What Time Is It? Time to Stop Changing the Clocks?

 

The United States has just completed its first half of the twice a year time change headache as we sprang forward an hour into Daylight Savings Time, unless you live in Hawaii or Arizona, in which there is no DST. For many people, the twice a year ritual involves a lot of complaining, forgetting, and possibly getting to a Sunday morning destination at the wrong time.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this could all just go away?

Well, in a rare show of bipartisanship, the Sunlight Protection Act has been reintroduced to the Senate as of last week. First proposed by Florida’s Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the bill would eliminate the twice a year time change by making spring forward permanent, as in putting the entire country (with a caveat-more on that later) on DST, permanently.

See also: Europe Grapples With Time Change Gripes

In a statement, Rubio called the twice a year time change “antiquated” and observed that there is increasing support for ending the time change. Rubio also said that the benefits of extended evening daylight would include less car crashes, less winter depression, and more “stability” to families.

While he probably does not agree with Rubio on much, Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey also supports the bill, saying that year long DST could “improve public health, public safety, and mental health - especially important during this cold and dark COVID winter.”

Other signed-on sponsors of the bill are Senators James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Mississippi, and Rick Scott, R-Florida.

Also speaking on the bill, Whitehouse noted that “Americans' lifestyles are very different than they were when Daylight Saving Time began more than a century ago,” before adding permanent DST will
“give families more daylight hours to enjoy after work and school.”

Both of those points are pretty hard to argue with.

On top of bipartisan support in the Senate, 15 states: Arkansas, Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, have passed their own laws/resolutions/voter initiatives calling for permanent DST. The problem: only federal law can change/end the time change, which means that the state statutes are void without a federal go-ahead.

As for the caveat mentioned earlier, the Sunlight Protection Act would not apply to places that currently don't observe DST (Arizona and Hawaii).

On the other hand, opponents of year-long DST voice concerns about delayed daylight during the winter having the potential to cause more car crashes on the front end of the day, which also coincides with the start of the school day. On the other hand, supporters of all-year DST will argue that most schools already start their classes before sunrise (at least during winter) and it’s rare for children to be hit by motorists on the way to school even now.

Should we go permanent DST? Well, in the effort of doing something that may actually bring the country together for a change, it may be worth a go.

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!

 

How to Spot a Young (or Old) Moon Within 24 Hours of New

 

Can you find the Moon at right? Even this is over 24 hours old!

What is the thinnest crescent Moon you can see? Can you see the Moon within 24 hours of New phase? The answer to the first question will vary but the answer to the second is undeniably a 'yes' as it is very possible to see the Moon within 24 hours of New. For even better news, spring is an ideal time to look.

Young/Old Moons (within 24 hours of New) are, besides quite aesthetic, rare, very rare. To sight a Moon within 24 hours of New requires all the conditions to line up just right. If everything goes perfectly, on the day after/before New Moon (or even on the same day depending on the time of New), just past sunset/before sunrise, a wire-thin crescent will pop out low on the horizon. Needless to say, when dealing with a Moon less than 2% illuminated, binoculars are a must.

So here is why the Young/Old Moon is so difficult to spot:

1. Timing. If New Moon is timed too close to sunset/sunrise, it will be lost in the Sun's glare on the day of New Moon and will be way past the 24 hour window at its first/last visibility for the cycle. While pretty, a 36 hour Moon is no challenge, pure and simple. Look up and find it.

2. Clouds. If it's cloudy, there's no seeing the Moon. In my Northeast Ohio area, spring and fall are 50/50 odds for a clear sky, at best.

3. Light. Young/Old Moon hunters are forced to fight the Sun With the Moon under 2% lit, just the act of spotting the Moon low on the horizon in such light conditions is a challenge because that is where the Sun is. A saving grace can be a nearby planet or bright star. If you can use a bright star or planet as a marker, it is a lot easier to estimate where the Moon will appear once the sky gets dark enough.

4. Haze. Even more so than during the day, haze makes its presence known at dusk, looking similar to wispy clouds on the horizon. While the biggest problem during the summer, haze can even appear in winter, too. Even a crystal-clear day can produce haze on the horizon at dusk. While the haze will quickly dissipate come dark, that's too late for the Young Moon. As a way to estimate haze before dark, look at the daytime sky. The deeper the blue, the lower chance of haze ruining the show. The good news, come fall and Old Moon season, the haze will be long gone as dawn approaches.

