This time of year, the sky is full of galaxies. We were showing spirals, ellipticals, irregulars, edge-on, face-on, every which way. All along I would explain how these are galaxies like the Milky Way that we live in.

Photo by Gary Spiers

Now these were mostly people who had ventured into the wilderness before, and they were familiar with the Milky Way. At least they thought they were. They knew the milky river of light crossing the sky on late summer evenings.

At least one visitor could not make the connection.

At one point I said, “We will never see our galaxy from the outside.”

The dark around the telescope was almost lit by the light bulb going on in someone’s head. I heard, “OH! We’re inside it! We only see it from the inside!”

I was rewarded with a “thank you” and “That was a profound thought.”

It reminded me of a question I’d had some twenty years earlier from my mother at one of my early experiences in Yosemite at a Glacier Point star party.

Mom was looking up at a starry sky and asked, “So of these stars we see, how many of them are in our galaxy?” Of course, the answer is obvious (all of them), but it doesn’t diminish the simple profound nature of the question, and I still enjoy relating the story and asking the question to visitors under a dark starry sky.

Pathology Report

Morris Jones — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:52:48 +0000

Here’s the deal: All along, this whole “prostate cancer” thing seemed to me like a gigantic fraud. Well not fraud, but maybe “surreal.” That all changed yesterday.

I felt fine, always did. I wasn’t running to the bathroom two or three times a night. My doctor never felt anything. I have no family history of prostate cancer. It was just a blood test, an imprecise secondary indicator, that suggested a biopsy.

Okay, I believed the biopsy, but still it all seemed abstract.

So I had the surgery. Sure, take it out. I don’t really need it. But I want to know.

This is why I picked surgery over radiation. The radiation therapy is known to be effective, but it’s still all abstract, not real.

Yesterday I went in to have my staples and catheter removed. (Yay!) (Anyone who is facing this procedure and wants to know more about it, I’m happy to share in a private exchange.) Meanwhile my nurse practitioner delivered the pathology report, and I asked her for a printed copy.

I’ll post all of the relevant parts below, followed by a few word interpretations.

Here is the pathology report:

Patient Name: JONES, MORRIS M
Facility: West Los Angeles Medical Center
Provider: STEPHEN GUION WILLIAMS M.D.

Collected: 1/19/2010
Received: 1/20/2010
Signed Out: 1/21/2010

————————————————————————–

FINAL PATHOLOGIC DIAGNOSIS

PROSTATE, ROBOT-ASSISTED LAPAROSCOPIOC[sic] PROSTATECTOMY:

1. PROSTATIC ADENOCARCINOMA, GLEASON SCORE 6 (3+3).
2. MAXIMUM TUMOR DIMENSION IS ESTIMATED AT 1 CM.
3. THE TUMOR INVOLVES THE GLAND IN A BILATERAL FASHION AND EXTENDS FROM THE APEX TO THE PROXIMAL PORTION OF THE GLAND.
4. VASCULAR INVASION IS NOT IDENTIFIED.
5. PERINEURAL INVASION IS NOT IDENTIFIED.
6. THE TUMOR IS CONFINED TO THE PROSTATE.
7. THE SEMINAL VESICALS ARE NOT INVOLVED BY TUMOR.
8. SURGICAL MARGINS OF RESECTION ARE FREE OF TUMOR.
9. HIGH GRADE PROSTATIC INTRAEPITHELIAL NEOPLASIA IS PRESENT.
10. THE NON-NEOPLASTIC PROSTATE SHOWS HYPERTROPHIC CHANGES.
11. TNM STAGE: II (PT2C NX MX).

Report Electronically Signed by
STEVEN R. MCLAREN D.O.
Date Signed out: 01/21/10

————————————————————————–

MICROSCOPIC DESCRIPTION
A microscopic examination is performed.

CLINICAL HISTORY

CLINICAL HISTORY (REQUIRED): Prostate Cancer

GROSS DESCRIPTION
The specimen consists of a radial prostatectomy specimen weighing 42 grams. The prostate itself measures 3 x 4.5 x 4 cm. Attached to the specimen is the left seminal fesicle, which measures 3 x 1.5 x 1.2 cm with the contiguous vas deferens measuring 0.7 cm in length and 0.3 cm in diameter. The right seminal vesicle measures 4 x 1.5 x 1 cm with the contiguous right vas deferens measuring 0.6 cm in length and 0.3 in cm in diameter.[sic] The outer surface of the specimen is inked and the gland is serially sectioned. Sectioning of the gland reveals nodular tan-gray cut surfaces.

