A bit of clear skies is not enough for tonight because of daytime work pressures

Unfortunately I still have a lot of work at my day job and that means I have to go to bed early. I didn't see the clouds clear away until later tonight although it looks like some clouds threaten viewing. The observatory likely still has some snow on the shutter which I still need to address.

I'm really looking forward to the new year and the chance to be away from the old day job grind. The last days before one retires should be pretty easy and fun, but I have a ton of stuff to review and turn over to the other members of the team yet. A lot of distractions and some computer changes at the last minute, caused my day job retirement to go a little less smoothly than I expected. But nobody is really ready for a retirement experience, it's kind of like getting that first job, it's a new experience.

I have ONLY two more days at work, this year and permanently, at least for a while. This means I'll be able to focus more on astronomy and other hobbies and just taking it easy for while. Some members of the club think this is great because I'll be able to stay up late all hours of the night and have the observatory open a lot more. . . We will have to wait and see about that.

My First vacation this year -
I haven't had a real vacation in the last five years. So I'm really looking forward to my early retirement. It always seemed there was one more big project to finish at work and "vacation could wait". Now that I took an early out the real vacation can begin.

The sky looks really nice a clear tonight, where there is breaks in the clouds. Really cold and crisp. I didn't even take out my binoculars however, because of the cold and I didn't want to get tempted into looking up and staying out late. Tomorrow will be a big day to get rid of most of the stuff left in my cube at work. Also I will have to fill out about eight exit forms with information that looks like exit interview stuff, technical debriefing, etc. If I'm lucky I'll be able to spend my last day at work, Wednesday saying goodbye to the few who are working at my workplace during the holidays.




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We will be trying to do some observing at the observatory tonight

The sky is pretty bad with a lot of clouds out but we are heading out to view the lunar eclipse outside the observatory. We won't be opening up the dome, due to ice and snow buildup, but we have a heater inside. There is snow on the ground and around the observatory and enterence must be through the large gate, not the small one.

Dress warm if your going to arrive. We may not be out there the entire time. The eclipse event happens until 4am. We will likely be there until 3am. You may want to check this blog again before heading out if you head out late to visit. Wear boots and warm clothes.


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I knew today the viewing would be decent

But of course it was so cold and windy out with the winter weather, even an old snowmobile enthusiast like I couldn't muster up enough courage to get out and star gaze.

It gets cold in the observatory and the wind and snow would not have made it a good night to star gaze at HJRO.

I took a quick look at the sky at about 9;30 when I went out for a late night errand. There was some interference in the viewing due to the atmosphere and possibly wind and ice crystals up there. The sky looked clear and the stars bright. It was very cool and very crisp and windy. Subzero wind chills.

The stars twinkled, and that means conditions were not ideal for imaging objects in the sky. It was a good winter night if you were St Nick being pulled in a sleigh. But not the best for star gazing. Astronomers take what they can get sometimes, but I've been out enough to not want to brave frostbite to get in a little more viewing.

A lunar eclipse is going to happen later thus month and I hope it's clear out and I can have the observatory open at that time.

I woke up late at night tonight after getting a few calls about a medical issue and wrote this late night posting at about 3:30am.

I'd look out at the sky tonight. . . Hang on a minute while I peek out of the window.

There's an astronomer who build unusual telescopes one which was a refractor with a flat mirror mounted in a mirror box that fit in a window. The mirror rotates and it movement allowed the fixed refractor to view different objects in the sky. That's the kind if telescope to have in a night like this. Some kind of refractory with a moving flat mirror. There would be some optical sacrifices with the mirror and who knows what kind of thermal problems one would have with a refractor exposed to the cold on one side and the warmth on the eyepiece side. It would probably have to be heated with major dew heaters on the objective side to keep condensation and major dew point problems from happening within it. And perhaps dew heaters on other parts of the PTA as well, which is my guess.


My guess is a nice wide field doublet and a good flat mirror which would be expensive would be a good place to start if you wanted to build one. Maybe.a Williams optics megrez doublet.

Such are the stuff of astronomer dreams as I start to fall asleep again. . . But first to look out of my window.

I can still see stars.

For now the blog readers will have to settle with a photo from my workplace window. It's too cold out there and my ears have a minor ache already.

I'm posting this at 3:45 am outside conditions are clear and bitter cold. I'm heading back under the covers before the inner astronomer decides to run outside.



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I almost made it out last night, but clouds won the race.

I was tied up early Friday, doing a little bit of training for an application I used for newsletter production last night. Jennifer and I had a nice discussion about apple pages and newsletter production. She's the new editor for our faac newsletter. But that's another story.

I arrived at home at about 10:30pm, friday and the sky was fairly clear but it looked a little hazy in spots.

I called George Korody to see what the skies looked like where he lives, and also see if he knew what the forecast would be for the late evening. It was nearing 11pm and the clear sky chart didn't look promising with it's forecast, but sometimes it's wrong.

George directed me to the accu-weather site.

Things would cloud up at midnight according to the clear sky chart which is a separate site and not accuweather's site.

I called one of the other facc members and said I might go to the observatory. Art Parent normally calls when the sky is clear, but he was busy. The satellite on the accu-weather site seemed to show we might have a chance for some viewing for perhaps a few hours.

I grabbed some gear(eyepieces and my laptop) and started toward my car and looked up while on the phone with Art.

A line of cirrus clouds almost like a vapor trail appeared. Clouds were moving in and the sky seemed to be growing worse by the minute, as I headed to the car. The clouds were arriving and they made much of the sky look hazy. I had taken too long to plan. I wasted to much time and missed a short window that I may have had to view.

I settled with a quick view through my 10x50 binoculars. I looked up for less than five minutes and then return to the warmth of my house.

The accuweather satellite maps show good cloud animation and as a plus they work on the iPad.

This is the link I should look at when on the run. Planning is okay for extended open invitations, but sometimes it's better to get out and look while you can and not spend to much time chatting and planning, because you might miss a short viewing opportunity.

As you can see it's cloudy out as I write this.



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I went out for five minutes

Sky was nice with some clouds.

It's cold out but I can't tell how good conditions are with low powered views.

I grabbed my 10 by 50 binoculars and looked at the Orion nebula, m45 the pleidies and the double cluster,

Then I grabbed my f4 four inch telescope, built in 1977 and did sone quick observing of m42 the Orion nebula and m44 using the 25mn eyepiece and a 15mm for Orion and the 25 for m45.

I didn't spend any more time but took a photo of the little scope in a mirror.

Now to sample the soup I made and head off to sleep.




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I wanted to open up the observatory bit I was too tired

There was sone clear skies tonight but I was tired from the results of a painful day and night from the dentist. And I had a ton of work and meetings to do today at work. So I vegged out a bit at home and cooked some homemade soup.

I'd like to take a quick look, but will probably just grab my binoculars and take a peek at the sky at my house and then head to sleep.

Maybe tomorrow night if the weather is better and I have more rest and an easier daytime with less work.

My job at work is waning a bit, but I gave to still work at transferring the work and there is just the effort at cleaningup the cube before I leave. We have a freeze period on software in deember and that makes the month slow for programmers. This is due to heavy holiday workloads. It's amazing that heavy workloads slow the programmers workload down, but that is true where I work.

Astronomy pictures of the day, the NASA site has had some nice pictures and there has been a lot of nice photos on that site.

There was a lot of solar activity on the sub lately and the NASA site has mentioned this. I saw the sky was sunny part of the day but was too busy tobreak away and head to the observatory during lunch. I had a short lunch break and no time to visit HJRO.




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The old tube was removed

I don't know if I put out a post about this. I have to read my own back blog posts. The old telescope tubes were going to be thrown out. I took them home and decided to save them from the scrap heap. I may rework and restore these over time on my own. I may actually rework the mirrors as well, but I think I'd prefer to have them polished and refigured by a professional.

As this would be my personal project, it would cost me some money to do this. It's really not "economically feasible" to do a restore when looking at it from a dollars and cents perspective. If you have "history" with an object, and some history in using it in the past you may have some good memories and feelings about that old object or piece of creation. In the sense that the club built the old blue tube telescope and so many worked on it, it has extra value for me. I was there when it was built. I remember looking through it with other club members. I remember building it. If I was just looking to get an affordable scope I could go out and buy one of many telescopes on the market today that have higher performance and are lighter and frankly look a lot better because they are new. But they are built in China or maybe partially outside this country and partially in California. And they are of course new and have all the bells and whistles. But there is something special you feel when you are looking through a telescope that has history and was built by people here. I know the history, at least part of the history of the blue tube telescope.

