September 2008 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

M57 +73PSW-3
by daniel turner 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

Mark your calendar for early evening May 7. Their will be a close encounter between the Ring nebula and periodic comet 73P. The comet will be close to earth so its exact position in the sky will depend stongly on your location on the globe. Go to spaceweather.com and use the link at the bottom of the page for "Observable Comets". 73p is in the list and includes orbital elements and a link for daily ephemerides. DT __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Wax them Ski's
by diveboss＠xmission.com 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,430424,00.html

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Jules Verne re-entry video
by Patrick Wiggins 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

Jules Verne re-entry video http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMI696EJLF_index_0.html patrick

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Upheaval Dome - final
by Canopus56 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

Many thanks to Howard Jackman for doing the Photoshop magic on the panorama. Here are the finals. - Kurt http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/observed/Upheaval/Upheaval… (1.5mgs) http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/observed/Upheaval/Upheaval… (63kb) Many thanks againj to all. - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Upheaval Dome - final
by Canopus56 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

Joe wrote: > Very nice! -- Joe Thanks. For others: It helps to sometimes read the camera manual first before going out to take your pictures. I looked at my camera manual for my cheap consumer 5 meg pixel camera's "panorama" mode. Turns out in panorama mode, the camera will "ghost image" the left or right 1/6th of the prior image over the current image LCD display. That way you can line up the current picture with the prior image. The problem with this nice feature that I missed in the field is that in bright daylight illumination, the "ghost image" is pretty much invisible on the LCD display. In a test this morning, using an Orion black observing cloth over my head and the camera, I was able to easily take a series of three properly aligned images covering 120 degs either hand-held or on a tripod. On a tripod was much easier. I have not tested the "ghost image" panorama feature at night on a bright star field from a dark sky site. Three images covering 120 degrees seems to be the limits of panorama images before image rotation distortions inherent in an apparent physical spheriod field-of-view become too pronounced. Beginning with the fourth 40 deg image, inherent image rotation made it impossible to align the fourth and third images. I mention this here should others be interested in taking astronomy related wide-field panoramas and who might have a similar "panorama mode" feature on their camera. An upcoming potential wide-field photo op would be the Oct 1 sunset wide-field conjunction of Venus and the Moon. - Kurt

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Space X launch video
by Patrick Wiggins 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

A private company called SpaceX put their first satellite into orbit a few hours ago. View video compilation here: http://www.spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php patrick

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Upheaval Dome - final
by Canopus56 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

P.S. - If anyone wants to grab the raw versions and have their own try at making another image substituting the woman as the scale person inside of guy-with-video camera, please feel free to do so. - Kurt http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/in/UpheavalUpLd/

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Upheaval Dome - final
by Canopus56 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

Partick wrote: > How many frames did you stitch together to get the final product? I took 6 frames to cover the 120 degs of apparent field in the panorama. I used only 4 of the images in my primitive stitch effort. I don't know who many Howard J used, but it also was probably 4. Siegfried also sent me a version very similar in execution to Howard's. The tough part is somehow getting the far left and right images remapped so they will align with the relatively flat two center images. I have a panorama feature on my cheap camera. I'll have to explore using that next time along with using a tripod. That should obviate the need intensive image processing on the back end. I am very grateful for the rescue of my hand-held images with the help provided here. The guy on the far left side of the frame was part of group of Russian tourists at the overlook. I was only American. There also were two Austrian amateur filmakers and a Spainish group standing in the background off-camera. Speaking of Photoshop reality verses objective reality, I also had the option of using one of Russian guys female traveling companions staring off into the sunset as the "scale person" for the shot, but did not have an image with a sufficently good exposure to be useable. http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/in/UpheavalUpLd/SANY0604.JPG I believe the money shot for this impact crater would be on the next summer solstice. The drainage valley to the northwest has a bearing of 296 degs from the salt intrusion at the center of the crater. That corresponds to the setting azimuth of the Sun on the summer solstice (270 plus 23 1/2 degrees). Next solstice sunset, the Sun will stream up the drainage canyon, brightly illuminating the potash core surrounded by the darkened crater walls. The best spot for such a shot would be on the end of the crater wall seen on the west or left side of the current panorama, using the slight rise at the end of the fin to block the direct western sun. My original 2005 shot plan for this feature was to have a crescent Moon rising at either the northwest or northeast horizons just above the crater rims. Still workin on that one. I mention these shot ideas here should anyone else be in the area and might want to take a stab at it. - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Photoshop assistance on Upheaval Dome panoramasought
by Canopus56 28 Sep '08

28 Sep '08

Rodger wrote: > Kurt, I know that Siegfried Jachmann created a five panorama picture of > Bryce Canyon that we used in the Reflector Magazine article that I wrote. Thanks Rodger, I'll give him a buz. It looks like I shouldn't have done this handheld. There may be too much image rotation in it. I may need to go back and redo it on tripod. - Kurt

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Photoshop assistance on Upheaval Dome panorama sought
by Canopus56 28 Sep '08

28 Sep '08

I am looking for someone to provide some help on creating an Upheaval Dome panorama with the objective of submitting it to Lunar Picture of Day. http://lpod.wikispaces.com/ My raw photos of Utah's Upheaval dome can be found at: http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/in/UpheavalUpLd/ I'd like to build a panorama from shots with an inset of the astronaut orbital photo ISS015_ISS015-E-5983 of the dome. I do not own a copy of Photoshop and am no great wiz at it when I occassionally run it off UofU computers. If someone has the time to generate a panorama, adjusting the gamma between the images, healing the image seams and perhaps window shading the overexposed sky, it would be appreciated. - Kurt canopus56(a)yahoo.com

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