Skies are supposed to be clearing up tonight.
One of the Faac club members wanted to open up the observatory, so we are opening it up.
Greg
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Happy Father's day. . . we may be open briefly when it gets dark out tonight
There's a slight chance I'll open up the observatory tonight. It depends on the weather and how my day goes. Today is Father's day. We opened up the observatory and I didn't make an announcement because some members of the club seemed interested in observing and I thought we might have a fairly good turnout. I also met a few people while out and about during the day Saturday and mentioned to them that the observatory would be open. None of the public showed up.
Today the skies may be fairly clear. Last night the skies were plagued with high altitude clouds after 11:20PM and maybe even a bit earlier. We saw good detail in the surface of Mars and saw Saturn as well with fairly good detail. We actually had three key keepers and two FAAC astronomers out last night. We spent much of the time talking about astronomy and listened to several good stories from different members about different topics, like the Messier list and the history of it. We also looked at Tim Campbell's Flickr photograph page and he showed us some photos and discussed some photography techniques he used. It was a pretty nice and easy going time at the observatory.
Tim Dey, Tim Campbell, Dan Barriball, Greg Knekleian (me) and Joe Bostic was out at the observatory. I arrived a bit late at 10PM, but Tim Campbell had the observatory already open as he is one of the key keepers, and also our Ford Amateur Astronomy Club president. We had a pretty good time and the mosquitoes didn't bother us to much. Temperatures were a bit on the chilly side and there were a lot of fireworks being set off by locals and at least a half dozen Chinese lanterns being launched locally, while we had the observatory open.
I left at 11:45PM and ran some errands. I think the observatory closed around midnight. I took a picture of the moon as it was rising, one day after being a full moon. The moon lit up the sky quite a bit once it was rising and the clouds started to cover and move in from the north. We also saw the International Space Station fly overhead. It actually flew well north below Polaris and toward Detroit's eastern shoreline. It disappeared in the trees as it grew a bit dimmer. We saw the ISS with a couple of pairs of binoculars. We only noticed it during part of it's flight over the horizon and it was out for a couple of minutes while we looked at it with binoculars.
Greg
Today the skies may be fairly clear. Last night the skies were plagued with high altitude clouds after 11:20PM and maybe even a bit earlier. We saw good detail in the surface of Mars and saw Saturn as well with fairly good detail. We actually had three key keepers and two FAAC astronomers out last night. We spent much of the time talking about astronomy and listened to several good stories from different members about different topics, like the Messier list and the history of it. We also looked at Tim Campbell's Flickr photograph page and he showed us some photos and discussed some photography techniques he used. It was a pretty nice and easy going time at the observatory.
Tim Dey, Tim Campbell, Dan Barriball, Greg Knekleian (me) and Joe Bostic was out at the observatory. I arrived a bit late at 10PM, but Tim Campbell had the observatory already open as he is one of the key keepers, and also our Ford Amateur Astronomy Club president. We had a pretty good time and the mosquitoes didn't bother us to much. Temperatures were a bit on the chilly side and there were a lot of fireworks being set off by locals and at least a half dozen Chinese lanterns being launched locally, while we had the observatory open.
I left at 11:45PM and ran some errands. I think the observatory closed around midnight. I took a picture of the moon as it was rising, one day after being a full moon. The moon lit up the sky quite a bit once it was rising and the clouds started to cover and move in from the north. We also saw the International Space Station fly overhead. It actually flew well north below Polaris and toward Detroit's eastern shoreline. It disappeared in the trees as it grew a bit dimmer. We saw the ISS with a couple of pairs of binoculars. We only noticed it during part of it's flight over the horizon and it was out for a couple of minutes while we looked at it with binoculars.
Greg
Friday, May 2, 2014
I've been experimenting with 3d imaging techniques while waiting for better weather.
I've been experimenting with ways that I might be able to add filters and masks to some of the telescopes inside the observatory and create a virtual binocular telescope. This would in theory have a true stereo view and be useful for observing the moon. It would work a bit differently than my binocular telescope, but might allow some interesting features which we have not seen at HJRO for public viewing options.
More on this when I find out more and complete more experiments.
Most of these experiments involve my telescopes at home at this time and when I get some of the techniques perfected (if I get them perfected) I'm hoping to apply them to the telescopes inside the observatory for some observing sessions which others can enjoy.
More on this when I find out more and complete more experiments.
Most of these experiments involve my telescopes at home at this time and when I get some of the techniques perfected (if I get them perfected) I'm hoping to apply them to the telescopes inside the observatory for some observing sessions which others can enjoy.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Received a comment from Tim Campbell about the Saturn images, chromatic color bleeding
Tim mentioned that the red and blue channels were out of alignment and there is a color alignment tool inside Registax that can be used to correct the offset colors.
I did that and reprocessed the Saturn photos.
Here is Saturn again, but with the colors aligned. This brings out more detail. I used virtually the same settings to process this, but changed my neat image approach a little bit. I'll update the other images in the previous post later on my laptop.
More detail :
The color channels can also be changed using advanced imaging programs like photoshop. One would have to split out the channels into layers from a one shot color tiff. Then align them as separate color channels. Registax did a pretty good job aligning the channels and it did this automatically. All I had to do was draw a box around the object from an rgb align dialog and Registax did all the work doing the alignment.
Not bad for free software off the net (Registax).
Neat image is not free however and can be bought as a stand alone piece of software or as a photoshop plug in.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I did that and reprocessed the Saturn photos.
Here is Saturn again, but with the colors aligned. This brings out more detail. I used virtually the same settings to process this, but changed my neat image approach a little bit. I'll update the other images in the previous post later on my laptop.
More detail :
The color channels can also be changed using advanced imaging programs like photoshop. One would have to split out the channels into layers from a one shot color tiff. Then align them as separate color channels. Registax did a pretty good job aligning the channels and it did this automatically. All I had to do was draw a box around the object from an rgb align dialog and Registax did all the work doing the alignment.
Not bad for free software off the net (Registax).
Neat image is not free however and can be bought as a stand alone piece of software or as a photoshop plug in.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Saturn captured early this morning at 625x and 1251x
Captured some AVI movie files using backyard EOS and the Canon t1i on the back of the c14.
The planet looked really nice in the eyepiece, but probably would have looked even better the night before as seeing conditions were about 3 times worse this morning.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
The planet looked really nice in the eyepiece, but probably would have looked even better the night before as seeing conditions were about 3 times worse this morning.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Capture and process of Mars at 1251x, 1:08am 4-20-2014
Update I just realized I calculated the powers wrong in the original listing and graphic. This was calculated without the barlow lens, so my powers are stated at 625x but should be 1251x. I'm going to change this listing and the graphical photo soon.
I opened up at the last minute without knowing how long I'd be out at about 10pm last night. I emailed a few Faac members or texted them. I thought I'd be out for one or two hours. Nobody showed up as a visitor. I had a lot of fun looking at Jupiter and Mars and tried to capture both of these planets with my canon EOS to get a good photo.
The results of the last capture and some afternoon processing are shown below.
- Mars at 1251x.
Some details
- Should calculate power for Canon EOS t-mounted on C14 as follows 3911mm focal length times 2 divided by 50, times 1.6 for 3/4 frame sensor giving 1251x.
