GMO: Grape Nuts

Life has been a little busy and so I am cheating a little on this post by keeping it so short.  But sometimes a picture is a thousand words.

The news seems always to be abuzz about some company or some brand deciding not to use GMO ingredients.   Yet here is a perfect example of the repercussions customers don't see.  And remember most consumers who don't support GMOs do so because of health concerns.  These Non-GMO cereals don't look like they are getting healthier to me.





Another great article that digs a little deeper into this issue is here:  Article on Grape Nuts and Cheerios 

Source of picture::
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/08/24/so-what-happens-when-gmos-are-removed-from-grape-nuts-less-benefits-higher-costs/

Astrophotography: Some good Books

There are some great resources on the web about getting stared in astrophotography and even more advanced knowledge on the subject.  But sometimes there is no substitute for a book.  There are few books I still use all the time and highly recommend if you want to learn more about astrophotography.  Even if astrophotography is not your thing, but you like to use a telescope for visual use you will learn a lot about general astronomy as well.

The first great book to start out with is The Backyard Astronomer's Guide.  This book is a great stater book.  It goes over all the different types of telescopes out there. You will read about mounts and eyepieces and how to start atrophotography if you wanted.  Even if you just want to use a telescope for visual use only this is a great resource.

Nightwatch is another one that I still pull out all the time.  You will find all kinds of general information, but this book really shines with the sky maps it provides.  This is book to use to learn the constellations as well as well as finding the location of any object you would want to view.

And finally whether you are just looking at targets or trying to take a picture, there are certain times of the year that each target is at a great location in the sky.  The 100 Best Astrophotography Targets has great pictures of each deep sky object from galaxies to nebula.  The book also gives information about CCD imaging which is a step above using you DSLR camera.  I don't do any CCD imaging yet and the book is an awesome guide of when I should photograph an object, not to mention the photos of each object are stunning.

These are some great books for your bookshelf if you love looking at the hidden treasures in our sky.  They are also books that I sitll pull out and reference still.

GMO Answers

Run a Google search on "GMOs" and you will get all kinds of info from facts to unscientific propaganda.  So is there a site where you can actually ask questions and get an answer?  There is one really nice site that is available for you submit your questions and get an answer.

Check out the GMO answers site.   This site is funded by Council for Biotechnology Information which include Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont.  I know the first reaction is of course they are going to answer the questions with a GMO friendly bias.  Yet one of the things I hear the most about GMOs is that the big agricultural companies are not transparent, they are selfish, and not to be trusted.  Well these companies are more than willing to give you answers and information if you are willing to listen  Ask questions and they will give truthful answers.  Many times the answers are given by an outside expert such as a professor from an industry.




































However, the anti-GMO groups are not just sitting around letting the public become educated with truthful information from sites like GMO answers.  They are very good at finding ways to fight back.  So some of the experts that help answer questions about GMOs on the GMO Answers site among other researchers throughout the United States were asked by a group called the US right to know to turn over all of their emails to companies in the biotech field.  They were sure that the researchers were colluding with the biotech industry.  This couldn't be farther from the truth.

Kevin Folta was one of those researchers.  He shares his story here and it is a good read.  The Kevin Folta story.  Imagine being targeted by a group like this.  You have nothing to hide, but it still turns you life upside down to have to comply with some bogus request like the ones these researchers had to do. And then anything they find can be taken out of context to smear biotech, the researcher, and even the universities.

Smear campaigns are very easy to run.  People fall for misinformation all the time just like the phishing emails that clutter your inbox but are able to steal peoples info all the time.  Check out these articles and resources and see the other side of the issue.  This is the side that is usually hard to see behind the Photoshoped pictures of food turning into monsters..

Astrophotography: Whirlpool Galaxy

I have several astrophotography posts on slowly getting the equipment to be able to take pictures of more than just the moon.  I had everything to attempt a photograph of  a Deep Space Object and my first try in 2014 was the Whirlpool Galaxy or Messier 51 by its formal name.   M51 is a spiral galaxy and besides being a beautiful galaxy it is really close to a second smaller galaxy called NGC 5195.  