5. Horizon Obstructions. Buildings and trees can play havoc with the horizon as Young/Old Moons will be within 10 degrees of it. What does that look like? Hold a fist vertical at arm’s length to simulate 10 degrees, then go outside and see how your surroundings do. Chances are, you’ll have to scout a good observation sight in advance if you live in a built-up area.

Now for the good news: spring is Young Moon season. Because of the near vertical ecliptic at sunset, the waxing Moon will hang higher in the sky now than any other time of year, which is good. For Young Moon Hunters, March through May (add February and/or June depending on time of month New Moon falls) is an ideal time to look.

On the other end of the scale, Fall is Old Moon season as the ecliptic is nearly vertical from September through November at sunrise (add August and/or December depending on New Moon’s time of month), making this the ideal time to spot an Old Moon, one within 24 hours of becoming New again.

As for this spring's Young Moon season, thin crescents will appear on March 14, April 12, May 12, and June 11. Of the four, only one will be a true Young Moon (April 12) and only for those people living in the Eastern and Central Daylight Time Zones. Mountain Time and West? The Moon will be over 24 hours old, but still worth a look as few people have ever seen a crescent that thin.

Whichever time (hopefully both!) you plan to hunt a thin Moon, give it a try it if it's clear.

In need of inspiration, here you go for some of my pictures!

A 17 Hour Young Moon (holy cow!)
A 19 Hour Moon (featured on Spaceweather’s home page)
A 23 Hour Moon

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!

3 Perspectives: The Great Jupiter Saturn Winter 2020 Conjunction

Tonight, the first day of winter 2020, will bring Jupiter and Saturn closer together than they have appeared in nearly 800 years, which will see the two planets separated by about a tenth of an angular degree. For comparison, a little finger held at arm’s length spans about half of a degree. The best news: this will be an event visible to the naked eye as all one has to do is look low in the Southwest about an hour after sunset. Jupiter is the brighter, lower planet and Saturn is the dimmer, higher one.

However, for some real fun, add optical aid. With binoculars of around 10x power (and held steadily or mounted on a tripod), the two objects will become six as Jupiter’s four largest moons will pop into view, appearing as tiny stars in a line around the planet. Saturn may also appear slightly oval in shape.

With a telescope, the rings of Saturn will become visible, as will the cloud bands on Jupiter. For an interesting comparison, look at the span of Jupiter’s moons as compared to the separation between the two planets. Visually, the planets will appear closer together than the most distant of the moons, although they will actually be hundreds of millions of miles distant in space.

As for what to expect, look no farther than below as the three pictures taken on Sunday, December 20 show the perspectives from naked eye (Nikon D700 and 50mm lens), binocular (200mm lens), and telescopic (600mm FL) view. 

 

 

 

Whichever way you plan to view the event, don’t miss it if its clear. Additionally, the planets will remain extremely close the next few nights if it’s cloudy, switching places along the way.

 

Way Back When . . . 

As an interesting aside, this event takes place almost exactly 14 years after another historic conjunction, which saw 3 planets, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter, all come to within a degree of each other. Here's my photo from that event with my old Hewlett-Packard PS 945 point and shoot (yes, HP made cameras back in those days!). The photo is at 300mm equivalent.

Oh yes, I got featured (sort of) with this picture on Spaceweather, too.

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!

A Complete List of Weather-Resistant Tamron Lenses

Tamron markets its weather sealed lenses as “dust/moisture resistant.”

Being someone who values both high quality and saving money, I always wondered what Tamron optics were weather-sealed. Unfortunately, I haven't succeeded in finding a concise list of such lenses anywhere. So, seeing a solution rather than a problem, I decided to compile one myself. So, if you're in the same boat I was in, here you go: a concise list of weather resistant Tamron lenses, which can not only stand up to the harshest environments, but can also save the buyer a lot of money over manufacturer optics. Know someone else you think would find this useful? Why not pass it on?

Companies are quick to tout cameras for weather-resistance. Unfortunately, what most beginning dSLR users don't know is this: there might as well be no weather sealing in the camera if it doesn't have a weather-sealed lens to go with it. Why is this? Simple: the lens/camera connection is the best avenue for unwanted junk, whether it be moisture, dust, or something else, to get into your camera. With a lens that has a rubber gasket at the mount, this problem is eliminated.

