Today is Cyber Monday, Shop Wisely!

The media is reporting that Black Friday 2011 was the best in history, with some figures giving over $50 billion in total retail sales for the day. Now, the brick and mortar retailers having had their day, its the online stores' turn with today, Cyber Monday, the day online retailers traditionally offer their deepest discounts of the year.

However, not all is rosy.

While there are obviously some major perks to online shopping (no long lines, no mad rushes, probably no sales taxes, guaranteed availability, and no getting pepper sprayed or shot), there are some downsides to online shopping, namely shipping charges, return policies, and lack of a hands-on shopping experience. For anyone wanting detailed explanations, check out my examiner page for an in-depth look at the pros and cons of Cyber Monday.

Don't Hold Your Breath for New Toys
The start of the Christmas shopping season has, with Cyber Monday, officially started, which means, in all likelihood, that there will be no major announcements in the photo industry until at least January. Why? Being so close to Christmas, there is simply not enough time to announce a new, major camera and then get it to stores fast enough to cash in in time for Christmas. So, for all of you dreamers waiting for a Nikon D800, Canon 5DIII, or an update to a favorite, yet old lens, sorry, you'll have to wait for at least a couple of months before your dream toy may come into being.

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Examiner for Week of 11/13, 11/20

Examiner has been slow, but there is a little to read.

Space News
Toxic fallout could result from failed Mars probe
Zero hour approaching with Phobos-Grunt
NASA delays Curiosity launch
Exoplanet count tops 700
Doom or detour for Phobos-Grunt
Black Friday, black Sun
NASA launches Curiosity rover


Photography
Picture sells for $4.3 million
Proof of JFK conspiracy caught on camera?
Adobe draws ire of Photoshop pros
Win a Sony a55
Yesterday's eclipse in photos



Cleveland Photography
See Black Friday ads today
Skip the extended warranties
The salesman's 7 costly lies
Don't shop this Black Friday
Eclipse photos


Cleveland Astronomy
Featured sight for week of 11/13: the Leonids
Featured sight for week of 11/20: Old Moon
How to avoid buying a junk telescope
Black Friday, black Sun
NASA launches Curiosity

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Shopping Advice: Day 3: Don't Shop Black Friday

In day 3 of the smart shopping installment, we focus on a rather controversial idea: skip the Black Friday sales altogether and wait a couple of weeks before buying electronics for Christmas. Most retailers give a 90 day return window for purchases. Unfortunately, electronics are an exception as return windows are often only 2 weeks long and can also come with a restocking fee if the item is in good condition but simply unwanted. Fortunately, many retailers waive this condition in the days immediately following Christmas. Simply put, it may be better to skip the sale and wait until mid December (there's always online shopping) to get that gift, which will give you enough time to make sure what the giftee really wants and, in case you didn't bother to make sure, enough time for a post-Christmas return should your gift find itself in the same category as those ugly Christmas sweaters or that store-bought fruitcake.

Bonus: How to Avoid Buying a Junk Telescope
Since Black Friday is not all about cameras, I decided to run a piece on my Cleveland Astronomy Column dealing with telescope buying tips, namely warning signs of junk telescopes. In the list are 6 tips to help educate first-time buyers as to what signs designate a good telescope from a junk one. While this seems like common sense to every seasoned astronomer, we all have to start somewhere so, if this is your first time buying a telescope, check out the above link.

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Shopping Advice: Day 2: The Salesman's 7 Costly Lies

In day 2 of the smart shopping installment, we focus on seeing the facts through the salesman's fistfuls of B.S. Listed below are 7 things a less than honest salesman (or woman) will probably tell you in order to convince you that that camera/lens you're looking at is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

More pixel mean better pictures
Tons of file size/formats are a great thing

The more shooting modes, the better

You need that ultrazoom lens

Electronic 'stabilization' is just as good as the optical variety

Look at how high the ISO can go!

Protect your investment, buy the extended warranty

More so than with any of the run-downs, a look at the full article is worth a look today as, naturally, some people may want some of these features despite the fact that they all have a dark side/are rather useless to a seasoned shooter.

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Shopping Advice: Day 1: Extended Warranties are a Scam

In today's edition of smart shopping 101, skip the extended warranties for your new camera, lens, or anything you buy for that matter. Generally speaking, extended warranties only cover repairs required because of 'normal wear,' which leaves manufacturers/third party service providers a lot of room to wiggle out of having to fix your merchandise. How far can they go? Browse online forums and you'll come across tales of repairs being denied because hairline scratches on lens barrels constituted 'damage' outside of regular use and thus an excuse not to fix the problem. Yes, manufacturers talk about customer service but, when providing a service costs money, they'll try and worm their way out fixing your gear any way they can.


