Monday, November 14, 2011, 2:00 AM PST

     We have what appears to be two (2) snow plows captured by the Teton Pass West webcam, and the Teton Pass East webcam, but these two are actually one and the same. The single snow plow is moving east. The Teton Pass West webcam captures the first image at 5:45:10 AM MST, and the Teton Pass East webcam captures the second image 17 seconds later, at 5:45:27 am MST. In both cases, the images can be clicked to bring up a larger image.

     In the late spring 2011, after the show melted up on Teton Pass, WYDOT crews inspected the light poles. They noticed that some of the welds at the bottom had opened up half inch gaps. It was surmised that snow and wind pressure over the years has caused this, and that it was possible that the poles could fall down under a heavy wind at any time. The decision was made to replace them. They were taken down, and new light posts were installed late in the summer. These new light posts had a different type of lighting system in them. The lighting installed on Teton Pass had heretofore been of the Metal Halide type, at least since 2005. However, at the schedule time for their replacement, Wyoming Department of Transportation warehouses did not have any Metal Halide configured lamp posts in stock. The only lamps posts available at the time were configured with High Pressure Sodium Vapor lighting systems. The maintenance crew had to take what was available. So these new street lamps, configured with High Pressure Sodium Vapor Lamps were installed.

     When these street lights first came on, the Teton Pass Web cams have been acting strangely. Take a look at the color shifting sequence we see, each evening, as the sun sets, and as the highway lights come on. It takes about 11 images to cover the time span. As before, you can click for a larger format image. The webcams are set to automatically switch to a black and white mode at a given low-light level, so we are not able to see the full progression of color beyond bright yellow. That is another part of the story. But the bottom line for me, was this conclusion, that the Teton Pass was now bathed in this bright yellow light at night. Based on what I could see in these webcams, I really believed that WYDOT crews had installed bright bug lights up there. (Yellow lights that don't attract bugs, like many people use on their front porches.)

     But as soon as the snow turns bright yellow, as you can see above, that is where things begin to get strange in the above installation. That same sequence which ends in bright yellow is typical of another type of bulb, not HPS, but LPS, short for Low Pressure Sodium bulbs. Their start-up characteristics are similar, but when Low Pressure Sodium bulbs get up to operating temperature, they give off a pure yellow light. When High Pressure Sodium bulbs get up to operating temperature they give off a nearly white light, or off-white, tinged with that characteristic orange/pink glow thrown in.

     And so the question arises, what is going on at Teton Pass? Why did WYDOT apparently install Low Pressure Sodium bulbs which give off that pure yellow color? But I will not let that false conclusion stand for longer than it takes me to say, that what appears to be the case, is actually NOT the case.

     This is a difficult lesson to learn sometimes, it was for me in this case, but there are situations where you simply cannot believe what your eyes are telling you, or more precisely what the web cameras are telling your eyes. These images are not telling us the WHOLE story. They are telling us only part of the story. Indeed there is something missing in these images.

     In the following image we see a high quality webcam render an HPS scene in a fairly accurate manner. This is Jackson Town Square in the early morning. There are white light sources in this image of course. But the street lights are standard High Pressure Sodium (HPS). The street light in the direct foreground, which throws that bright splash on the corner is HPS, and beyond the central off-white glare you see the typical orange/pink character of HPS lights. Additional splashed of orange/pink can be seen on the street in the distance. That is HPS light as well.

     And so we must ask, regarding the overblown yellow light reported by the webcams on Teton Pass, where did the blue light go? The answer to that question, is that the web cameras are operating in a mode where they no longer are registering the blue light spectral component of a typical HPS lamp. Why would that be? There are two factors that are contributing to this.

     First, the spectral composition of an HPS lamp is very unique, in as much as the blue component is at a very low level compared with the yellow and red wavelengths.

(source)

     As to my simplified explanation, these two factors work together to eliminate the blue spectrum light from the above images.

     If you overload the webcam's CMOS sensor with a high power HPS light, the camera will adjust its exposure, which means it will limit the sensitivity (electronically) of the CMOS light sensor to keep it from being overloaded, or saturated. When you overload a CMOS light sensor, the output electronics will give you a pure white. Well, you don't want that. You want to see what is actually there. Once the sensor is overloaded, there is no further differentiation of color possible. The goal built into the electronics is to limit sensor saturation by strong light sources. To compensate for strong light situations, the camera will make the sensor less sensitive, and it does this electronically, so that the strongest portion of the input wavelength will not saturate the sensor array. In this case, it will adjust down the sensitivity so you will see the strongest yellow/red component of HPS light in a clear and undistorted manner. Because the blue light is already at a very low level, this reduction in the sensitivity of the sensor, makes the blue light invisible (to the sensor). At this low sensitivity level, the blue wavelength component of the incoming light, will fall below the noise level. The sensor will not be able to register the presence of any blue region wavelengths, because the sensor has been driven by the high intensity yellow/red combination, into a low sensitivity state.

