mars, bringer of ass-kicking
Aug. 31st, 2003 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashI went out to Griffith Park tonight with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ultraken to look at Mars via the telescopes of a bunch of amateur astronomers. The sight was underwhelming, yet cool. While enhanced photographs bring out far more detail, there's just something about seeing it via photons that have been spawned by the Sun, bounced off Mars, and been captured and funneled right into your eye by a clever arrangement of lenses and/or mirrors.
It's a little disc the size of an asprin that you have to be at just the right distance from the eyepiece to see... but it's real. You look up in the the sky and see the slightly-tan dot of Mars, then look in the telescope aimed at it and begin to see detail. So much of the things we see, including our daily life, is through several filters - the camera to the process separation to the paper to the eye, the video footage edited for the most exciting yet content-free slant then pushed through lossy compression algorithms and back, the subtle depth of a painting reduced to nothing by bad reproduction... I was still looking at Mars through lenses and mirrors, but these were designed solely to magnify.
Also, I learnt that when looking through a mounted telescope, while the natural instinct is to grab the eyepiece to steady it and yourself, this is actually the last thing you want to do, especially when it's high magnification.
Then I was reminded of the annoyance of reality when I left my wallet on the floor of Ken's car. At least I hope I left it there. Otherwise it's somewhere in Griffith Park. Which is not good. Not at all good.
[ addendum: I emailed him when I realized this, and he just emailed me back; it was, indeed, left in his car. Phew. ]
ultraken to look at Mars via the telescopes of a bunch of amateur astronomers. The sight was underwhelming, yet cool. While enhanced photographs bring out far more detail, there's just something about seeing it via photons that have been spawned by the Sun, bounced off Mars, and been captured and funneled right into your eye by a clever arrangement of lenses and/or mirrors.It's a little disc the size of an asprin that you have to be at just the right distance from the eyepiece to see... but it's real. You look up in the the sky and see the slightly-tan dot of Mars, then look in the telescope aimed at it and begin to see detail. So much of the things we see, including our daily life, is through several filters - the camera to the process separation to the paper to the eye, the video footage edited for the most exciting yet content-free slant then pushed through lossy compression algorithms and back, the subtle depth of a painting reduced to nothing by bad reproduction... I was still looking at Mars through lenses and mirrors, but these were designed solely to magnify.
Also, I learnt that when looking through a mounted telescope, while the natural instinct is to grab the eyepiece to steady it and yourself, this is actually the last thing you want to do, especially when it's high magnification.
Then I was reminded of the annoyance of reality when I left my wallet on the floor of Ken's car. At least I hope I left it there. Otherwise it's somewhere in Griffith Park. Which is not good. Not at all good.
[ addendum: I emailed him when I realized this, and he just emailed me back; it was, indeed, left in his car. Phew. ]
no subject
Date: 2003-08-31 08:04 am (UTC)"Lots of times, on TV"