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Black Friday is Coming, Smart Shopping Tips on Tap This Week

For people living in the United States, this week marks Thanksgiving and, for many, an unofficial holiday: Black Friday, which is when retailers traditionally make major price cuts in order to lure in shoppers for a strong start to the Christmas season (the term 'Black' Friday refers to the fact that stores are all but assured of operating at a profit, or 'in the black,' for the day). For my readers living in other countries, the sales are so good that some people are willing to camp out all night outside a store in order to be among the first in line to get that special item.

Now, unfortunately, many people will spend like a drunken sailor and make all sorts of impulse buys upon seeing the word 'sale,' which is the goal of all retailers. Naturally, with photography (and astronomy) being expensive pursuits, if you are going to buy in order to fuel these hobbies this year, a lot of cash outlay already, which is all the ore reason to go into Black Friday with some smart shopping tips in the back of one's mind.

Running tomorrow through Wednesday, I will be using my Cleveland Photography Examiner column as an avenue through which to provide sound shopping advice. Basically, I will be writing on three main topics: why extended warranties are scams, how to weed through a salesman's pitches, and, last but not least, why it may be smart to not shop on Black Friday at all. Basically, I'll be running the full piece on Examiner while providing quick run-downs here for anyone who wants the most basic of info.

So, come the next three days, be sure to check back here or at Examiner for sound shopping advice that will hopefully keep you out of the poorhouse this Christmas season.


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Examiner for Weeks of 10/30, 11/6

 Been really busy, not much on Examiner of late . . .

Space News
NASA, astronaut settle camera lawsuit
Comet plunges into Sun
Standard Time returns
Giant asteroid to buzz Earth

National Photography
Canadian lake monster caught on camera

Cleveland Astronomy
Featured sight for week of 10/30: Late sunrises
The Taurids are coming!
Featured sight for week of 11/6 Standard Time
Asteroid to buzz Earth

Cleveland Photography
Zip, zilch, nada . . .

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Favorite Carl Sagan Quotes

Carl Sagan would have been 77 yesterday.

November 9 would have been Carl Sagan's 77^th birthday if he were alive today. While it has been nearly 15 years since he died (December, 1996), Carl Sagan's influence is still as strong as ever for the people who were first introduced to astronomy/space science by him, in all probability through his Cosmos TV series, which first hit the airwaves in August, 1980. From that point on until his death, for many, Sagan was the face of astronomy.

Now, with November 9 being the unofficial holiday of Carl Sagan Day, space/astronomy websites/organizations were paying tribute in various ways. On Universe Today, staff took up a list of favorite Sagan quotes sent in by readers and published them in in an article as a tribute to the astronomer who could very well have been a poet as well.

By following this link, you can read through the ever-growing list of favorite Sagan quotes and, through the comment function, even add your own below the main article itself.



Ok, here are a few of mine . . .
Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you . . . books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet, we speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.

The iconic 'pale blue dot' iamge of Earth from Voyager 2.
Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?



For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.

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Our Dangerous Universe

If a doomsday asteroid were to be discovered, as of now, we might as well kiss ourselves goodbye.

Today, Earth is going to have a close call with an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier. While the asteroid, 2005 YU55, will pose no threat to Earth, the fact that such a huge space rock will be coming within the Moon's orbit serves as stark reminder that we live in a cosmic shooting gallery of sorts, populated by millions upon millions of miniscule worlds, some of which are big enough to do great harm here on Earth should they hit out planet.
As of now, there are millions of asteroids floating around the solar system, mostly in the Main Asteroid Belt, which is safely between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Of the millions of asteroids over 7,000 are classified as near-Earth. Of the near-Earth objects, over 1,000 are considered as "potentially hazardous," which is defined as an object over 500 feet in diameter that can come within 4.6 million miles of Earth. Obviously, a metallic space rock 500 feet across traveling at up to 15 miles per second could do an immense amount of damage. For comparison, the object (most likely a comet) that caused the Tunguska Incident was probably less than 100 yards (300 feet across, or only about a quarter the diameter of 2005 YU55) but still leveled forests for over 1,000 square miles.
Needless to say, if such an object (even a small one) were to hit a populated area, the death toll would be apocalyptic. Large impactor? Worldwide devastation and possibly an end to civilization as we know it, all the more reason to keep looking and work on planet defense systems.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the world would probably be helpless to do anything as of right now if a doomsday asteroid were to be discovered. When doomsday scenarios are considered, planners usually give months or even years advance notice time to come up with a plan to divert the colliding body and save the world. However, new asteroids are being discovered all the time, often within just days or even hours of close passage to the Earth.
So, if scientists were to discover a doomsday asteroid on a collision course with Earth, would there be enough time to do anything about it or would we simply have to resign ourselves to a terrible fate and possibly go down in history like the dinosaurs?