     The conventional way to look at this, is to see the CMOS image array, as an array of photon buckets. At each pixel location, you have the equivalent of three buckets, one that collects red photons, one that collects green photons, and one that collects blue photons. The electronic "shutter" will open for an instant in time, and then close. In that instant of time, all the buckets will fill up with so many photons, depending on the color of light and its intensity. So many red photons will fall into the red bucket at the corresponding pixel location, and so many into the green, and so many into the blue, and so forth. When the electronic shutter closes, the internal computer then measures how many photons are in each of the red, and green and blue buckets at each pixel location, to determine what the color of that pixel will be. The computer will then put all of the pixels together into a complete picture, and store it in memory, ready to gather the next image.

     All of this stuff happens very fast of course. Much quicker than it takes to snap your fingers, will the electronic shutter open and close, filling all the buckets at all the pixel locations, the computer looking at them all, gathering up all the information, and putting it all together into an image, storing it in memory, and gets in the position to take the next image.

     Now, if the shutter opens, and the buckets fill up and overflow, the computer will sense that, and it will say to itself, "I can't let that many photons in". The image is discarded. And the exposure will be adjusted for the next. The next shutter opening will be of a shorter duration, so that the buckets won't overflow. Ideally, the computer will attempt to adjust the shutter opening duration so that none of the buckets overflow for any of the pixels.

     In this case, because there is such a torrent of yellow and red photons, the amount of time the electronic shutter remains open is very short. If you are standing at Niagra Falls, and you have a cup, and you want to fill it with water, you thrust it into the deluge for a micro second, and pull it back out. Even so, you have probably overflowed your cup about twenty times anyway. By contrast, if you a have dribble coming out of a faucet, to fill up your cup, you will keep it under faucet for much longer. Because there is such a huge torrent of yellow/orange photons, the cup is exposed the light for a very short duration of time. And in this shorter amount of time, because there are so few photons in the blue range present, there is not enough time to collect them, and the blue buckets remain empty, or nearly so.

     Because all the blue buckets are empty, you get the image you see above, where only the red and the green buckets have filled up.

     The two images of the snow plow above gives us an accurate rendering of the scene, absent the blue light component of the street lamps. If the web cameras did not turn to a black and white mode so quickly, we would see the full progression to the strong yellow/orange light as the street lamps came up to full power, as this light drives the webcam's CMOS array into a lower and lower state of sensitivity to compensate.

     If this theory is correct, adding blue light to these images should bring them back to a more normal and accurate rendering of the scene. And that is exactly what happens.

     In Corel Photo-Paint X3, I took the Teton Pass East image from above, and merged it with a blue square of the same size. This merge was accomplished with the "ADD" mode. You can merge colors and images together in many ways. One of the options is simply "ADD". The following sequence shows the results. The resulting image is indeed much closer to an accurate rendering of the scene. Please click on the image to bring it up in full size.

     When we compare and contrast the RGB channels of the Teton Pass East image, and the Jackson Town Square image, we have another very interesting piece of evidence that points to the validity of our (missing blue) theory. The blue channel in the Jackson Town Square image is bright. The blue channel in the original Teton Pass East image is DARK! Check this out.

     First, if blue light is crucial to giving us the proper balance of white light in an image, then if we turn off the blue channel in the Jackson Townsquare Image, we should see lots of yellow. And that is exactly what we see.

     Second, if blue light is crucial to giving us the proper balance of white light in an image, then if we AMPLIFY the low level of light in the blue channel in the Teton Pass East image, we should see the image rendering improve in the direction of a more realistic HPS illuminated scene. And that is exactly what we see. Please click to bring up a larger image.

     As we can see the blue channel for the original Teton Pass East image is nearly completely dark. When w blow that up, and take a closer look at it, we can see more clearly, just how void of information is the blue channel of the Teton Pass East image. There is some blue information there, but not enough of it. Please click the image for a larger image.

     The blue light associated with the incandescent sources on the snow plow are quite bright by comparison.

