Rob Masters

 These days I do most of my blog-type posting on aus.social, a Mastodon instance. Sometimes though the limited formatting makes that a poor choice. This is one such case. Today I want to take you through the post-processing steps I go through to create a final astrophotographic artwork. And these are artworks, not scientific records. I could  use the same data to perform astrometric observations, but I don't. I like to create beautiful images. Knowing the things I am creating pictures of is part of creating that beauty, and that does require some scientific knowledge, but it is only a means to an end.  So, let's start with what comes out of my telescope. I use either a DwarfII or Dwarf3 smart telescope for my imaging, and what comes out of that is already pre-processed in a variety of ways. The telescope does its own stacking, and has a built-in link to a cloud post processor. So what I get is two images - one denoised and with basic image optimisations performed, and ano...

 "Death of a Unicorn" is a movie we went into with the expectation of Richard E. Grant revisiting Darwin Mayflower from Hudson Hawk. We were not disappointed, but we got so much more. It is a very fun romp, full of heavy-handed satire  - and it works. And it works really well.  Lots of bloody violent deaths, lots of historical references (and some very specific made up ones), and some fantastic humour. Paul Rudd and Jenny Ortega are having a ball, but the real prize in this is Anthony Carrigan as the magnificently understated manservant Griff. 9/10 and Alien meets Charlie Chaplin on the Sid and Nancy scale. #Movies #MovieReview #Comedy #Horror #ComedyHorror #Unicorn 

 A little while ago I announced that I'd finished " Scout and Shaman". Then a voice spoke to me, and I am finding that I am committing Sequel. So say 'Hi' to Joyful Finder, a descendent of the characters in the original story. I hope you enjoy " Shaman Scout ".

 I am a huge fan of ink rollers - that magical hybrid of rollerball and fountain pen. Sadly, hardly anyone makes them - Herbin have one, Traveller have one, and that is about it. Kaweco used   to have one in their wonderful Sport line, but it has been out of production for at least 10 years.  Sadly, one of the problems with them is that the rollers do wear out, and one of my Sports finally died. A lot of research found ... nothing. Not a single person had ever detailed how to fix one - but plenty of people were talking about replacing nibs.  The nib sections are a friction fit - so you just pull them out. So I tried that with my recently deceased ink roller. "Pop!" it went and came right out. So now I had an empty section.  A while back, I purchased a supply of Schmidt PRS ink roller heads, to go into a 3d printed body I had found. So I figured, why not give it a ... "Click"! Huh. It looks like new. So I a stuck in a cartridge, and it all works! So there you go....

On the night of New Year's Eve 2024 we (myself, Leece , and her mum) saw in the New Year by hosting a star party for family and friends. To make it as accessible as possible, we found a park in Como that is almost completely dark, despite being only a couple of kilometres from the CBD. Adjacent to this park is the Como Croquet Club, so we hired their clubhouse as a base of operations. Two days before, we got a panicked message from the club, asking if their members could have a gathering of their own - which was fine with us, as long as they did not want to turn on the field lights. So we had twenty odd people turn up, along with about the same number of Croquet Club members. As it turns out, the son of one of my workmates played in high school, and got his family into playing a game, much to the delight of the club members. Sun by Rob We started proceedings with a couple of shots of the sun and the current sunspots (Me: "This is what it looks like right now!" 16yo daught...

Originally published at  https://aus.social/@rdm/113674412653690387 . Content warning - mention of bullying. The headmistress stalked the halls of the school. One of the second grade teachers had reported that one of his students was missing, and had been present earlier in the day. As she passed a storage cupboard, she heard a small noise and stopped. A quick check showed the door was locked. Interesting. A quick wave of her hand, and there was a "click". She opened the door. Inside was the missing student, Britney Butler. She had clearly been crying, and her clothes suggested that she'd been manhandled into the cupboard, not climbing in.  "There you are, Miss Butler. Out you hop, and let's go and have a little chat." "Mrs Aitkins ... I'm sorry, it ..." "None of that now. Come along, you are not in any trouble." The little girl climbed out, and the headmistress closed the door.  "This way, please". And started down the hal...

