Ryan, When I looked at the back, I thought I saw three different sizes of cable! I imagine, when photographing it, the points of light "bloomed" so that the different levels were disguised. Only 9110 visible stars? I've never had the time to count them, but that seems small. I've been in a number of situations where the Milky Way is plainly visible. The best was on Great Bahamas Island the night a fire knocked out the diesel power plant. No source of light for 60 miles! More importantly, no moon. We stayed out on the beach all night. Chaco Canyon in NW New Mexico. No source of light for 30 miles, no moon. Gakona, Alaska, a scattered "town" of 123 nestled in the woods. Drive a few miles north, and there's nothing. Yep, remote places. I think Ryan's photo doesn't show the range!
That is Cool! I've heard the theory kicked around before, this is the first time I've seen it done. Very impressive. Just another of the wild things that can be done with modern technology.
and LOTS of meticulous labor. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, the number that are visually distinct from one another. There are visible areas of the Milky Way (alone) that are just good-sized smudges of light - there's a lot of stars behind stars behind stars we're looking at there. Sabotaging your local electric co. is not recommended (Stupid mistake #752, plus you'll have to have a backup generator to run your trains). So I recommend that you get out to Nowheresville or hop in your Way-Back Machine to see the REAL night sky. It is truly awesome, and Ryan 79's zillion-dollar backdrop brought back the memory of that
I think you did a really great job with that. The other people who say there are too many stars don't exaclty have the right idea, I don't think. The thing is there are to many stars of the same brightness. Being out in the country, you can seel way more stars than you have on your backdrop. The thing is, some are really brights, and some are so dim you can't see them at first. Putting carying brightnesses would make it look so realistic. It already is very realistic, but for the extra little touch, I think it would be good to dim soome of them. I've thought about doing something like that before, but I was thinking of doing it on the roof of my car! Nah, thats just foolishness. I just saw them do it on Pim my Ride from MTV, and the stars pulsed with the music. Very cool. Keep up the great work. :thumbs_up: I also looked at your Railimages, and I really like your intermodal yard. How did you do the concrete around the tracks?
Not too long after I started this project, my wife and I went to Vegas with about 15 of our friends, and we went everywhere in limos, which is the cheapest way to move 15 people around Vegas at the same time. Every single one of these limos had fiber optics in the ceiling, which before this project, I could never figure out how to do it. I know now I built my intermodal yard with 3/16 luan(cheap wood, like plywood but not as good quality) and drywall joint compound. The luan is everywhere except under the tracks, and it is basically there to raise the whole yard to track level. The whole yard is covered with drywall joint compund, and in between the tracks is also drywall joint compound. I took a pair of pizza cutter wheels to the wet compound to make sure that I had plenty of clearance for wheel depth. I'm going to redo my yard sometime in the future, and move the two tracks I have spread out right next to each other. Bascially there will be two tracks under the crane, and enough room to lift a trailer off. I'll take pics when I do this. The only bad thing about a this set up is that the joint compound is level with the tracks, making them almost impossible to clean. I'm going to fix this when I redo it.