CASSETTE SUMMARY:.
[Inventory of slices omitted]
[End of meaningful report]

Most of the report is just barely transparent enough to see that it’s good news. This whole report makes it all real for me! There was a 1 cm tumor contained within the gland, no invasion seen outside. And I guess I weigh roughly an ounce and a half less than I did with a prostate. This is why I opted for surgery instead of radiation, the detail and specifics without question or doubt. (Science is real!)

Item 9 is interesting, “High Grade Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia” is also referred to in the industry by its shorthand HGPIN.

I believe this is shorthand for a common cell formation detected under microscope. Neoplasia is literally “new growth.” And intraepithelial means “within the layer of cells that forms the surface or lining of an organ.” It’s an abnormal mass of cells that are known to sometimes morph into cancer.

Finding HGPIN, aside from the tumor, is significant in that it adds to the diagnosis, and provides another data point in the statistical link between HGPIN and a cancerous tumor. Nice for me is that it’s fully contained within the gland, “intraepithelial.”

Following on with item 10, non-neoplastic would then refer to everything that isn’t “new growth,” all the non-tumor parts of the prostate. Hypertrophy is the increase in the volume of an organ or tissue due to the enlargement of its component cells. It’s just evidence that my prostate was getting bigger. That’s what they do.

Item 11 is meaningful too, and puts the cancer into a statistical class. TNM is short for “Tumor, Node, Metastasis.” Stage II says the tumor has not spread outside the prostate. The overall stage is then followed by T, N, and M numbers. T2C means the tumor is found in both lobes. (I suspect the qualifier PT2C means this is a prostate cancer specific designation.) NX and MX mean the lymph node and metastasis stages could not be determined. That makes sense, since the lab is handling a disconnected prostate gland in vitro.

I’m sure that an industry professional might correct some of my interpretation to be more specific, but I think I have the gist of the report.

And I like what I see.

Prostate Cancer

Morris Jones — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:45:17 +0000

With Jane’s encouragement, I thought I would write this blog entry. I want to keep my friends and family up to date, and for the most part they are the only ones reading this blog anyway.

The short version is that I was diagnosed with a small but clinically significant prostate cancer in September, and will have RP surgery (Radical Prostatectomy) using robotics on January 19. I’ll be at Kaiser’s West L.A. Medical Center for one night, then recovering at home for about three weeks. Within a few months, the expectation is that I’ll be pretty much back to normal for the duration.

For those of you who really want all the details, how this came about, and what decisions were involved, I’ll go into it all below. For lots of people this comes under the category of “too much information,” and you are certainly excused without prejudice.

It all started with a routine physical back in June. A blood test then revealed an elevated PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) level. 3.5 is considered significant, and mine was 3.6. My previous test 18 months earlier was around 1.something.

One positive test is not a result, so my doctor ordered a retest, which had a count of 4.1. That called for a referral to the urologist.

The urologist meeting came in September. Prostate cancer is so slow-growing that one has the luxury of dealing with it deliberately. After reviewing my chart, he scheduled a biopsy, which we did the following week or so.

(In discussing the process with other men who’ve been through it, the biopsy seems to be the most unpleasant part. I called Jane after mine and said, “I need a drink.” We met at Traxx Union Station shortly after.)

The biopsy took fourteen “cores” (yes think of core samples) which were examined visually under a microscope. One sample was 30% cancer cells, and one was 10%.

Interestingly there are absolutely no symptoms at this stage of the cancer. I feel great, have no urinary troubles, and no other symptoms of any kind.

In this instance, I must recommend my experience with Kaiser Permanente. They take advantage of having a vast and closely-tied medical staff, combined with the best Electronic Medical Record system in the business. The efficiency and accuracy is very confidence inspiring.

The question after diagnosis becomes the choice of treatment. Interestingly, because prostate cancer grows so slowly, new treatment studies can’t know their effectiveness for 15-20 years. The accepted treatment these days is either RP (surgical removal of the prostate) or radiation treatment.

