Light snow on the sculptures at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial outside of the Judiciary Square Metro Station.

- mike lee - washington, dc

My new digital camera, an Olympus C-5060 arrived today. While the battery takes its first charge, I'm going through the ritual of attaching the camera strap and lens cap tether, and unpacking all the other doodads. It'll really feel complete when the battery grip arrives later this week. With that and a big CF card, I'll probably be able to shoot for days without a recharge. If all goes well, first photos from the Olympus will be on the main blog over the weekend.

My workhorse Nikon Coolpix 995 is on its last legs with CCD pixels dropping out and the LCD screen flashing funny colors. After 30,000+ images over two years, and much action, it deserves to be retired.

- mike lee -

She loved it!

Amy and I are at the 50s-style diner near our house with friend Geoff. Here you can see baby's recent fascination (repulsion?) with watching us eat. I imagine anyone who has to watch a big blob of meatloaf being inserted and chewed at close range could potentially be grossed out.

- mike lee -

...and a circular one at that! It was literally just a few minutes from some loose narrow angle first frames to a horizontal panorama, and then this eye-popping circular polar panorama popped up. It looks like the lander just missed a huge boulder, which can be seen in the first phone cam pic here. The lander is just two degrees off level and very stable. This circular pano will be a signature image for the mission, and more magnificent photos will be all over the news by morning and into the coming weeks. Good night...

- mike lee -

Incredible!

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe applauded the success of the Mars landing saying, "This is a big night for NASA. We're back." He poured champagne for each of the team principals on stage. Then Rob Manning, the project's manager (last frame above), gave a quick update on the lander/rover. The craft has landed correct side up and the protective petal flaps are unfolding to expose the rover to the Mars surface environment (illustration shown above). Since all engineering data indicate a textbook landing, we could see images from the landing craft transmitted via the orbiting Mars Odyssey satellite by 2:30am eastern this morning. Good coverage is starting to appear at SpaceRef.com. I'm staying up.

- mike lee -

Seconds ago, Spirit mission control got a very strong UHF signal from the rover's low gain antenna. The spacecraft has successfully landed on Mars and is functioning! What an exciting six minutes hearing the blow-by-blow of Mars entry as the ship broadcasted data tones. The orbiting Mars Odyssey ship also received a signal from the rover. Just an incredible feat of engineering.

- mike lee -

The Mars Exploration Rover Mission's first rover in its final entry sequence, and it's great to be able to watch JPL mission control via streaming video on my laptop here at home. NASA TV is broadcasting live coverage. With about 30 minutes to go, all systems are go. The key atmospheric entry, aerobraking, and landing events all happen within six minutes as the spacecraft arrives at Mars at a speed of 12,000 mph. Evidence of a successful landing may be arrive until tomorrow, so if you're interested, watch the reports on Google News.

- mike lee -

Re-inspired by a photo-illustrated discussion on Hiptop.com on someone's success with rewiring a Hiptop camera, I resumed hacking on extras of both types of Hiptop camera attachments. It's been a few years since I've tinkered with electronics, but I found my soldering skills were still intact.

So far I have the low-rez camera on a foot-long extension, and it's ready to be extended many more feet. Along with the obligatory recursive image shot, I re-did the shot of the camera looking out from the back of my mouth towards my reflection in a mirror. It's kinda neat that the reflection of my face ended up visible in the gap in my front teeth.

I also have attempted to extend the high-rez camera, but the signal is much more sensitive, and I haven't met with much success yet.

Here's a link to a few photos on Skholla of my earlier experiment.

More to come...

- mike lee -