I had several plans for viewing today’s solar eclipse, depending on the weather. As the hour approached and clouds loomed in the west, I decided that my best bet would be to get above the cloud cover, and drove up into the hills to Del Cerro Park at the top of the Palos Verdes peninsula.

I’m glad I did, because a lot of other people had the same idea.

Individuals, couples, families, groups of friends, groups from schools — and everyone had a different way to see the eclipse: pinhole cameras, binoculars projecting on cardboard, welding helmets, “eclipse glasses” and more. There were also people who were just out for a day at the park, and wanted to know what was going on.

If J had been a few years older it would have been a family event for us too, but at a year and a half, I don’t think I would have been able to explain anything beyond “don’t look at the sun.” A partial eclipse is easy to miss if you’re not paying attention.

I’d cobbled together a pinhole camera the day before from two Amazon boxes, a sheet of paper, a sheet of aluminum foil, and lots and lots of packing tape. I actually started with just one box and I decided the image wasn’t big enough, so I grafted on a second. Even then it was only about 3/8″ across, but when testing it I could see the edges of clouds drifting across the sun, so I figured it would work. It did.

I set up “shop” near a couple who were working on their own pinhole camera, but decided that mine had a better image and used their to prop mine up. It was far from the best view of the sun, but a lot of people stopped to check it out.

One of the groups with a filtered telescope was letting anyone walk up and take a look. It was a really impressive view: still very bright, but orange, and a lot sharper than anything I could see on the pinhole camera’s screen. I tried putting my camera up to it, but the lens was just too long. My phone, however, was just about perfect.

The woman whose pinhole camera ended up being used as the support for mine discovered that she could aim her iPhone a little bit away from the camera and get a fainter image of the sun in the lens flare. I was surprised that the iPhone’s lens was long enough to flare, but it also pretty much confims my suspicions about the weird lunar eclipse photo I found in a box a few years ago. Naturally, I had to try my own hand at it.

At the peak of the eclipse (what would have been totality a few hundred miles north of here), 85% of the sun’s diameter was covered. It was still too bright to look at the sun, and still broad daylight. Though it did seem dimmer, it’s hard to be certain how much of that was it being later in the day, since at 6:38 it was only about an hour before sunset.

About this point, I borrowed one of the welding helmets. It felt a lot more immediate, since I wasn’t looking at a projection or a reflection. Even the telescope, despite the large image (or perhaps in part because of it) felt more like I was looking at a picture of the eclipsed sun, which you can see anytime. Still, the welding mask made the sun look green, which made it seem a little less real.

The best were the eclipse glasses (made from fully-exposed photographic film). Not only was it immediate, because I was looking right at the sun, but the sun looked orange – much closer to expectations. I took a photo through the glasses, so you can see roughly what it looked like.

As the afternoon wore on, the fog moved inland and up the hills. When I arrived, the ridge of Catalina Island was just barely visible above a layer of clouds, and the nearby coastline was just visible below them. By an hour in, both were buried. We were starting to wonder if the fog would block the view, but it stayed well below the sun’s elevation (even if it crept up on ours).

Shortly after the maximum eclipse, the college(?) group with the telescope gave the sun a round of applause. As the moon blocked less and less of the sun, people started leaving, with a mass exodus around half an hour later.

By around 7:10, the festival atmosphere was gone. Around 100 people along the hilltop ridge dwindled down to about 20 in scattered groups. It gave the park the feeling of early evening at the beach, after most of the people out swimming or sunning have left, and those left are gathering around fire pits. A few minutes later, most of them had gone too, with only a few of us sticking around for the sunset.

A few more people arrived after all the hubbub had died down. It’s a nice evening spot to just get away from it all and watch the sea, or the clouds, or the sunset. Locals arrived walking their dogs, and the park took on its usual feeling of solitude.

The fog pushed its way over the hills, not quite reaching the one where I stood, but pouring over the next ridge as the sun descended behind it.