- Used Backyard EOS on a laptop with the Canon EOS t1i.
- Captured a 400 frame AVI movie.
- Processed it a bit on a Asus laptop using Registax 6 (this software is free off the internet.)
- Exported the image as a tiff file, imported it and processed further using Neat Image noise reduction on a Macintosh computer
- Created the chart on the iPad with a Mars Atlas Map screen shot from the same time frame.
As you can see my image is a little dark compared to the chart.
Click on the photo below to see a bigger image.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I opened up at the last minute without knowing how long I'd be out at about 10pm last night. I emailed a few Faac members or texted them. I thought I'd be out for one or two hours. Nobody showed up as a visitor. I had a lot of fun looking at Jupiter and Mars and tried to capture both of these planets with my canon EOS to get a good photo.
The results of the last capture and some afternoon processing are shown below.
- Mars at 1251x.
Some details
- Should calculate power for Canon EOS t-mounted on C14 as follows 3911mm focal length times 2 divided by 50, times 1.6 for 3/4 frame sensor giving 1251x.
- Used Backyard EOS on a laptop with the Canon EOS t1i.
- Captured a 400 frame AVI movie.
- Processed it a bit on a Asus laptop using Registax 6 (this software is free off the internet.)
- Exported the image as a tiff file, imported it and processed further using Neat Image noise reduction on a Macintosh computer
- Created the chart on the iPad with a Mars Atlas Map screen shot from the same time frame.
As you can see my image is a little dark compared to the chart.
Click on the photo below to see a bigger image.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Mars image from 4-18-2014
Here's one of the images we took.
Stacked about 50 out of 600 frames. The level of detail we took may not have been sufficient enough for me to orient the image to match the map from a Mars iPad app.
Image video file captured using Backyard EOS.
Conditions were poor but Mars is near opposition.
The graphic on the original post states this is at 125x but I didn't take into account the 2x barlow lens, so this was actually taken at 250x. Will update graphic soon.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Stacked about 50 out of 600 frames. The level of detail we took may not have been sufficient enough for me to orient the image to match the map from a Mars iPad app.
Image video file captured using Backyard EOS.
Conditions were poor but Mars is near opposition.
The graphic on the original post states this is at 125x but I didn't take into account the 2x barlow lens, so this was actually taken at 250x. Will update graphic soon.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Friday, April 18, 2014
Conditions were far worse than expected for Friday night viewing.
I took a nap and overslept. I woke up and found out my voicemail on my phone was full. I left my phone in another room as well so I didn't hear it when I was napping. I left my house around 10pm and found both Tim's and a new Faac member at HJRO. The sky was mostly cloudy with winds and haze not helping the views. They were looking at Jupiter. It seemed the clouds were clearing a bit, but we had somewhat poor seeing with no real improvement over a 25mm plossl with any higher powered eyepiece, when using the c14. Also the view may have even improved a bit using a lower powered 32mm eyepiece. So seeing conditions were fairly poor. Or perhaps I should say details delivered were poor. The seeing wasn't good, but the movement, from seeing wasn't as extreme as I've seen on some really bad nights with high winds.
I saw much better views of Jupiter in sky conditions a few days earlier in the week. If the seeing is bad we can still try to take an image or AVI movie of a planet and try to process that collection of stills and create a decent photo.
I tried this and used backyard EOS to capture some AVI movie files.
Here is one of the photos I processed of Jupiter below. This image is not very good. It looks a bit better than what we were seeing most of the time at the eyepiece, but it's not nearly as good as I hoped it would have been.
I would have taken a much better image of Jupiter at the end of the science night session earlier last week, when seeing was excellent, but I didn't have a camera with me at that time.
If you double click the image below you'll see a larger image in your browser.
Mars looked much better than I expected it would look. Mars is near opposition right now, which means it's giving great views through nice high powered telescopes. . . If you get a chance to see Mars, now is a good time to see it.
I'll post a photo of Mars in my next blog entry.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I saw much better views of Jupiter in sky conditions a few days earlier in the week. If the seeing is bad we can still try to take an image or AVI movie of a planet and try to process that collection of stills and create a decent photo.
I tried this and used backyard EOS to capture some AVI movie files.
Here is one of the photos I processed of Jupiter below. This image is not very good. It looks a bit better than what we were seeing most of the time at the eyepiece, but it's not nearly as good as I hoped it would have been.
I would have taken a much better image of Jupiter at the end of the science night session earlier last week, when seeing was excellent, but I didn't have a camera with me at that time.
If you double click the image below you'll see a larger image in your browser.
Mars looked much better than I expected it would look. Mars is near opposition right now, which means it's giving great views through nice high powered telescopes. . . If you get a chance to see Mars, now is a good time to see it.
I'll post a photo of Mars in my next blog entry.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Will be open tonight at 9pm
The observatory will be open tonight at 9pm.
Objects of interest include Jupiter and Mars. The moon will rise around 12:15pm and that will decrease the visibility of faint objects in the sky as it's almost full and fairly bright.
Anyone can visit the observatory when it's open. Children under 18 need to bring a parent or guardian when we don't have teachers present.
Tim Campbell and Dr. Timothy Dey should be at the observatory much of the time. I may be out there for an hour or so. The observatory will likely be open until about midnight. Hours are often dependent on astronomy club members desires to stay out and observe so sometimes we stay open much later than advertised and enjoy observing.
Some teachers were notified about our being open so some student and their parents may arrive. Depending on those who show up the program or what's available can change. Sometimes if nobody shows up the few astronomers present end up imaging. We often do more visual observing when many new guests arrive.
Below is a partial image of the sun that I took through our solar telescope at HJRO last week when nobody could show up to observe.
I took this image using a digital camcorder through an eyepiece. To get a decent image the camcorder had to zoom in a bit and we are only seeing part of the sun. We use safe solar telescopes when observing the sun. Please don't observe the sun unless you are using a safe solar telescope, often sold by astronomy stores found on the internet.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Objects of interest include Jupiter and Mars. The moon will rise around 12:15pm and that will decrease the visibility of faint objects in the sky as it's almost full and fairly bright.
Anyone can visit the observatory when it's open. Children under 18 need to bring a parent or guardian when we don't have teachers present.
Tim Campbell and Dr. Timothy Dey should be at the observatory much of the time. I may be out there for an hour or so. The observatory will likely be open until about midnight. Hours are often dependent on astronomy club members desires to stay out and observe so sometimes we stay open much later than advertised and enjoy observing.
Some teachers were notified about our being open so some student and their parents may arrive. Depending on those who show up the program or what's available can change. Sometimes if nobody shows up the few astronomers present end up imaging. We often do more visual observing when many new guests arrive.
Below is a partial image of the sun that I took through our solar telescope at HJRO last week when nobody could show up to observe.
I took this image using a digital camcorder through an eyepiece. To get a decent image the camcorder had to zoom in a bit and we are only seeing part of the sun. We use safe solar telescopes when observing the sun. Please don't observe the sun unless you are using a safe solar telescope, often sold by astronomy stores found on the internet.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Didn't open up tonight
Was open last night very late, to do some configuration tests for future Planetary photography using the Stellacam.
The setup didn't go as smooth as I hoped.