The blue tube telescope was spray painted Sky Blue. We called it "sky blue" because it sounded good at that time, back in 1977 and it was a nice sounding name for a color. However the blue we selected was actually "powder blue" when I first described the color I was pushing for when I was the Astronomy Club president. I wanted "powder blue" because that matched the color of my father's Powder blue 1975 Newport Custom. That old Newport Custom was a huge car and had a great ride for cross country road trips. I wanted the telescope to be powder blue, but the terms were quickly changed to "sky blue" which sounds a lot more astronomical.

So when I brought the telescope tube home, I looked at the old tube, it's worn out. It had a lot of grim and dirt on it. Even rust on the straps that were metal and painted that held the tube in the homebuilt telescope yolk mount we made out of wood. The telescope tube looked pretty bad yet. I took out some soap and water and rags and started cleaning it up. I cleaned it up with mostly water and rags. I used sweat equity and mostly just worked on it for a few hours. It was cleaned up pretty well. I left some of the decay on the telescope, to show some of it's age and abuse it had in sitting around all those years. I didn't get rid of all the rust on the straps for example. There are some light rust stains from these on the surface of the tube as well. There's some flaws and separation in the cardboard portion of the tube as well. These look bad, but you don't see them in the dark when you are using the telescope. You won't even notice all the dirt and grim on the the tube that was on it for the most part when it's dark out.

The telescope is still not usable. I removed the tube from the mount. The mirror was removed and sits separately. We checked the mirror out. It's okay, but of course it needs to be repolished and figured. A professional quote for refiguring the mirror from one of the best mirror makers in the country is about $600 maybe more. That's before we even recoat the mirror.

The spider broke a bit when I removed it from the tube. I need to fix the spider and perhaps need to replace the secondary mirror as well. I'd almost be better off with a new spider. I may fix it eventually.

The thing that makes this difficult is from a practical standpoint, this is not actually the best application of dollars for a telescope. I can buy a 10 inch dobsonian telescope for under $500. I can buy a dobsonian Orion telescope and it's less than the cost to fix the mirror. But projects aren't always based on cost.

And a F5 8 inch with a great figure and optics is still a very nice scope to look through. And I'd have the history and know that I'm looking through a telescope that the club built in 1977. There's a special feeling you get when you use a telescope you've built. Maybe it's a bit of pride and something we shouldn't worry about building up to much. I like to think of it as appreciation for all the work that others put into building the earlier instrument.

Fine instruments have this craftsmanship perspective that guys can feel and appreciate. Some items, I'm not going to go into all the kinds of items, but some items have a lot of careful construction and care put into them. A person who has a homebuilt motorcycle or custom motorcycle may feel more appreciation for that than a store bought one. Because it's unique, it has a story and a history. Of course we are not supposed to become overly attached to objects and get to tied up with them. You can check out the extreme example of loving things to much, even junk in a cable show called "Hoarders". "Hoarders" shows people who get so attached to things and so attached to owning things that they end up with a huge collection of junk and decaying items in their house. There house becomes a junkyard and a dumpster. Old folks tend to get into junk collecting and end up holding onto a lot of stuff that has history. Hoarders end up getting a bunch of junk that they haul home and they cannot throw it out because they are to attached to the "value" of the object and "reusing the object" even if it's total garbage. They go to the extreme. You can take reuse to an extreme. They say one man's junk is another mans treasure, but often that second man may be a hoarder. In the old days, I'm talking about a long time ago, people experienced very difficult times and items became scarce. This happened in the Great Depression and during some of the sacrificial years of WWII when items were hard to find. Some in some cities that were under siege in war, or who experienced major economic problems, saw the value in "items" and reusing them or saving them. Because when dollars or currency becomes worthless, then the only value left is in the actual items and bartering may happen. So some people get into this collecting mentality and it actually works at times of extreme need. The problem is some get old, or become mentally unstable and put to much attachment into the value of things and they don't have time or can't muster the energy to mentally reject things and throw them out. They have more that they are collecting than they are throwing away. Older folks buy items and pay a lot for them as well and over time the items become worthless, at least many of these items will. And these things are useless, but they will see the item as if it was new, and remember all the money they spent on it. They may just have "depression" mentality and think that they are getting ready for the next depression. Or they may be kind of an odd junk collector of sorts. So they will start to hoard junk items.

Older folks get into this. And older families can get into this habit. How do you break free? You have to decide to go through the things you own and look at the real practical value of these things. Can they be easily replaced? Have you used this and can you really use this? Will you use it, or is it just some useless memory item. Some old items, like old magazines for example have little value but people will keep them even if they are largely worthless. The collector will always have some excuse. If they are a hoarder, they will find or have a complex set of beliefs that puts a lot of value on the junk. They become emotionally attached to it. I'm not talking about a family heirloom, I'm talking about crap you may even pick up out of a dumpster, someone else may have some low quality crap they throw out, and it's worthless. And you'll pick it up, figure it can be fixed, when it can't and haul it home and add it to your heap. Old folks get into this more than younger ones.

Kids may have this tendency to, but usually with toys. They have to have more and more and soon they have a room full of junk. A healthy parent and child may end up having some kind of criteria or formula to give the older toys away to keep the clutter down. The value isn't in the item, it's being able to use something or not use it. And also there may be more value in giving something to someone who has nothing, than keeping it and hoarding it for yourself.

Some popular materialistic sayings are really based on a hoarding mentality as well. Think about it? He who dies with the most toys wins. . . ? What does he win? Toys don't really make winners. But we think this in a our modern life. Greed can at times end up creating things like the feeling that we can expand and produce nothing, we can profit and everyone can get richer and richer. We did this to some extent in the past 20 or 30 years with the boom years and credit bubble. We thought we could buy more and more and our jobs would pay more and more and the middle class would move to China and we'd all be rich and we'd make money off China's emerging class in a world economy. It didn't happen. What happened, was raw materials and fuel prices increased. We moved production offshore to other countries and we couldn't produce anymore. We created false economies built on ever increasing leveraged growth, that couldn't be maintained. We hit a resource and possibly a "conspiracy" limit. It's difficult to say what all the causes were. But everyone wanted to haul home a boatload of toys from big box stores and fill up huge new houses with them that had large mortgages. Then the markets started to fall. On the downside, and as the economic crisis came apart, all that need for new toys and big houses, didn't solve any problems. Some of course lost their houses and all their junk from China was thrown on the lawn. This is the end result in hoarding and greed. The final result of "he who dies with the most toys wins". Things are not as important as people, but we don't hear that very much in America. It's used as a slogan to fund raise, but not much else. Well I've strayed off into values and greed discussions instead of astronomy, so it's time to get back to the column.

I'm hoping I'm not showing hoarding tendencies toward old telescope junk. Maybe that's a weakness of astronomers.

There was some good solar activity going on a couple of days ago

According to the Nasa site. You can see some of this on the internet.

With the bad weather we were unable to look at the sun during the past week or so. We have no good updates or invites to present at this time. Maybe the weather will change for the better in a few days. One can always hope.

I heard a report that we will have a lot of cold weather like we are experiencing now for the next few weeks. This may mean we'll have few cloudless viewing nights or days up through Christmas.

Sorry about the lack of posts

I've been very involved with my daytime job. I work as a computer analyst for the state of Michigan and will be retiring soon. You would think retirement would allow me more time. It should, but it causes more work at work as I scramble to get things setup for those who will have to take over my duties at work.

The observing conditions have been poor lately and that has kept me away from the observatory. Additionally I'm trying to get rid of time deadlines in my personal life and get ready at least initially for some vacationing and getting into some projects that may take a lot of time. This means I'm trying to get rid of a few responsibilities yet help those who will be taking them over. For example I'm giving up the job of editing the faac newsletter at least for a while. The new editor hopefully will be able to edit and do a better job with it and I'll help her with it but try to remove some of the deadline pressures I felt. It seemed at times I was trying to open up the observatory on a clear night for visitors just before a newsletter deadline and I needed to edit the newsletter and also felt a desire to open up the observatory. I live close to the observatory and I try to keep it open and provide access for club members and the public, so it's a priority for me.

