Wednesday morning the 27th we woke up at Punta Vicente Roca on the north-west corner of Isabela Island. The scenery was stunning. While eating breakfast, we could see some sea-life outside the boat, including turtles and the fins of several Mola Mola:
Mola Mola fin
The first order of the day was a panga ride to observe the wildlife along the cliffs. We started out with a sea lion and Green Sea Turtles in the water:
Sea Lion
Green Sea Turtle
Green Sea Turtle
Nearby on the rocks were a Noddy Tern and Boobys and Frigatebirds:
Noddy Tern
Blue-footed Booby and Frigatebird
Blue-footed Booby
Blue-footed Booby
There were also quite a few Marine Iguanas on the rocks:
Marine Iguanas
Marine Iguana
Marine Iguanas
Marine Iguana
But we were really excited when we found the Flightless Cormorants:
Flightless Cormorants
Flightless Cormorant
Flightless Cormorant and shadow
Flightless Cormorant
We cruised further, seeing a variety of Galápagos Fur Seals:
Galápagos Fur Seal
Galápagos Fur Seal
And then, the second high point of the morning occurred when we spotted Galápagos Penguins:
Galápagos Penguin
Galápagos Penguin
Galápagos Penguin
Galápagos Penguin
Galápagos Penguins
Galápagos Penguins
Galápagos Penguins
Galápagos Penguins
Galápagos Penguins
Galápagos Penguins
As you can tell, I had a hard time staying away from the shutter button! We returned to the ship and our next order of business was snorkeling. We came across the Attack Cormorant:
Flightless Cormorant
Despite our best efforts, this Flightless Cormorant wanted to interact with us. I got pecked on the arm. The cormorants were very fun to watch in and under the water:
Flightless Cormorant
We also got a nice view of a group of Green Sea Turtles:
Green Sea Turtles
We got back in the panga and returned to the ship:
John, Francois, Cedric, Jill, Barb, Natasha
It was time to cruise to our next destination. As we cruised, we watched for whales and other wildlife. We did not see whales this day, but we saw other things. A large splash far toward the horizon turned out to be a Swordfish jumping:
Swordfish
Swordfish
Swordfish
Galápagos Petrels, Frigatebirds, Brown Pelicans, and the Moon kept us company:
Galápagos Petrel
Frigatebird
Brown Pelicans
Moon
We arrived at Urbina Bay mid-afternoon. We boarded the Pangas and went on-shore, watching the Brown Pelicans dive as we went:
Brown Pelican
The highlight of our excursion was the giant Galápagos Tortoise. We found them hiding in the vegetation along the trail:
Galápagos Tortoise
Galápagos Tortoise
Galápagos Tortoise
We caught view of a couple of invaders - Smooth-billed Anis brought by the ranchers in hopes they would reduce parasites on the cattle:
Smooth-billed Anis
And, of course more finches:
Darwin Finch
There were also land iguanas. We found evidence of them again before spotting them:
Iguana by-product
But we found several of the large reptiles as well:
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana
Land Iguana eating
Land Iguana
The male was courting the female - he would lick her tail as part of it. Here is an animation:
Returning to shore to wait for the pangas, I watched the pelicans dive while others swam at the beach:
Brown Pelican
Brown Pelican
We returned to the ship and had our briefing for the next day - a quick trip to Fernandina and then back to Isabela:
As we cruised toward Fernandina that night, we stayed up on top for a bit talking and watching the night sky:
Moon and Frigatebird
Jill, Mariangela, Pedro, Fabricio
And then we slept another night, ready for our next morning "in paradise" as our Concerige Roxane liked to remind us!
I got two GoPro Hero3 Black cameras and am planning a panoramic project with them. However, to do the project correctly and accurately, I need a good read on their field-of-view. So, I set up a tripod and a grid and a tape measure, and took a few photos. Here they are, desaturated and contrast-enhanced, with central red dots and some annotations. First, measuring the diagonal FOV: Next, the horizontal FOV: Finally, the vertical FOV: The front of the camera lens was almost exactly 17 inches from the grid. The camera body started about 17.25 inches from the grid. Assuming the sensor is embedded some distance into the body, I used an estimated field-to-sensor distance of 17.5 inches. This yields the following field-of-view, in degrees: Diagonal: 146 Horizontal: 121 Vertical: 93 Doing a little interval math on the field-to-sensor distance shows these angles are accurate to about plus or minus 1.5 degrees. Int...
I got up this morning very early to make an animation of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, the Moon, Venus, and Mercury as they rose in the early morning sky. Here is the finished product: It was very cold - 7 degrees Fahrenheight - and very early. This is a 30-minute sequence starting at 5:39 AM and finishing at 6:09 AM. All of the images have the same parameters: Canon 7DmkII camera Canon 8-15mm f/4L lens, locked at 10mm (widest useful zoom with this lens on a 1.6x crop camera) 8 second exposures at ISO 3200 Image sequencing performed by Canon's EOS Utility. A capture was started every 15 seconds. That camera/lens combo yields a 180-degree diagonal field-of-view. Jupiter and Mercury are about 120 degrees apart in these images, so this gives some extra room for animation and cropping. Capturing all five planets in the pre-dawn skyglow is surprisingly tricky, especially when city light pollution is contributing to a murky lower atmosphere. ...
A few years ago, I converted various planet maps to icosahedral models . You can print these out, cut along the solid lines, fold along the dotted lines, and have a nice icosahedron to play with. Since then, two more robot spacecraft have created global maps of planetary bodies. Most recently, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto. Here is an icosahedral projection of the data we have so far: Also fairly recently, the Dawn spacecraft has orbited both Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest asteroids (or "dwarf planets" as the new nomenclature has it) in the Solar System. Here are icosahedral projections of those two. First, Vesta: Next, Ceres - note the mysterious white spots toward the upper right: All of the data used to create these projections was taken from Steve Albers' Planetary Maps Page , which I highly recommend. Edit: A PDF file of helpful hints on assembling these can be found here .
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