Tonight there was a slight chance I'd open up but the weather wasn't going to offer great skies. I fell asleep taking a nap at 9pm with a very sore back ache. My short nap turned into a long nap and I wok up at 2am.
Watched some Netflix. A video about histories mysteries, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Then wrote up a bunch of stuff on my laptop, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Saw the sky was still clear, but I'm not gong out. . .
There are other events happening away from HJRO and it's supposed to rain this Thursday evening, so I don't think I'll be opening up HJRO Thursday night.
I might open up Friday, but many of the Faac members may be out at the school outreach event out near novi. That's a bit far for me to drive to, with HJRO nearby. . . So I might open up Friday. . . I'm kind of playing it by ear, as I've been pretty busy with other things like getting my tax refund finished.
I have a huge todo list right now and need to get a bunch of normal things done. I've been reading up a bit and studying mirror building techniques this week. . . Mostly to screen stuff out there because a new member had some mirror building questions.
There is a lot of stuff out there on mirror building, most of it is in the form of quick tips, on YouTube videos for example. They cover different techniques and ideas, but it's kind of experimental and something that one learns bh doing the process. The old school way of building telescopes was more defined. There seems to be a lot more talk about newer techniques and different newer ideas, which of course may work better, but are really much less standardized and less defined. . . Compared to the old ways of doing things. We used to for example use two mirror blanks two piece of glass one being the mirror tool and the other the mirror. With two identical piece of glass being the same size, the technique was pretty much standardized. With newer techniques to save on cost or do advanced mirrors, there is a lot of talk about sub diameter mirror tools, smaller sized tools that are smaller than the main mirror one grinds for a telescope. There is a lot of talk about making a tool out of plaster. This to save on the cost of having a mirror blank or tool that costs as much as your mirror does. To sve money mirror builders create a tool out of plaster or some use metal tools from barbell weights, etc. These different techniques save money but are much different and create different experimental techniques.
Most of the guys in the FAAC club that built mirrors built them a long time ago, and they don't build them now, because they don't want to do the physical work and strain their backs with a lot of long grinding and polishing techniques. It's much faster to buy a finished mirror or repurpose a mirror from a telescope and build a new telescope design. So a lot of modern do it yourself builders, use a mirror they buy and just assemble and built the tube or frame of the telescope.
Some members of the FAAC club build or machine telescope parts as well. These guys of course have a lot of shop and machine experience, so they can build some really wonderful devices and parts for astronomy.
A few members build parts for telescopes and sell them to the public as well.
One club members builds parts as a side business called Telescope Support Systems. Another member of Faac, Eric Webster, builds custom dobsonian telescopes known as Webster Telescopes, build here in Detroit. Webster telescopes builds telescopes with mirrors created by premium telescope mirror builders who build customized mirrors for high end amateur astronomers. Mirror builders like Mike Lockwood, or Carl Zambuto. These mirror builders build large mirrors which are very close to being perfect mirrors and are very expensive. .
There are perhaps less than a half dozen premium mirror builders in the northern hemisphere. There may be some optical shops that gild premium mirrors as well, which don't have the name of the builder prominently known. Some custom mirror building companies, of course may build mirrors with very high quality, custom telescopes that are very high priced and end up being built for observatories or NASA projects. These systems are generally priced well out of the range of most amateur astronomers.
I'm starting to get into rambling on about mirror building now, so I'll stop writing. . . Time for me to take another nap.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
The setup didn't go as smooth as I hoped.
Tonight there was a slight chance I'd open up but the weather wasn't going to offer great skies. I fell asleep taking a nap at 9pm with a very sore back ache. My short nap turned into a long nap and I wok up at 2am.
Watched some Netflix. A video about histories mysteries, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Then wrote up a bunch of stuff on my laptop, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Saw the sky was still clear, but I'm not gong out. . .
There are other events happening away from HJRO and it's supposed to rain this Thursday evening, so I don't think I'll be opening up HJRO Thursday night.
I might open up Friday, but many of the Faac members may be out at the school outreach event out near novi. That's a bit far for me to drive to, with HJRO nearby. . . So I might open up Friday. . . I'm kind of playing it by ear, as I've been pretty busy with other things like getting my tax refund finished.
I have a huge todo list right now and need to get a bunch of normal things done. I've been reading up a bit and studying mirror building techniques this week. . . Mostly to screen stuff out there because a new member had some mirror building questions.
There is a lot of stuff out there on mirror building, most of it is in the form of quick tips, on YouTube videos for example. They cover different techniques and ideas, but it's kind of experimental and something that one learns bh doing the process. The old school way of building telescopes was more defined. There seems to be a lot more talk about newer techniques and different newer ideas, which of course may work better, but are really much less standardized and less defined. . . Compared to the old ways of doing things. We used to for example use two mirror blanks two piece of glass one being the mirror tool and the other the mirror. With two identical piece of glass being the same size, the technique was pretty much standardized. With newer techniques to save on cost or do advanced mirrors, there is a lot of talk about sub diameter mirror tools, smaller sized tools that are smaller than the main mirror one grinds for a telescope. There is a lot of talk about making a tool out of plaster. This to save on the cost of having a mirror blank or tool that costs as much as your mirror does. To sve money mirror builders create a tool out of plaster or some use metal tools from barbell weights, etc. These different techniques save money but are much different and create different experimental techniques.
Most of the guys in the FAAC club that built mirrors built them a long time ago, and they don't build them now, because they don't want to do the physical work and strain their backs with a lot of long grinding and polishing techniques. It's much faster to buy a finished mirror or repurpose a mirror from a telescope and build a new telescope design. So a lot of modern do it yourself builders, use a mirror they buy and just assemble and built the tube or frame of the telescope.
Some members of the FAAC club build or machine telescope parts as well. These guys of course have a lot of shop and machine experience, so they can build some really wonderful devices and parts for astronomy.
A few members build parts for telescopes and sell them to the public as well.
One club members builds parts as a side business called Telescope Support Systems. Another member of Faac, Eric Webster, builds custom dobsonian telescopes known as Webster Telescopes, build here in Detroit. Webster telescopes builds telescopes with mirrors created by premium telescope mirror builders who build customized mirrors for high end amateur astronomers. Mirror builders like Mike Lockwood, or Carl Zambuto. These mirror builders build large mirrors which are very close to being perfect mirrors and are very expensive. .
There are perhaps less than a half dozen premium mirror builders in the northern hemisphere. There may be some optical shops that gild premium mirrors as well, which don't have the name of the builder prominently known. Some custom mirror building companies, of course may build mirrors with very high quality, custom telescopes that are very high priced and end up being built for observatories or NASA projects. These systems are generally priced well out of the range of most amateur astronomers.
I'm starting to get into rambling on about mirror building now, so I'll stop writing. . . Time for me to take another nap.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Friday, April 4, 2014
Lake Erie Metropark observing - Beginner's night Saturday night
Our club president in the Ford Amateur Astronomy Club sent out this information about
the first beginners night which will be held this year at Lake Erie Metro Park.
The weather may be very cold tomorrow night so dress up really warm if you plan on being
there. We usually have beginners nights to show people how to operate their telescopes
that they may bring out. I don't know if I'll be doing anything tomorrow at HJRO, I'm
kind of doubting that, but if I do something I'll try to put a post out. I have a friend who
wanted me to see a movie sometime tomorrow and that may eat up most of my free time
and I may not even make it out to the beginner's night.
