March 2009 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Bahtinov mask
by Canopus56 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Jerry wrote: > For those interested in using a mask to aid in focusing should check > out the Bahtinov mask. Read all of the links and try generating one for your scope. > http://astrojargon.net/MaskGen.aspx Jerry Foote Yes, that is is a nice design. Much more difficult to fabricate in terms of the number of cuts than a Hartmann mask but the Bahtinov mask addresses the drawback of the Hartmann. The Hartmann mask greatly reduces the amount of light passes the aperture and can result in the object that you are trying to focus on simply disappearing from visibility when you install the H-mask. - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Utah-Astronomy Digest, Vol 73, Issue 7
by Robert Taylor 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Are we going to start this pointless debate again? Everyone who believes in Man Made Global Warming line up on the far LEFT Everyone who Believes that Global Warming is part of natural cycle line up on the RIGHT. When the bell rings, everyone start sending links back and forth. Ready - - - GO! Thank you. Now can we get back to Astronomy? Bob Taylor ___________________________ Message: 1 Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:49:40 -0700 From: stormcrow60(a)xmission.com To: utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Global Cooling? Message-ID: <20090303114940.vo3wjyv4ecks4wkc(a)webmail.xmission.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Hi Joe, Although I am not disputing the fact that sunspots and sun activity affects the temperature of our planet... I mean, how could it not? But, for those that say global warming is not man-made are still in denial and try to muck up the water and the truth regarding global warming. For instance, NOAA recently released a global warming report and some right wing newspaper or organization responded (can't remember who it was), while cherry picking data out of the report. They were claiming that NOAA's conclusion was that global warming was natural and not man-made and that Arctic sea ice was growing. However, when the NOAA scientists were informed their study and their data was being taken out of context, they called this organization out and set them straight. These are the deceptive tactics of those who see scientific fact and public opinion turning away from the status quo. These organizations, such as American Heritage Foundation, The Petroleum Institute, CATO and others are "paying" their psuedo-scientists to make these false statements. Why are these organizations doing this? Because they are financially supported by the fossil fuel corporations. They stand to lose billions and billions of dollars in the near future. Whereas NOAA is a government institute. NOAA scientists receive no monetary gain from supporting global warming facts. They will make their 100K/year (or less) no matter what they state. In fact, The Bush admin stifled the real data from global warming reports for years. They even went so far as to edit environmental and global warming reports, so it would reflect the Bush admins viewpoint. I mean, its like denying that evolution is real. These institutes that try to deceive the public are the same ones that lied to us about WMD's in Iraq, allowed the Hurricane Katrina fiasco to occur and got us into the economic fix we are in today with their ponzi schemes. They even denied we were even in a recession during the presidential campaign. Did you notice the "R" word was not uttered during the campaign and only emerged afterward? Then it was told to the public that we had been in a recession since December 2007? Why? Because this would have made it that much more difficult for John McCain to win the election. How can anyone believe what these organizations say? They spout lies in the media on a daily basis. Now I know some of you will retort, or wonder why I am saying this on the Utah Astronomy blog. But this is scientific fact, and it affects our planet, the only one we know of in the cosmos that supports life... intelligent life. Also realize I am only responding to the initial link to Joes article, which in itself had this particular paragraph: "Last year brought a reverse in the trend of rising global temperatures, reports the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA branch in New York City. "Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000," the institute added. Its report was issued on Dec. 16, 2008, and updated on Jan. 13. It may seem a paradox, but 2008 also was the ninth-warmest year since weather observers began making careful measurements in 1880. That's because, while 2008 was cooler, it was still part of a period of generally high temperature." I believe global warming is the largest threat to humans and our civilization. 98% of U.S. and international scientists and international scientific organizations will agree with me. The only ones that do not are on the fossil fuel industry payroll. Thanks for your time. Jon

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Sun Spot Activity
by erikhansen＠TheBlueZone.net 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Hi All, I found this passage at the end of the wiki page on sun spot obseravtions "Sunspot research was dormant for much of the 17th and early 18th centuries because of the Maunder Minimum, during which no sunspots were visible for some years; but after the resumption of sunspot activity, Heinrich Schwabe in 1843 reported a periodic change in the number of sunspots. Since 1991, the Royal Observatory of Belgium keeps track of sunspots as the World data center for the Sunspot Index." It seems most sunspot activity during the time (17th and early 18th century) was mostly derived or extrapolated and not directly observed. Most data prior to the 17th century was derived from carbon dating and tree rings. Erik

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Happy square root day
by Patrick Wiggins 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

It's 3 3 9 Wont have another until 4 4 16 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090303/ap_on_fe_st/odd_square_root_day patrick :)

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Colorful Doubles - Mon to Cnc
by Canopus56 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Jim wrote: > After I looked up the HIP# (sorry my planetary software only has > a partial list of SAOs) I went outside all excited, but quickly > got disappointed to find the high thin clouds had been replaced > by heavier ones. I will be watching for an opening later on in March. Got to curb your enthusiasum for this weather constrained time of year. http://www.weather.gov/sat_tab.php?image=ir I can easily port HD numbers from my master list in Astroplanner. I don't have the HIP cross-references easily accessible. Would the HD cross-references be of any help for you? - Kurt P.S. - If you have Astroplanner, I can also just upload the apd file.