In terms of lenses, weather-sealing is one of the newer innovations for the simple reason that film cameras were nowhere near a susceptible to the elements as are today's “superior” digital versions. So, to keep their pros happy, camera makers started building rubber gaskets into their lenses at their most vulnerable points. Below is a complete list of Tamron lenses that are marketed as 'moisture resistant.'

Of all the major lens companies, Tamron has the best website, far and away, for showing just exactly what goes into their weather-resistance as all but a few of the optics have a cutaway diagram (the one above is from the 70-200 f2.8) showing exactly where the rubber gaskets are located. That said, just because a lens has rubber gaskets built in, doesn't mean that it is of professional quality as a few lenses on this list do not even have metal mounts. 

Di Series (Full Frame, APS-C)

15-30 f2.8 VC USD G2
17-35 f2.8-4 OSD
24-70 f2.8 VC USD G2
28-300 f3.5-6.3 VC PZD
35-150 f2.8-4 VC OSD
70-200 f2.8 VC USD G2
70-210 f4 VC USD
100-400 f4.5-6.3 VS USD
150-600 f5-6.3 (both versions)
35 f1.4 USD
35 f1.8 VC USD
45 f1.8 VC USD
85 f1.8 VC USD
90 f2.8 Macro VC USD

Di II (APS-C only)

10-24 f3.5-4.5 VC HLD
16-300 f3.5-6.3 VC PZD Macro
18-200 f3.5-6.3 VC
18-400 f3.5-6.3 VC HLD

Di III (Mirrorless)
17-28 f2.8 RXD
28-75 f2.8 RXD
28-200 f3.5-5.6 RXD
70-180 f2.8 VXD
20 f2.8 OSD 1:2
24 f2.8 OSD 1:2
35 f2.8 OSD 1:2

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!

MIT Releases Eerie Apollo 11 Disaster 'Deepfake' Video

It has long been known that then-president Richard Nixon already had an alternate speech prepared in the event that the Apollo 11 mission should end in disaster. Now, thanks to technology, the world now has the chance to see Nixon give the speech that, thankfully, he never had to make in real life.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spent over a year creating alternate history by using advanced computer technology. By taking historical audio and video and running it through a computer, the MIT team was able to create an eerily convincing video of what history may have looked like if things had gone differently in July, 1969.

Part of the video was released a year ago but only now has the full 7-minute video been made available. For anyone wanting to see the 'speech,' it starts at around the 4:30 minute mark.

While the project owed its impetus to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the MIT team had a more present goal in mind: educate the public about the concept of 'deepfakes,' defined as video forgeries designed to make people look like they're doing and/or saying something that they aren't.

While in years past restricted to special effects studios, video manipulation technology capable of making a convincing fake video of a real person is now well within reach of amateurs. With its video, MIT hopes to educate about what deepfakes are, how to spot them, show how they can be used/misused, and what is being done to combat their misuse.

And as if 2020 wasn't crazy enough already . . .

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!

After Almost a Decade, Americans Return to Space

For the first time in nearly a decade, the United States has launched astronauts into orbit without having to hitchhike a ride with, ironically of all people, the Russians.

A new era in the history of spaceflight began at 3:22pm yesterday as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Benhken into orbit and to the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the first privately-owned spacecraft to carry astronauts into orbit. The Falcon launched from the historic 39A pad, which saw launches during both the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs.

What would have undoubtedly been a media and public frenzy in normal times was very subdued thanks to the ongoing China-originating COVID 19 Pandemic. Still, though, President Trump and Vice President Pence, who have spearheaded the effort to reassert America’s dominant place in space, were in attendance, with the president declaring “the decades of lost years and little action are officially over.”

To be perfectly honest, America’s space program of the 21^st century to this point could be described as lost not in space, but on the ground.

With mounting calls for the retirement of the Space Shuttle following the 2003 Columbia disaster, then President George W. Bush announced the Constellation Program in 2005, which sought to return Americans to the Moon by 2020 via heavy lift rockets similar to the Saturn V. There were to be two versions of the new Aries rocket: one designed for manned launches and another designed for heavy cargo payloads.