You'll need to arrive before 10PM to get into the beginners night. If you have a telescope
and have questions about it, you're better off arriving early to meet club members so
they can answer questions about the telescope and suggested operation ideas when it's still
light outside.
Beginner's nights are not necessarily huge public outreaches, with much smaller crowds
arriving so there may be more club telescopes and more time to look through club telescopes
than a person would have in a much larger crowd, like Astronomy At the Beach.
---- Here's part of the FAAC club message regarding tomorrow night.
Greetings everyone!
the first beginners night which will be held this year at Lake Erie Metro Park.
The weather may be very cold tomorrow night so dress up really warm if you plan on being
there. We usually have beginners nights to show people how to operate their telescopes
that they may bring out. I don't know if I'll be doing anything tomorrow at HJRO, I'm
kind of doubting that, but if I do something I'll try to put a post out. I have a friend who
wanted me to see a movie sometime tomorrow and that may eat up most of my free time
and I may not even make it out to the beginner's night.
You'll need to arrive before 10PM to get into the beginners night. If you have a telescope
and have questions about it, you're better off arriving early to meet club members so
they can answer questions about the telescope and suggested operation ideas when it's still
light outside.
Beginner's nights are not necessarily huge public outreaches, with much smaller crowds
arriving so there may be more club telescopes and more time to look through club telescopes
than a person would have in a much larger crowd, like Astronomy At the Beach.
---- Here's part of the FAAC club message regarding tomorrow night.
Greetings everyone!
This Saturday, April 5, is the first "Beginner's Night" of the 2014 observing season and will take place at Lake Erie Metro Park.
(To avoid confusion... most beginner's nights are at Island Lake State
Park -- this event is NOT at Island Lake... it's at Lake Erie. Don't
drive to the wrong place ... that would be bad.)
At the meeting, I mentioned this would be at the Marshlands Museum (the nature center)... THAT HAS CHANGED. We are meeting at the south end of the park in the area they refer to as the "Cove Point Picnic Area". You can find it on this map: http://www.metroparks.com/Multimedia/www.metroparks.com/Files/Maps/Lake-Erie_park.pdf
When you enter the main park entrance, you'll keep to the right and
just keep on going. The logic behind this change is that there would be
no restrooms available to us if we used the museum parking lot (it will
be locked) but Cove Point has local restrooms (not heated) ... and just
around the corner are the marina restrooms (which are heated -- and I'm
told these are open 24 hours all year long).
I
tend to arrive about an hour before sunset. Sunset is at 8:02pm
tomorrow. I may not be there right at 7pm but will certainly arrive
before 7:30pm.
You MUST ENTER THE PARK BY 10pm!
The
park has a one-way entrance drive and one-way exit drive. The gate for
the exit driveway never closes. The gate for the entrance drive DOES
CLOSE. Tomorrow night it will close at 10pm (it would normally close at
8pm during this part of the year, but special arrangements have been
made to keep it open until 10pm for us.) If you plan to arrive late,
you'll need to be in the park before they close the front entrance gate.
The weather forecast looks fantastic. The clouds we have today are expected to break up tomorrow morning and be gone by 9am.
Here's the chart: http://cleardarksky.com/c/LkErMtPkMIkey.html?1
Greg - blog writer continues with comment on latest chart.
The chart looks pretty good, but seeing may be a little less that perfect and there may be
a little bit of cloud cover or haze from time to time. Keep in mind a wind out of the west
means it may be picking up humidity off the lake and that will likely be cold and moist.
Moisture can cause humidity to be worse in the air and that can affect seeing, but light blue
is a pretty good prediction in the clear sky chart. . . read the chart and it's labels for more
details. The things we look for is transparency, dark blue is better, seeing dark blue is better
and cloud cover, dark blue is better. If you see a lot of dark blue on the chart, it's a prediction
of a really good night. Light Blue is pretty decent.
Those arriving early may get some nice views of Jupiter as the sun sets. . . I'm not sure and
kind of doubt I'll be able to make it, but there is a slim chance I can make it. I'm fairly sure
that I won't be able to open up HJRO. This because of other things I'll need to do and I have
to be around the house sometime to get some quality family time in.
Greg - blog writer continues with comment on latest chart.
The chart looks pretty good, but seeing may be a little less that perfect and there may be
a little bit of cloud cover or haze from time to time. Keep in mind a wind out of the west
means it may be picking up humidity off the lake and that will likely be cold and moist.
Moisture can cause humidity to be worse in the air and that can affect seeing, but light blue
is a pretty good prediction in the clear sky chart. . . read the chart and it's labels for more
details. The things we look for is transparency, dark blue is better, seeing dark blue is better
and cloud cover, dark blue is better. If you see a lot of dark blue on the chart, it's a prediction
of a really good night. Light Blue is pretty decent.
Those arriving early may get some nice views of Jupiter as the sun sets. . . I'm not sure and
kind of doubt I'll be able to make it, but there is a slim chance I can make it. I'm fairly sure
that I won't be able to open up HJRO. This because of other things I'll need to do and I have
to be around the house sometime to get some quality family time in.
Friday, March 14, 2014
HJRO has been closed much of the winter, I tested observing from a warm room
I'd like to be efficient and be able to put out a great report and update about astronomy. Unfortunately there isn't much to talk about regarding HJRO from the past few months. I haven't even written an update for our Ford Astronomy Club newsletter. There isn't much to write about, I've been staying away from the large snow banks that blocked access to HJRO's gate most of the winter.
A lot of snow and ice have hindered the opening of the observatory. I've been very busy with ice and snow removal and also working on a hobby video project during the cold winter months. Been dealing with a bit of illness in the family and extra chores due to that as well. So I have not had a lot of free time to go and shovel my way into the gate and shovel a path through the snow to try to open up the observatory. I've done that in the past often with few people showing up after a lot of digging through snow drifts.
I tried to open up early January one afternoon to access the condition at the observatory, and I actually could not open up the door because it was frozen solid with ice. I had to wait for a thaw and melting to pry the door open with a big tug. The weather was poor and more snow followed so I didn't even observe from HJRO.
So basically other distractions and my lack of wanting to observe digging through snow drifts prevented a lot of observing time.
Sometimes the sky was clear and cold nights looked promising. I tried to observe only briefly at home a few nights this winter, but this was unconventional observing. Because I was tired of the cold, and feeling sick a bit some of the time I didn't do any long outdoor observing sessions and decided to try something completely different, which is observing from a warm room looking out into the cold night sky through an open window.
This is a challenge of course with a lot of drawbacks. There are a lot of people that tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't do this. A lot of those reasons are sound and good, because they point out heat and thermal temperature differences will hurt the image quality. Warm air and positive air flow will cause mirage like effects to flow out with the warm air rushing out of you window. These will of course chill your room and ruin the view especially from a telescope. A lot of these objections to observing from inside are true and there are a lot of drawbacks.