Well you would think that giving up the newsletter editing job would provide me with more free time, but that's not the case at first. Because I want to provide some hints and even photos for the new newsletter editor. Help them get into the swing of things without many hassles. So I'm keeping busy getting some training material and reference material ready, and I lost a disk drive through an accident and it had about 3 months worth of recent photos stored on it. I'm not even sure how many photos I lost.

The new newsletter editor has a Macintosh to edit the newsletter with. I use a Macintosh as well and we both use Pages. This is a big advantage for the transition because I already have figured out the little shortcuts and quick things you may want to do in Apple's Pages application. I'm actually using a program called "ScreenFlow" that can record a Macintosh screen session and create a video of any program I have on the Macintosh. I can record the editing of the newsletter inside Pages, and show and tell all about the shortcuts and hints I've learned in editing and throwing together a newsletter. This will save the new editor hours of experimentation and provide a better quality product. If things go well, I'll hopefully be able to provide her with an article or two and they will be better than when I was the editor, because I'll have more time to write and refine the article, rather than write and edit the newsletter. I'm hoping to provide better content and take better photos and video of activities in the club and the observatory and provide better content that's current event related.

So I've been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but not posting a lot about the observatory. I also of course have many other little things to do, but hopefully I'll have a lot more free time after the new year and that will mean I'll be able to focus and help out the club and the observatory in different ways that may be new and unique and provide a better overall experience. Maybe even help out with gathering more in the realm of stories and photos for the newsletter. It's tough to edit a newsletter and try to create content. I tried to do both and that was difficult. To many hats and to much to do. The quality will suffer when a person tries to do to many things at one time.

There are a lot of little projects and probably more when it comes to writing things and drafts that go on behind the scenes and I never bring them up here. So much to do and so little to post at times on the observing blog.

I've really had very few observing sessions in the past few weeks due to the weather as well. I tried a new heater for the winter observing sessions. This heater throws ir heat and heats the person or object directly rather than heating the air. It heats via radiate energy from ir radiation. This is more efficient and causes less heat to build up and escape from the shutter. Having hot air inside an observatory will cause thermos and interference with the best seeing conditions. The best way to observe is bundled up and keeping heat sources away from the telescope and away from the front of the telescope. This even means heat sources out a ways from the telescope that may be throwing up heat. The heat from a warm sidewalk after sunset may throw off thermals for some time. For this reason astronomers who are hoping to get a better view will seek sites with more ground around the telescope and less building, pavement or anything that gives off heat. Die hard astronomers and imagers who do astrophotography will even tell you the construction of an observatory can cause problems. Block walls provide security of course, but they hold a lot of heat and may radiate thermals into the sky if they are heated up. The best observatory color for the outside walls is white. Black walls would be a heat sink and heat up much more. Light thin walls are also better because there is less thermal mass. But of course in today's modern environment, you cannot have super thin flimsy walls, especially when you consider security of the equipment from bad weather or uninvited guests. So most observatories are just big buildings, but ideally you would have a flimsy building out in the middle of a tropical island to observe from.

As you can see I'm starting to talk about vacation islands, and I haven't even retired yet.

More to follow.

In news regarding the observatory one of our faac members is working on creating a flyer for libraries to advertise the observatory. George Korody is working on this and he asked me for photos. In the rush to get my computer reorganized I actually dropped a critical disk drive and lost a lot of photos. That put a bit of a damper on my thanksgiving vacation.



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It's been cloudy out. Not many posts - meteor showers

There's another reason for the lack of posts. I've been experiencing a bug in my iPad blogpress software. This would cause crashes in the posting for any posts with photos. I have been upgrading some software and have a new iPhone which didn't run the old blogpress software.

They just released a new version of blogpress on the iTunes store which is supposed to take care of the posting bug. We will find out soon I suppose.

Someone on Facebook asked me about the best location to see a meteor shower. This is a pretty broad question so I'll attempt to answer it.

First you need to know which meteor shower you are looking for. They were asking about the Leonids. It's usually advertised as happening at it's peak at a certain date. Last Wednesday and thursday we had a peak advertised for a meteor shower near Leo. The showers are often named after the constellations they are going to appear to be coming out of. This means streams of meteors will appear to be coming out of a certain area of the sky near a constellation. You need to know where the constellation is and where it will be in the sky when your looking. So you can focus on the area where the constellation is.

Leo rises and is in the east at about midnight. It's only about 40 degrees up at 3am. So you'd want to look east and up. This would be the quick answer. And you'll want to be out at 3am or even later in the morning when the constellation rises higher in the sky.

If your looking at the constellation and the shower when it's really low in the east then your probably not going to see much, because it's too low and also looking at the shower earlier in the evening will result in your seeing far fewer meteors. The reason for this is the earth rotates in such a way the it's moving away from the path a piece of rock or particle would need to take to burn up in the atmosphere before midnight. Before midnight a meteor would have to catch up to the earth to hit the atmosphere as the earth is moving around the sun in it's revolution around the sun. After midnight the nighttime side of the earth is starting to turn toward the path of revolution (not rotation) which the earth is traveling. So after midnight we are traveling into the path of space particles and they will fly into the earth not only from their motion, but the earth is flying into them. Think of the earth like a car traveling down the street crushing bugs on the windshield. How often do bugs hit the rear window of the car when your driving verses the front. Of course bugs can only hit the back window if your car is traveling at a speed slower than the bug is flying, which is unlikely. Most meteors travel faster than bugs, but they still have to catch up with the viewers position before midnight to enter the night sky. So they need to be travelling faster than earth and catch up to the earth before midnight. This is unlikely, so fewer meteors can be seen before midnight. After midnight we start seeing bugs in the eastern side of the sky which is the front of our imaginary earth car, hitting meteor particles like bugs on the front of a windshield.

The earth is traveling at about 66,400 miles an hour around the sun. So a meteor particle would have to travel faster than this or be caught up in the gravity of the earth and be sucked back into the backside of the earths path to appear before midnight in the sky. Most particles are not going to travel this path, it's much easier to plow into the earth like a bug on a windshield of a car traveling at 66000 miles an hour. So there's a lot more meteor action seen by the observer after midnight.

So the question should be when are you going to be looking for the shower and hopefully it's early in the morning hours after midnight. Once you kow the time, figure out where the constellation is. There are other meteors and these will appear anywhere in the sky. Meteors for the most part come from dust trails from comets. So they are left over clouds of particles from comets, left by comets. They are sitting in some dispersal path or trail around the sun and the earth travels through that path every year as it approaches the path as the earth revolves around the sun. Since we are in the same relative position to the sun and the stars each year, we see the particles coming from the same general area of the sky each year.

Okay now that I've covered some of the basics, what's the best place to view a shower from. Specifically the Leonids. They are about 60 degrees above the eastern horizon at 5:30am. So you want to look east and have a good view of the eastern sky with a nice dark view hopefully. They are about 40 degrees higher than Saturn. There's another more obscure shower nearby, so you may see meteors from a different shower as well. If you don't know where Leo is in the sky you might see other metoers and think they are from the same shower.

Thursday was the peak of the shower and the sky conditions were not very good out. We've had a lot of cloudy weather. You can still see some near the peak of the shower near Leo, just fewer meteors per hour.

A big field is better with less stuff on the horizon. This means someplace where you can see more of the sky. The darker the site the better. This of course brings into question other issues and how to watch meteor showers. Sometimes astronomers have meteor shower parties. Which is just a group of people sitting in lounge chairs or laying down perhaps on blankets, etc. Reclined and looking for meteors in the area of the sky where a shower is expected.

A shower is a shower but now a shower that you might expect. They have a thing called a rate of meteors expected per hour. The rate might be something like 50 meteors per hour. But that's the maximum rate expected. Your mot likely gonng to see that many. You might see far fewer. The meteors will be short and small or sometimes have a long path. They will rarely be one meteor a minute to most viewers. We call it a shower, but if your expecting to see them shower down like water droplets from a shower head, then you'll be disappointed.