By sunset, the clouds had rolled up through the foothills, blanketing the slope down to the coast.

I’d half-hoped to get some shots of the setting sun while it was still eclipsed, but you really have to wait until it’s almost at the horizon…just a few minutes after the eclipse ended. I settled for the next best thing, and caught this shot of the sun “eclipsed” by a pair of trees.

I’d left the pinhole camera by a bench facing outward toward the sea. After the sun dipped below the horizon, I walked back to retrieve it. It ended its life as a dog toy.

So it goes.

Full photoset on Flickr.

»Skip to the photos if you’re so inclined.

There was a very strong comic book focus to the con, maybe not so much as at Long Beach, but all the major comics publishers were there, plus many of the minor ones. I was surprised to find webcomics wrapped around the large-press area and not hidden off in a corner. The small press and Artist’s Alley areas were huge (especially when compared to Wizard’s Comic Con in the same hall two years ago). And there were comic book dealers all over the place.

The only real complaint I had about the layout was that it seemed a bit haphazard. Marvel, IDW, and DC were front and center, but Studio Foglio and the Winner Twins were stuck in between IDW and DC. Zenescape was off in a corner rather than being clustered with fellow indies Archaia, Aspen and Avatar. And when I say the comic dealers were all over the place, I mean scattered all over the place.

The rest of the convention center was being used by a girls’ volleyball tournament and a cheerleading competition. I was encouraged by the fact that the players were just as interested as the fans in taking photos of and with the people in costumes, from Captain America and Bucky through Optimus Prime.

*They’d like to return to San Francisco after Moscone Center’s renovations are done, but that’s still up in the air.

Around the Con

Friday I went solo. It was lightly attended but still busy, and if anything, I’d call it relaxing. I spent a lot of time in panels, exploring the floor, and looking for bargains and cool stuff. This was probably the most traditionally “comic con” day for me. I parked in the convention center lot before noon and stayed until 9 at night (for Superman vs. the Elite), and still felt energized when I got home. It reminded me of the last time I did a Friday at WonderCon (2009) in San Francisco, or like a day at SDCC back in the 1990s.

Katie and I both went to the con on Saturday, when it was a lot more crowded. We parked in the lot across the street, got drenched on the walk to the convention center, and got hailed on that evening. I went to a couple of more literary panels, but didn’t spend much time on comic events…though I did spend a lot of time hunting down autographs. After Friday’s dismal plastic food (worst. pizza. ever.) in the convention center, we made a point of taking a break for lunch and eating at one of the hotel restaurants. That was definitely worth it.

Sunday was very different, because we brought our son along. Having a toddler with you really changes what you can do, how quickly you can get around, etc. (We also got in later, which meant parking waaay out at Angel Stadium and taking a shuttle in. Fortunately the shuttles were fast and frequent.) Crowd weaving with a stroller is a lot more difficult even than crowd weaving with a giant backpack. We were only there for about four hours, and mostly spent the time exploring. I don’t think he really understood what was going on, but he had a good time people-watching, and playing with demo toys, and I made sure to find him a place out of the way that he could run around.

Signings, Swag and Encounters

After a couple of years on hold, I’ve picked up the Comic Book Tattoo autograph project again. Only Ted McKeever was there out of the artists and writers I still needed, but since I wan’t carrying a computer around, I figured I’d bring it on the first day. Then I picked up a volume of Absolute Sandman for 50% off. (How do half-price trade/hardcover booths make a profit? Is it a loss leader? Clearance?) I was very happy that I’d managed to park in the convention center lot that day.

I talked for a while with Randy Milholland of Something*Positive, and while I wasn’t planning on buying any original art, I figured I’d take a look, and stumbled upon a piece that inspired a running gag here. Then he told me the real story of the childhood event that inspired the storyline. Somewhere in here, the real T-Bob showed up, and he and Randy caught up while I continued looking through the art.