By 2009, a study concluded that Constellation was grossly over budget. As a result, in early 2010, then President Obama announced that Constellation was going to be canceled and replaced with a single rocket: the Space Launch System (SLS), which could be built in multiple configurations while utilizing technology originally developed for Constellation.

Fast forward 9 years and it's more of the same.

The first SLS launch at the program’s 2010 announcement was targeted to be an unmanned capsule sent around the Moon in December, 2017. The first manned flight was targeted for mid 2021. Obviously, December, 2017 is years in the rear view mirror and the SLS has yet to leave the ground. The latest in an ever-slipping schedule has the SLS’s first unmanned launched, now officially titled Artemis 1, taking place in November, 2021.

However, manned American spaceflight has a new champion in President Trump, who has made it very clear that he intends to see to it that Americans will once again be able to not only fly themselves into space, which we now have done, but to the Moon.

Last year, NASA announced that its Project Artemis (the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology) seeks to land astronauts on the Moon again by 2024 with the long-term goal being the creation of a permanently manned lunar base that will serve as a stepping stone to Mars. Making the upcoming journey especially interesting is a new player in space that wasn't even imaginable in the 1960s: the private sector, which completely bypasses the shifting winds of party politics in Washington D.C..

While there are now numerous private companies involved in spaceflight, the far and away leader of the proverbial pack is SpaceX.

Looking at SpaceX and what it has achieved since its 2002 founding is like looking at a shopping list. SpaceX was the first private company to: launch a rocket into orbit (2008), orbit and then recover a spacecraft (2010), send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (2012), complete a propulsive landing of a rocket (2015), reuse a rocket (2017), launch a payload into solar orbit (2018), and now launch astronauts into orbit as of yesterday.

The most intriguing possibility, however, is that offered by SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. First launched in February, 2018, according to NASA, the Falcon Heavy is capable of launching astronauts to the Moon, although the SLS is the preferred option. With the SLS falling ever farther behind schedule, there is a very real possibility that the Falcon Heavy could be NASA's ticket to the Moon by 2024 if the SLS is not ready to go in time.

Yes, these are not the 1960s when manned spaceflight was a matter of national priority and pride, but the possibilities offered by the private sector are undoubtedly exciting, too. NASA astronauts riding a privately-owned rocket to the Moon? The idea would have seemed crazy in 1969 but, come 2020, this could be the future of America in space.

The future of manned spaceflight may look different, but the possibilities are truly limitless and with the private sector coming on board, could do a lot to show the world that America’s ingenuity and industry are far and away the best in the world.

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!

Find Your Old Examiner.com Articles on the Wayback Machine

Did you once write for examiner.com? Are you seeking a way to link to and recover your examiner.com articles? Well, it’s possible courtesy of the Wayback Machine.

After seeing a surge in traffic here over the last month or so, many new visitors to the site may have been seeing my anything but subtle plugs to follow various links to my work on examiner.com in order to, as the text plainly says, help me pay my bills. Well, for anyone curious enough to follow the links, they landed on a website that was clearly not the expected destination. So, what gives?

For many people looking to break into writing professionally 10-15 years ago, examiner.com and other similar websites built on user-generated content offered a promising gateway. While not able to speak for the other websites that I didn’t write for, I can say that Examiner was very up front with prospective writers about what they were getting into. Pay was per click, a penny per click, which wasn’t much. Examiner was open about the fact that its writers probably wouldn’t even be able to entertain the idea of quitting their regular jobs for writing, but that writing for Examiner was more of a way to supplement one’s income.

As for me, I was looking for a way to cover my health insurance costs, or at least part of it. This was in 2009, long before Obamacare drove premiums through the roof. As for the application process, it was quite simple: look for the largest market city nearest to you, look for open titles, click on one you were interested in writing about, write a sample article for that title, and send it in along with some of the usual job application stuff.

I heard back pretty quickly from the editorial staff and, after I filled out a few forms and opened a Paypal account, I became the Cleveland Photography Examiner.

After plugging away around a month or so, I realized that this was, at least to me, pretty decent money, enough to cover my health insurance and then some (back when a healthy young adult could get a policy with a monthly premium under $100!).