     One way to deal with this nearly dead blue channel situation, is to simply replace it, in effect, to create a new blue channel, using existing and accurate intensity levels in the red and green channels. In this way we would get a better result in terms of image clarity, and accuracy of the shadow information as well.

     As fortune would have it, I found the requisite Channel Mixing function inside of my Corel Photo-Paint X3 program. This function gives one full control of channel levels, and allows the mixing of any channel with another. To get the best result, I cut the red channel intensity down about 10%, left the green channel alone, and transferred 110% of the green channel intensity levels to the blue channel. Remember, we are not transferring green color values to the blue channel, just the intensity values. At every pixel where there is green intensity information, there will now be a corresponding level of blue information, bringing the blue channel alive with intensity information. Resurrecting it from the dead, as it were. And this is the result. Please click for a larger image.

     In closing, I wanted to list the many ways in which this way of looking at the root of the problem, serves to reconcile many heretofore confusing and conflicting pieces of information.

1. When you look at the various video's on Youtube, which show the illumination characteristics of High Pressure Sodium Lamps, as compared to the illumination characteristics of Low Pressure Sodium lamps, one is struck by the fact that most of them show bright yellow light for both types, when in fact bright yellow light is only associated with Low Pressure Sodium lamps. The reason that the great majority of YouTube videos are showing bright yellow light coming out of High Pressure Sodium lamps, is because these well-intentioned videographers have their inexpensive video cameras pointed directly at the bright bulb, which forces the internal CMOS sensor into a low sensitivity state, to compensate for the bright light. And for the reason stated above, the blue light content, which is at a very low level in HPS lights anyway, is forced down below the noise threshold of the sensor, and is not included in the camera's color rendition calculations, and thus, a yellow image is the result, as we see above. So, knowing this, we can say, O we now understand why we were seeing yellow everywhere.

2. When you look at all the WYDOT web cameras, you see this yellow light phenomena in many places. The question is, is the state of Wyoming using Low Pressure Sodium bulbs throughout the state? In our research we find that the use of Low Pressure Sodium Bulbs are not commonly used in the United States in highway lighting situations. In fact, just today, a WYDOT person just told me today that they don't use LPS lighting anywhere in the State of Wyoming. So, why are all these street lights showing yellow light? This was another major confusion factor for me. Understanding the above answer now, we can say, O we now understand why we were seeing yellow light in these webcams in many places.

3. When you do an image search on Google, looking for examples of the appearance of High Pressure Sodium lamps, again, most of the images that show up are YELLOW! Very few show an accurate color representation. This was another major confusion factor for me. Understanding the above answer now, we can say, O we now understand why we were seeing yellow everywhere. Most image sensing technology is based on CMOS. And we are seeing this phenomena where digital and video cameras are either being pointed into brightly lit scenes and overloaded by bright HPS light as described above.

4. Some people say they SEE (with their own eyes) yellow when they look at High Pressure Sodium Lighting. Why is that? Surely, this was another confusion factor for me. I believe it is for the same reason as above. If you look straight into a bright HPS bulb, the iris in your eye closes down to limit the light coming in to keep the level within the natural dynamic range of your own vision system, which reduces the amount of blue light that comes in. Because the amount of blue light is already very low in an HPS lamp, by reducing the amount of it coming into your eye further, this will cause the color to be rendered, by your brain, towards the yellow. You can never accurately judge the color of HPS lighting by looking into the light directly. You need to see what color is being reflected off a white surface. Again, the above image from Jackson Town Square is a good reference. What we see in our neighborhood is a soft orange/pink glow coming off of our sidewalks.

5. In the midst of the sorting out process I went through in trying to figure out the reason we were seeing yellow light on the Teton Pass webcams, something I have never seen before, I would note that the presence of this yellow/orange color in the two images above, helped greatly to anchor in my mind the truth that this was not caused by Low Pressure Sodium bulbs. From the color we see here, the strong yellow/orange, we know that these are definitely High Pressure Sodium Bulbs, as Low Pressure Sodium lamps would have no red spectrum with which to produce such an orange result. Low Pressure Sodium lamps, when they reach their operating temperature, emit a pure yellow. In fact the light is such a pure yellow, that it is used as a laboratory wavelength standard. I would thank the progenitors of serendipitous events for providing the two images above, which were the only two color images captured that morning, as the camera's normally operate in black and white mode at night.