Rarely are the rates so high that you'll be excited. I never looked for meteor shower in the old club, when I was in junior high or high school. The showers were best viewed after midnight and we didn't go to the school outings for astronomy after midnight. We were finished by midnight. You'll see more activity from a dark sky site and it's best to view them naked eye. Meaning without binoculars or telescopes. They travel to fast and are to random to see or track in a telescope, and they are sometimes viewed with very wide angle opera glasses which are 3 power by some astronomers who view an area of the sky where they expect the shower to come from.

In a meteor shower party you might divide up thee sky for different people to watch different sections of the sky and if your more experienced you'll be able to tell if the meteor came from the constellation that the shower is supposed to be coming from. There are meteors coming from other areas of the sky and they are generally labelled based on the location they started from.

Here's a screen capture from star walk on the iPad showing a meteor shower location.

Leo is actually up and to the right of Saturn at five o'clock in the morning. The shower would be 60 degrees above the horizon at 5:30 and you can subtract 15 degrees per hour meaning the shower is 15 degrees lower each hour earlier in the eastern sky.



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Showing off the observatory at pizza place

Chatting with friends and showing them the observatory


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HJRO observatory will be open from 7 to 9pm then a food break and a return for late night viewing

We will be open from 7pm till about 9pm then break for a trip to vitos pizza on fort street in Lincoln park and then return for late night viewing around 10:15pm until about midnight when clouds should start arriving.

Call 313 477-2574 if you have any questions.

Sent from my iPhone


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Opening the observatory at 7pm

Maybe a little earlier.

Will focus on binocular telescope viewing of moon at first.

Dress warm.


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Observatory will be open at 8pm tonight

We will be open at 8pm tonight

Kids need to bring there parent to gain admission.

I will probably be there for at least two hours, maybe more.


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We will be open tonight at 10 pm

Tonight at 10pm open to members adults and children accompanied by their parent or guardian.



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We will be at the observatory at 9:30pm tonight

We will be open at 9pm tonight. It's difficult to say how ling we will be there probably a couple of hours.



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Slow going with the t point software

We had 10 stars in and then the mount went out of control.

We saves the model and now we are trying to start a new model.

At times the pc acts strange with the cursor acting up a bit.

The mount tried to do a meridian flip when it went out if control and it didn't need to.

Here's a photo of the screen with the software running while we were working in this.


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Here I'll try the post again of the comet

No processing canon eos t1i


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Location:Champaign Rd,Lincoln Park,United States

This is a screen shot of one of the comet photos, maybe it will post


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Location:Victoria Ave,Lincoln Park,United States

We will be open tonight at about 9pm, photo of the comet below

Here's a photo unprocessed of the comet which was near the double cluster yesterday.

We will be open around 9pm tonight.

The comet was disappointing to look at with eyepieces. Looks better in a photo.

Probably to much sky glow and the comet is fairly small faint and with a very faint tail, really invisible even in the c14 with the naked eye looking through an eyepiece.


I'd inched the image but I'm having a blogpress problem at this time and will update it later.



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Sometimes HDR photos are just wonderful

Cloud conditions at sunset, HDR photo from iPhone 4.

Of course we have to look for breaks on the clouds to observe, that's obvious. It's supposed to be clear tonight, I'll have to keep checking.



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Comet Hartley will be near the double cluster Thursday

The big question for us in Michigan is, will the skies be clear enough to see it?

Before you run out with binoculars to see this, remember this is a faint object and it magnitude rating is actually the overall brightest if the entire object. So it may be very faint and difficult to see. Especially in skies that we have in Lincoln Park Michigan which have a lot of sky glow and light pollution.

Here's a chart of what it should look like in a wide field telescope at low power. Keep in mind this is a charting program and the comet will look a lot fainter than this representation in even a large telescope.

The best view of it will not be a view at all but would be from a camera taking photographs of it.



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Drive out toward Ann arbor

I went out toward Ann Arbor Sunday night and the sunset was spectacular. I stopped and took sine photos. I was out a little to late to get earlier, brighter sunset photos.

I tested my iPhone 4's ability to shoot low light sunsets with the HDR mode. HDR takes more than one photograph very quickly one after another and combines them to increase the contrast or perhaps I should say flatten the contrast. It's difficult to say what it's doing, but basically it's trying to show more detail in bright and shadow areas where detail would be fully lost. Either blown out and too white and bright or just black because the photo is to dark. HDR takes different exposures and then tries to combine them with to show more detail. Sometimes it works, sometimes it makes the photo look worse. I thought HDR might improve handheld photos through a telescope eyepiece, but it usually makes the resulting still look worse.

Here is a photo of the dark skies as the sunset turned toward twilight.

This at ford lake.

When I returned the sky was finally clearing, but I was tired from a long weekend and it was after midnight. So u didn't out out a post and open up the observatory Sunday, but I took a quick look through a telescope at home and then put it away after only five minutes of observing.

Hopefully we cab start observing soon. Clouds are supposed to be in the skies tonight so I wont be announcing an opening tonight.

(photo below is an HDR photo if ford lake, Ypsilanti Michigan.)


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It will be clear out tonight but the observatory will be closed

We will be doing t point modeling for the mount tonight and put in a new star model in the Gemini mount as well. This setup is much more refined than setups we've had in the past at the Hector J Robinson observatory.

The Gemini model can be altered and more stars can be added during other sessions. This allows us to setup the mount and make alterations later if we have visitors. But the t point model has to go in during the single observing session. You can't modify it later, you have to do it all in one session. The more objects we add the better the model and more accurate the scope will aim and track. We have a really good aligned mount now, so we will focus on the t point model tonight.

It's going to be a very busy day for me tomorrow, so I won't have time to setup telescopes outside for visitors. So basically the observatory is closed to visitors tonight.

I'm showing a photo of the sky today. It's not an astrophotograph of course, but just a photo of the cloud cover at this time.

The nice thing about this setup once we are finished with it will be the ability to take much better astrophotographs with the Gemini mount. It would be nice to get a photo of the more recent comet visitor that is below cassiopia at this time. It's getting close to the double cluster if I recall the positional movements correctly.




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A few Faac astronomers

A few of us were at the observatory tonight to do work.

I arrived late. George Korody was already there and Tim Dey was there as well.

They worked on the drift alignment. George and Tin did most if the work, actually all the work. I basically watched and learned, which means I tried to throw out witty remarks and for the most part failed tonight as u was cold and didn't really warn up much during the observing or alignment times. It was mostly alignment work.

We took a quick look at Jupiter and tested the pointing accuracy looking at a few objects. M15, Sirius, the ring nebula, etc. The stars they chose for drift alignment, actually I forgot to note them down. But by the end of the session the alignment was complete. We didn't have time for the t point model, which is a more accurate model. We need to cold start and start the alignment process. They also looked for the latest comet that is making it's return and supposedly near 5.5 in magnitude but this is dispersed. The bright skies made it impossible for Tim to see the comet naked eye through the telescope.

George has a lot if good advice. I was happy to be there but to tired to be much good.

We also mounted a new f6.3 field reducer for the c14. This gives the c14 a wider field of view and an effective focal length of about f7 instead of f11. Meaning lower power but wider fields of view and it provides a flatter field if view.

That's it for now.

I'd show a photo but I was to tired to setup and get a good one. Hopefully we will have good viewing and have the scope in much better working order in the next few days.


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There us a lot of haze out today

Quick photo from my workplace window



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The new iPhone 4 is pretty nice

This is my first blog entry using a new iPhone 4.

Not much happening with astronomy at the observatory due to bad weather.

More to follow later.


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Visitor at the obsrvatory

Andrey visited tonight.


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Hoepfully the weather and the scope mount will stabilize

We have been having some minor problems and not much in the way of clear nights lately.

We have had some problems wit the mount. These have been due to some pointing errors and also at time the mount will runaway. That's a strange term so I'll explain it. The mount doesn't run down the street, but when it's moving the telescope toward a star under computerized control, the mount will at times miss it's target or lose track of the target and continue moving out of control until it reaches a point where the mount reaches a safety limit.

Safety limits a locations where the mount moves to far and the counterweight are too high or the telescope could hit the mount. So the build in boundary in the computer goto controller will stop the telescope from crashing into the pier or the mount itself, but the controller is non responsive and the mount has to be rebooted. This is the nature of a runaway, the mount runs away out of control and we lose control over it.

To fix this we reprogram the star model or cold star and reprogram mount settings. There's other diagnostics involved as well, mostly trial and error and reading up and studying suggested solutions from other Gemini mount users that have a similar telescope mount.