To observe n perfect conditions you need less atmospheric disturbance, less thermals, less humidity, less wind. Basically you need to remove the weather altogether. You ideally need no air, and need to be floating in dark space to get great observing. But of course this is impossible. It's a no pain, no gain situation. You need very sparse and rare weather conditions most of the time to get great visual observing. If it's cold out, the air is thin and it's dry, like on a high mountain range in south America, you will get great viewing. Because the air is dry, no moisture and little heat interfere with air currents. There's no clouds, and great views from a mountain top in thin air. But thats a harsh and uncomfortable place to live in. Astronomers sacrifice comfort and spend a great deal of money to find a great astronomy view. We often sacrifice comfort, sleep and dress up for cold weather to get great views.
And of course when your older and want quality views you will perhaps spend more money on a bigger telescope and better optics.
But when your young your learning, maybe using marginal equipment, with optics that are not that good, but passible. You observe when you can and have the joy of just observing and being out, When I was young and probably more resilient I could take the cold better and might not mind the cold as much. When we get older the cold might start to cause our bones to ache more. We want a warm dry retirement. So a cold michigan snowy night doesn't appeal to older observers as much and some dream of retirement to a dry Arizona desert away from city lights for astronomy.
If we want to spend money and have the extra cash we might travel to a warm vacation and observe with our telescope or binoculars that we take along on vacation. There was a winter star party in the Florida Keys last month and some Ford Astronomers spent a week down there observing.
I couldn't go down there. I didn't have the time to do that or the excess money. So I decided to bring Florida to my house. I decided to try to observe a bit from my house. I did a few short observing experiments and tried this a few times. I'm going to report how this went in a short presentation to the Ford Astronomy club at our next meeting.
- Observing through an open window in the winter.
One can observe from inside but there are drawbacks and work arounds that exist. The observing won't be as high a quality as you'd get from moving your gear outside and bundling up.
We sacrifice the quality of the view, for comfort and speed in setting up and tearing down the telescope.
To give a quick summary the seeing quality is quite bad most of the time, with this technique but one can get brief glimpses of good views for a short time, in the middle of much distorted viewing. To reduce distortions I use low power and just look at an object longer waiting for a nice quick view which is brief and fleeting. I can look at the object longer because I'm more comfortable and in a warm room, there is less rush because I'm in a nice warm room. I also can have almost no direct light pollution on my eyes because I use curtains to keep stray light off my eyes. I don't use a fancy EQ tracking tripod, but a simple altAz mount tilted toward the window. It's not even a balance level tripod, but a simple support that is sturdy and my aim and tracking is manually performed. I used a wide field refractor or binoculars. A short wide field telescope works. I don't recommend open tube telescopes for this, or dobsonian Newtonian telescopes. This is better with small refractors, like a wiliams optics 70mm or 80mm telescope. I used my vixen bt80 binocular which worked well with 32mm eyepieces. I tried a nexstar 4se for planetary observing of Jupiter in -3 degree weather. That was not good, I don't recommend a long focal length sct or Maksutov for this kind of observing.
This means I end up looking at a target longer for brief glimpses that are pretty good, but never excellent. It also means that I spend more time looking at a small patch of the sky because the window view is limited. Also I end up using lower powers and never use high power, which means planetary viewing is really bad with this technique. There's a lot of little adjustments one can make and a lot to discover when viewing using this technique. New things to learn. I'll post more about that later.
I think the school system could use a window technique like this for solar observing from the classroom with the proper solar telescope and a simple tracking mount setup. Something mounted on a sash based wedge perhaps. More on this later.
I'm supposed to give a brief ten to twenty minute presentation about this at the meeting and that includes questions from the audience. I threw together my presentation the other day and timed a presentation test and found my presentation a bit to long. 30 slides and 18 minutes without questions and answers. I have to work on revising that so I can quickly relate what I've learned from my observing tests.
- Some quick conclusions from my tests, you results may vary.
Low power small refractors and binoculars work well for indoor observing.
A simple but sturdy alt az tripod is best. This is better for solo observing because you need more eyepiece time to watch and wait for the good views.
Binoculars work great. With two eyes you overcome seeing difficulties a little better.
Turn off heat registers to the room before observing. The room will slowly get colder, when it gets down to about 55 degrees I'd close up.
Look though the upper sash of the window, sliding down the top sash to observe through. Place two tripod legs against the front wall close to the window with one tripod leg back. Raise the tripod to the right height, then extend the inside leg to tilt it closer to the open window. The tripod should be fairly sturdy and have some friction because the head of the mount won't be level, the tripod leans against the window sill to get the lightweight telescope closer to the window opening.
You'll observe from 30 to 60 degrees most of the time, only looking at a few constellations from the porthole like view.
Curtains or thermal drapes can block out the stray light from outside street lights, and also blocks out sone of the winter cold.
These are some of the things I've verified.
Setup and tear down can be 15 seconds and you can observe while your in your pajamas, perhaps adding a coat on. Less time to bundle up and no snow shoveling. So you can spend more time looking through a telescope because your setup and tear down time are reduced. Thats some of my basic conclusions.
Visual observing can be good, but never excellent. This will not provide good images for photography, it's only for visually looking through the telescope. It takes longer so it's better for one observer, not a crowd session. Because you'll need to be on the eyepiece longer. (For crowd viewing setup the telescope outside or use an observatory.)
Also, much of the time I was using low powers, like 26 power on my vixen binoculars. Sometimes 36 power, but found moderately high powers like 70x to be almost useless. So this is more for wide target observing and maybe some lunar observing.
I'll write more updates later.
For the die hard astronomer looking to get the best views, it's still better to bundle up and make the sacrifice to go out into the cold. You'll get better visual views.
But if your hungering for a quick observing fix of the night sky and don't want to venture out in the cold you can get some satisfaction with indoor observing through an open window. I know a few older Faac astronomers who never go out in the winter to observe because they hate the cold. These may get some joy from winter observing through an open window with a little bit of practice.
I found I could easily observe for up to 90 minutes most of the time,with perhaps a sweater or coat near the end of the session. I'd close up in about 30 seconds, and open up the heat duct to allow the room to warm back up.
Note:
(I also observed toward the east and northeast away from prevailing winds, so the wind wasn't blowing into the room.)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
A lot of snow and ice have hindered the opening of the observatory. I've been very busy with ice and snow removal and also working on a hobby video project during the cold winter months. Been dealing with a bit of illness in the family and extra chores due to that as well. So I have not had a lot of free time to go and shovel my way into the gate and shovel a path through the snow to try to open up the observatory. I've done that in the past often with few people showing up after a lot of digging through snow drifts.
I tried to open up early January one afternoon to access the condition at the observatory, and I actually could not open up the door because it was frozen solid with ice. I had to wait for a thaw and melting to pry the door open with a big tug. The weather was poor and more snow followed so I didn't even observe from HJRO.
So basically other distractions and my lack of wanting to observe digging through snow drifts prevented a lot of observing time.
Sometimes the sky was clear and cold nights looked promising. I tried to observe only briefly at home a few nights this winter, but this was unconventional observing. Because I was tired of the cold, and feeling sick a bit some of the time I didn't do any long outdoor observing sessions and decided to try something completely different, which is observing from a warm room looking out into the cold night sky through an open window.
