salzburg: night zoo and haus der natur
Nov. 14th, 2023 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoelevenas usual, posting my trip pictures has been delayed. my original plan was just to post the pictures of salzburg and its environs, but even that's too much for my schedule. so, we're going to start with just two things in or near salzburg: the zoo, and the science and technology museum, das Haus der Natur. that's the best name for a science museum i've ever heard.
as my readers may recall, soon after we arrived in salzburg, we sallied forth to get our bearings. one of the things i was looking for was the city information stand, since that's where we'd buy our city cards. city cards are these wonderful things that provide free or low cost entry to all sorts of attractions, as well as the city's mass transit system. every major european city we've been to has them, but i've never seen them in the US. in any event, we didn't find the information stand, because as it turns out, we didn't go quite far enough into the old city.
we did, however, find it the next morning. like many places tourists congregate, it had a display of brochures for local businesses, cultural venues, and the like. i found this leaflet:
even my rusty german was enough to read it:
well, that was that day and the next! so we now had a plan; actually, more of a plan, since there were a number of sights to see on the same set of bus lines, and we were already thinking of going to one of them.
reasonably enough, the night zoo starts around sunset, at 6:30.
at the extreme left of the picture there's a pair of parrots in a tree. i got a slightly closer view of them:
one thing about modern cameras is that they compensate really well for the ambient light, if there's any light to work with at all. so, despite what these next two photos look like, they were taken at twilight, in the same fading light that the parrots were in.
the main reason for the night zoo is that many predators are crepuscular. during normal zoo hours, they're just lying around, looking bored. but as it gets dark, they come out to play. for example, the snow leopards perked up; one of them succeeded in getting a rise out of a younger sibling:
the younger sib then started roaming around:
for those curious about the photographic details, they're both at ISO 1600, which explains the graininess. aperture was f/5.6, which is wide open for that lens using the 2x teleconverter. the first was 1/60th of a second (a long time to hold still). the second was 1/30th of a second (forever; it's long enough that i could hear the shutter close and reopen as distinct sounds). i didn't have a tripod, but i was resting my elbow on a railing. but still, a long time to hold still, even with something to take the weight of the other eye of god. (the original eye of god went with a different camera system, so the other eye of god replaced it when i switched to micro 4/3.)
the next morning, our last day in salzburg, we went to das Haus der Natur. it's a pretty small museum, so we weren't expecting much. but they've packed it to the gills by cleverly dividing the space. this is a view of the two long halls devoted to a local boy done good, christian doppler. the one visible exhibit tells how doppler radar was used to measure the rotation of saturn.
i was also pleased that they had a (long, thin) exhibit of local science, which was about the river salzach, which flows through the city.
there was also a much more typically arranged exhibit about nikola irmer, who draws and paints preserved birds in museums.
i have an unusual fondness for sketches for some reason. they always seem more interesting than paintings or even black and white photos, which similarly emphasize form and shade.
while most of the exhibits were up to date – some even cutting edge, like a short hallway to walk through which used motion tracking to invert the doppler effect as one walked through it, so approaching sounds got lower pitched, and departing ones got higher – we saw one exhibit of pinned insects which was so faded that it not only looked like something from the 19th century, it might have been from the 19th century. (even in the 19th century, god had an inordinate fondness for beetles.)
as my readers may recall, soon after we arrived in salzburg, we sallied forth to get our bearings. one of the things i was looking for was the city information stand, since that's where we'd buy our city cards. city cards are these wonderful things that provide free or low cost entry to all sorts of attractions, as well as the city's mass transit system. every major european city we've been to has them, but i've never seen them in the US. in any event, we didn't find the information stand, because as it turns out, we didn't go quite far enough into the old city.
we did, however, find it the next morning. like many places tourists congregate, it had a display of brochures for local businesses, cultural venues, and the like. i found this leaflet:
even my rusty german was enough to read it:
an evening with the king
welcome to the night zoo!
every friday and saturday in august
well, that was that day and the next! so we now had a plan; actually, more of a plan, since there were a number of sights to see on the same set of bus lines, and we were already thinking of going to one of them.
reasonably enough, the night zoo starts around sunset, at 6:30.
at the extreme left of the picture there's a pair of parrots in a tree. i got a slightly closer view of them:
one thing about modern cameras is that they compensate really well for the ambient light, if there's any light to work with at all. so, despite what these next two photos look like, they were taken at twilight, in the same fading light that the parrots were in.
the main reason for the night zoo is that many predators are crepuscular. during normal zoo hours, they're just lying around, looking bored. but as it gets dark, they come out to play. for example, the snow leopards perked up; one of them succeeded in getting a rise out of a younger sibling:
the younger sib then started roaming around:
for those curious about the photographic details, they're both at ISO 1600, which explains the graininess. aperture was f/5.6, which is wide open for that lens using the 2x teleconverter. the first was 1/60th of a second (a long time to hold still). the second was 1/30th of a second (forever; it's long enough that i could hear the shutter close and reopen as distinct sounds). i didn't have a tripod, but i was resting my elbow on a railing. but still, a long time to hold still, even with something to take the weight of the other eye of god. (the original eye of god went with a different camera system, so the other eye of god replaced it when i switched to micro 4/3.)
the next morning, our last day in salzburg, we went to das Haus der Natur. it's a pretty small museum, so we weren't expecting much. but they've packed it to the gills by cleverly dividing the space. this is a view of the two long halls devoted to a local boy done good, christian doppler. the one visible exhibit tells how doppler radar was used to measure the rotation of saturn.
i was also pleased that they had a (long, thin) exhibit of local science, which was about the river salzach, which flows through the city.
there was also a much more typically arranged exhibit about nikola irmer, who draws and paints preserved birds in museums.
i have an unusual fondness for sketches for some reason. they always seem more interesting than paintings or even black and white photos, which similarly emphasize form and shade.
while most of the exhibits were up to date – some even cutting edge, like a short hallway to walk through which used motion tracking to invert the doppler effect as one walked through it, so approaching sounds got lower pitched, and departing ones got higher – we saw one exhibit of pinned insects which was so faded that it not only looked like something from the 19th century, it might have been from the 19th century. (even in the 19th century, god had an inordinate fondness for beetles.)
no subject
Date: Nov. 15th, 2023 03:30 am (UTC)Backwards doppler hall sounds extremely weird, what was that like?
no subject
Date: Nov. 15th, 2023 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Nov. 15th, 2023 04:11 am (UTC)