DannyJ.Caes

Danny J. Caes (Danny Jules Caes)

WARNING: there are no such things as colors and illustrations (drawings / photographs) in this user's page because the purpose of it is to READ, and to try to use your imagination while exploring and reading (all of) it. Keep in mind that there is a possibility of turning blue (or all other sorts of colors) during, or after, reading.

• °28-2-1964, Ghent (East Flanders-Belgium), somewhere before or after 19:00. Born as an observer (of everything which was, and still is, detectable by eyes and ears). Daydreamer at school (more precisely: he knew the gentle art of observing the ever changing sky and the variety of its cloud patterns, through the windows of the classroom) (those windows were "a bit" too large to try to avoid the view of the sky). See also, in a certain way, David Clemens's (Keir Dullea's) mental absence in the classroom of Frank Perry's David and Lisa (1962). That sort of situation.
• Admirer and observer of mirror reflections of the sun's light (specular reflections on walls and ceilings), and also all sorts of optical contraptions such as telescopes, binoculars, etc... (with lots of prisms and lenses in them). Always looking for transparent glass "crystals" from, for example, Swarovski, at flea markets (!!!) and in second-hand stores (!!!). Color filters, diffraction filters (hand-held spectroscopes), unusual artificial lightsources, and polarizers (linear an circular filters). See also the cover photograph of Philip Glass's album Glassworks.
• Admirer of Marcel Minnaert's book Light and Color in the Outdoors (Dutch: De Natuurkunde van 't Vrije Veld, Volume 1: Licht en Kleur in het Landschap).
• Admirer of the Dutch book Gepolariseerd licht in de natuur (Polarized Light in Nature) by dr. G. P. Können (1980), with flexible linear polarisation filter in it!
• Very frequent user of Wil Tirion's Uranometria 2000.0 star atlas (the very first edition of 1987).
• Admirer of the book Sky Catalogue 2000.0, Volume 2: Double Stars, Variable Stars, and Nonstellar Objects (edited by Alan Hirshfeld and Roger W. Sinnott, 1985).
• Inventor of the topic Pseudo-Supernovae (very weak nearby foreground stars in our own milky way system, appearing like bright supernovae in very distant galaxies, when foreground stars and distant galaxies are aligned (so-called "compagnon stars"). We need a catalogue of these "compagnon stars", to avoid misunderstandings during possible observations of supernovae in distant galaxies.
• Collector of names and nicknames of astronomical objects beyond the solar system (a HUUUUUGE collection!) (probably the world's largest). Believe it or not, everything is written down with ballpoint pen on square shaped cards of 10 by 10 centimeters, alphabetically arranged in a handy classification system (a series of Tengwall's Ring binders, each one of them has four D-shaped or U-shaped rings). Each card shows the name of the astronomical object, the coordinates (Epoch 2000.0), the constellation, the type of object, etcetera...
• Investigator of SIMBAD Astronomical Database (Centre de Données Stellaires, C.D.S., Strasbourg).
• Admirer of the WIKISKY photographic atlas of the starry heavens, combined with Wil Tirion's URANOMETRIA 2000.0 star atlas.
• Explorer of both the New General Catalogue (NGC) and the two Index Catalogues (IC) of nebulous deepsky objects, and of much more obscure and very unknown astronomical catalogs.
• Moon connoisseur (observer of clair-obscur effects at the sunrise and sunset terminator, and of subtle colors such as the yellowish Wood's Spot at the Aristarchus Plateau).
• Admirer of Antonín Rükl's moonatlas (the moon's near side in 76 sections, plus 8 sections for the libration zones).
• Explorer and investigator of the Clementine Atlas of the Moon - Revised and Updated Edition (Ben Bussey and Paul Spudis, 2012). Believe it or not, the name Danny Caes (Danny J. Caes of Ghent-Belgium) is mentioned on this book's page xi (Preface to revised edition), because of D.J.C.'s detection of hundreds of typographical errors in the first edition of 2004. Wasn't there a proofreader during this book's pre-press activities? (imagine... the absence of a connoisseur of the moon's named surface formations at Cambridge University Press. Hello Cambridge University Press, tell me, what was going on in those days?).
• Admirer of William Henry Pickering and his... eh... rather odd (read: bizarre) thoughts about possible lifeforms on the moon (during his lunar observations at Mandeville, he thought he detected swarms of migrating insects in crater Eratosthenes). Strange to say, modern science is trying to comprehend the existence of so called extremophiles which are masters of survival in the most impossible sorts of environment, such as the interior of a nuclear power plant. If such extremophiles know how to survive, they could live in an airless environment such as space, and perhaps also on the moon. Wasn't there a time when scientists explored the interiors of meteorites to try to detect traces of micro-organisms coming from outer space? In his days, William Henry Pickering was called the Madman of Mandeville (in and outside of Jamaica, where his observatory was), but... as I see it... he wasn't that crazy after all.
• Explorer of orbital lunar photographs made during the Apollo program (Hasselblad camera photographs, Fairchild camera photographs, Itek camera photographs).
• Once a frequent visitor of Kipp Teague's Apollo site, to explore High-Resolution scans of the Hasselblad photographs made on the moon's surface, and also Eric M. Jones's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (contains everything about very unknown details of the Apollo program).
• Admirer of Space Art, especially Chesley Bonestell's illustrations for magazines such as Collier's, and also George Solonevich's rather odd illustrations of "fluid" lunar surfaces and unusual looking spaceships.
• Explorer of cover-art for science fiction books and booklets, especially those of the 1940's and 1950's (see Google images).