My urologist scheduled me for a type of seminar session in which Jane and I would meet with specialists from each of the different treatment options to discuss the matter. In one morning we discussed the options with surgeons and radiation oncologists.

(For men closer to 70 than 50, another possibility is “no treatment.” Prostate cancer is really slow growing. Indeed most men will have prostate cancer when they die, but it will be something else that killed them.)

Which treatment to pursue was really a no-brainer. Surgery and radiation treatment are about equally effective. The big advantage of the surgery is that they get to actually examine and analyze the cancer in vivo. They get to take it out and send it to a lab for analysis or research. The surgeon can see without any doubt if it has spread beyond the prostate and if any follow-up treatment is required. All of those advantages disappear with the somewhat blind radiation treatment.

The modern robotic surgery technique is fascinating. The doctor sits in a corner watching high-def video and manipulating the tiny robotic instruments. I’ll spend one night in the hospital and head home the next day.

I get to spend ten days at home with a catheter, and another couple of weeks recuperating. They taught me an exercise regimen to restore tone to the pelvic floor muscle, so I’ll be doing those.

I decided to do one other bit of preparation before going in. I had already joined Weight Watchers, and have been sticking with it to drop another five pounds of weight or so. I also hired a personal trainer to try and be in decent physical shape. I managed to make progress in both areas over the past three months. These are not part of the official protocol for surgery prep, but to me they just made a lot of sense.

This Friday, Jane and I are going to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary in Las Vegas at the Venetian. We’re going to have a splendid vacation weekend. I’ll turn 53 on my birthday on Monday, January 18, but won’t get to eat any solid food that day. It’s okay, we’ll celebrate plenty the day before.

A lot of men are going through this now, or will be in the future. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer, but not the most common killer. Don’t put off the routine physicals; this thing has no symptoms until it starts to become a serious problem.

At my stage of the game, I can treat it as an inconvenience. Throughout everything leading up to this, I’ve lost no sleep, had no serious worries. Bridge players learn to do the best they can with the cards they hold, and it doesn’t hurt to have a top-notch partner across the table from you.

Update: This lolcat went by today on ICanHasCheezburger:

Pinwheels, Horseheads, and Flaming Stars

Morris Jones — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:07:02 +0000

Photo from Feb. 2009 of the Astro-Physics Traveler getting ready for a night of imaging at Chuckwalla Bench

Jane and I were by ourselves for the dark sky weekend of November 14, 2009. We set up at our usual spot at Chuckwalla Bench. Unlike the past two months, this night featured a cold air mass that required bundling up well. It also implied that the seeing from our desert location might not be perfect.

Jane brought her 12.5-inch Litebox dobsonian, and I opted for the 4-inch Traveler refractor (seen in my heading photo).

The night turned out to be beautiful. The seeing was good, and we were able to enjoy a few early Leonid and Taurid meteors as well. My goal was to try getting more exposure minutes on some classic targets, and try to get some piggyback constellation photos as well.

M33 and Triangulum region

Triangulum, Aries, and Andromeda, piggyback naked-eye resolution

The famous Pinwheel Galaxy, M33, was a difficult object for me when I started out in astronomy with a classic 8-inch Celestron SCT. The face-on spiral is enormous in the sky, covering almost as much area as the nearby Great Andromeda Galaxy. But its surface brightness is low, so with a little magnification it’s possible to look right through the galaxy without seeing it. I later learned that it sometimes shows up better in binoculars than a telescope.

If you click on the naked-eye resolution photo nearby, you can find M33 as a faint smudge just to the left of center. M31 the Andromeda Galaxy bright core is in the upper left.

The three bright stars of Triangulum are in the lower third, just left of center. The bright stars of Aries are also in the lower third, to the right of center. (Might be fun to use Flickr’s photo tagging feature to highlight the features.

M33 the Pinwheel Galaxy

Again “click to embiggen” as Phil Plait would say. This image is a stack of four 15-minute exposures with the AP Traveler and the SBIG ST-4000XCM one-shot color CCD camera. I love seeing the famous red star-birth regions sprinkled through the arms of this nearby galaxy.

In terms of technique, I used a Bahtinov focusing mask for the first time. It saved a lot of time in finding and maintaining focus. Autoguiding worked perfectly. It felt really good to have confidence to take long sub-exposures and stack them in Photoshop. This was my first true one-hour image, and the first I’m proud to have seen at full resolution.