This is a challenge of course with a lot of drawbacks. There are a lot of people that tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't do this. A lot of those reasons are sound and good, because they point out heat and thermal temperature differences will hurt the image quality. Warm air and positive air flow will cause mirage like effects to flow out with the warm air rushing out of you window. These will of course chill your room and ruin the view especially from a telescope. A lot of these objections to observing from inside are true and there are a lot of drawbacks.
To observe n perfect conditions you need less atmospheric disturbance, less thermals, less humidity, less wind. Basically you need to remove the weather altogether. You ideally need no air, and need to be floating in dark space to get great observing. But of course this is impossible. It's a no pain, no gain situation. You need very sparse and rare weather conditions most of the time to get great visual observing. If it's cold out, the air is thin and it's dry, like on a high mountain range in south America, you will get great viewing. Because the air is dry, no moisture and little heat interfere with air currents. There's no clouds, and great views from a mountain top in thin air. But thats a harsh and uncomfortable place to live in. Astronomers sacrifice comfort and spend a great deal of money to find a great astronomy view. We often sacrifice comfort, sleep and dress up for cold weather to get great views.
And of course when your older and want quality views you will perhaps spend more money on a bigger telescope and better optics.
But when your young your learning, maybe using marginal equipment, with optics that are not that good, but passible. You observe when you can and have the joy of just observing and being out, When I was young and probably more resilient I could take the cold better and might not mind the cold as much. When we get older the cold might start to cause our bones to ache more. We want a warm dry retirement. So a cold michigan snowy night doesn't appeal to older observers as much and some dream of retirement to a dry Arizona desert away from city lights for astronomy.
If we want to spend money and have the extra cash we might travel to a warm vacation and observe with our telescope or binoculars that we take along on vacation. There was a winter star party in the Florida Keys last month and some Ford Astronomers spent a week down there observing.
I couldn't go down there. I didn't have the time to do that or the excess money. So I decided to bring Florida to my house. I decided to try to observe a bit from my house. I did a few short observing experiments and tried this a few times. I'm going to report how this went in a short presentation to the Ford Astronomy club at our next meeting.
- Observing through an open window in the winter.
One can observe from inside but there are drawbacks and work arounds that exist. The observing won't be as high a quality as you'd get from moving your gear outside and bundling up.
We sacrifice the quality of the view, for comfort and speed in setting up and tearing down the telescope.
To give a quick summary the seeing quality is quite bad most of the time, with this technique but one can get brief glimpses of good views for a short time, in the middle of much distorted viewing. To reduce distortions I use low power and just look at an object longer waiting for a nice quick view which is brief and fleeting. I can look at the object longer because I'm more comfortable and in a warm room, there is less rush because I'm in a nice warm room. I also can have almost no direct light pollution on my eyes because I use curtains to keep stray light off my eyes. I don't use a fancy EQ tracking tripod, but a simple altAz mount tilted toward the window. It's not even a balance level tripod, but a simple support that is sturdy and my aim and tracking is manually performed. I used a wide field refractor or binoculars. A short wide field telescope works. I don't recommend open tube telescopes for this, or dobsonian Newtonian telescopes. This is better with small refractors, like a wiliams optics 70mm or 80mm telescope. I used my vixen bt80 binocular which worked well with 32mm eyepieces. I tried a nexstar 4se for planetary observing of Jupiter in -3 degree weather. That was not good, I don't recommend a long focal length sct or Maksutov for this kind of observing.
This means I end up looking at a target longer for brief glimpses that are pretty good, but never excellent. It also means that I spend more time looking at a small patch of the sky because the window view is limited. Also I end up using lower powers and never use high power, which means planetary viewing is really bad with this technique. There's a lot of little adjustments one can make and a lot to discover when viewing using this technique. New things to learn. I'll post more about that later.
I think the school system could use a window technique like this for solar observing from the classroom with the proper solar telescope and a simple tracking mount setup. Something mounted on a sash based wedge perhaps. More on this later.
I'm supposed to give a brief ten to twenty minute presentation about this at the meeting and that includes questions from the audience. I threw together my presentation the other day and timed a presentation test and found my presentation a bit to long. 30 slides and 18 minutes without questions and answers. I have to work on revising that so I can quickly relate what I've learned from my observing tests.
- Some quick conclusions from my tests, you results may vary.
Low power small refractors and binoculars work well for indoor observing.
A simple but sturdy alt az tripod is best. This is better for solo observing because you need more eyepiece time to watch and wait for the good views.
Binoculars work great. With two eyes you overcome seeing difficulties a little better.
Turn off heat registers to the room before observing. The room will slowly get colder, when it gets down to about 55 degrees I'd close up.
Look though the upper sash of the window, sliding down the top sash to observe through. Place two tripod legs against the front wall close to the window with one tripod leg back. Raise the tripod to the right height, then extend the inside leg to tilt it closer to the open window. The tripod should be fairly sturdy and have some friction because the head of the mount won't be level, the tripod leans against the window sill to get the lightweight telescope closer to the window opening.
You'll observe from 30 to 60 degrees most of the time, only looking at a few constellations from the porthole like view.
Curtains or thermal drapes can block out the stray light from outside street lights, and also blocks out sone of the winter cold.
These are some of the things I've verified.
Setup and tear down can be 15 seconds and you can observe while your in your pajamas, perhaps adding a coat on. Less time to bundle up and no snow shoveling. So you can spend more time looking through a telescope because your setup and tear down time are reduced. Thats some of my basic conclusions.
Visual observing can be good, but never excellent. This will not provide good images for photography, it's only for visually looking through the telescope. It takes longer so it's better for one observer, not a crowd session. Because you'll need to be on the eyepiece longer. (For crowd viewing setup the telescope outside or use an observatory.)
Also, much of the time I was using low powers, like 26 power on my vixen binoculars. Sometimes 36 power, but found moderately high powers like 70x to be almost useless. So this is more for wide target observing and maybe some lunar observing.
I'll write more updates later.
For the die hard astronomer looking to get the best views, it's still better to bundle up and make the sacrifice to go out into the cold. You'll get better visual views.
But if your hungering for a quick observing fix of the night sky and don't want to venture out in the cold you can get some satisfaction with indoor observing through an open window. I know a few older Faac astronomers who never go out in the winter to observe because they hate the cold. These may get some joy from winter observing through an open window with a little bit of practice.
I found I could easily observe for up to 90 minutes most of the time,with perhaps a sweater or coat near the end of the session. I'd close up in about 30 seconds, and open up the heat duct to allow the room to warm back up.
Note:
(I also observed toward the east and northeast away from prevailing winds, so the wind wasn't blowing into the room.)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday, January 12, 2014
A bit off topic.
The observatory has been closed for some time due to the snow and cold weather. I didn't want to dig it out with a snow shovel to freeze and basically have no visitors.
What can an astronomer do when they can't go to their favorite observing place?
The answer for me was to experiment with observing in extremely cold weather, by braking a cardinal rule of observing, never look out of a window of house.
I wasn't looking through a window pane of glass, but opening a window, and looking out of the opening. That same rule still applies, because air currents and temperature differences can make up a tremendous amount of turbulence. And the heat and cooling down of the optics or more importantly heat moving up the tube even in a closed tube refractor may cause heat to be moving up in a small heat mirage, very small for us but amplified by the optics. What happens?
