California's Central Coast

Shot this while vacationing in Cambria, California.

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A strange result

The two panoramas that I shot while atop the 150-foot Solar Telescope at Mt. Wilson were shot from the very same position, but with the tower's revolving dome facing opposite directions. I decided to try to blend the two panoramas together in order to maximize the amount of "skyspace" in the shot. After some basic alignment, Photoshop gave me an almost ethereal blending result, which I think is more interesting than if I had just managed to remove most of the dome from the shot.

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Muir Woods

Another long-since-overdue set of panoramas that I took when vacationing in San Francisco. (Click here to see the full Muir Woods gallery.)


At the entrance to the Muir Woods trails.


A corner.


A bridge.


Almost to the top of the mountain.


Relaxing at the top.

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Mt. Wilson Observatory (long overdue)

I'm having one of those days where I go back and check out all of the things I said I'd do "later." Amongst those to-do items were some panoramas I've taken in the past year or so that I've been meaning to post on the blog. The first set, here, is from our PictureBubbles visits to the Mount Wilson Observatory here in California. (Click here to see the full Mt. Wilson gallery.)


Inside the 100-ft. Telescope's dome. The desk looks almost Jules-Verne-steampunk, no?


Getting these shots required riding to the top of a 150-foot tower in a bucket-built-for-two. I'm a bit acrophobic, so the compulsory harness didn't really give me much of a feeling of security. Still, this has to be one of the most amazing views of Los Angeles one can possibly get.


Standing in the same spot, but the dome was moved 180° to face north.


This is the office underneath the Solar Telescope, where data is collected and stored. The team there still use computer systems from the 1970s (very HAL 9000)—not for budget reasons, but because changing their equipment would sacrifice the consistency of their decades-long observations.


Another part of the CHARA array. Believe it or not, much of this room is a gigantic optical bench.


Also inside the CHARA array.


The CHARA array consists of these metal sleds which are able to slide back and forth to compensate for the different distances over which light must travel from the several telescopes on Mt. Wilson.


The "Monastery" is where astronomers camp out during the winter months when Mt. Wilson is less than accessible.


The views from the Monastery are fantastic.

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Curaçao Maritime Museum Virtual Tour

Posting on Carel Struycken's behalf here...
Carel recently completed a brilliant virtual tour of the Curaçao Maritime Museum. Stunning work, and a beautiful glimpse at Curaçao!

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Saint Francis High School Virtual Tour

We recently completed a pretty slick virtual tour of Saint Francis High School in La Cañada, California. Mouse over any of the text descriptions and click to see a full-screen PictureBubble panorama.

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Object Movie: Hooker 100-inch telescope, Mount Wilson Observatory

(Click the thumbnail image above to open the full-size object movie in a new window.)

Hooker 100-inch telescope
Mount Wilson Observatory, California

Here's the first glimpse of our PictureBubbles tour of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, out in the mountains north of Los Angeles. Unlike most of our other work, this is an "object movie." Rather than pivoting around where the viewer stands, like most spherical panoramas, this image allows you to drag across, left to right, and rotate about the focal point. In this case, that focal point is this massive telescope, finished somewhere around 1917.

Making this was quite a lot of fun. Rather than walk around the entire installation at set intervals, Carel was able to set up the tripod in one position while Arthur Vaughan (Deputy Director of the Observatory) and I marked off the floor in 5° intervals. The entire domed turret revolves around the telescope, allowing us to create an image that would be otherwise impossible.

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Randy's Donuts

Randy's Donuts
Inglewood, California

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Berkeley & San Francisco

Some shots from my summer trip to Berkeley and San Francisco, CA. Includes a small campus tour of UC Berkeley. Click the Permalink below to see the entire gallery.

July 14, 2007

San Francisco, July 14-15, 2007

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First post

Welcome to the PictureBubbles blog! More to come soon.

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