Auriga and IC 405

Piggyback view of Auriga, naked-eye resolution

Auriga was one of the first constellations I identified and recognized on my own as a new astronomer, so I’m always delighted to see it again.

In the piggyback shot, the bright Auriga stars form a squashed pentagon slightly left of center. The right-most star doubles as part of Taurus. North is to the left, and the brightest star there is Capella. In the full-resolution image you can see the Milky Way open clusters M36, M37, M38, and I think that’s M35 in Gemini in the lower right.

Jane was enjoying touring through targets in this part of the sky, and spent some time attempting to see visually the difficult target IC 405, the Flaming Star Nebula. (Her companion post on the subject is coming soon.) I was intrigued as well, and took 30-minutes of exposure time on IC 405. It’s not visible in the piggyback view, but is found in Auriga near the upper center of the picture.

IC 405 the Flaming Star Nebula

I wasn’t familiar with this target, and the 30-minutes of data here shows only the brightest areas of this faint nebula. Longer exposures and a Hydrogen-alpha filter will show the nebulosity extending out to the left and curling up like a huge comma. This was a really fun target, and I’m looking forward to Jane’s discussion of it.

Orion, the Flame and the Horseshoe

Orion, piggyback naked-eye resolution

Finally I wanted to see if my little 4-inch refractor could possibly do justice to one of the most popular astrophotography targets. Here in my naked-eye resolution piggyback photo is the Orion constellation, with its famous bright star-birth nebula near the dead center of the photo.

The target I had in mind wasn’t the Orion nebula itself, but two very different nebulae near the left-most belt star Alnitak (Zeta Orionis). Just to the left of Alnitak is a bright yellowish nebula called the Flame. In a telescope it shows a lot of detail, looking almost like tire tracks. The full-resolution picture of the constellation has just a hint of the flame. If you already know it’s there, you might be able to see it.

For my piggyback photos I used my Canon 20D digital SLR camera, mounted on top of the AP Traveler. I shot 5-minute exposures, and tried to subtract a 5-minute dark frame, which doesn’t seem to make much difference. The camera does leave behind a reddish glow which I’ve removed in Photoshop.

Just below Alnitak is the Horsehead nebula, also known as Barnard 33. Seeing the Horsehead visually is a fun and difficult project, requiring really good transparency and a fairly large telescope. Jane observed it visually in her 12.5-inch.

The Flame and the Horsehead in Orion

I never dreamed the image would turn out this nicely. The big white bright blob just above center is Alnitak. In the lower right is Sigma Orionis, one of my favorite multiple star systems. Of course the bright Flame is just left of Alnitak, and dark nebula B33 is just below center.

Just as with M33, this image is made up of four 15-minute exposures. The telescope is a 105mm f/6 Astro-Physics Traveler, with an SBIG ST-4000XCM one-shot color CCD camera. The mount is the AP Mach-1 GTO on wooden tripod, and I did autoguiding and image capture with Software Bisque’s CCDSoft. I used SBIG’s CCDOps software to process the Bayer-matrix one-shot color pixels out to luminence and RGB components, combined the L and RGB components in Photoshop, then stacked the four color images for the final photo.

Finally autoguiding

Morris Jones — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:16:21 +0000

Full photo album of setting up and astrophotos here at the Whiteoaks Photo Album.

Update: Here’s Jane’s version of the same evening.

It was another perfect new moon Saturday for a trip to our favorite spot in the Colorado Desert out I-10.

Yes this is a very full Grand Caravan!

Jane and I happily took out all the seats of the old Grand Caravan and filled it with telescopes and gear. We brought her 17.5-inch Litebox dob, and our AP180EDT f/9 refractor.

Jane has been indulging my dabbling in astrophotography lately. I’ve been delighted that Jane is using some of my astrophotos for the What’s Up podcast, lucky that she wants imperfect images that are closer to what one might actually see in an amateur telescope.

This 180mm f/9 refractor should be an outstanding astrograph; it’s certainly an amazing visual astronomy instrument. I dabbled with it a little last year in Anza Borrego, knowing I needed to learn a lot of operating technique to get some good results. I solved a few mechanical problems then, and ran into autoguiding calibration later. Those lessons served me well, even though it’s almost a year later.