Well to be brief, without a long write up, the optics cool down and the view gets to be very marginal. One has to close the heat vents to your room to prevent more heat from flowing out of the room.
Low powers for example in the 10 to 26 power range are not all that bad. For a quick wide field fix, it's not to bad. One might use curtains and try to find other blocking methods to limit the air flow over the front of the lens.
I created a long tube of stiff cardboard like paper to fit over the telescope, giving it a long dew shield, in hopes of funneling any hot air from the window around this dew shield instead of in front of a telescope aiming out the window. This helped some, but maybe only improved the image 15 percent at most. The image in colder days with greater temperature differences seems to be even worse because perhaps of a greater temperature difference between the indoors and outside air.
At medium and high powers, views of things like planets, the planet Jupiter were extremely poor. Making a decent telescope operate like a really poor store bought cheap telescope from China, which you can never fully appreciate. The image of Jupiter on a really cold day at medium powers looked almost like a blurry flag, or a blur as large as the moon. The wealthier was cold that day, and I could see heat from a nearby chimney and neighbors furnace flying up near where I was observing. And the heat flow was going 10mph in one direction and then 10 mph in the opposite. So there was a lot of wind turbulence that day that could affect seeing.
When the seeing is better, with lower power, you can see some things clearly maybe as much as 20 percent of the time. That means a brief look for maybe a minute at the eyepiece may only snow 20 seconds of clear viewing interrupted by 40 seconds of blurry viewing. This can be just super short sharp viewing moments, interspaced with a lot of blurry poor image.
Now even with the worse viewing, of maybe 3 percent sharpness or less, for a short fleeting moment I could make out Jupiter's bands, and see a moon close to jupiter just peeking out next to the planet.
Now outside in the subzero cold I might see a stable image much of the time. I didn't have the time to check. Rather than checking outside and freezing and shoveling snow, I tried to take some photos from inside.
The wide field photos were not horrible, most of the time, but they were not good images either. Certainly not much use. Photos of the sun was okay, but not anywhere as sharp as it could be. Solar viewing with a safe solar filter worked okay from inside. I haven't done lunar observing yet.
Of the 33 photos I took of Jupiter only. One turned out sharp, but it was overexposed and I could not pull out any detail.
So my summary is it's like going back in time when all I could afford was a really bad telescope. Viewing out of the window often can take a thousand dollar telescope and make it look like it was bought for $30 from the local Walgreens or CVS, truly poor images most of the time. There are occasional little brief moments when the image is sharp.
Is it worth it? I think it is if you want a quick observing fix and want to stay warm. It works better with binoculars, you can stay warm and safe inside the house and observe. If your not careful and known as an astronomer, your neighbors might think your window peeping however so it's something you'd want to exercise caution doing.
If it's really cold out, the view is even worse than if it's moderately cold out. In some cases with it being really cold, one might be better off observing outside quickly with a simple grab and go telescope. Because the views will be better while your out there and your just taking a quick peek.
I'd say if your setup provides good seeing ten percent of the time, with lower power it's probably worth it to observe for a while from indoors. Your observing targets will be much fewer because you can only look at a part of the sky. Clusters are probably good targets. The sun with a proper safe solar telescope, is probably okay, but you need to be certain your using a safe method. If you have any doubts call a good astronomy store like OPT in California, and verify your observing setup is safe before you use it and damage your eyesight.
The other thing I did was think about and plan to buy a camera for astronomy. But it's really expensive, the setup I want and I decided to do a little testing and purchase a new laptop for video editing, another hobby of mine. I bought a Windows 8 machine with an i7 processor. I'm testing a video editing program with it, and the program seems pretty nice.
But all I can say about that laptop, is the laptop configuration and Windows 8 is very lame. It is horrible. The worse thing about is is random programs opening, because Windows, at least my setup and this laptop wants to open the newer 32 bit graphical applications at the drop of a hat, or actually randomly by hovering actions acting as if they are mouse clicks.
The hovering feature, to select stuff should be called land mine. Because one can rest a mouse cursor anywhere and it may take that hovering over something as a key press. Part of the problem is super creative wannabes wanting a bunch of features based on a mouse hovering over something,
It's like walking in a mine field, and menus open up and programs randomly take over your screen. You may even copy or delete something, because your mouse hovers over something.
It's a complete walking and living nightmare. One is expected to move a mouse around as if it's a mouse in a maze and you cannot leave the mouse on many parts of the screen, but have to find a safe place to leave it, to prevent random actions and programs from running.
Part of the problem may be tied toward laptop manufacturers trying to be cute with many features and gestures on the touch pad as well. But overall I'd have to say these Windows 8 machines from a user interface perspective were designed by clowns or groups of absolute lunatics.
If I'm able to wrestle and tame this system, a video program called Edius looks promising. I just have to figure out a way to have it run and stop all the random insane crazy actions of the laptop that appears to be possessed.
Now some would say, well you don't know what your talking about, but they would be wrong. A good ergonomic interface should have a positive action from the human user to command the computer to do something. The computer should wait and sit for a user action. Each action should be specific in the users mind and easy do to without causing the computer to be confused. With hovering selects, the computer puts the human on a timer, and if you don't do something, the computer will do something automatically. It's like having a psychotic group of people or robots just beat you up randomly without knowing why they are doing it or when they are striking. Windows 8 at least in my case will make you think your laptop was taken over by demons.
There are ways that one can tame the Windows 8 beast, or so these are claimed. Why not setup the computer to work right in the first place and allow users to add the extra features like strange gestures and super sensitive mouse clicks that seem to randomly appear. As a user I don't want a hidden 32 bit program to appear from the windows 8 tablet app in front of my 64 bit desktop app while it's running, and these apps run without a simple way to quit them, sending you into other strange paths to try to get back to what you were doing. It's like having a crazed dictator stab you in the back randomly while your trying to run a computer. What's good about that.
So to conclude this post, I have been toying with astronomy from indoors and trying to tame a crazed computer that was designed by people who should be out of their jobs. Seriously Windows 8 is going to sell a lot more Macintosh computers.
I also had a laptop with Windows 7 behave the same way and I had to tame it and cut back on all the "I wish I had more gestures than the Mac" settings that PC builders throw into their laptop designs.
Focus of a program shouldn't randomly go to some other process that causes the OS to launch a bunch of other programs.
They say Windows 8.1 can solve some of this. Maybe it can, maybe I'll try that upgrade.
I have a cheap windows 7 laptop that I can use for some basic astronomy stuff. I really would like to do everything on a Macintosh system and do as much as I can on one.
In the case of video editing, with Edius, I can import any footage without really any importing time. This means I can edit a ton of video quickly in theory, once I learn the new interface and customize it.
But everything else and even some features of Edius are inferior to the Macintosh experience, and I'm running an old Macintosh MacBook that is five years old. For video in some aspects, Media 100 is still faster than Edius is, and this is on a system that is five years older.
This shows me at least with the work I do how far behind the PC is. It's years behind, and unfortunately going backwards.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
What can an astronomer do when they can't go to their favorite observing place?
The answer for me was to experiment with observing in extremely cold weather, by braking a cardinal rule of observing, never look out of a window of house.