So we've been having a few members come out to do diagnostics and also we do a little star gazing, but not much. We at times get a bit carried away and look at a few objects of interest because something may be out and the sky might be decent for a short time.

So I haven't been inviting the public out much on this blog the past week. The main reason is diagnostics and the mount, but also the sky conditions are often bad and haze and clouds are moving in. Well spend some time trying to simulate or recreate a pointing error and other times briefly looking at some object like Jupiter while there's a break in the clouds.

Frankly I don't want to tell folks to come by and then have them watch a boring diagnostic session or perhaps get in the way of core group members who are working on the mount. And if sky conditions are really mixed and iffy, (if iffy is a good term to use here?) I don't want to invite a lot of people and club members and have them drive out and then show them a cloudy sky and just sit here hoping for the clouds to clear. I've spent about five hours this week under totally cloudy skies when forecasts were for clear skies.

So we are still here.

Tonight there will be a early break in the sky but it's supposed to be cloudy after the early evening hours. The core group will try to do some extensive changes to the mount and maybe really put in a great model, called a t point model. But it's likely that we will not even have time and cloudless skies long enough to get it all done tonight. We can only hope.

So if you see the observatory open early in the evening it's probably going to be open for diagnostics and we probably won't invite the public in.

If conditions are really nice and we are there and you see a telescope outside I may have a scope outside for visitors to peer through. Jupiter is a great target right now. Especially after 11pm as it rises higher.

There is also a faint comet that we have prig rammed into the sky software. It was magnitude 7 last week and supposedly an essay target to see, but we couldn't see it through the c14. We were able to bring it out very faintly on a photograph we tried to get. The sky glow and drift errors in the mount mass longer exposes impossible.

We got the best image with a mild sky glow filter that George brought along.

The comet is getting brighter but it's tail is not visible even in photos from George's observatory which has darker skies and better cameras.

Here's a photo of the comet, it's not very good and really just an attempt to see it and see if it's in the field of view. It's not a real astrophotography of real quality that most would work on and post but rather just a test photo from my canon t1i eos camera.

You'll want to click on the link photo and look for the small faint blob near the center of the photo. Can you see it? Not much to look at. More photos stacked with better processing would show a better image.

We took some photos of Jupiter between clouds as e clouds dominated the weather the past couple of times I was out there.



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No observing tonight

Today was supposed to be the first national observe the moon event. I would have done something for this event, but the weather didn't cooperate.

So I spent this evening editing the Ford Amateur Astronomy Club newsletter.

It's not ready yet but should be out by Monday. Here's a sneak peek of my computer screen and part of page 9 of the newsletter.

Hector J Robinson observatory
I have some photos from my iPhone in this months newsletter.

To see past newsletters google "FAAC Astronomy" and look for the Ford Amateur Astronomy website.

Here's a photo of the video monitor of the solar observing today.

Our stellacam 3 camera can take pretty decent video clips of the sun. We have a tv monitor that can show this.

The images we saw from the stellacam were I'm some ways better than looking through an eyepiece in the hydrogen alpha solar scope.

And the monitor looked better than this photo of the monitor.


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Richard visited the Hector J Robinson observatory today

Here's a photo I was able to take of Richard in front of the telescope with my Canon Eos camera. I'd send this to his email, but my last email bounced and wasn't delivered. So here's the photo Richard.

You can see this was when we were observing the sun through special telescopes and filters designed to allow one to safely view the sun.

Richard told me when he was young, some made safe glass to view an eclipse through. Of course we know now that the instructions they used to create safe glass at that time were wrong. You need to be extra careful and insure you have the correct setup to view the sun. When in doubt, stay safe and if you wonder it's better to consult with an astronomer to insure your using a safe method to view the sun.




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More visitors at the observatory

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Some visitors

Can you name this visitors


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Great time observing the sun

I didn't have a lot of time to observe the sun today after work.

I rushed to te observatory and announced Otto faac members and Tim Dey that I would be there.

There were many distinct features and promanences on the sun today.

Ed out technology guy from the school showed up as well he saw te observatory open. Soccer players were nearby from a visiting school. I asked Tim if Ed being present was enough school support presence to show the kids the sun. Tim went out and started inviting kids in to observe through the solar scope. We had some adults view the sub as well.

I had to close up. An older gentleman from the neighborhood arrived am we chatted a while. I told him I has to leave and might be back later. But my late departure meant I would not be able to get to a
Bakery in time.

So I called a friend who is in the club and asked a favor. Could he pick up preordered nake goods for me. He did, but then we talked and started looking attge faac video footage I shot and put together.

We went out to eat and he offeredany good editing suggestions and tips. We ran out of time. I'm tired and the sky is wonderful but I stayed up to late last night.

So I have to go to sleep,

I was trying to do to much and I won't be able to open the observatory tonight. Sorry guys.

Here's a photo of some of the kids today who looked thru the solar telescope at the sun.




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The test tonight

We tested goto meeting with the iPad


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Astronomy at the Beach was a lot of Fun Friday

I had a lot of fun as many did at Astronomy at the Beach Friday night. I was out until almost 1AM at the site. I didn't get home until 4AM.

I didn't spend any time watching the lectures. I like to attend and hear, but tried to get footage of telescope setups and talk the the astronomers at the beach. I also tried to quickly setup and show a few folks the sky through my binocular setup. Although my tripod is not very good for the binocular Telescope so I focused on only showing two objects.

I would have loved to look through more telescopes during the event, but of course you're either looking through other scopes, or showing your own. Or in my case, taking a few photos and some video clips. I tried to do a little bit of everything and that kept me pretty busy.

There are some excellent photos on the FAAC site that Greg Ozimek took. They capture a lot of the spirit of the event and are much more wide ranging than the memory video I took.

There's also a video that focuses on the WSU lectures on Friday night.

The link to that is as follows:

http://thesouthend.wayne.edu/index.php/article/2010/09/videowayne_state_visits_astronomy_at_the_beach

I will edit and submit some video for the FAAC show if they want to use any of it. The FAAC cable show producer was there and shot his own video, so it's difficult to say if he will be able to use any of the short segment or clips I might provide.

I need to do a voice over and put some music perhaps over some of the clips and will put a note about the video clips here when I have something ready for some YouTube viewing.

Everyone that was a visitor that I saw was really nice and they were all very kind and thanked us for letting them look through the telescopes.

As for Saturday, it rained. I don't know if they cancelled the Saturday event. I didn't go out there, one of the astronomers I know headed home at 4PM after attending a lecture that was only open for astronomers. He said it was raining buckets out there and he wondered if they'd cancel the Saturday event, because he doubted anyone would show up.

They had 3500 people attend the event on Friday.

Some of the Astronomers I know arrived late, and they setup late. There were fewer vendor tables this year than in the past, perhaps a sign of the tough economic times.

Tonight Astronomy At The Beach event will be at Kensington Metro Park

At the Maple Beach area starting at 6pm.

This is the biggest Public star party in Michigan with as many as 7500 people attending.

I'll be there tonight, with the skies hopefully cooperating.

I haven't decided what scope to take along. I may just mingle with the other astronomers, and take a peek through their telescopes. I want to shoot some video clips. I may focus on that and not setup any telescope at all.

There's a lot there. a portable planetarium, speakers on Saturday, vendors, and of course astronomers with telescopes trained on the sky.

Hope to see you there.

Saturdays weather has a 50 percent chance of rain, so for a better chance at looking up your better off going out there tonight.


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I'm likely going to be at the observatory from 10 until 12

Hoping to get in a couple hours tonight.

Will be working on the mount model if no visitors arrive, and I I'm working in the model with other members may be able to show visiters views through the binocular telescope.

If the sky is very overcast in Lincoln Park I may not stay there.

I've been very tired with aches in my muscles today.

It's cold out so dress warm if you plan on showing up.


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There is a good chance I'll be at the observatory at 10pm

There may be clouds, or partial clouds.

Im going to try to put in a new model.

There may not be a lot of good viewing tonight and it may be mostly work.

It might be better if FAAC core members show up if they have time and can read this post.

Other visitors may not find much to observe. We might be busy, so it's probably better if you don't plan on coming by for a great time observing. We might observe a few objects if the sky clears up and we get the model setup. I'll likely be there until 1am if the skies are clear and I avoid freezing. . . Lol.

