Covering information that shouldn't be caught out in the open.
Covering information that shouldn't be caught out in the open.
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Clustermap added Oct. 15, 2007 Other Diaries
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March 29, 2008 The absurdity of "Earth Hour" Omigawd, it's Global Warming! We have to do something!!! Wait, I know, we'll just turn out the lights! (But only for a little while, otherwise it gets too inconvenient). The touchy-feely crowd is going gaga for "Earth Hour." That hour, once a year, this Saturday night, when we're all supposed to turn off the lights, the TV, the computer (even Google went "dark" to "remind" us of the blessed event)
and (I'm not making this up) stay home and play board games by candlelight. Sydney, Australia was among the first.
And then, I suppose, an hour later, the now totally empowered, indeed enlightened Lord Mayor turned the lights to the bridge and opera house on again. It's billed as "a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change. As in "OK, I'm aware already, let's turn on the lights and party!!!" This whole thing is patently absurd because:
I'm going to go outside to fool with my telescope tonight, but I can just about guarantee that this gesture will make an absolutely indetectable dent in night-sky illumination. I know this because I've been out at 3 AM, and despite most of the population being sound asleep (in the dark), the sky is no darker than at 8 or 9 PM. The light pollution comes from users (municipal and commercial) who don't care and don't want to turn off. I'm going to compromise. I'm going to turn off all the lights and surf the Web using my laptop, because that has batteries so it doesn't use any electricity.
March 27, 2008 International Space Station flyover I managed to image the ISS for a few seconds as it made a twilight pass. I would have gotten a lot more but it drifted out before I could take control with the joystick (it's slow to respond with this telescope model; 5 to 10 sec for inputs to show up on screen). I used Brent Boshart's "Satellite Tracker" program, which has just gone freeware / abandonware with V2.4.8 It may not remain available for much longer; to get it, you have to join the Yahoo support group for Satellite Tracker and look for it in the Files section. If one has registered with the U.S. government's Space Track (also free), one can automatically download satellite data to use in the program. (Here's how they get that data). All except classified satellites, and those are handled manually by downloading the appropriate zip file from Mike McCants' site. (How do amateurs get the data for "secret" satellites? The story is kind of funny. And, there's a basic problem with secret satellites – you can see the things if you just look up. Here's one saga of finding a lost satellite, and losing it again, and the efforts made to hide the things.) Here's the first ISS frame, to give some idea of how big the ISS is on the imager. It turns out I could even see the solar panels visually through my smaller piggybacked scope, an 80mm f/7.5 operating at about 20 power. Note that the longest dimension of the ISS, at 240 ft, is nearly the size of a football field.
And here's the animated GIF, extensively cropped.
Time of pass: 7:12 to 7:22 PM PDT, March 27, 2008. Maximum elevation 54 deg. (Sunset was at 7:11). Equipment details: 12" Meade LX200GPS, Meade 0.33x focal reducer giving EFL ~1000mm, field size 9.6 x 12.8 arcmin (long dimension a little less than half the size of the Moon), Philips ToUcam 740K webcam, captured in K3CCDTools, processed and animated with Photoshop and ImageReady. Camera settings: frame rate 10 fps, exposure 1/1000 sec, brightness 100%, contrast 95%, saturation 100%, gamma 0%, white balance set to "sunlight", gain 60%.
March 20, 2008 Sometimes, you don't have to fake it with Photoshop. My friend Donn Mukensnable's son, Alex, shot this incredible image of the already-eclipsed moon rising within the shadow of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano on February 20th. It was featured on the NASA "Astronomy Picture of the Day" web site for March 1st.
Go here for the spectacular time lapse of the rising, eclipsed moon.