Google Search info for M51

My setup for the photo was:

Telescope:  SV90T (90 mm refractor)
Mount  Celestron AVX

The basic premise of astrophotography of deep space objects (DSOs) is to take a bunch of exposures of the target and then you will stack them together.  The longer the exposure, then the stronger your signal.   I unfortunately was not yet ready to go guiding which helps keep your mount locked on the target for a longer exposure.  I will go over guiding in a future post. For now I had was just using the Celestron AVX mount to track the target.  We talked about the GEM mounts in a previous post and how they move with the Earth's rotation so you might think this should be enough to keep your target nice a centered.  The answer is it does a good job for awhile, but it is not quite good enough to hold the target perfect for the really long exposures.  For those you need a combination of the mount and a second telescope and camera to lock onto a star near the target and give the mount small corrections to stay perfect.  Since I did not have a guiding setup my mount is good for about 30-45 second expsoures before I start to see slight star trailing.

I got the mount calibrated and polar aligned (perfectly pointing to the North Star) so it will rotate with the sky correctly and then slewed to M51.  I took around 75 pictures at a 45 second exposure.  My final picture had about an hour of exposure.  The more total exposure you get, usually the better the picture detail you can capture.  this is a fairly easy target since you can pick up so detail of this galaxy in binoculars.   Therefore I could get a decent picture even with only an hour of light gathering.

Once you have the photos you need to stack them.  That process is another post and after you get one stacked image you need to process the image.  Processing is another topic I will eventually have several posts on.  Processing is its own science and you can spend hours on this step.  there are also many different software package options which are used in slightly different ways.  The very first attempt I made at processing the M51 photo I had is below in the first picture.

First processing attempt of M51

I was actually a little disappointed.   I wanted a colorful picture.  I was using a software package called Startools.   I talked to the owner of the software on the softwares forum site and he helped me come up with a much better image as shown below.  This just shows how important processing is.  Your stacked picture has all kinds of data including gradients, viginetting, color, etc.  Some of the data you don't even want in there like light gradients from light pollution and some you need to bring out like colors .  In my first picture you can even see a diagonal streak I had from some reflection I was getting.  The moon was out and I am gussing it was bouncing off something to cause my scope to pick up a reflection and put a defect in the image.

Processing with Startools Software

I tried the same picture with a second software call PixInsight and got a similar pciture

Processing with Pixinsight software

This post opens up a lot of questions:

How to Guide and get longer exposures

How to stack images (I did not even mention bias, flats, and dark photos)

How to process images

Hopefully these re things to talk about in future posts.  In the end I am still learning, but my first real picture of something other than the moon was breathtakingly beautiful and amazing to me.  

Cooking: Sourdough Bread

A good friend of mine got me into trying to make bread (Thanks Patrick!).  He told me that as he read about bread making he saw that it is an art not a science.  I understand science, but I am a poor artist.  So my first attempt at making sourdough bread was not a piece of art, but it sure was good to eat.

Sourdough bread making in general has two steps.  The first is to make and "feed" a sourdough starter.  After about a week or more of feeding the starter you can complete the second step of actually making the bread.

There are all kinds of recipes out there.  Like I say, it is an art and so everyone has little difference in the way they do it.  The King Arthur brand website has a lot of resources and I used a lot of info from their site. Check it out for even more resources. 

1.  The Sourdough Starter

There are a few ways to get a starter.  The starter basically consists of flour, water and yeast.  There are two ways to get the yeast.  The first way is to stir 1 cup of flour and and 1 cup of lukewarm water together in a bowl.  Then just let it sit for a day.  Every day, take one cup of the "starter," one cup of new unbleached all purpose flour, and one cup of  warm water and mix them together.  There is yeast everywhere in the environment, so over time natural "wild" yeast is finding its way into the starter and the population will slowly grow.  The other way is when you make your starter from scratch you will add one cup of flour, one cup of lukewarm water, and some yeast from the store.   This will go ahead and inoculate your starter and make things progress a little faster.  In both cases you need to feed your starter which mean each day you are taking one cup of the starter, one cup of flour, and one cup of water and mixing them together.  This also means that each day you have almost 2 cups of old starter you are throwing away.  This brings us to the third way to get a starter going.  Instead of throwing the old starter away, you can give it to someone else and then they have a starter to begin feeding each day.  There are also recipes for the discards like pretzels if you feel bad about wasting.  No matter how you get a starter going you should feed it each day, but pay attention to the temperature which is important to yeast.  The location of the starter should be at least 72 F or above, with 75-85 F ideal.  You can find warm spots in the house like on top of stove that was just used or beside an appliance that might give off heat.