Just realize we may be busy and have to show you something though a smaller scope.

If I'm alone at the observatory, I may be busy with the model.

Also it's cold out tonight, so if you stop by don't forget to dress for the cold.

The sky conditions are not supposed to be good, mixed clouds and poor seeing. But it may be good enough to put in a model. I'd rather do that work with marginal viewing and sky conditions and then have the mount setup for good nights and have it open for visitors.

Greg


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Visitor at the observatory

Joe knew Hector J Robinson


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Testing at the observatory

Test of goto meeting

I took the still in the wrong perspective.




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Went out near the river to view tonight

Fun time now to head for bed.


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Not much to report today

It's cloudy this evening.

I spent some time going over clips and photos I took last night as well as other astronomy photos.

With digital cameras you can take a lot of photos cheaply. But then of course you have to store and try to organize them for later use.

Probably 80 percent of my photos are not something I can use later. A lot of junk photos.

With digital you seem to be able to be a pack rat and store and horde almost every photo you've taken.

Of course that can get tone a huge problem, with many cameras as well. Digital point and shoot, slr styled cameras, images from an iPhone, and from camcorders aa well.

Photographers use database photo libraries, but still need to work to organize there photos.

For the apple computer iPhoto is a nice product but it will start to chock on some machines when you get over 10000 photos.

I probably have 30,000 photos but not all in a library. Digital astrophotographers take many photos of the same object to stack them. This makes storage and organization even more critical. One if my problems is I don't spend or have enough time to organize all these photos and I'm not even seriously into astrophotography yet.

I was primarily looking for photos related to the observatory tonight. Getting stills for a cable show segment. FAAC gas a cable show and I am putting together a little intro summary clip about the observatory.




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Getting ready for a short observing session

I overslept and will be heading to observe or play with the star model which is damaged. (Typo correction in blog press for iPad)

It's 11:30 kind if late to start on a work night.

I napped and overslept.

Here's my dinner.





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Sorry no observing Monday night at the observatory

I spent a little time at the Wyandotte cable studio as a guest of the FAAC astronomy cable show.

I didn't spend a lot of time practicing an answer for the shows questions. We had a list of the questions ahead of time, giving us some chance to formulate our answers. I hope I didn't stutter to much in the interview. Anyway, there's going to be a second show about the observatory where they videotape the segment at the observatory.

I even created a brief video with some stills and limited video for a short piece. Thanks to the wonders of video editing I can work on that a little more and we can insert it into the show.

Over the weekend we were there and I was out a little late observing Saturday. Also Sunday, which was a bit of a waste of time, although we learned some things about the setup and connecting laptops to the Losmandy controller, somehow we destroyed the star model and have to enter a new one for the tracking of the scope.

We also tested goto meeting and showed live video, from a webcam feed of the observatory and live video of a video monitor feed. This is not the final setup for web broadcasting from the observatory, but just a test. It was fun, and we learned a lot from that.

An audio feed or perhaps a live chat from the observatory would probably make a feed much better, we were not sending audio over the net with the live feed.

That's it for now. It was a long day. I'd like to observe but I have to rest for work tomorrow.



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Solar observing now

Trying to record a video clip with new Stellacam at this time


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Orion nebula about 16 degrees above horizon at 4:08am

Checking out Orion nebula before I go to sleep.

Wonderful night but a lot of ground fog rising.


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Will be out at the observatory at 10;30pm for hours

I will be back out at about 10:30pm.

I'm raking a break after solar viewing and getting a few stills and video clips.


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Joingotomeeting.com
376-774-723

The above link is active as we test looking at the sun online using the Stellacam and other tools.

The observatory is open for some testing via gotomeeting.

Sent from my iPhone



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Sunday night and Monday were not good for observing

I met Dr. Timothy Dey for some observing Sunday night. This with some doubt as to how nice and clear it would be out. Soon clouds appeared and there were only a few openings from time to time to get a view of the moon or Jupiter. Jupiter seemed to be playing hide and seek for an hour or so. We sat and chatted, I cleared out some floor space, taking one support leg off the stand and removing a 10 inch newtonian reflector I had left inside from an earlier night of observing.

Tim also updated some of the software on the computer and loaded some antivirus software on the machine.

We had a good time anyway. Viewed the moon a bit and Jupiter a bit.

Monday night I received a text message from Sean, one of our newer members. He wanted to know what I was doing? Just seeing that text made me go out and take a look at the sky. It looked pretty good. I didn't check the clear sky chart, wanting to head out to grab a bite to eat anyway.

I texted back that I'd be out there. I put a late night message on a FAAC message system that I'd be out there likely until 12pm. It looked mostly clear with some threatening clouds on the horizon. By the time I actually loaded up my car stopped at a drive through and drove over, it became clear that clouds were moving in and covering most of the sky. There was a slim sliver of open sky near the west. Sean and his girlfriend arrived. She hadn't seen the inside of the observatory, so we gave her a quick tour of the observatory. No observing tonight.

With some of the hit and miss partly cloudy nights I've not even bothered to get the hopes up of those of you who might read this blog. If it's kind of marginal I may stop by to do some kind of maintenance, but I may not announce I'm there. I've tried announcing last minute to FAAC members using a different internet method we use, but often won't tell the public if I'm out there last minute. This is more to keep from wasting the time of others who would like to come out when there is good viewing. Sometimes I'm caught off guard with some late night clearing.

The other week (did I cover that in another post?) I woke up early in the morning and the sky was clear, so I headed out to view from the school grounds next to the observatory. I didn't even open up the observatory to use the telescope inside but instead focused on viewing with my binocular telescope. A visitor approached and started to chat. He never saw the inside of the observatory, so I opened up to give him a quick tour and we looked at four objects in the sky. Sometimes these things happen unannounced.

I'm hoping to get out near the end of the week. There may be more members of the club out Friday and Saturday if the skies are nice.

That's it for now. I took some shots of the observatory with the poor cloud conditions the past few nights and may post some of them later.



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(Luna) . . . And other times obscured

Posted from iPhone camera through the binocular telescope with a 25mm eyepiece giving 36 power.

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Luna at times she peeked between the clouds

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It's looking real bad now with tons of clouds, don't stop by

I just called one of the members and told him to stay home it's too cloudy out.

Sorry everyone who might have read this and hoped to stop by. Looks like mother nature isn't cooperating.

I'm going to leave early, there's no point in staying at an observatory to watch a sky full of clouds.

I'll walk the track and go home to sleep.

The weather looks to be bad for the nest couple of days. It may clear up Sunday night. I may be out Sunday night.

Greg


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I'm going to the observatory at this moment

12 pm Friday night

Some bino lunar viewing and we will see what happens sky wise.


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I could also make out small craters with the 15mm eyepiece and the binocular telescope

For example this crater.




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I got out for about an hour with the binocular telescope

Focused on looking at the moon and identifying craters. I identified a crater that shares the same name as a friend of mine. Also some other craters. . . some being quite small and others being larger of course. The relief or shadows near the terminator are simply spectacular through the binocular telescope. The maps and illustrations don't do it justice.

Here's a sample from moon atlas that shows a large crater in deep relief due to shadows that any telescope should easily see.

Image below from moon atlas.



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Jupiter Thru Nexstar 4SE

****
Do you wonder where I've been. I've been under the weather. That is suffering from some kind of cold, ailment or whatever. It was so bad I thought I was going to pass out and felt sick enough to check myself into ER last week. I didn't know if I was having a heart attack or what? I felt dizzy and as if I would pass out any moment, so off to ER I went.

Tonight I'm still under the weather and I didn't plan out going out to the observatory, because I've been to much under the weather. I did however take a quick look out with my telescopes at home and took a few shots of Jupiter with my little Nexstar. The sky is so transparent and wonderful tonight. I wish I felt better and could have been out and opened up the observatory. It's also cool out and no bugs were biting.

I combined trips tonight, that is I took out my binocular scope briefly before eating dinner out tonight.

I felt like my back was ripped up pretty well and I haven't even done anything to cause that.

Finally after viewing the moon a bit, I drove home. Immediately seeing that the seeing looked good, I brought out the Nexstar. I decided to take a few photos through it, using the T mount on the regular eyepiece, and shooting through a 25mm and then 15mm eyepiece. Here's the results

****

Comparison of three Actual Size, jpg files. Unretouched, from Canon T1i.

