Eight Minutes Old

I’m busy with the final preparations of my trip to Australia. A college of me an I will visit the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra for two weeks, giving talks on our research on Satellite / Tidal Dwarf Galaxies and discuss with the local researchers about their projects. Especially interesting for me is the so called “Stromlo Missing Satellites Survey” (SMSS), a project where they map the southern sky searching for not-yet-known satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. That should give me more observational input for my theoretical works.

We will start next Monday, arriving in Singapore on Tuesday for a short stop-over of one night. It’s ‘perfect’ timing: there is monsoon-time right now. But so what, they have a constant 30 degrees Celsius all year round. Then we will depart for Australia on Wednesday, arriving in the early morning (local time) in Sydney to catch a bus to Canberra.

I must admit I am a bit excited about the trip. Until now I never traveled this far. I never left Europe, actually (the continent that is, I have been in Switzerland which is not a member of the European Union). I wonder how I will react on the jet lag, and the different climates. From late, not too cold Fall to humid, tropical, to dry and hot Summer … I was told that there were 35 to 40 degrees in Canberra some days ago.

I will try to blog while I am traveling, and of course take black and white pictures. I’ll take only one of my Canon EOS 50E bodys with me, with the favorite 24mm/f2.8 and the 17-40mm/f4.0 lenses.  Unfortunately my tripod would be too heavy. Last week I got the last 77mm red filter that was available from Amazon, making the 17-40 lens finally usable for me. I  love to see everything in red when looking through the viewfinder, it improves the contrasts and makes it easier to see in black and white.

Hopefully the films I pack are enough. I decided for ten rolls each of Fuji Neopan Acros, Tri-X and an Rollei Infrared. The latter is of not much use in winter, so I am even more happy for the trip into the summer right now. (No, I did not forget that I promised to write something about infrared photography.) The films will have to wait to be processed until I am back, though, so maybe I blog some shots from my cell phone. I don’t like these at all, but it is an easy way to show and share impressions. Or I can convince my wife to present some of her digital shots, as she is accompanying me.

Related Posts

• December 15, 2009 — In Canberra, Australia
• June 25, 2010 — Dark Matter Keeps me Busy: In the Radio and Astroclub
• May 6, 2010 — Photo Series: Quadrants (Sydney)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Equipment, Landscape, Photography, Science, Series: Brittany after the season.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.