Regardless of how you get your starter you are "feeding" it more flour and water each day to give it a fresh food supply to continue to grow and nourish the yeast population.  Typically you will do this at least a week, but it is ready to use a bread recipe when you see lots of bubbles, it starts to get thicker, and it seems like it has gained some volume.  The longer you let it go and more mature it gets then then more "sour" it becomes.  So you influence the taste of the bread by the age and yeast population of your starter.  

2.  Making the bread

Once you have a starter that is showing good activity you are ready to make some bread.  There are so many recipes.  I chose to use a recipe from the King Arthur site.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/PrintRecipe?RID=91&radio=1

After adding all the ingredients, you will get a nice dough ball,

Just let the dough ball sit in a bowl for about a couple hours in a warm place to rise.

Once the dough rises, it can be carefully separated into two loaves and placed on a baking sheet.  Lightly cover the two loaves and let them rise for another hour or so until they have risen as well.

Then it is just a matter of baking the bread in the oven.  Next time I will shape the loaves a little higher so i get bigger pieces of bread when I cut it.  However the bread was really good.

The rustic was good, but I tried a second recipe the next day that as sweeter.  It contains one of my favorite ingriedients, sugar.   See below for that one.  The ingredients, cooking time, and steps vary slightly and you finish it off by brushing it with melted butter, but the overall concept is the same as the rustic recipe.   I think this is the recipe I will stick with for awhile.   It is delicious.   

 This is the fun of bread making; changes in just a few different ingridients gets you a very different tasting bread.   If you have other favorite bread recipes then be sure to share them!

http://www.food.com/recipe/light-almost-airy-sourdough-bread-322348

Kid Science: Fun with Milk

I have to be honest, I might have more fun with this one than the kids.  It is super simple, but pretty cool.

The supplies you need are:

1.  A plate with some milk poured in
2.  A Q-tip
3.  Food coloring
4.  Dish detergent (Dawn)

The next step is to add just one drop of each color (four colors is best) to the center of the plate of milk.

Add some Dawn (or equivalent) to the end of a Q-tip.  Take the Q-tip and place the soap end right in the center of the of the drop of food coloring. Then just watch the show.  You can move the Q-tip to different parts of the milk and add more soap to continue to show.

So what is going on?  Milk is is mostly water, but it is also contains protein and fat.   The soap molecule has two ends, one is hydrophilic and the other is hydrophobic.  The hydrophobic end does not like water, but it does like the fat.  It will bind to fat, which is why soap is used to clean dirty dishes.  As parts of the soap try to bind to the fat in the milk the binding causes all kinds of disruptions in the milk and the food coloring gets bumped all around.  This bumping causes the display you see.

GMOs: Fear mongering

Human nature is an amazing thing, but sometimes I think you could replace amazing with frustrating.  When humans come across new ideas, new products, new technologies, or new scenarios many of us tend to perceive it as a threat,or at least become skeptical.  I think this how we are programmed and what has kept our civilization alive.  Fear and the fight or flight response still comes naturally to all of us without even having to think about it and that emotion is picked up by any in the area eliciting a response in them as well.  We are no longer running and fighting saber tooth tigers, but we still come across situations where the fear response is strong.  This instinctual reaction comes to all of us at some point in time whether it is on a roller coaster, a situation where we perceive someone threatening, or military deployments.   We still experience fear and need to react.  However our ancestors experienced fear individually or in small communities and it was contained.  In today's world fear can spread more broadly   Fear is now spread through media in the form of TV, social media, radio, etc where thousands of people are exposed to a story.    Humans react off of each other's emotions.  Has someone in your house been grumpy for a day.  Usually everyone is grumpy and in a foul mood because emotion is contagious.   So when media spreads something that causes fear for a few it spreads like wildfire.  We sense fear in others and that innate fight or flight  response kicks in and makes us fearful too.