Early in the evening was Jupiter time, and we all spent some time soaking up the gorgeous views through a binoviewer in steady seeing. 300x on Jupiter showed lots of detail in the bands, including a nice red barge in the North Equatorial Belt, and nice little disks and color on the moons.

I’m going to take a few paragraphs to talk shop, gadgets, problems, and solutions.

Setting up the AP180, all ready to take flats, except there's no known focus position!

My camera is an SBIG ST-4000XCM single-shot color CCD camera which perfectly suits my recreational needs. The big AP180 is mounted on an older 900QMD mount, a simple but stable platform without GOTO electronics or servos.

The 900QMD mount comes with digital encoders on the R.A. and Dec axes, but having spent several years using this telescope for primarily lunar and planetary observing, those encoders went unused for the life of the mount.

The R.A. axis encoder is removable so you can use a polar alignment scope, and the encoder shaft has a slip fit into a metal sleeve when it’s in place. Last year I discovered that this mechanical connection slips very easily, rendering the encoder useless.

The trick I settled on, which worked again tonight, was to cut a little piece of rubber band and push it into the fitting to serve as a tightener.

Jane aligns the Telrad on her 17.5-inch Litebox

To use the digital encoders for pointing, I acquired a BBox from JMI, connected that to a USB-Serial adapter, and used Software Bisque’s TheSky 6 to serve as my controller. I’ve learned by experience (at Fremont Peak observatory) that the alignment doesn’t need to be 100% perfect. I’ve learned the trick of syncing the software and encoders to a bright star near my target, then doing an accurate short slew to my actual target.

(One problem I haven’t quite solved yet is play in the polar scope. I haven’t figured out how to tighten the polar scope in position, in the correct orientation, so it doesn’t wiggle.)

So with a not-quite-perfect polar alignment, autoguiding becomes my essential partner. CCDSoft can be tricky software to work with when calibrating the autoguiding. The error messages and manual don’t really help solve problems like “Illegal motion in X-axis, error 352.” I thought I might even be dealing with a problem in the mount mechanics. In retrospect, I think I also hadn’t learned the correct switch settings on the QMD controller. (“Guide” and “.5″ works much better than the 16x slew mode for visual!)

On perusing the Software Bisque support forum last week, I was able to learn that their autoguiding calibration depends entirely on there being only one bright star in a large region of the guide imager. While I could see the guide motions working perfectly and orthogonal, the software doesn’t do matching of the star field, only looking for the one significant guide star.

Having discovered that, I was finally able to successfully calibrate the autoguider. And with one successful calibration (remembering to set the current declination), I could autoguide on different targets successfully for a long time.

(The Software Bisque manuals hint that there’s a way to link to TheSky so CCDSoft knows the declination of its target, but I haven’t figured that out yet.)

M74 two 15-minute exposures, SBIG ST-4000XCM, 180mm f/9, October 17, 2009

Pisces was high overhead, and I love M74, so I decided as a first target to revisit that favorite. I settled on 15-minute exposures. The first one came out “double vision” when the autoguider momentarily lost track during the exposure, but that was the only time that happened during the evening.

NGC7541 in Pisces, 15 minutes

A visit to the Night Sky Observers Guide suggested NGC7541 as a Pisces “showpiece,” and I love galaxy groups. This one was gorgeous in Jane’s 17.5-inch, too.

NGC7640, 15-minute exposure

Jane showed me NGC7640 in her 17-inch, a really lovely look, and I thought it would be a great target. We’re starting to enjoy comparing visual and imaging views.

NGC253, 2x15minute exposures

I admit I get impatient when I’m imaging, and want to collect more targets rather than more exposures on the same target. As a result, I have a little more noise in my images, but I’m having fun anyway. That said, I couldn’t resist spending some time on NGC253, the Silver Coin galaxy. I had a tantalizing glimpse of this target last year at Anza Borrego when I hadn’t yet learned how to make the autoguiding work. This time I got two lovely 15-minute exposures. Well worth it.

Pre-dawn crepuscular rays at Chuckwalla Bench

After a few hours sleep, we were greeted with lovely pre-dawn crepuscular rays, Venus, and Saturn making its return after solar conjunction. Not to worry, the telescope was capped, and about to come down into its box, anyway. (You can see the box ready to be loaded with telescope.) Jane paused to take this lovely picture.