• Admirer of Jean Giraud's (GIR's / Moebius's) cooperation in Steven Lisberger's Tron of 1982. A unique phenomenon in the history of cinematography!
• Admirer of Vorticism, because he too looks and feels very much like a combination of nervous zigzag shaped lightning strokes, Cactus-esque needles, and barbed wire. Attention water filled balloons, avoid a confrontation with D. J. Caes!
• From 2007 to 2017 a very dedicated contributor of Charles A. Wood's and Jim Mosher's Moon-Wiki project (Wikispaces). It turned the history of lunar cartography and the nomenclature of the moon's surface formations (both IAU related nomenclature and unofficial names) inside-out and upside-down. Meanwhile, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) went into orbit around the moon and the LROC (the LRO's camera) photographed the whole of the moon's surface in unprecedented detail! (the six landing sites of the Apollo program too!).
• From the beginning of the 1990's to 2017: collector of unofficial nomenclature of lunar surface formations (non-IAU names and nicknames). From 2018 onward: collector of astronomical nomenclature... of everything beyond Proxima Centauri: from single stars, supernovae, binary star systems, telescopic asterisms, gaseous nebulae, planetary nebulae, dark dust clouds, open star clusters, globular star clusters, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, superclusters of galaxies... all the way to gigantic super structures and super voids in the most distant corners of the universe.
• Explorer of optical phenomenae in and outside Earth's atmosphere, and also of entoptic phenomenae related to Jan Evangelista Purkyně's discoveries.
• For several years a very dedicated observer of NASA's live Earth images of the cloudy atmosphere and of sunlight reflecting lakes and rivers, captured by the HDEV camera aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Especially the appearance of the optical phenomenon Glory on the clouds below, and also of the bright halo phenomenon Subsun on Cirrus clouds, and lightning discharges on Earth's nocturnal hemisphere.
• Discoverer of an equivalent of the optical phenomenon Glory in synthetic fabric (Nylon, thank you Wallace Hume Carothers!), looking like parallel spectral colored bands instead of a set of circles. A frequently seen phenomenon while strolling in clothes stores (winter jackets), illuminated by bright white and somewhat pointlike artificial lightsources. Not many people are aware of this optical phenomenon's existence! (the equivalent of the Glory).
• Discoverer of the red colored entoptic phenomenon Arc of Caes while looking "sideways" at a region near a bright pointlike white lightsource, surrounded by blackness (looks like a miniature version of the Circumzenithal Arc). This is not an after image! (is the Optical Society of America aware of this curious looking arc shaped entoptic phenomenon?).
• Admirer of the Sourcebook Project (William R. Corliss), about everything in the world and the universe which is not 100 % investigated and/or explained. Especially nocturnal luminous phenomenae. Thanks to the mid-eighties issues of the American magazine ASTRONOMY, and also the books by Julien Weverbergh (the Belgian writer and ufologist who worked together with Ion Hobana), D.J.C. learned about the existence of the Sourcebook Project created by W. R. Corliss, and also about the pioneer of the art of looking for unusual phenomenae: Charles Fort (The Fortean Times).
• Looking for eye reports of Ball lightning, to find out if there's a possible relation with Earth Lights (unusual nocturnal luminous phenomenae at or above mountainous regions and active seismic spots) (Earthquake lights).
• Observer of contrast-colored binary star systems through Magenta filter. Yellowish-white looks deep orange, lilac-white looks Indigo blue. Enhanced contrast!
• Observer of Jupiter's (more-or-less red colored) spot (storm) through Cyan-blue filter, to enhance the darkness of the spot surrounded by Jupiter's "white" clouds. Also of the planet Mars, to lower the brightness of the tan colored surface and to let the white polar cap shining through (color contrast).
• Observer of the First Quarter Moon and Last Quarter Moon by daylight (blue sky), through rotating linear polarizer (the blue sky's maximum polarisation is at an angle of 90° from the sun).
• Inventor of ASTRONOMY WITHOUT MATHEMATICS. Each one of us is capable of exploring maps and atlases of the starry heavens, and also of lunar globes, maps, and atlases. There's no need to know mathematics during stargazing or lunar observing! Astronomy is not only something for the top people of astrophysics and cosmology, it is something for everybody. All of us have the same amount of intelligence and intuition, that's how we were born. Deep in our souls we are scientists, and we want to understand A.S.A.P. the sort of strange situation we were thrown into (not exactly Oliver Hardy's Another Fine Mess, but... you know...).
• Searching his very first musical experience (must have been something raw, rude, and Rock-n-Roll'ish, certainly not some sort of sweet children's song). Perhaps it was Jerry Lee Lewis's A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. Could be. Or... it could also have been the instrumental Camp by Sir Henry and his Butlers.
• Admirer of the American composer Charles Ives, especially his The Unanswered Question (that question which is crawling its way deep inside everyone of us, especially during the nocturnal early morning hours, when we can't sleep and get out of bed to take a look outside, to observe the starry sky and "hear" the absolute stillness of space. It's impossible to describe that question (or rather: that feeling), because we know there's no answer, or rather... for us it is forbidden to know the answer).
• Admirer of the British rebel of astronomy, Patrick Moore, and also Pete Conrad, the rebel of the early NASA astronauts.

As Gustav Holst (of Opus 32: The Planets) once said: Everything in this world is just one big miracle. Or rather, the universe itself is one.