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

Re: [Utah-astronomy] USNO-B1.0
by Joe Bauman 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

Patrick, That sounds exciting. I guess we could put it on an external hard drive -- is that right? What is used to see the images? Is there a special viewer? Thanks, Joe (PS: I gather no telescope class tomorrow!) --- On Sat, 3/28/09, Patrick Wiggins <paw(a)wirelessbeehive.com> wrote: From: Patrick Wiggins <paw(a)wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] USNO-B1.0 To: "utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009, 9:31 PM There is now a local source (in SLC) for the USNO-B1.0 catalog. Being that it tips the scales at about 80 GB I've put off getting it until now (I've been waiting for the price of a suitable hard drive to come down). A few days ago I found where the catalog could be downloaded from and then spoke to Bruce Grim's brother in law who does IT professionally and he agreed to download a master copy. It took 25 hours of download time but he now has it. He sold me a 500 GB drive for $85 installed and copied the catalog to it for free (transferring it to the drive took about half an hour). The transfer is free if you take him your drive. If anyone here would like a copy please let me know and I'll provide contact info. For those who may not have heard about the catalog I'll include a description below. Cheers, patrick USNO-B is an all-sky catalog that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The data were obtained from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken for the various sky surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky coverage, completeness down to V = 21, 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy at J2000, 0.3 magnitude photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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USNO-B1.0
by Patrick Wiggins 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

There is now a local source (in SLC) for the USNO-B1.0 catalog. Being that it tips the scales at about 80 GB I've put off getting it until now (I've been waiting for the price of a suitable hard drive to come down). A few days ago I found where the catalog could be downloaded from and then spoke to Bruce Grim's brother in law who does IT professionally and he agreed to download a master copy. It took 25 hours of download time but he now has it. He sold me a 500 GB drive for $85 installed and copied the catalog to it for free (transferring it to the drive took about half an hour). The transfer is free if you take him your drive. If anyone here would like a copy please let me know and I'll provide contact info. For those who may not have heard about the catalog I'll include a description below. Cheers, patrick USNO-B is an all-sky catalog that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,042,618,261 objects derived from 3,643,201,733 separate observations. The data were obtained from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken for the various sky surveys during the last 50 years. USNO-B1.0 is believed to provide all-sky coverage, completeness down to V = 21, 0.2 arcsecond astrometric accuracy at J2000, 0.3 magnitude photometric accuracy in up to five colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects.

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Colorful Doubles - Mon to Cnc
by Canopus56 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

Thanks, Jim. I'll check the targets out. For right now I'm concentrating on identification and will turn to photographing during a future year. - Kurt Jim wrote: 27Hya (companion)(Spect G8, F5) 09h 16m 54s -08 45' 47" Mag 5.5 & 4.8 Sep 229" P.A.211 Opt Mag 4x N Hya (Spect dF6, dF7) 11h 32m 29s -29 17' 07" Mag 5.8 & 5.8 Sep 9.5" P.A.210 Opt Mag 79x S 651, HR5120, SAO181790 (Spect A3, A5) 13h 37m 03s -26 31' 02" Mag 5.8 & 6.7 Sep 10.2" P.A.190 Opt Mag 74x

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] A Perfect PEC solution (PPEC)?
by Naz & David 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

I have now been using a Telescope Drive Master (TDM) on my Vixen GPD mount for a few months and the results are very impressive. I now have a mount that has a RA "periodic" error of +/-1arcsec. In addition, I built a converter to allow me to have the RA encoder do double duty to provide a signal for the TDM for periodic error correction (<2.5arcsec p-p) and also a signal for my Argo Navis for position information (20,000 tic/rev). To match the RA resolution, I picked up a surplus encoder off ebay and mounted that on the DEC axis to get the same resolution - thanks to Bob Grant for helping me with that challenge! With this combined capability I can quickly polar align to with a few arcmin using the Argo Navis (four star fit), locate objects no hassle to within the same accuracy and do unguided exposures to between 5-10min using the Stellacam3. Hope to show some of you this when I get a chance to attend a star party or two this year (certainly the AstroFest at Bryce!). I've loaded a few images of the kit in my gallery for those interested. Cheers David

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] LED suggestions
by Jim Gibson 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

Chuck, Thanks for the great report. You mentioned a Petzl head lamp. I have a Petzl head lamp among my climbing gear that sounds just like the one you describe. The last time I used it was during a night climb at City of Rocks in Idaho. Since you reminded me of City of Rocks, that would be a great place for a star party. It is probably less than an hours drive west of Tremonton. The place is a wonderland. I love it up there. The place we camped was at the south end of the park with a great view of the sky. It’s got to be like one of those unaided eye mag 7.0 sites. We could see the Grouse Creek mountains in Utah from there too. Normally I can’t see mag 7.0, but one night at Wolf Creek Kim Hyatt coached me into seeing some stars about mag 7. I don’t remember exactly, but it was way more than I could see normally. There is a technique to it. Jim

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Colorful Doubles - Mon to Cnc
by Jim Gibson 28 Mar '09

