A non observing report, it's cold, damp and cloudy outside

(I'm up late and about to fall asleep. I wrote a little update)


It's late at night and I'm going to write.

My back is aching, outside it's cold and damp.

I'm writing sentence fragments, to appear poetic, but they don't rhyme.

Sky conditions are typical outside, a bit warm and kind of damp for December. The dampness is a cold dampness, not enjoyable.

The Cumulus clouds are low and moving fast, with other haze above I wish I could observe tonight and look up at the stars.

In a perfect world, it would be clear out, comet Ison would be the comet of the century, instead of a melted promise, and I'd be out observing it. Oh well. . . No use crying over spilt Milky Way.

There so many geeky and relaxing things to like about star gazing. When I go out to HJRO, sometimes I'm so excited, I don't think and plan much, but just open up the observatory shutter quickly and start observing visually. I'll pick the obvious objects first, planets and then work at looking at nebula and star clusters most of the time, I usually save galaxies and colored stars or more obscure objects and requests for later in a session. When others are present, we often observe in an add hoc manner, doing requests and talking.

When the weather gets cold and conditions are calm and clear out, we often get the best observing conditions. Winter nights a boon to the young astronomer, are often avoided as we get older, our old tired bones can't take the cold as well as a young star gazer.

Good cold observing nights are rare in Michigan. To be comfortable, observers you have to dress up warm, against the elements. When it's really cold out, (if you have the setup for photography) there is a great temptation to take photos of the sky or image the sky, rather than visually observe.

With imaging we typically setup the mount, telescope and camera with a computer to control and take pictures. And most astronomers will run inside somewhere warm to sit back while the camera does the work taking photos of the night sky. And that cold weather without dew doesn't hurt the camera or laptop we often may use for imaging. The laptop most astronomers use for imaging won't mind the cold. The computer will love the cold and thrive in it. The imaging chip in the camera will run with less electronic noise, calmer and colder electrons stay where they belong The digital image will look better with fewer stray electrons running about in the sensor creating less stray noise.

Electrons in a modern camera are like restless cattle that won't always stay in line. In the cold, electrons wander off their paths - designed for them by circuit designers. They wander off their paths less because they are cold and less active, like a cold cow will move less and try to save energy, those electrons behave a little better in the cold.

A cold electron environment, or cold dark currents in a camera, will give a cleaner signal.

There's a great temptation to setup a system in the cold weather to do the difficult work in the cold, but it's not the same as observing with the naked eye at the eyepiece. The cold weather can wake you up with fresh air in the lungs, a brisk rush of winter, waking an observer up, under the stars.

If you take decent astro photos, in the winter that can be a plus. One can play with those photos with image software and try to improve them and bring out subtle details the eye can't capture.

The forth dimension, a long exposure of time brings out a lot more details in the image when you use a nice telescope and camera setup. Those long exposures offer a chance to see much more than the eye can see. More detail, fainter objects and often more color as well. When your done, you can have a record of you observing session and show it to others. That's half the fun of observing.

Astronomy is a lot of fun when the skies are clear. I'm starting to feel sleepy now so it's time to post this and get some rest.


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