Let's look at a quick example.  In NC we have had around 8 shark attacks in the summer of 2015.  And it was in the news everywhere. You heard talk about it everywhere and people were scared.   Social media was full of of its usual fun.

The fear spread efficiently and the first response for many was "The is no way I,m going in the water this year."  This was a new scenario and we react with an instinctual fear response.  Once things settle down we start to think more rationally.  Let's think rationally about this one.  We get in our cars everyday.  We are not really fearful of using those multiple times a day, but the probability of dying in car is WAY higher than a shark biting you.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/attacks/relarisklifetime.html

Ebola is another example.  Remember the fear in the United States when the Ebola epidemic hit Africa.  If you vomited, then people were getting away from you.

The point is that when fear is spread it quickly outpaces rational thought.  There is nothing wrong with that; it is what could keep us alive.  However there will be time to stop and apply rational thought.  Once we can sit down and are willing to process that fear we can quickly find that things are not as bad as they might seem. The sad thing is that some people know how to use that natural human fear response to pursue their own agenda.  A new article by Shiva Ayyaadurai says Formaldehyde may be in GMO crops.

The paper

And it does not mater how bad the science is, the anti-GMO groups can use this type of material to spread fear.  We don't think rationally to fear and so when you see this picture you don't go and say "let me read that paper and make a conclusion for myself."  Instead you say "Oh wow, I'm not feeding that to my kids and I need to tell my neighbor the same thing."

Infographic release by GMO free after the article

It is hard to get ahead of the curve of fear mongering.  People's emotions are a strong tool for Anti-GMO activists.  The paper is full of holes and lots of them.  For one actual plant samples were never even tested.  The paper is based on on computer models, which by the way can output anything you want them to depending on what you put in the beginning of the model.    An awesome scientist, Kevin Folta has publicly tried to reach out to Ayyaadurai and actually do the test with REAL samples with a very well thought out scientific design.  Guess what that answer has been?  SILENCE.

http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2015/07/gmo-formaldehyde-challenge.html

I don't want to get into more details of why this paper is not very good on a scientific level.  For that take the time to read  the Genetic Literacy Projects response to the paper.   The point is that fear from papers like this are hard to counter.  Once the damage is done you can't retract it even when the data is completely irrational and plain out wrong.  Once one shark is seen then everyone is scared to go in the water.   Our human fear instincts are going to kick in on matters like this.  It is who we are as humans and that is not going to change anytime soon.  It is part of what has made our civilization successful.  That does not mean we should not recognize the power of fear and do own our research. My plea is that once you have a moment in a safe place  then stop and use your rational thought to really investigate if the fear response you had was really warranted.

Astrophotography: German Equatorial Mount

When I first started trying to do astrophotography,I had a simple tripod mount.  These type of mounts are called altazimuth mounts which just means they let your scope move in four simple directions.  They go up, down, left and right.  They are easy to quickly move your scope to a target like the moon, a star, or even a terrestrial target.

These altazimuth mounts have their purpose, but the trouble with astrophotography is that the Earth is spinning.  Just like the sun and moon move through our sky due to the Earth's rotation, the stars are moving too.  If you were to open the camera shutter for a long time and just let the camera expose over time you would see the stars are moving throughout the night.  Polaris, or the North Star is the one constant star in the sky that stays in the same position and the rest of the stars will rotate around it. The pictures below show what the star rotation looks like if you left the camera exposing throughout the night.

https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/970/flashcards/2386970/png/untitled1358612324401.png

http://burro.case.edu/Academics/Astr306/Coords/NMSkies_StarTrails2.jpg

Photographing a moving target is much tougher than a still target.  So some genius people invented another type of mount for telescopes called the German equatorial mount or GEM.   The scope is attached to the mount and can still move, but is much more counter intuitive than with a altazimuth.  In this case the scope moves in directions that are not as simple as up, down, left, and right.  The first movement direction is called the right ascension (RA).  When the scope is pointed towards the North Pole, then the scope moves in the same direction as the stars rotating around the north star.  The other movement direction is called the declination (DEC) which lets the scope move north and south.  This system lets the scope follow the stars through the night.