28 Mar '09

Kurt, Some years ago I used Burnham’s book as a source for double stars to put together a list of doubles by constellation. Then I found some neat websites, as you have, such as the Belmont society and others to add to the list. I don’t remember what all my criteria were but some thing like the main start had to be brighter than 7.0 and the companion had to be brighter than 9.0 and the separation had to be larger than 3.1”. I threw in some exceptions figuring that I might want to check out a few tougher ones at dark site. This is what I had for Hydra: 27Hya (companion)(Spect G8, F5) 09h 16m 54s -08 45' 47" Mag 5.5 & 4.8 Sep 229" P.A.211 Opt Mag 4x N Hya (Spect dF6, dF7) 11h 32m 29s -29 17' 07" Mag 5.8 & 5.8 Sep 9.5" P.A.210 Opt Mag 79x S 651, HR5120, SAO181790 (Spect A3, A5) 13h 37m 03s -26 31' 02" Mag 5.8 & 6.7 Sep 10.2" P.A.190 Opt Mag 74x Those may suck. I don’t know, I haven’t checked them out yet, but it is a sample of the way I decided to list things. I also updated many of them with the HIP catalog numbers. I really should update my planetarium to default to the SAO list I guess. I have had too many other things going on to get to that just yet. I made charts of each constellation with the telrad reticle marking each pair’s position. I had to update the RA & Dec because since Burnahm’s time things have really changed. In some cases I included a picture mostly from the Belmont Society. I put it all together in HTML format on a CD. The link to "Spect" is a link to a separate page that reminds me what G8 really means. I find that spectrum is so variable among different lists for the same thing that I don’t put a lot into listing spect anymore. In many cases when I went out to actually look at what I had listed, some fell woefully short of my expectation in my ability to either find them or separate them; but that was half the fun. I found this to be a fun winter project though. Now that I have gotten into astrophotography I would like to image them. I think I would go slightly out of focus to enlarge the stars and see the color better. Then I will include them in my CD. That is a long term project though. Anyway, having gone through the process, I know the work you are doing is time consuming and not a small task. Once I get to the upside of the learning curve of astrophotography, I plan to get back to doing some doubles, so I am saving your posts to add to and improve my list. Jim

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Musing about light
by Joe Bauman 27 Mar '09

27 Mar '09

Hi Chuck and DT: I really enjoy your comments except for one thing: I wish you could also make them on my blog. It would add a great deal of interest and possibly stimulate others to comment. Nobody needs to use a real name, if that's worrisome. Thanks, Joe --- On Fri, 3/27/09, daniel turner <outwest112(a)yahoo.com> wrote: From: daniel turner <outwest112(a)yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Musing about light To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Friday, March 27, 2009, 6:11 PM The nature of light is where we first ran into the strange world of quantum mechanics. The best way I've found to understand it is to consider emission and adsorption to be the realm of particles and everywhere in between light acts like waves. Einstein and Plank first demonstrated photons and their properties a century ago, yet all of optics has to do with the wave nature of light. I had a college physics course where we passed a laser through a pair of slits and noted the interference effects of light. Covering up one of the slits and the interference disappeared. Back to two slits, we cranked the light intensity down until the energy was so low that only one photon a time was in the space between the source and the screen. Then we carefully measured the flux at the target and by moving the detector around we could see that the interference pattern was still there. Each individual photon actually went through both slits and interfered with itself. Modern interference studies are done with light from two widely spaced telescopes that is combined into an interference pattern. Each photon recorded has passed through both Keck I and Keck II at the same time. DT _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Facebook?
by Chuck Hards 27 Mar '09

27 Mar '09

Amen, Rob. Right now, I am looking at 127 unread Utah-astronomy posts in the last few weeks. It goes up every few days. I'm losing the battle; a line has to be drawn somewhere. I spend way too much time in front of the computer as it is, and virtual social networks just compound the problem. It would be nice to be able to limit computer time to an hour a week, at most. 2009/3/27 Rob Ratkowski Photography <ratkwski(a)hawaii.rr.com> > I'm only on because my grand kids got me to join a phone call is better > > >

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] LED suggestions
by Jim Gibson 27 Mar '09

27 Mar '09

Chuck, Mine has a little lever on the battery pack at the opposite side of the head band from the light. The adjustment seems rather coarse, or in other words when I move the lever nothing seems to happen then all of a sudden it goes either bright or dim depending one which way you are sliding the lever. Jim --- On Fri, 3/27/09, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards(a)gmail.com> wrote: From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] LED suggestions To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Friday, March 27, 2009, 3:41 PM If it is, I can't find how to do it on mine. No instructions came with mine, just a little brochure of other Coast products. It's either full brightness white light with 5 LEDs, or full brightness red light with the single center LED. As it is, this looks about right for operating a SPOC telescope. Dimmer would be better at a dark-sky site, however. On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Dale Hooper <Dale.Hooper(a)sdl.usu.edu>wrote: > Hi Jim, > > I guess I didn't catch this before. So the brightness of the red LED is > also adjustable on the Coast lenser? > > Clear skies, > Dale. > > _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Colorful Doubles - Mon to Cnc
by Canopus56 27 Mar '09

27 Mar '09

Jim wrote, > Kurt, Thanks for all the good work you share. I like doubles :>) Jim Glad you enjoyed it. Please send on any corrections or changes to descriptions if you do not feel that they are right. The next list I am working up is Hydra to Virgo. It is not shaping up as a true urban astronomy list. This is away from the galactic disk looking up towards the North Galactic Pole, so the color contrasting double stars tend to be a mag 6 or 7 primary with mag 9 or 10 secondary. There a few brighter pairs but at a much lower density that around Orion and the galactic disk. - Kurt

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