At one point, while walking down the hall, I heard someone saying “I think so, Brain…” in a perfect Pinky voice. I looked over and it was Rob Paulsen. (‘Kay bye.)

I got Naomi Novik to sign the latest Temeraire novel, Crucible of Gold and Ernest Cline to sign the audiobook of Ready Player One. (I’d read the book on the Kindle, and discovered that morning that Wil Wheaton reads the audio version. Apparently they’d been trading recommendations for quite some time, informally, and Wil was quite pleased to get to do the audio version. He didn’t pre-read the book, so he didn’t know he was in it until about the page before, and still managed to read it “like a boss.”) Humberto Ramos signed my copy of Impulse #1 (previously signed by Mark Waid), and I caught up with Fiona Staples for Saga, and Joe Benitez for Lady Mechanika. I talked briefly with Flash co-writer/artist Brian Buccellato, and intended to head back to his Artist’s Alley table later, but somehow never quite made it.

Events

Programming is one of Comic-Con/WonderCon’s strong points, and they always have a wide variety of events. As much as people complain about the Hollywood presence in San Diego, most years you can put together a personal schedule of entirely comic-book events that barely leaves you any time on the floor (or for lunch).

I caught the Superman vs. the Elite screening on Friday. Since it was Friday, I had no trouble getting in, and getting a really nice view of the second row of screens. It moves the premise from Action Comics #775 to a more political stage, and while there are problematic elements, and the animation style takes getting used to, my favorite part of the movie was the interplay between Lois and Clark.

In general, I’ve found that if I have to choose between an announcement and a discussion, I’ll go for the discussion. (The announcements will be online by the end of the hour anyway.) I did check out the Hobbit panel, which turned out to be less preview and more “What we know so far…” from The One Ring.net, and the Friday DC Comics & Vertigo panels. I got some good quotes, but not much information out of the DC panel, while Vertigo has me seriously considering checking out American Vampire.

A couple of audience surveys at the DC panel: Only about 1/5 of the audience raised its hands when asked whether they read comics online. And it was sad that only a handful recognized China Miéville’s name.

Anthony Bourdain’s upcoming graphic novel Get Jiro sounds like one of those amazingly bizarre books that will either be awesome or awful: In a dystopian future Los Angeles, the divide between haves and have-nots has become extremely sharp. All forms of entertainment have died out except for food, and the action-adventure focuses on Jiro, a sushi chef caught between literally-warring gangs of foodies.

More fun were the Saturday panels on Rewriting History and the Science Behind Science-Fiction.

Rewriting History featured Naomi Novik (Temeraire), Ernest Cline (Ready Player One), Rob Reid (co-founder of Rhapsody, with a sci-fi novel coming out called Year Zero) and — when he finally made it through the parking mess — Todd McCaffrey (the more recent Dragonriders of Pern novels).

The Science Behind Science Fiction was a presentation and Q&A by the authors of How To Defeat Your Own Clone, showing examples of common sci-fi tropes and comparing them to real science. For example: We can’t build an Iron Man suit (yet), but we can build an exoskeleton. We can’t engineer a super-human, but there are genes that control muscle growth. We’ve only cloned animals so far, but we can look at identical twins. They used clips from movies to illustrate the tropes, including Avatar, Captain America…and two from Doom. (Now I have to know: is Doom so bad it’s good, or so bad it’s bad?)

One of them told us about the time he was almost bitten by a radioactive spider, and how just for a moment, he actually considered letting it bite him.

Quotes

“Are you clamoring for a Canterbury Cricket series?” “I am.” “Oh, you’re the one…” – DC All Access on Friday

“Is intertwinededness an actual word?” “It is now, I’ve got the podium.” – DC All Access again

“Is that Thorin, or Gowron?” – The One Ring/The Hobbit on Friday

“A hipster will wear a Captain Picard shirt and say, ‘Look how dumb this shirt is.’ If I wear one, it’s because I want some mofo to make it so!” — The Nerdist, Friday

“Why doesn’t Batman talk about his feelings more?” — CAC #7, Female Superheroes and Trauma, Saturday

“Who would do this to their dying friend?” — Ernest Cline, re: taking someone to see Star Wars: Episode I, Saturday

“If you don’t know who Boba Fett is, your opinion is invalid.” — Ernest Cline, Saturday

But Wait! There’s More!