March 18, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke † Word came today that science fiction writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at the age of 90. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=axkmx6LQPGFQ&refer=home http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/books/18cnd-clarke.html?hp http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/03/the-passing-of.html http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1309902,00.html He is perhaps best known to the general public as the co-author, with director Stanley Kubrick, of the screenplay for that director's seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story evolved from Clarke's earlier short story, "The Sentinel." He also proposed the idea of communications satellites as early as 1945, when the closest thing to spacecraft was a primitive ballistic missile. When I was growing up, there were the "Big Three" of science fiction authors: Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. I read everything, by all of them, that I could lay hands on. Science fiction today is a mere shadow of what it was in the '40s, '50's, '60s, and even '70s. It was what it was because other writers had to live up to the standards set by Clarke and his fellow Prometheans. There were giants in those days and we shall not see their like again. Heinlein passed away in 1988, Asimov in 1992. Our vision of the future is a lot dimmer now than it was 40 years ago. 2001, of course, created a vision of space that steered the course of an entire generation – my generation, our generation. A generation, now fast approaching retirement age, that saw Man set foot on the Moon, and then, in the most colossal failure of vision in recorded history, withdraw from the frontier, without taking the next step. My favorite Clarke novel is "Against the Fall of Night." In elementary school, I remember reading Clarke's "The Sunjammer"
in the March, 1964 issue of Boys' Life magazine. It's about a race using solar sails for propulsion. To me, that cover art is typical of Clarke's view of our immediate future in space: a sunlit adventure, a quest for knowledge. The same feeling was conveyed in one of his later novels, "Rendezvous with Rama." In high school, assigned reading even included Clarke's short stories "The Nine Billion Names of God" and "The Star," both of which may be read in their entirety online. A third Clarke on our reading list was "A Walk in the Dark." For those who have never read Clarke before, I envy you.
Asteroid (1620) Geographos Yesterday, I mentioned the Spaceweather site, and its listing of current Near Earth Objects. One of those caught my eye because it is relatively bright – (1620) Geographos. Its nearest approach to Earth was on the night of 16-17 March. I caught it the following night. Geographos, at the time of these exposures, was about 49 lunar distances away, or 0.125 A.U. (astronomical units – 1 AU = the average Earth-Sun distance), or 18.7 million kilometers, or 11.6 million miles, and shining at magnitude 13 – about the limit of detection by eye in a 6-inch telescope. Following is an animated GIF. Exposures were taken for one minute every ten minutes, and automatically stacked by the Meade Envisage software. Telescope was a Meade 12" LX200GPS, 0.63x focal reducer, Meade DSI II Pro camera, exposure time 2 sec per frame. To give some idea of the size of the frame, the long dimension is about 40% of the apparent size of the Moon. You'll see a faint blob move from upper left to lower right.
Some interesting tidbits of information on Geographos. Wikipedia claims it's the most elongated object in the solar system. It's shaped about like a long potato, 5.1 x 1.8 km (3.2 x 1.1 miles). Here's the orbit diagram. With an albedo of nearly 0.33, it's fairly shiny, as rocks go; our Moon has an albedo of about 0.12. A lump of coal has an albedo of... about 0.10, only slightly darker. With all its bright clouds, Earth's albedo is about 0.37. In keeping with the news of the day, and the current theme of asteroids, I checked to see if there was a space rock named for Arthur C. Clarke (there just about has to be). It's (4923) Clarke. Discovered on the same day in 1981 as (5020) Asimov. I just checked, 4923 is very dim at mag. 19.4, it transits just before 5 PM and sets just before midnight. Tough target.
March 17, 2008 Asteroid (5424) Covington, Asteroid (10656) Albrecht, and the end of the world In his Daily Notebook for March 13, telescope and astrophotography author Michael Covington posted a photo of "his" asteroid, (5424) Covington (actually named after an unrelated Canadian radio astronomer). After he had mentioned it the day before, I figured, just for grins, I'd try to image it. So, I got the data online, had Cartes du Ciel plot its position, and drive the telescope to the appointed place. I got something, but I couldn't be sure it was the asteroid because it was ever so slightly displaced from where the program said it should be. Later, when I saw Michael Covington's own image, taken the following night with that one little point of light displaced farther left, I knew I'd gotten it after all. (Compare the two images; north is up in both, but my image scale is slightly larger. Note the bright star in mine, at upper right near text, appears at right center in his, and go from there).