It's a not a pleasant thought, but one that may just come true. All the more reason to keep scanning the skies and breath a collective sigh of relief when a big space rock like 2005 YU55 passes harmlessly, albeit a bit too close for comfort, by our planet..

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Rejoice! Standard Time Returns

With the end of DST, the Teapot and Summer Milky Way (and all their treasures) make a brief return to the night sky.


Daylight Savings Time is gone and Standard Time (is it standard, it only lasts for just over 4 months) returns, which means good news for astronomers/astrophotographers.

The calendar says November, but the sky still says August, at dusk at least. With the advent of Standard Time returning, we will be treated to one last, brief peek at the summer constellations. So go out just as it gets dark to see the Teapot diving in the Southwestern sky. If you live in a dark area, you can still see the Milky Way, looking like steam, coming out of the Teapot's spout and rising up into Aquila and then through Cygnus. If the visual sight was not enough, a telescope at low power will reveal a swath of nebulae and star clusters, both open and globular, among the starry arch that is the Milky Way. Overhead and to the West, Hercules (two wonderful globulars) and Bootes (globular and double stars highlighted by Izar, which looks green and gold) are still visible. Since the summer constellations are still visible, all we need now is the warm weather!

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Standard Time Returns Tomorrow Morning

It's the first weekend of November, which means that it's time to fall back for those of us living in the United States. While most people are happy for an extra hour of sleep on this one night, for us astronomers, there are perks to Standard Time that are much more far-reaching, such as earlier bnights, a a last chance to see the summer sky, and not having to stay up so late for a winter preview. So, don't forhet to set your clocks back before you go to bed tonight.

So, as daylight Savings Time ends, why not learn a little with some trivia? Enjoy!

* Many ancient civilizations divided their days into 24 hours just like us, but adjusted the hours'
lengths so that there would always be 12 hours of day and 12 of night.

* While he did not propose DST, Benjamin Franklin, while serving as envoy to France,
anonymously published a letter suggesting people rise early (and thus go to bed earlier) to
economize on candles and make use of natural sunlight.

* DST was actually proposed by New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, who
suggested a two hour daylight savings shift.

* English outdoorsman/builder William Willet also proposed the idea simultaneously. He
suggested advancing the clock during the summer months only

* Both Hudson and Willet had personal stakes in seeing more daylight: Hudson found that
extended time at night would allow more time to collect specimens. Willet hated having to cut
short his golf rounds and see many Londoners sleep through most of the mornings

* In WWI, the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and allies) were the first to use DST
as a coal-saving measure in 1916. England and many allies quickly followed suit. Russia
started using DST in 1917 and the United States adopted the idea in 1918.

* While we shift by an hour today, twenty and thirty minute shifts, and also two hour shifts, have
been used in the past

* Even now, start/end dates aren't standard around the world

* Switch dates are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere

* In some areas, voters have rejected use of DST altogether while in other areas, there are pushes
to eliminate Standard Time and have DST all year long.






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Examiner Roundup for Week of 10/23

Another week done, another Examiner roundup arrived.

Space News
ROSAT falls to Earth
Surprise aurora storm
All about the aurora
Oil tanker sized asteroid is coming
Could NASA get out of space science?
NASA, astronaut settle suit over camera


Photography
Amazing aurora pictures
ACLU sues over photographers' rights
East Coast snowstorm in photos

Cleveland Astronomy
Northern Lights over Ohio
All about the aurora
Giant asteroid to buzz Earth
Be alert for Northern Lights, again!

Cleveland Photography

Protect your computer from Muammar Gadhafi
DPR's hands-on with Nikon 1-series
Northern Lights pics ignite Web
DPR tests Sony A77
Hands-on with the Fuji X10

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