These taken through a T mount (lower Right, inverted image) and a 25mm Plossl (handheld at 3x zoom into eyepiece), and through a 15mm (handheld, 3x zoomed into eyepiece).

No processing of the jpgs has been performed. All were displayed in actual size. Reduced sizes would make them sharper of course.

The effects of rely morning dew on the lens.

Here's an early morning photo from Dexter. When this was taken dew had fallen on the lens of the camera, obscuring the image details.

It looks almost like it's been manipulated with paint, but it hasn't been manipulated.



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I had a grueling weekend with a lot of stargazing

I don't want to say how late I stayed out. But the stargazing at the observatory last Thursday, Friday night in Dexter and Saturday at Island Lake multi-club picnic took its toll. I was to tired to do any stargazing at home much less get out to the observatory.

Here's a poster example from a photo I took of my friend in his yard last week.




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Tonight I'll be at island lake

Here's a photo from last night. I stepped into the frame while the camera was taking a 30 second exposure.




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I finally saw the pleidies open star cluster this year

It's been a while since I saw this cluster. Nice to see it rise at the Dexter viewing location but it was nearly 3am when I noticed it being out.

So many bright stars it was difficult to find constellations. A pretty nice dark sky site compared to the urban setting.

3am might be a little late at the FAAC picnic viewing site tomorrow. I have a feeling it will be some time before m45 pleidies is visible for the observing or star parties.

I took to many pictures compared to what I thought I'd take out here and stayed out here too long. O decided to sleep on the couch out here and drive back tomorrow morning. At least the dew will clear off all the eypieces by sunrise. I had so much dew on stuff I left the caps off most of the eyepieces.

Time to snooze. . .




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Out at a darker sky location than Lincoln Park can offer

About four miles from peach mountain.




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No observing tonightsorry for the late

I'm out observing at a freinds house, sorry for the late post last night was fun. More on that later.


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Will open the observatory tonight at 10pm and maybe earlier

If I open it up early I'll put a post out here, but I doubt I'll be there in time for solar viewing today.

We had a faac executive board meeting and I was at that today and have a few errands to run.

Didn't open the observatory due to weather and humidity

SO THE OBSERVATORY WAS CLOSED - Instead I observed from the Possum Platform at home.

There were reports of storms possibly occurring on the radio. It was very humid and hazy last night, especially around 11PM. While running a late night errand I looked up and saw it might be worth taking a look to test the atmosphere (bowl like clearing conditions). The clear sky chart report stated it would be cloudy and transparency would not be good.

I was too tired to open up the observatory. I didn't want to throw out a late night post and then have someone arrive late to be disappointed by poor seeing and humid conditions. The humidity we had last night might rival a Panama rain forest.

I pulled out a couple of small telescopes and observed at home (for a "quick" look). It's funny how a quick look can turn into a long look and then you're falling asleep outside instead of being inside.

Transparency was better than I expected from the clear sky chart, with little "flickering" noticable, but the consistant view was somewhat bubbling from the humidity. I don't know if there's a good way to say transparency seemed okay, but humidity hampered the view. I was able to see the great red spot or at last something that looked like it, through the binocular telescope with 15mm eyepieces.
(about 46 power.)

There was some dew as well. The heat and humidity seemed pretty oppressive. My glasses would fog up or dew up when I would set them down. It was like being in an unpleasant sauna, with a few bugs buzzing around. I sprayed myself with enough insect repellant to perhaps keep stray pit bulls away.

Memerized or perhaps just to tired to pick up and go back inside, I felt myself drifting into Rem sleep, well perhaps more like REM observing.

Nothing of major interest to report, just gazed at the moon and Jupiter for a long time. I was trying to see how many details I could spot on Jupiter. I get this perception or feeling that some of the moons are closer and coming around this side of Jupiter and others are further back when viewing Jupiter through the binocular telescope. I think this is more of an imagined than something that can be proved, maybe it's actually some kind of optical illusion.

THE WANING MOON
The moon was wonderful, a better view than the night before. The sky was clear and not showing a glow or colored effect from pollution in the sky. I could stare at the terminator line most of the night. Some of the craters and mountains shinied brightly out of the shadows due to their height. One large crater(sorry I didn't look up the name) had a rim that was bright and lit up but darkness surrounded the rim. Darkness was inside the crater walls. That crater looked like half a mirror test on a test stand, where the edge of the mirror is brightly lit up and the rest of the mirror is dark. While watching a star suddenly appeared next to the dark side of the moon. It was covered (occulted) by the moon. The moon had past over the star and it suddenly appeared and flickered in the night sky. it appeared near the top dark side of the moon. (Remember I was using a binocular telescope, so this would look like it was near the botton of the moon in most telescopes or photos.)

The moon had an orange tint the night before, but last night it was more cold and white looking. The image bubbled a bit near the outer fringe. Not a bad view for 36 power.

I searched for the ring nebula and could not find it. This is a small target. Perhaps to small for the small telescope I was using.(magnitude 9.5) If I had the 10 inch Newtonian out I'd have likely found it, but I only used two small telescopes and didn't want to drive to the observatory to use the C-14 or a goto mount.

I also tried to take a handheld photo of the area where the ring Nebula would be. It was to hot to play with the telescope and pull it off the camera tripod so I just flopped down on the wood deck to shoot handheld. I pressed the camera against my face trying to hold perfectly still while the 10 second exposure went off. I'm not even sure I had a good focus, it wasn't bad, but it was far from perfect.

While I was laying perfectly still on the deck;, taking a few photos, I imagined being attacked by a local possum who took up residence under our deck.

I tried to remain calm while imagining that the possum would attack -- perhaps defending her "nest" of little possum offspring. (Possums have 13 little ones in their litter or swarm or whatever we are supposed to call them.) The possum family of course bothers the neighbors. The possums have been eating our neighbors corn before our neighbors could harvest any of it. And one little possum has been poisoned and crawled and died in another neighbors garage ("stinking it up to high heaven".) I told my neighbor (who removed the dead body) the possums want to live on our property, eat at the other neighbors garden, and die on his property.

Possums have 50 sharp teeth but probably won't fight, or be aggressive unless cornered and they'd rather play possum/dead than fight most of the time. They are like a cute, big ugly rat. They are actually marsupials and can climb like a fat squirrel. They have hands and feet that grasp like our hands and carry their kids in a pouch. Also they rarely get rabies, but they are pests and love to eat out of gardens and local garbage cans.

They have an odor kind of like a skunk that they give off and reportedly leave dropping that are kind of like dog droppings, but smell worse. I don't know for sure what possum droppings smell like, hopefully I'm not rolling around on them on my deck late at night enough to start smelling like a possum.

DISCLAIMER: (I hope that I don't smell like a possum, but sometimes may play possum at work.)

Well the possum never showed up, maybe poisoned by eaten some rat poisoning. My handhel photos don't rate a posting here.. I could get a faily clear shot at 10 or 13 seconds exposure. A 20 seconds exposure was to blurred with obvious camera movement.

Reviewing the photos I thought, maybe I should be looking for the Hercules Cluster instead as it was obviously nearby. I focused on using the binocular telescope most of the time, and the mount would not supply a steady view while looking up near the zenith (straight up).

This morning thinking about how tired I've been lately a part of a line came into my mind and I tried to write a short poem around it. So here it is. . . kind of old fashioned sounding.

-----

My eyes are moon burned from looking last night,

with cold dark circles beneath.

The hot humid air, bubbling atmosphere,

drove my observing to grief.

-----

Hmm. . . funny what looking at an OPT website can do.

Photo above is a long exposure of me looking at the moon through the Vixen Binocular Telescope.

I was looking up the Lunt Solar scope that we have in the observatory on the OPT site. Ocean Pacific Telescope is one dealer that sells these and other telescopes. There are more expensive telescopes out there of course, but the 35mm Lunt Solar scope is a pretty nice telescope for solar viewing. Bigger Hydrogen Alpha setups are great and provide more detail. But a 60mm solar scope of this type could be in the $3500 range. And a 100mm in the $7000 to $8000 range. You can buy hydrogen alpha filters and spend nearly $8,000 to put a filter on a larger telescope. Often these filters may include a blocking filter and a special adapter that matches it from the same manufacturer, for instance Daystar makes some of these packages. You could easily spend $10,000 for a filter set for a larger telescope. We even have a member who has a filter set that would likely cost in the $8,000 range in our club. He states this gives much more detailed solar views than you'll see in a typical small solar hydrogen alpha telescope.