»All my WonderCon 2012 Photos
»WonderCon as a Test Case for Comic-Con in Anaheim

Of course, they don’t ship the batteries charged, which put a quick end to that plan. And today, it’s overcast and smoggy.

I did, however, get this shot of the moon when I left a few hours later on a trip to the grocery store.

It was right around sunset, so the sky looking east was actually a medium blue, but with the short exposure needed to get details on the moon, it ended up looking black. This is the first photo I have taken of the moon that shows texture. I think this will do!

When I looked into repairing my old camera (it developed a permasmudge inside the lens mechanism a few months back), it was going to cost about the same as getting a new, comparable camera — and I figured, if I’m getting a new camera anyway, why not get one that’s better, and solves the problems that have bothered me about the old one?

The key things I wanted in the new camera:

• Long optical zoom.
• Still small enough for at least a jacket pocket. (I’ve said I want a digital SLR, but the more I think about it, I wouldn’t want to carry it around much.)
• Minimal shutter lag. (With a toddler in the house, I keep trying to take a picture of him doing something, or showing an expression, and he moves between the time I press the button and the time the camera captures the image. What I miss most about film cameras is the fact that the shutter opens the instant you push that button.)
• Replaceable battery. (Seriously, the cameras I kept finding that fit the rest of my criteria turned out to only have an internal battery, so that you charge them like a cell phone. I’ve had enough experiences where I’m out somewhere, about to take a photo, and suddenly the camera shuts down. I like being able to swap in a spare.)

I ended up getting a Panasonic DMC-ZS8. I considered another Canon, but the main advantage it had was the continuous-shot mode, and this one had better zoom & less shutter lag. I’ve been testing it out at home, and I’m really looking forward to the chance to try it out with more types of pictures!

Just yesterday, I had no idea there was going to be a lunar eclipse this morning. Then I skimmed an article somewhere and got the impression it was only going to be visible on the east coast, And then I read about it on Bad Astronomy and realized I had it backward. Not only would I be able to see part of the eclipse, but I’d be able to see the moon in totality! All I had to do was get up early in the morning and find a place with a clear view of the western horizon. I considered driving down to the beach at 5am, but thought I’d start out by seeing how visible it was from home. As it turns out, I should have gone to the beach to start with, but I had some good viewing before I left.

So I set my alarm, woke up at 5am (plus the snooze button), and went out to see what I could see. To my surprise, I actually had a decent view of the partially-eclipsed moon from across the street. It was about half-covered at this point (as shown in the first photo above). So I stayed out there for a few minutes deciding what I wanted to do, went back in to have some coffee and breakfast, then went back out shortly before 6 to watch as the umbra covered the disc the rest of the way. I found it interesting that it didn’t look particularly reddish this time, just brown.

Awesome viewing, though it was clear the moon would dip below the roofs of the houses soon. I needed a less obstructed view.

As soon as the moon went into totality, I went back inside, woke up Katie just enough to let her know I was going, tossed the rest of my coffee in a travel mug and hightailed it down to the beach.

The eastern sky was already light when the total phase of the eclipse began. As I drove, I crested a south-facing hill and saw the southeastern horizon lit up deep red, with silhouettes of Saddleback and the San Gorgonio mountains in the distance. (Keep reading – I’ll come back to this.) I came so close to stopping, but figured eclipses are only visible from here every few years. Sunrises happen every day. So I kept driving.