This story is one that I thought I had finished. Then one of the characters started poking me, and telling me that there needed to be more. Finder tells me it is done, for now at least. So here is what I think is the complete story of Lorn, Scout Explorer and Finder-of-Unnoticed-Details, Shaman. https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/scout-and-shaman.html Diligent readers Of A Certain Age may well have suspicions about the larger universe that the story is set in. I will neither confirm nor deny this resemblance. Anyway, I filed the serial numbers off, and gave it a new coat of paint. 

I do not often make gear recommendations to other photographers, but today I will, because it is not some great flash new bit of kit that will revolutionise your workflow. I am recommending it because it will revolutionise how you look at photography, and remind you of the very core of our art. So, if you are an even half-way skilled photographer, go out and get yourself a kiddies thermal printing camera. And a bunch of thermal printer rolls of paper. You'll set yourself back about AUD50 for enough supplies to print thousands of images. Don't bother getting a microSD card for it. That's not the point. The point is the immense freedom and creative challenges that working with a fixed aperture, fixed focus plastic lens that will then print out on a short-lived high-contrast paper will bring. And it is a freedom being so highly restricted. It is also freeing to be able to shoot with abandon, not worrying about any sort of post-processing, and not worrying about the cost of the...

Last night we visited the Gravity Discovery Centre and Observatory in Gingin for one of their Observatory Tour nights. You get a full access ticket to the discovery Centre as a part of the tour ticket, so we made use of that to have a look around at the exhibits. The whole thing is a bit like a very focused SciTech or Powerhouse Museum sort of idea. The GDC at sunset, the Leaning Tower to the right, and the Lecture Dome and Giant Pendulum to the left We also collected the five solargraph cameras that we set up six months ago. Three of these were Solarcan Pucks, and two were home-brew can cameras. One of the Pucks was, alas, full of water, and the film was washed away. One of the can cameras was also heavily water filled, while the other had been partially crushed. The other two Pucks were in perfect condition. Six month solargraph of the giant pendulum, with the Leaning Tower in the background. What was unexpected was that both can cameras had acquired significant populations of tiny...

 Well, I have completed my Rooftop Movies Solargraphy project! You can read all about it on the project's dedicated page - here !  Here is a teaser!

 This evening we visited the wonderful Rooftop Movies. Before the show, though, thanks to the organisers , we set up a dozen or so solargraph cameras around the cinema.  These are a mix of Solarcan Pucks, Solarcan Cans, and some homebrew can cams.  The plan is to recover half of them in a fortnight to check alignments and framing, and the rest on the last day. As a special treat to ourselves and the Rooftop Movies team, we brought one Puck in after just three hours. Here is the result.

Through late 2022 and most of 2023, an author, E.W.Paris , on the writing.exchange Mastodon instance shared a daily AI generated image as a writing prompt for a 500 character story.  I found myself entranced by the often surreal images, and responded to quite a few of them. A handful of them turned into a linked space opera that I am now turning into what will probably be a novella with a working title of The Cerian and Varan War. You can find that here .  Another one prompted a high fantasy, which is also turning into a larger tale, most likely a long short story or novelette. You can read about Gwen and Grey here. And so, without actually intending to, I appear to have become an author of sorts. I hope you enjoy my tales.

 I am a novice when it comes to driving advanced post-processing tools like Siril , which, if you are getting into astrophotography, I highly recommend. It does have a steep learning curve, especially the post-stack processing side. Powerful, but not intuitive. But if you want quick results from your funky new smart telescope, you do have alternatives. So let's have a look at some solar photography and see what happens. Here is a untouched image, and the same image with some in-camera curve adjustment. The only edit is to crop the image. The Sun, unmodified With in-camera curve  adjustment Straight away, you can see more detail - the penumbras are clearer in sun spots, the granulation is more obvious.  Now let's look at what happens when you get heavy handed with Snapseed's structure and sharpening tools, adjusting the shadows and highlights a bit more, adding a touch of HDR and tweaking the colour balance. Heavily post processed in Snapseed First up, the granulation is v...