- Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Guy Consolmagno Vatican Astronomer
by Joel Stucki 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

I have not seen anyone promoting on this list yet but we have a famous astronomer hitting town and lecturing at BYU, UVU, and a Draper Catholic High School. Information is below. All events are free and open to the public. The UVU event has him as keynote for a larger conference exploring science and religion with an emphasis on Mormon perspective but obviously Brother Consolmagno and others will be speaking from their own religious perspectives as well. http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8.5x11flyer.jpg http://cpms.byu.edu/project/director-of-vatican-observatory-to-deliver-byus… http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/events/2016-second-interpreter-science-mor…

2 1

Paging Wayne Sumner
by Chuck Hards 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

Fiji was decimated by the recent hurricane, I was wondering if anyone has heard from Wayne since? Wayne, if you by chance can access email, please check in and let us know if we can help in any way, and how you and your wife are doing. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and the people of Fiji!

2 3

Future SLAS speakers
by Joan Carman 18 Feb '16

18 Feb '16

It was great to see Rich at the presentation by Ben Bromley last night. Bromley was terrific. Rich suggested I post upcoming SLAS speakers on this board for anyone interested in attending. The general meetings are open and free to the public. SLAS General Meetings are always on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, starting at 7:30 p.m. March - Jonathan Barnes, Professor of Physics at the Salt Lake Community College, Taylorsville Campus. Subject not yet determined. Room 207 Calvin T. Rampton Technology Building, f ree parking in lot "R" directly north of the building. April - Everyone set aside this meeting because this board's moderator extraordinaire and infamous/famous Chuck Hards will be the guest speaker on the Moon Watch Program. He is promising to bring vintage scopes to show as well. Room 203 Calvin T. Rampton Technology Building. May - TBD I might have a speaker on the Cassini mission, but not sure yet. June - Tim Parker, Jet Propulsion Labora tory - Mars geology September - Kyle Dawson, Ph.D., University of Utah - back by popular demand - Where we are in the universe and how we know it. I'll try to remember to post changes and new information when available. Joan

1 0

Gravitational Waves
by Joan Carman 14 Feb '16

14 Feb '16

I would think this board would be abuzz with the news. http://www.seeker.com/gravitational-waves-discovery-1598074959.html Dale caught it first, but IMHO the link he provided to an astronomy.com article was probably the most poorly written scientific announcement ever written . This is really exciting news. Wonder what Stephen Hawkings is thinking righr now

6 12

Digital cameras on clearence
by Jamie Bradley 13 Feb '16

13 Feb '16

Just FYI, I saw a bunch of digital camera bodies on clearance at Walmart in Centerville, lots of other stuff also. Might be at other Walmarts also.

2 1

Next Liver & Onions Subcommittee Meeting
by Chuck Hards 13 Feb '16

13 Feb '16

Just a reminder that the next Liver & Onions Subcommittee luncheon will be Saturday, February 27th, at the Left Fork Grill. Starts at noon. I'll post reminders as we get closer. Hope to see you all there!

1 0

Gravitational Wave Discovery
by Dale Hooper 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

In case some of you haven't heard the big news: http://astronomy.com/bonus/gravity?spMailingID=24700511&spUserID=MTE2MjkxMD…

5 6

Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 (2016) - Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
by Dave Gary 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

One for the history books. Another confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and an observation of a merging black hole binary system with subsequent ringdown to the resulting single black hole. If you hit the PDF button you can download the submitted article. Very interesting. > http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102 <http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102> Dave

1 0

Pit n Pole
by Joel Stucki 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

Anyone know what conditions are like out at pit n pole right now? Thinking today or tomorrow night might be good for observing there, but how much snow is on the ground? Is it drivable without 4 wheel drive? Any suggestions of other dark sky sites near UT valley?

4 3

AstroTortilla
by Dave Gary 07 Feb '16

07 Feb '16

Do any of you guys that image out in the wild use AstroTortilla? It’s freeware and it is the greatest piece of software for a goto scope and imaging setup that one can have in their arsenal. I tried it out last night and was amazed at the results. I never once had to leave the comfort of my chair (and the small heater under the table to warm my feet) to look through the finder scope and get the target centered on the camera chip. I didn’t even do a one-star alignment once the mount was polar-aligned, so I could really test the accuracy of the program. I have my setup ready-to-go in the garage so I know the camera is already focused. I used my hand controller for the mount and made a slew to Betelgeuse. Of course, since the mount was not aligned it missed the target (Betelgeuse) by quite a bit. I was not in the field of view of the camera chip, that's for sure. I opened AstroTortilla and let it do its magic. It did a plate solve of the area my scope was pointing to at that moment. Within seconds AstroTortilla told my mount where it actually should be (based on the input from the hand controller, i.e., Betelgeuse) and moved the scope to center Betelgeuse. It took about 15 seconds. I synced on Betelgeuse and it was off to races. One note, make sure to download the Tycho2 index files when the installer shows you that option. I didn’t do that the first time I used the installer and my plates wouldn’t solve. I went back to the AstroTortilla installer, picked only the Tycho2 index files when the installer presented them, then downloaded them. From then on the plates solved and everything was good. I tried several targets and the program centered every one in a matter of seconds, automatically. I mean dead center in Nebulosity’s window. You can use a variety of imaging programs with AstroTortilla (I use Nebulosity 3) or you can save a frame-and-focus image (I saved one as a .JPG to see how that worked) and solve off of that. One caveat, you have to link to your mount with ASCOM drivers. Either a direct cabled link, which I think most people use to connect their scope to their computer, or WiFi. I use WiFi and the iOptron ASCOM driver for my mount. Nearly every mount has ASCOM drivers available for it. Here is a link for ASCOM drivers. http://ascom-standards.org Here is a link to get the AstroTortilla program. http://sourceforge.net/p/astrotortilla/home/Home/ Below is a link to a great tutorial for the program. This guy covers everything and has a link to an excellent field-of-view calculator (to calculate your camera chip’s field-of-view). It was when I actually ran the field-of-view calculator that I realized I needed the other index files. Sometimes, when I try to save a step or some disk space, it doesn’t work out. If you image and don’t want to get up and look in the finder scope to center your target (while tripping over cables or tripod legs) then get this program. http://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-setting-up-and-using-astrotort… Dave

1 0