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Tribune Astronomy Blog posts and a plea
by Canopus56 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Sheena, > Well, it's that time of year. The editors at the paper are going > through and eliminating blogs that don't have high readership or > reader interaction (ie comments). It's unclear to me what we need to do to generate a click record for your management's stat tracking on your blog, The Final Frontier. Is it: a) Posting comments b) Subscribing to the RSS feed c) Other? I generally hit the rss subscribe, read it regularly and leave it at that. Is the pass/fail test for the Trib editors posting comments? - Thanks, Kurt http://blogs.sltrib.com/frontier/

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Busy!
by Chuck Hards 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Hi friends, I noticed tonight that there are some *54* Utah-astronomy threads that I haven't had time to open in the last month, and all the replies to each!! My work schedule has been a killer since mid-December. So if you want to reach me, use my yahoo address (or the phone) for a while because, while I'm not unsubscribing or turning off my list messages, it's obvious that I don't have time to read it all. Too many interesting subjects! I only use this address for Utah-astronomy messages, nothing else. Thanks for understanding, I'll check in more often when I can come up for air, in the meantime it's going to be hit-and-miss. How do you people have the time for it? Are you all retired? I'm always amazed, you guys are supermen. TTYL.

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Bahtinov mask
by Jerry Foote 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

For those interested in using a mask to aid in focusing should check out the Bahtinov mask. Read all of the links and try generating one for your scope. http://astrojargon.net/MaskGen.aspx Jerry Foote ScopeCraft, Inc. 4175 E. Red Cliffs Dr. Kanab, UT 84741 435-899-1255 jfoote(a)scopecraft.com

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Kepler Project Launches Friday
by Jay Eads 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Kepler will launching on Friday via a Delta II rocket to begin its 3 1/2 year study of planets in other systems, some that may harbor life. Here's an article I found today on it from the San Jose Mercury News: http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_11815817?nclick_check=1 Can't wait to find what they find or don't find, though I think they may find more than what they think. Jay

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Colorful Doubles - Mon to Cnc
by Canopus56 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Jim asked: > After I looked up the HIP# (sorry my planetary software only has a partial list of SAOs) > I went outside all excited, but quickly got disappointed to find the high thin clouds > had been replaced by heavier ones. I sorry, I forgot we went through this on the Gem doubles list. Here's a quick, down and dirty SAO to HIP cross-reference list ported from Simbad. I don't use HIP numbers, so let know if they are not right. Many of the stars on the list also have Bayer and Flamsteed ids. The SAO-HIP numbers are mostly of use to decode the Struve numbers into something you can use in a hand-controller. This is the raw list before narrowing, so you will see SAO to HIP cross references for stars that are not on the narrowed list. The list is by ascending SAO number. After I finishing narrowing the rest of the list for doubles in Cnc, I'll incorporate the HIP numbers into the master list. Clear Skies - Kurt ------------------------------------------------------ SAO "h:m:s" "d:m:s" HIP ------------------------------------------------------ 1 SAO61125 08 54 14.731 +30 34 44.81 43721 1 SAO61177 08 59 32.654 +32 25 06.81 44154 1 SAO61202 09 01 24.129 +32 15 08.27 44307 1 SAO79928 08 05 37.057 +27 31 47.05 39607 1 SAO80416 08 46 41.821 +28 45 35.63 43103 2 SAO80416 08 46 39.980 +28 45 54.21 43100 SAO80425 Not Found - Is gam Cnc 1 SAO80585 09 01 48.839 +27 54 09.34 44342 1 SAO95659 06 25 28.174 +14 43 19.17 30564 1 SAO95766 06 31 09.563 +11 15 04.95 31066 2 SAO95766 06 31 09.627 +11 15 20.96 120003 1 SAO97645 08 12 12.726 +17 38 51.97 40167 1 SAO97646 08 12 12.726 +17 38 51.97 40167 1 SAO97881 08 31 35.730 +18 05 39.91 41822 1 SAO98013 08 39 50.716 +19 32 26.94 42497 1 SAO98020 08 40 22.087 +19 40 11.78 42549 1 SAO98021 08 40 22.087 +19 40 11.78 42549 1 SAO98230 08 55 22.881 +17 13 52.59 43811 1 SAO98267 08 58 29.222 +11 51 27.72 44066 1 SAO113810 06 23 46.085 +04 35 34.31 30419 2 SAO113810 06 23 46.501 +04 35 44.92 30422 1 SAO114258 06 40 58.661 +09 53 44.71 31978 1 SAO114266 06 41 09.415 +08 59 05.01 31996 1 SAO115756 07 39 18.118 +05 13 29.98 37279 1 SAO115981 07 49 29.786 +03 13 15.61 38189 2 SAO115981 07 49 30.759 +03 13 31.77 38193 1 SAO134618 07 24 01.284 -03 58 43.95 35896 2 SAO134618 07 24 00.318 -03 58 40.09 35895 1 SAO135173 07 50 59.233 -03 07 15.48 38313 1 SAO135190 07 52 08.461 -03 03 14.88 38410 1 SAO135505 08 06 27.413 -09 14 40.05 39675 2 SAO135505 08 06 26.300 -09 14 14.32 39673 1 SAO135551 08 08 35.648 -02 59 01.63 39863 1 SAO152363 07 05 49.640 -10 39 36.29 34234 1 SAO173349 07 16 36.834 -23 18 56.14 35210 2 SAO173349 07 16 38.356 -23 18 39.38 35213

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