The real eureka moment came when I logged on one morning to see my previous day’s click/earnings total and was shocked to see that I had over 8,000 hits the previous day and was going to be getting over $80 for that one article. The topic, you ask? Remember the viral photo of then-president Obama looking at a girl’s butt? Yep. Since it was a hot topic at the time and was related to photography, I did an article on it, posted it, and got picked up by Google News. It was at this point that I read up on search engine optimization (SEO) and how to achieve it. Since my pay was per click, learning about SEO was something worthwhile to do and would quickly come to be very profitable.

Over the next year or so, I would add three more columns, Cleveland Astronomy, National Photography, and National Space News to my plate, often cranking out at least one article per column per day. Using my newly earned SEO knowledge, I became pretty good at wording my headlines and opening paragraphs all while looking for topics that either were already or looking to become hot in my chosen areas. Astronomy and Space News? Major celestial events like eclipses, meteor showers and new scientific discoveries made good fodder. On the photography side, new cameras, camera side by side (camera A vs. camera B) comparisons, hot photo industry rumors, and how-to articles on photographing big celestial events (think cross-marketing) often led to big hits, and money. A couple of times, I made over $200 on just a single article that got picked up by and placed at the top of search results in Google.

Did I ever make enough to live on? Absolutely not, but who wouldn’t mind having, on average, an extra $500 a month or so from writing about topics they were already interested in? I sure didn’t!

Unfortunately, after a few years, the examiner.com gravy train came to a screeching halt. Search engines (most notably Google) decided that examiner.com was a ‘content farm’ and that the articles offered on such websites were low quality ‘click bait’ and that such websites’ search results should get pushed to the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Come 2020, people who are urging Big Tech and, even worse, government, to regulate the spread of ‘fake news’ and ‘misinfornation’ need to think about this: who are Big Tech and government to determine what online content is of quality and what is not? Do you really want other people deciding this for you? Do you think people are too stupid to think for themselves? Well, it already happened when sites like examiner.com were blacklisted by search engines. As a writer, I will say that SEO was a big part of being successful on examiner.com but, on the other hand, using attention-grabbing openings doesn’t equate to junk articles and besides, what established media outlet doesn’t use such tactics?

Long story short, the hits really dried up. In fact, they all but evaporated. Many writers left. Me? I kept plugging away at it for awhile, especially when a big astronomical event was coming or when a hot new camera was first announced. Eventually, on the Cleveland edition at least, I would often occupy multiple slots on the most popular article list but have only a few bucks to show for it when, in the past, I could have been earning tenfold. Eventually, the effort wasn’t worth the reward and I gave up on it, too. Come 2016, so did examiner.com itself. The site went offline and all content, at least in published form, was lost.

Or was it? Enter the Wayback Machine.

Started in 2001, the Wayback Machine is a web archive of cached web sites/pages that looks to serve as a digital repository for as much of the Internet as is possible. Getting curious upon learning of it, I started plugging in websites that I knew were long gone and, as if by magic, there they were again, often complete with working links. This is when I decided to search myself and my long thought lost 4 columns on examiner.com.

Guess what? There they were, albeit in pieces.
Astronomy in Cleveland
Space News in National
Photography in National
Photography in Cleveland

Did you write for Examiner and want to find your old stuff in its published context? Well, to do that, simply go to the Wayback Machine and plug in your old Examiner URL into the search bar at the top. Don’t remember your URL? No problem. The start of all the Examiner URLs will be http://www.examiner.com/. After the slash, simply plug in your title in all lowercase letters with hyphens between the words, then another slash followed by your name with a hyphen between first and last. Example: “photography-in-cleveland/dennis-bodzash” for my Cleveland Photography column. That done, hit the “Browse History” button.

This is where things will get different for everyone as the amount of saved links will vary. If your column was popular, expect a lot of links. If you weren’t popular or came in late by which point Examiner’s traffic was next to nothing, don’t expect a lot.

Your site archived, start clicking on things. If you were like me and listed recent articles at the bottom of every article you wrote and/or linked to previous articles or ones in your other columns if you wrote under multiple titles, there could be a lot of clicking involved. Not all links will lead to an old article but, hopefully, many will take you to an archived web page where you can see your work in its original context rather than as a Word file.

Like What You Read?

Why not check out other great stuff about photography, present astronomy, historical astronomy, reviews of associated gear, and how to use it.

Think someone else would find this informative (or at least entertaining)? Use the buttons below to share!