6. To tell the truth it was only after the appearance of these two snow plow images (collected by my webcam image collection program which I wrote myself in C++ by the way), which proved conclusively that the light had to be coming from HPS bulbs, that I was able to let go of the LPS theory, opening my mind up for another explanation, at which time the principle of the dynamic range of CMOS sensors in conjunction with the low blue spectrum of HPS light generally came to me, no doubt in answer to my prayers. I was praying for freedom from this state of (LPS) confusion, I can tell you that.

7. The fact the Teton Pass web cam shifted to black and white before the full color shift could be seen, was one of the factors that helped me to reach the false conclusion, and adhere to it, at the onset, that what was installed up there was Low Pressure Sodium, as these are the only kind of street lights that produce a pure yellow color. Once it became clear that this was a false impression, that a further color shift was occurring, into the yellow/orange only then did it become clear that these could not be low pressure sodium lamps.

8. The information given to me today, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, by the WYDOT District 3 Traffic Engineer, about the change in Lighting at Teton Pass, fits into the above scenario. He tells me that the lighting on Teton Pass used to be produced by Metal Halide bulbs. Metal Halide bulbs have a very high blue spectrum content. There is plenty of blue light spectrum there to produce a proper rendition of the Teton Pass scene. The CMOS sensors are similarly forced into a low sensitivity state, that is why you get those deep black shadows everywhere around the centrally lighted scene, but there is still plenty of blue light that remains above the noise level of the sensor. Blue light is still detected therefore in sufficient quantity to allow for the rendering of the nighttime images in a color accurate manner. That is the reason we never saw yellow light there before this. Moreover, when it was discovered that the mechanical condition of the light poles required their replacement, he tells me that his lighting of choice for the replacement poles was not HPS. But it just so happened that the only poles available in the WYDOT system were fitted with HPS lighting, a lighting system which includes not just the bulbs but the HPS specific ignition and ballast systems. And so, a new type of light appeared on Teton Pass this summer. This new type of light set up the conditions whereby the limitations of the webcams up there were made clearly manifest as noted above.

• A) Receive the next new image from the web cam.
• B) Cut the red channel intensity levels by 10%.
• C) Set all pixel locations in the blue channel to zero.
• D) transfer the green channel intensity levels to the blue channel.
• E) Set new brightness and contrast levels.
• F) Save he image in the public dissemination folder.

     Then, instead of transmitting the webcam images directly into the public dissemination folder on the server, they could be transmitted into the hands of this image processing software first. The image could be adjusted in the above manner, and then stored in the public dissemination folder.

     In this way all the cameras that have been set to black and white mode because of this problem, could be set back to the color mode, and the public would have access to much higher quality images.

     I hope the WYDOT people will factor into their decision processes, when deciding how soon they are going to return the Teton Pass to their native Metal Halide lighting, and how soon they will implement a color-correction process in their traffic webcam network, the importance of the principle of telling the truth at all opportunities, taking note of this fact that their webcams are currently not telling the truth in this area, and that this is something that should be remedied. The people of Wyoming, and America at large, should not be misled about the nature of HPS light. It is not yellow. It is pink/orange.

     For Ascended Maser students, we can use the Teton Pass snow plow images above, to help us understand what the human aura looks like without a devotion to Divine Purpose, which is represented by crystal blue light. Without the crystal blue light of Divine Purpose alive in the aura, the aura cannot attain to a condition of pure white light.

     This helps us to understand that whenever the Messenger Elizabeth Clare Prophet diverged from serving the Divine Truth, and was pressured by various factors to serve a personal vested interest, that her aura went instantly into an off white color, which corresponds to a distorted perception of the truth. How could it return to pure white, without letting go of the factor of error that muddied the aura in the first place? This applies to all embodied individuals.

     Two factors help to trap leaders within the web of their own errors. First, their own pride. Second, the idolatry of their followers who will not question erroneous decisions. Thus, as their leadership tenure continues on, the quality of their decisions is becoming less and less anchored to the original divine purpose for which power was first placed in their hands.

     What is the formula for pure white light in the aura? It is love (pink) aligned to Divine Purpose. It is wisdom (yellow) aligned to Divine Purpose. In any situation where the mind falls away from Divine Purpose, therefore, you would see an instant muddying of the aura.

     May you pass every test.

Thursday, November 3, 2011, 7:09 PM PDT

     The last "Low Pressure" image the Teton Pass West web camera captured, was time stamped Nov. 2, 2011, 8:45am MST. The camera stayed with that image for about 2 hours and 45 minutes. One would surmise that someone was working on the camera during that time period. When the camera came back with live images, at 11:30am MST, the "LOW PRESSURE" indicator was gone. And it has not returned.

     May you pass every test.