Which prompted Jeff Duntemann to bring up an interesting question. Is there an asteroid with my name on it? Well, lessee... This list should tell us. Yup. (10656) Albrecht. Who was he? Probably no relation. Wikipedia says
JPL has an interesting little utility, the JPL Small-Body Database Browser, that plots minor planets like this. Here's the data on "my" lump of rock. Turns out that this one was discovered relatively recently, in 1971 – heck, I was already using my first home-built telescopes by then. Co-discoverer Tom Gehrels, who shot the discovery plates with the 48" Schmidt telescope at Mt. Palomar, is a well-known name in solar system astronomy, and he's still kicking around. Before becoming an astronomer, Gehrels had a colorful career in the Dutch Resistance in WWII. How many paratrooper/resistance fighter/astronomers can there be? (Sounds like the premise for Buckaroo Banzai). Entering this in my list of asteroids and doing some fiddling with Cartes du Ciel, it turns out that this year, 10656 will be at its closest to us, and brightest (mag. 17.5, just a tad fainter than 5424, above, which is 17.2), within a couple of days of my own birthday. Coincidence or... cosmic conspiracy? 10656 has a rather eccentric orbit, with e = 0.089. That means it has a more elliptical orbit (compared to the Earth's more circular orbit, e = 0.017) and comes significantly closer to the sun at some point. In August 2012, we'll be passing 10656 just as it's closer to its own perihelion – its closest approach to the sun – and at that time, it will be brighter than the upcoming 2008 close approach. It will be 1.89 astronomical units away – about halfway between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Still not close close, but closer than now. It completes its orbit once every 5.65 years. To see what space rocks are currently near Earth, and how far, see Spaceweather. Right now there are three rocks, all less than 20 meters across, listed as passing closer than the Moon. One, as little as 0.2 lunar distance – about twice as far out as your geosynchronous TV satellites. That one is listed as 6 meters in diameter. Not even big enough to leave a mark, according to this nifty meteorite impact simulator. On the other hand, if it's going to be 2012, no point in staying up that late to watch it. Because we all know, the Mayans have told us, the world ends in December 2012. Right around my birthday again. Maybe it doesn't just have my name on it; maybe it has all our names on it! (Moahahahaha....)
March 9, 2008 Asteroid 45 Eugenia (and the Zulu Wars). Last night, asteroid (45) Eugenia passed very close to a brightish star. In fact, along a path just south of me, in northern Mexico, the asteroid actually blocked ("occulted") the star for about 12 seconds. And just north of me, one of the asteroid's moons did the same, for about 0.7 seconds. The third moon occulted for about 0.3 sec in northern Baja California. I couldn't see any of those events, but I did shoot a time-lapse sequence of the asteroid heading pretty much straight at the star. Maps of this occultation track and here. Here is the track for the larger of the two moons, Petit-Prince. Yes, "The Little Prince." Depending on which source you believe, it was indeed named for the prince from the Antoine Saint Exupéry story, who lived on an asteroid. (The prince, not the aviator/writer...) The asteroid itself is named for Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, one of the most gloriously incompetent monarchs in history – the man who made France the only country ever to be defeated by Mexico, (the Foreign Legion still celebrates a lost minor skirmish as their finest moment; you've got to hand it to them); the man who started the Crimean War, the man who decided to pick a fight over who gets to be king of Spain, invaded the Saarland (huh?), and so kicked off the Franco-Prussian war and finalized the unification of Germany under Prussia (and another French defeat). Petit-Prince, according to some, is named for their son (of Napoleon and Eugenie, not France and Mexico... oh, never mind), Napoleon IV, who managed to get himself killed in the Zulu Wars, about five months after the ignominious British defeat at Isandlwana (the film Zulu Dawn) and the glorious minor non-defeat at Rorke's Drift (Zulu). Can't say he wasn't warned. Western Europe probably owes the Zulus a debt of gratitude for making Napoleon IV eligible for a Darwin Award; who knows what damage he might have caused if he had somehow wangled a job as Emperor of France. (This concludes today's tangential history lesson). General info and maps on upcoming asteroid occultations: in general poyntsource and in detail , and at asteroidoccultation. Sky and Telescope story on this "three-fer" (Eugenia, Petit-Prince, and the smaller moon, Petite-Princesse). Eugenia was discovered in 1857. Petit-Prince was the first asteroidal moon to be discovered by a ground-based telescope, in 1998. The first asteroidal moon had been discovered by the Galileo probe in 1993, orbiting (243) Ida. But what's interesting is that there had been hints of such moons from the 1970s, based on just such occultation observations. Equipment details: Meade LX200GPS, polar mounted on Meade Superwedge, imaging through Meade DSI II Pro camera; each frame is a stack of 4-second exposures over one minute, sets of exposures are 10 minutes apart, (i.e. expose from 9:00 to 9:01, wait until 9:10, expose to 9:11, etc). Time lapse set up automatically in the Meade Envisage software (while I watched TV). Saved as jpg images, processed in Photoshop, animated gif created in ImageReady. The sequence will repeat three times and stop. The faint stars in this image are all about magnitude 15. Eugenia is about magnitude 13. The bright star is 5.5. The sequence ended when the view was blocked by trees, or I would have captured the asteroid coming out of the star's glare. The occasional spikes are diffraction spikes caused by nearby power and telephone lines.
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