Aster Pictures

These pictures of Aster were taken at various times by friends with digital cameras. This document pulls these together along with information about when and where these were taken.

Introducing Aster Labrador

Aster Labrador graduated from Guiding Eyes Yorktown Heights, NY on January 20, 1990. Here is Aster's Graduation Picture taken on Monday, January 22, 1990.

Born on February 15, 1987, she worked until November 29, 1999 when she retired at the age of 12 years and 10 months. She lived as a pet dog for another 5 days before finally leaving us on December 5, 1999.

Generic Aster Pictures

This is the Aster Labrador picture of Aster used in all my WWW pages. It was originally taken by Russell Brown in the Cornell Robotics and Vision Lab using a frame grabber in the summer of 1993. The resulting bitmap file was cleaned up by Matthai Phillipose to produce the gif and eps files for use for the AsTeR logo in my Phd thesis entitled Audio System For Technical Readings (AsTeR).

After graduating from Cornell, Aster went on to accept a research position at Digital's Cambridge Research Lab (CRL). I think this next image was taken by Keith Waters at Digital's Cambridge Research Lab for use on Aster's CRL home page which specified her research interests as motion planning and obstacle avoidance in Cambridge. During our four years at Cornell, Aster and I lived one summer in Palo Alto when we worked at Xerox PARC, and one summer in Oregon when we worked at Intel. In addition, she travelled to numerous computer science conferences throughout her research career.

Aster Labrador In The Early 1990s

These are from early on in Aster's career during her time at Cornell. I got these pictures from my friend Murali's family photo album.

Here is a picture of Aster graduating from Cornell, complete with her graduation cap --this picture was published by the Cornell Chronicle.

October 1994 Walltham Pond

Pictures taken by Bob Harris at Waltham Pond, October 9, 1994
Scanned by Dave Wecker at CRL.
front view --Raman and Aster

Los Angeles, March 1998 --CSUN 98

Aster and I went to the CSUN conference in LA every year from 1994 to 1999. CSUN is an especially challenging and tiring conference for a guide-dog to atend --Aster did remarkably well in her six consecutive years of attending CSUN.

These pictures were taken at the Champions Sports Bar where Aster and I were hanging out with everyone else. I think Aster's picture was taken while she was lying under the table. These pictures were taken by David Jaffey.

Los Angeles, March 1999 --CSUN 99

These three pictures were taken by Swatee Surve during CSUN 1999.

Park Place

After working for 18 months in Cambridge, Aster and I moved to Mountain View, CA in fall 1995 when I joined Adobe's Advanced Technology Group. Aster had a green Adobe badge that she wore on her collar with her picture and email address on it; she made it into the Harpers Internet Index at some point as the first dog to have a URL on her collar. This Raman and Aster is one of the pictures Bob Ayers took of Aster and me at Park Place apartments in Mountain View. These pictures were for the picture CD we made in July 1999 shortly before I left Adobe. Aster is perfectly healthy in these pictures.

July 1999: Photo CD

In July 1999, my friend and colleague Bob Ayers took good quality pictures of Aster and had them made into a Photo CD. I have had considerable trouble getting JPEG versions of these to put up on the WWW. Here are the results of my present effort at producing JPEG versions.

Florida November 1999

Aster and I left Adobe Systems in August 1999 to join IBM Research to work on speech interaction. I flew to Florida with Aster in the first week of November 1999. We left Monday November 1, 1999 and returned November 4, 1999. This was Aster's final airtrip --during this trip she was still healthy and energetic --though her tumors were beginning to show. This Aster in Florida was taken on Wednesday, November 3, 1999 during the evening dinner.

Flying back from Florida, our plane was diverted to Reno due to bad weather in the Bay Area and shortage of fuel; while parked on the runway, the American Airlines captain walked out with Aster to let her relieve herself --thereby almost replicating the picture that the Smithsonian magazine published a few years ago.

Wishing Aster Goodbye

I had to wish Aster a final goodbye on December 5, 1999. She came down with skin cancer which eventually affected her vital organs.
Email: T. V. Raman
Last modified: Mon Sep 10 19:34:58 2001