The stars of the night sky have been divided and mapped since ancient times. With this mapping the imaginative shapes and legends of the constellations were created. This photo of Aquarius shows, enlarged in their true color, the main "naked eye" stars that make up the shape of the constellation. The photograph also reveals deep space detail in this region of the sky including "The Helix Nebula" seen as a small red circle in the center of the photo near the trees. A photographic technique was used that we call a "motion stop sequence" to get the long exposure of the constellation and a sharp exposure of the trees in the same photograph. Briefly, the camera must accurately track the movement of the stars across the sky over the hour long exposure to keep them from smearing on the film. Then a new exposure is taken with the tracking drive turned off to capture the "Earth scene" and keep it from smearing on the film. Then the two are merged together so the final photograph shows both components clearly as they looked to the observer in "real time".

Yesterday the dishwasher made a weird noise which we tried to ignore. We did the old off and then on again and even went to bed without waiting for it. Today the noise was just as assertive but this time it was coupled with a puddle in the basin of the machine. A bit of blind rummaging in the murky water did not provide any sloppy or sharp answers. I googled the model of this dishwasher and the search engine (as is its wont) supplied the words "not draining". Google told me what to do and I did it and now, within half an hour, the machine is purring away again. When I complete little jobs like this I always feel quite male and self-satisfied.