I went to an area of Redondo Beach or Torrance (I’m still not sure exactly where the city boundaries are) where a street runs along the top of a cliff, with occasional stairs leading down to the beach maybe 30 feet below. There’s parking along the street, and benches where you can watch the waves or the sunset…or this morning, where you could watch the eclipse. There were maybe a dozen or so people spread out along the cliff, several of them with tripods. Clearly I wasn’t the only eclipse hunter who had thought of this spot.

Unfortunately, I got there too late. By the time I parked the car, the sky was light enough and the moon was behind enough haze that it was virtually invisible. It would have been a great full moonset under ordinary circumstances, but the refracted earthlight just wasn’t enough to light it up against the dawn sky.

Everyone still there was packing up.

I stayed for a few minutes, then decided I might as well catch the sunrise while I was out. The closest place I could think of that had a clear view of the east was the hill I’d crested earlier, which had a good view…except for the the skeletal towers of a cluster of power transmission lines. I wasn’t the only one out to watch the sunrise, either. Aside from the people walking their dogs in the park nearby, there were two other guys standing around by their cars (carefully not parked near each other), looking at the eastern horizon.

I’ve always found it interesting that you can see distant mountains silhouetted at dawn and dusk that you can’t see during the day. The San Gabriels at left are often visible from the South Bay (just as they are from Orange County), but it’s rare to be able to see Saddleback from out here. And the mountains in between? Very rare. I think they’re the San Gorgonio range.

If you look carefully in the higher-res version, you can see that there’s another mountain sticking up behind the Santa Ana Mountains, near the north/left end of the range. I’m not 100% certain, but I think it’s San Jacinto!

Anyway, I walked a little ways down the hill to where the towers didn’t block the spot where the sky looked brightest, and waited. It wasn’t very long — I’d cut things pretty closely — before a bright spot appeared just a little above the horizon. Oddly, it looked like it appeared between the horizon and the tops of the mountains south of Saddleback, which I chalked up to the same sort of refraction that causes the sun to look higher than it actually is.

After the sun cleared the mountains, I stared to head back to my car, when one of the guys asked me, “You’re here for the eclipse, right?” It turned out that he’d misunderstood an article describing where and when to look, and so he went out to a spot with a view of the eastern horizon a little after 6:00. The moon had been behind him (and a hill) the whole time. I showed him some of the photos I’d taken earlier, so he at least got to see them second hand, and then we both drove off.

As I drove home, I noticed other people out just looking at the view. At one point I caught a glimpse of Downtown Los Angeles, with several skyscrapers reflecting the sun like columns of light.

I’m not usually up that early in the morning these days, especially not on a weekend. I’m more of a night owl. But sometimes I can definitely see the appeal.

The beach was absolutely deserted when I arrived (not counting the gatekeeper who dutifully collected $6 for parking), which made sense — it had been a cold, rainy day in November, and it was almost sunset besides. The sand was all wet, covered with tiny little pockmarks from the rain.

Rain was still falling in Santa Monica to the north and somewhere inland in the South Bay — possibly Torrance or Redondo Beach. Lit from the side, Santa Monica looked like there was a golden haze above the city.

It was clear enough that I could see the silhouette of Catalina Island off in the distance to the south (though I didn’t get any good photos of it). I was surprised at how much more I could see from the beach than from my office window, only a couple of miles inland. (I have to remember: LAX is huge.)

As the sun dipped below the horizon, it lit up a column of clouds red from below. Even afterward, it lit up the edges of distant clouds just barely visible peeking over the horizon.

The rain started up again as I left, getting stronger as I drove inland. By the time I got home, I was ready to use an umbrella just walking from the garage to the front door. About a minute later, it really opened up, and I made the mistake of going out to check the mail. Instant soak.

Full photo set (8) at Flickr.

One day a few weeks ago, I tried to make it to the nearest beach I could in time for sunset. I missed…but while on the mostly-deserted beach I caught some nice views of pink underlit clouds over the Santa Monica Mountains, and this view of a closed lifeguard tower at El Segundo Beach.