Many astronomers have small solar telescopes, one very popular one being the PST or Personal Solar Telescope. These cost about $500. You can get "dual filters" for the front of these PST instruments and that could push the cost over $1000.

But what about the 35mm dual filter Lunt setup? It's really nice, and after looking through it, that to me would be the minimum personal solar telescope I'd want, or something more expensive. Some of the photos on the Nasa site from the earth are through solar telescopes that are 60mm or larger. It's difficult to imagine taking a photo that was published through a smaller solar telescope. Is a telescope for viewing the sun worth the price? Well it depends on the astronomer I suppose. But considering it's easier to look at the sun during normal hours than stay up late to look at some faint object that might be affected by haze, it's clear that a lot of people find solar viewing a great pursuit.

In looking at the Lunt, meaning the exact same one we have in the observatory, one thing becomes very interesting and clear. The telescope is small and portable. But it's also not very wide. It's narrow enough to "mount in a binocular configuration". This makes a personal solar telescope purchase of the exact same model very interesting from my own perspective. Because it means there might be a chance to make a mount that would hold one I purchased with one from the observatory, for viewing at the Lincoln Park Site. It would be very interesting from my perspective, to pull up with a matching Lunt Solar scope with a mount and pull the Lunt from the observatory for a temporary use outside on a separate binocular mount. I have seen the effect that binocular viewing can have in enhancing the moon watching experience. I'd like to experience binocular or stereo viewing of the SUN through a really nice setup.

This is perhaps the "next buying temptation". But of course I'd have to be careful and probably go over the alternate configuration setup for use at the observatory with the club and the school system. I think it's a possibility, but I'm not sure how long it will be before I order a Solar scope to test it out. (Then again I could get a second Lunt without a mounting bracket or eyepiece even cheaper. I have dual eyepieces already for the binocular telescope setup.) Maybe I could fabricate the binocular setup and get into stereo solar viewing for about $1100 without figuring the cost of the mount. It's tempting to think about.

One thing to consider when solar viewing is the sun beating down on you as you watch and that heating you up and making the view uncomfortable as well. So some kind of make shift shielding is also a nice thing to plan for. In the observatory we can use the shutter to block out the sunlight from the viewer most of the time and just allow the sun to peek past the shutter into the Lunt mounted on the mount. With a Binocular setup, things would be a little more complicated for the shielding.

Okay, enough late night thinking about solar scope purchases, time to get some sleep. . . it's cloudy out.

A little better photo, but still not much compared to the view

As promised here's a photo through the eyepiece from the Canon t1i.

This photo still is not nearly as good as it should be. I'd estimate the view looking through the eyepiece showed 20 times more detail and many more craters than in this handheld photo.

To do the photograph correctly, I should have mounted a webcam like device to the telescope and taken a video clip or movie with this mounted on the telescope properly. With the Vixen, it's likely that I'd have to use "eyepiece" projection, which is not the case with many telescopes, for example the telescopes in the observatory. So I'd need an adapter that held the webcam over the eyepiece using "eyepiece" projection into the webcam. The video recording would provide many frames and good software would select the best frames and give me a photograph that would look as good or better than what we'd see in the eyepiece.

Because I continue to do handheld photos most of the time through eyepieces my photo suffer in quality.

Still you can get a rough idea what the view was like seeing this photo. Most cheap telescopes would give a view this well and even better than presented below.

When I get a proper webcam and adapter things may change. Or when we get the replacement camera for the observatory that should have movie capability. This will likely happen in about a month or so. With Astronomy you may want to take you're time and be patient, as many things in the sky will be there in the future for us to look at. Sometimes as consumers we forget that and tend to rush out to get the latest gadgets to look at the stars.

A simply horrible photo

Just to be sure I put something out I'm including this as an example of a bad photoof the moon through an eyepiece.

This is blurry and doesn't show any decent detail. The telescope shows so much more detail and fine quality than this junky photo I have to make excuses.

Why is it difficult to take a good photo at the eyepiece? Well there's a sweet spot, you need to hold the camera injust the right position and the iPhone 3 gs needs to set focus and exposure via a target which you can pick with a touch of your finger on the face of the phone. Then touching the phone to trigger the photo moves it aa well. You also don't have a zoom capacity to get a decent framing or vary the exposure. So you en up with shots like this.

This should have a lot more detail and there's probably 100 times more detail at the eyepiece.



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What to do when it's cloudy

Eat out.

When I returned home from Carters in Dearborn, the sky cleared up a little. This was later at night around midnight.

I had other errands to run. Once finished, I looked up and saw the moon rising with mist and clouds. Wanting to check out the moon a bit with the binocular telescope, I set it up for a quick look. The ridges near the terminator line were amazing to view. The night and conditions were getting worse, but I took a few shots of the setup and tried to take a handheld shot through the eyepiece with the iPhone camera. Those photos looked to be poor in quality, so I pulled put the canon eos and tried taking a few with that.

I didn't have time to upload those photos to the blog and didn't bring my camera to do any uploading during lunch, so the photo from Carters will remain in this post.

I'll try to post one of the other photos in the next blog entry.






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Moon map pro view of banting crater area

It's interesting to see the detailed maps after reviewing what I saw and looking at moon atlas.

The Moonmap Pro software has more details and the imagery shows more streaks and more detail. Clearly showing me what I saw and what I could not.

Here's a sample screen shot from the program.

Combining the two programs provides some serious ability to view and identify lunar features in detail. Another reason to own an iPad.




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A fun time surveying the moon throughout the binocular telescope

I took some audio notes to review.

Sitting in a chair with moon atlas running on the iPad. I selected a mare and started searching to match craters and other features.

I ended my viewing with a pair of 15mm eyepieces in the Vixen binocular telescope.

I could see the a b c d craters that correspond to the messier craters. The smallest of these being 1.6 miles across. It looked like a bright dot. You could tell it was a crater.

I could see more detail with my left eye. The right eye for example would not see the 1.6 mile crater but it would blink in and out. The right eye would confirm what the left was viewing and the small crater would pop in and out of 3d perception.

Here's a screen shot of the messier craters, from the moon atlas program. The streaks to the left really looked like a comet, with the messier craters appearing as the head of the comet. A fitting name for the craters.

For those of you wondering, just how good and how much detail a pair of binoculars that have 3 inches of glass for each eye can be, the detail I saw was better from a crater perspective than what is shown zoomed in fully with this program. There were a lot of craters and this with an almost full moon. However the ridges were less visible than with the Moon Atlas program. There were a lot more bright spots and you could see more bright ejection paths from crater impacts than this program will show on the map. The shading was more subtle than shown in the moon atlas. And this was under viewing conditions that were far from ideal. A larger telescope would show more information. One member of the FAAC club mentioned that the moon map programs seem to lack the contextual view (maybe they need a split screen mode) for the iphone or ipod touch. This may be a problem. I actually don't have a moon atlas loaded on my iPhone so I can't confirm that. I can say the iPad had a large enough screen to easily see the context of what you were looking at and zoom in to look at details and figure out what you were seeing. I could have spent 10 hours of moon watching with the Moon atlas sitting on my lap, but you have to stop and get some sleep. With bigger scopes you can see even more detail. The moon atlas at $6 seems to show a lot of detail, but naked eye astronomy through the telescope shows so much more detail, I found myself wondering if there was a way to have a more detailed linked map, something like the other moon mapping program that has a poor interface. That other moon mapping program called moonmap pro has a very unstandard and segmented interface.

MoonMap Pro is not as user friedly, but the satillite maps of the moon in great detail. It would be great if some kind of mapping software could combine the two. In reviewing this post and adding to it, I pulled up the MoonMap Pro software and looked at seciton 42 which contains high resolution sattillite imagery of some of the earlier areas I was looking at. I looks like you could use the Moon Atlas program on the iPad to get your bearings and figure out what section and detailed features you are looking at, then fire up the MoonMap Pro and start drilling down into sections to get a really close detailed view that is greater than you'd see in your small telescope. See my next post for a sample screen shot of the MoonMap Pro close up view.





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