http://starizona.com/acb/basics/equip_mounts_gem.aspx

The movement of this mount to find a target is much more difficult especially if your are trying to do it manually.  It is not as simple as just moving it up and to the left to get the scope pointing at the moon.  The good news is that most of the mounts have a electronic systems built into the mount called "Go To."  You just tell the mount through an attached handheld controller which object you want to look at and the mount automatically "slews" or goes to your target.  Before you can use the GoTo system you need to calibrate the mount.  The controller will ask you to chose several stars and then slew to them.  It will be a little off and you will use the controller to move the star into the center of the eyepiece.  Each time you slew to a new calibration star, the scope will be a little more exact.  By the time you line up 3-4 stars, the mount will find any target you input and after slewing to the target it be right in the center of your eyepiece.

There are a couple of downfalls to a mount like this.  First, they are heavy.  The mount itself is fairly heavy, which means the tripods are very solid and add more weight. .  The telescope must be balanced through all movements and so there are weights on one end that also add to the weight.  The mount also needs power.  You can plug it in, use a car adapter, or get a battery for it.

If you ever want to do astrophotography then this is the next item to get after a scope.   These mounts come in different sizes and brands.  The bigger the mount the more weight it can carry.  Once you start adding cameras, bigger telescopes, guide scopes, etc to the mount then your weight load goes up and the mount needs to handle that weight.  The scope moves with a motor and you should not exceed the capacity of the motor.  If you do not only do you stress the motor, but the scope will not stay as steady on your target which is a must for astrophotography.    This is always a tough decision when you get these mounts.  They can be expensive, but you don't want to go to little because once you have new and bigger scopes you can quickly outgrow the mount.  On the flip side, the bigger the mount the heavier it gets which makes transport and setup harder.

I chose a Celestron AVX as my mount. It has performed well for me.  However I am at load capacity with my scopes.  If I ever get a bigger scope than an 8 inch SCT then this mount will not be able to handle it.  I am content with the scopes I have for awhile, so I can highly recommend the AVX mount as great starter mount that should meet your needs for a long time.

Celestron AVX at load capacity with my scope and camera

Photography: HDR photos

In an earlier blog post I talked about "bracketing the moon" where if you put your camera in Bracket mode it will take a picture and then also take an over and under exposed picture of that same subject.  It was helpful to quickly find the right exposure setting for a nice picture of the moon.

Bracketing photos provides another tool to produce some beautiful photos called HDR photos.  HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  One of the easiest ways to make a HDR image it to use the bracketing technique to take 3 or more photos where you have a photo plus the over and under exposed version of the photo.  HDR photos combine these three photos in one.  This combination of over and underexposed lets these photos bring out shadows and highlights that you would not be able to see in just a one shot photo.  The contrast you get with a HDR photo can really bring out details that you may not otherwise see in the normal photos.

Once you have the series of photos then you will need some software.   I use a paid software called Photomatix.  It is pretty straight forward to use.  You just load your bracketed photos into the software and play with the settings until you get the HDR photo you like.

A free way to create HDR photos is to upload your various exposures into the the Google photo auto backup app on your phone or the computer.  Google will automatically spit out a HDR for you.  This can be hit or miss on how it turns out, but sometimes it works very well for a free way to get an HDR photo.

One thing HDRs do not do well with is movement.  If there is too much movement from a blowing tree or a moving person between the shots, then blending the photos together will produce ghosting.  Sometimes you can get rid of it and sometimes it is near impossible.

I find that with landscapes, HDR can always give a photo that looks in my opinion better than the original shots.   Check out some HDR phots I took of my recent visit to some spots in the North Carolina Mountains.  Next time you are out photgraphing, try taking different exposures and see what kind of HDR photos you can get. 

Three exposures of the same waterfall

The HDR photo from those 3 exposures

Other HDR images I recently took.

Chimney Rock, NC

Chimney Rock, NC

Chimney Rock, NC

Hickory Nut Falls, NC

Hickory Nut Falls, NC

Hickory Nut Falls, NC

Hickory Nut Falls, NC

Mount Mitchell, NC

Mount Mitchell, NC

Mount Mitchell, NC