Then there was the clear afternoon when I went exploring the Palos Verdes area, looking for public parks where I could see the LA basin. Not much luck on that count, but as sunset approached, I decided to see if I could make it up to Del Cerro Park (more photos from this spot taken during daylight) up at the top of the bluffs. I did, and because the park is actually higher than the next hill over, I got to watch the sun set over the ocean and behind a hill at the same time.

I stayed up there for a good 20 minutes after sunset, watching the sky darken through twilight. It was incredibly windy that evening, and even from a thousand feet up with no direct sunlight, I could still watch the waves between the mainland and Catalina Island, moving slowly through the strait like tiny ripples in the direction of the wind.

This was the view that surprised me the most: Bright orange (a little more magenta in real life than it looks here in the photo) on the underside of the clouds, but plain gray on the sides.

Here are a couple of views of the rainbow and Downtown Los Angeles in the distance, a little bit earlier.

Looking northwest across LAX toward the Santa Monica Mountains. The sun is out of frame to the left. Oh, who am I kidding? It was behind a building, so I aimed at what I could see.

More photos: LA post-storm rainbow & sunset

When I was twelve, I went with my mom, brother and a family friend to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. It was the first mission after the Challenger disaster, and the orbiter was Discovery.

I took a roll of slides using a manual SLR camera and (for the landing itself) a telephoto lens. With the last shuttle mission ending tomorrow, I decided to track down the slides and scan them.

From what I remember, we drove out the night before and slept in the car. It was still pretty dark when we got up, even though the landing wasn’t until mid-morning.

We were out on the edge of a dry lake bed, far enough away that we couldn’t see the landing strip.

There was a bit of a festival atmosphere, with vendors selling food, sodas and souvenirs. Mostly, though, everyone was clustered as close to the fence as they could get to see the best view.

I put on a telephoto lens for the landing itself. When Discovery first came into view, it was barely a white dot in the sky…even through the camera.

Here’s that same shot, cropped so that you can see it at the original scanned resolution. What’s amazing is that even at this distance, you can make out the shape.

My grandfather, who had given me the camera and was teaching me a lot about photography, showed me how to make prints in his dark room. I made an 8×10″ of this shot of the shuttle approaching the landing strip, though I think today I would go for the next one instead:

I took the telephoto lens off after the landing. This should give you a better idea of just how far away we really were from the shuttle. NASA wasn’t taking any chances with civilians!

Here’s the line of cars waiting to leave the base. I don’t remember how long it took to get out, but I do remember that we shut the engine off for a long time waiting for the cars in front to move.

On the way out, I caught one last shot of the shuttle in the distance. You can just barely see it near the center of this photo.

I’ve uploaded the full set on Flickr. I know the photos themselves aren’t fantastic — we were several miles away, and I was only twelve after all, but there’s something special about photos you took yourself at an event you witnessed personally.

Believe it or not, this is looking *away* from the sun. Sun rays are (at this distance, anyway) basically parallel, and a trick of perspective makes it look like they converge toward the sun or, in this direction, toward the point exactly opposite, like looking down a long hallway.

Ever since I read that these were possible under the right circumstances, I’ve been hoping to spot them and (if possible) photograph them. I saw some once while looking toward the mountains a year or two ago, but they were too faint to photograph. Naturally, when I finally saw them again, I was driving, and didn’t have time to stop and aim. Amazingly enough, one of the photos I took just pointing the camera out the window actually caught the rays!

Contrast enhanced to make the rays more visible. You can also check out the unmodified version.

I kind of wish that sign wasn’t in the middle there, but my Photoshop (well, Gimp) skills aren’t quite up to it. Maybe I’ll give it a shot with context-aware fill at some point.

It was awfully hazy toward the north, though, and you can see the San Gabriels are fading into the haze toward the left of the frame.

These were taken at the same spot as the loooong snowy panorama from January 2008, the Misty Mountains from December of the same year, and the cloud window panorama from January 2010. (I should really just come up with something to tag all the photos I’ve taken there.)