Thursday, NASA released the first new moon images from the recently launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Here is a good story at the Christian Science Monitor . The camera was turned on for testing, and wow, the photos were much better than expected.


Caption: Full resolution detail from one of the first LROC NAC images. At this scale and lighting, impact craters dominate the landscape. Two general types of impact craters are readily identifiable. Solitary craters which most likely represent a single impact event, and clusters or chains of small, fresh craters produced by the impact of lunar material excavated by a larger impact. Image width is 1400 meters, north is down [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera web site.

In 1982, this was the biggest flag in Thousand Oaks. I sat on the field with a 20mm lens and let the students carry the flag over me.


Giant U.S. Flag carried by California Lutheran students during a 1982 football game at the Thousand Oaks college campus.

Last night's walk led to 6th and Broadway and the Los Angeles Theater.

Fireworks are normally shot with tripods and long exposures. The only real exposure control is the lens aperture. I use f/11 at 100 iso. But instead of a tripodI I usually handhold the camera, moving it during star bursts. Here are a few examples.

Howard Jarvis pumps his fist during June, 1978, victory party for Prop 13. Photo by Scott Harrison

I was working for the Downey Southeast News in 1978 and covered the victory party for Prop 13. Since California is in the midst of the type of budget collapse long ago predicted by anti-Prop 13 forces, I thought it was a good time to post this image. Another image by Los Angeles Times photographer Joe Kennedy is posted here. We were standing on chairs side by side when these photos were taken.

1982 photo of the annual City of Thousand Oaks Fireworks show over the Ventura Freeway looking east from Borchard Road.

Today, the entire photography community is mourning the death of Kodachrome. Kodak announced the end of the famous film. LA Times story.

Basically Kodachrome film was a three layer black and white film with the color added during processing. The images faded very little over the years compared to other color film. Also Kodachrome gave richer reds. So today, like many baby boomers, I have a pile of 1940s-50s Kodachrome slides from my parents that look like they were exposed yesterday.

Check out this Kodak blog. Co-worker David Muronaka put me on to this story.


1952 Kodachrome photo of me. The 1969 on my shirt refers to year I would graduate from high school. (I did graduate it that year.)

This YouTube video is dedicated to NASA and today's launch to the moon. (See the next Atlas blog item.) The video is from 2004 on the 35th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Atlas missile, left, sits on launch Pad 14 at Cape Canaveral when this photo was taken on May 14, 1963. A day later on May 15, Gordon Cooper successfully piloted this his 'Faith 7' spacecraft for more than 34 hours and 22 orbits. An United Launch Alliance Atlas V, left, rocket blasts off with NASA's LRO/LRCOSS mission from Space Launch Complex-41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 5:32 p.m. EDT on June 18, 2009. The mission is expected to relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon. Credits: NASA, leff, Pat Corkery, United Launch Alliance, right.

Headline today: Atlas Missile launched to the Moon.

What time warp am I caught up in? Is this 1969 or 2009???? The story says an Atlas missile was launched to the moon.

Yep it was true. On thursday, June 18th, 2009, an Atlas V missile was launched to the moon.

Story at LATimes.com .

This scouting mission has two parts. First is a straight-forward lunar orbiter to provide a new and better detailed lunar map.

The second part is a 21st Century version of the searching for water with a divining rod. Yes we are going to search for water at the Lunar South pole. Part of the rocket will be blasted into the moon and a follow-up instrument package will check out the blast plume before itself smashes into the moon.

LA Times writer John Johnson Jr. really explains this crazy mission.

My confusion was with the Atlas missile. I grew up following the Atlas. The first version of the missile was launched in 1957. It was the first ICBM. It was used to launch John Glenn and other Mercury astronauts in the early 60s. And here, 52 years later, they are still being made.

Of course the current version, called Atlas V, is vastly improved. While the Atlas was originally designed to attack the Soviet Union., today's version uses engines built in Russia.

Check out this wikipedia article.

My son Nick just graduated, but he has one last fundraiser for Newbury Park High School. No candy bars, car wash tickets, but artwork. For one project in advance photography Nick and his classmates made greeting cards and then asked relatives to purchase them. Forty percent of the sales go back to the school.

So I am giving them a plug.


Nick shot some film of one of our dogs - Woody - then contact printed the film strips for this image used on his greeting card.

Packages of 12 cards sell for $20.50 at www.artworkforeducation.com. ( And of course some shipping and handling at checkout.)

There looks to be several hundred schools and organizations using the site for fund raising. Have fun cruising the site. Great artwork.