I wasn't looking through a window pane of glass, but opening a window, and looking out of the opening. That same rule still applies, because air currents and temperature differences can make up a tremendous amount of turbulence. And the heat and cooling down of the optics or more importantly heat moving up the tube even in a closed tube refractor may cause heat to be moving up in a small heat mirage, very small for us but amplified by the optics. What happens?
Well to be brief, without a long write up, the optics cool down and the view gets to be very marginal. One has to close the heat vents to your room to prevent more heat from flowing out of the room.
Low powers for example in the 10 to 26 power range are not all that bad. For a quick wide field fix, it's not to bad. One might use curtains and try to find other blocking methods to limit the air flow over the front of the lens.
I created a long tube of stiff cardboard like paper to fit over the telescope, giving it a long dew shield, in hopes of funneling any hot air from the window around this dew shield instead of in front of a telescope aiming out the window. This helped some, but maybe only improved the image 15 percent at most. The image in colder days with greater temperature differences seems to be even worse because perhaps of a greater temperature difference between the indoors and outside air.
At medium and high powers, views of things like planets, the planet Jupiter were extremely poor. Making a decent telescope operate like a really poor store bought cheap telescope from China, which you can never fully appreciate. The image of Jupiter on a really cold day at medium powers looked almost like a blurry flag, or a blur as large as the moon. The wealthier was cold that day, and I could see heat from a nearby chimney and neighbors furnace flying up near where I was observing. And the heat flow was going 10mph in one direction and then 10 mph in the opposite. So there was a lot of wind turbulence that day that could affect seeing.
When the seeing is better, with lower power, you can see some things clearly maybe as much as 20 percent of the time. That means a brief look for maybe a minute at the eyepiece may only snow 20 seconds of clear viewing interrupted by 40 seconds of blurry viewing. This can be just super short sharp viewing moments, interspaced with a lot of blurry poor image.
Now even with the worse viewing, of maybe 3 percent sharpness or less, for a short fleeting moment I could make out Jupiter's bands, and see a moon close to jupiter just peeking out next to the planet.
Now outside in the subzero cold I might see a stable image much of the time. I didn't have the time to check. Rather than checking outside and freezing and shoveling snow, I tried to take some photos from inside.
The wide field photos were not horrible, most of the time, but they were not good images either. Certainly not much use. Photos of the sun was okay, but not anywhere as sharp as it could be. Solar viewing with a safe solar filter worked okay from inside. I haven't done lunar observing yet.
Of the 33 photos I took of Jupiter only. One turned out sharp, but it was overexposed and I could not pull out any detail.
So my summary is it's like going back in time when all I could afford was a really bad telescope. Viewing out of the window often can take a thousand dollar telescope and make it look like it was bought for $30 from the local Walgreens or CVS, truly poor images most of the time. There are occasional little brief moments when the image is sharp.
Is it worth it? I think it is if you want a quick observing fix and want to stay warm. It works better with binoculars, you can stay warm and safe inside the house and observe. If your not careful and known as an astronomer, your neighbors might think your window peeping however so it's something you'd want to exercise caution doing.
If it's really cold out, the view is even worse than if it's moderately cold out. In some cases with it being really cold, one might be better off observing outside quickly with a simple grab and go telescope. Because the views will be better while your out there and your just taking a quick peek.
I'd say if your setup provides good seeing ten percent of the time, with lower power it's probably worth it to observe for a while from indoors. Your observing targets will be much fewer because you can only look at a part of the sky. Clusters are probably good targets. The sun with a proper safe solar telescope, is probably okay, but you need to be certain your using a safe method. If you have any doubts call a good astronomy store like OPT in California, and verify your observing setup is safe before you use it and damage your eyesight.
The other thing I did was think about and plan to buy a camera for astronomy. But it's really expensive, the setup I want and I decided to do a little testing and purchase a new laptop for video editing, another hobby of mine. I bought a Windows 8 machine with an i7 processor. I'm testing a video editing program with it, and the program seems pretty nice.
But all I can say about that laptop, is the laptop configuration and Windows 8 is very lame. It is horrible. The worse thing about is is random programs opening, because Windows, at least my setup and this laptop wants to open the newer 32 bit graphical applications at the drop of a hat, or actually randomly by hovering actions acting as if they are mouse clicks.
The hovering feature, to select stuff should be called land mine. Because one can rest a mouse cursor anywhere and it may take that hovering over something as a key press. Part of the problem is super creative wannabes wanting a bunch of features based on a mouse hovering over something,
It's like walking in a mine field, and menus open up and programs randomly take over your screen. You may even copy or delete something, because your mouse hovers over something.
It's a complete walking and living nightmare. One is expected to move a mouse around as if it's a mouse in a maze and you cannot leave the mouse on many parts of the screen, but have to find a safe place to leave it, to prevent random actions and programs from running.
Part of the problem may be tied toward laptop manufacturers trying to be cute with many features and gestures on the touch pad as well. But overall I'd have to say these Windows 8 machines from a user interface perspective were designed by clowns or groups of absolute lunatics.
If I'm able to wrestle and tame this system, a video program called Edius looks promising. I just have to figure out a way to have it run and stop all the random insane crazy actions of the laptop that appears to be possessed.
Now some would say, well you don't know what your talking about, but they would be wrong. A good ergonomic interface should have a positive action from the human user to command the computer to do something. The computer should wait and sit for a user action. Each action should be specific in the users mind and easy do to without causing the computer to be confused. With hovering selects, the computer puts the human on a timer, and if you don't do something, the computer will do something automatically. It's like having a psychotic group of people or robots just beat you up randomly without knowing why they are doing it or when they are striking. Windows 8 at least in my case will make you think your laptop was taken over by demons.
There are ways that one can tame the Windows 8 beast, or so these are claimed. Why not setup the computer to work right in the first place and allow users to add the extra features like strange gestures and super sensitive mouse clicks that seem to randomly appear. As a user I don't want a hidden 32 bit program to appear from the windows 8 tablet app in front of my 64 bit desktop app while it's running, and these apps run without a simple way to quit them, sending you into other strange paths to try to get back to what you were doing. It's like having a crazed dictator stab you in the back randomly while your trying to run a computer. What's good about that.
So to conclude this post, I have been toying with astronomy from indoors and trying to tame a crazed computer that was designed by people who should be out of their jobs. Seriously Windows 8 is going to sell a lot more Macintosh computers.
I also had a laptop with Windows 7 behave the same way and I had to tame it and cut back on all the "I wish I had more gestures than the Mac" settings that PC builders throw into their laptop designs.
Focus of a program shouldn't randomly go to some other process that causes the OS to launch a bunch of other programs.
They say Windows 8.1 can solve some of this. Maybe it can, maybe I'll try that upgrade.
I have a cheap windows 7 laptop that I can use for some basic astronomy stuff. I really would like to do everything on a Macintosh system and do as much as I can on one.
In the case of video editing, with Edius, I can import any footage without really any importing time. This means I can edit a ton of video quickly in theory, once I learn the new interface and customize it.
But everything else and even some features of Edius are inferior to the Macintosh experience, and I'm running an old Macintosh MacBook that is five years old. For video in some aspects, Media 100 is still faster than Edius is, and this is on a system that is five years older.
This shows me at least with the work I do how far behind the PC is. It's years behind, and unfortunately going backwards.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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