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

3169 Astro light curve
by Jerry Foote 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Patrick that is a great light curve. The quality of the measurements is spelled out by the K-C standard deviation of .0066m, particularly as this was computed over the almost 9 hours of your run. Professional level work!! Jerry Foote ScopeCraft, Inc. 4175 E. Red Cliffs Dr. Kanab, UT 84741 435-899-1255 jfoote(a)scopecraft.com

1 0

Light curve (and OT tower recording)
by Patrick Wiggins 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

I just finished putting together my longest light curve to date. It contains a few brightness spikes I can't explain so it's not perfect but I like it enough to display it. And I'm hoping it might get some of you interested in doing light curve work (hint: it's much more forgiving of poor seeing, lesser equipment and operator screw ups than taking "pretty" pictures of the sky <g>). http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=965 And off topic but still interesting, here's the entire tower recording from prior to take off to just past splash down for the airplane that ended up in the Hudson river last month: http://www.avweb.com/podcast/podcast/AudioPodcast_USAirwaysFlight1549_Audio… patrick

2 1

Animated gif check request
by Canopus56 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Thanks Patrick. - Kurt

2 1

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Animated gif check request
by Scott Catron 05 Feb '09

05 Feb '09

Worked for me also. Verson 10.4.11 --- On Thu, 2/5/09, Patrick Wiggins <paw(a)wirelessbeehive.com> wrote: From: Patrick Wiggins <paw(a)wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Animated gif check request To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 10:51 PM Worked for me. OS 10.5.5. patrick On 05 Feb 2009, at 22:32, Canopus56 wrote: > Will some of you Mac owners check this animated gif and let me know > if it runs on your box. Please return your Mac OS version as well. > - Thanks, Kurt > > http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/observed/LCROSS/CAshcraft2… _______________________________________________ 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://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

1 0

Open question to Kurt about LCROSS
by Patrick Wiggins 05 Feb '09

05 Feb '09

Hi Kurt, You've been a very frequent contributor to the LCROSS list. Care to share some of your thoughts about the mission and how folks here can participate? patrick

1 0

Observing report - Moon passes Pleiades
by Canopus56 05 Feb '09

05 Feb '09

Although I did not expect to be able to see the Pleiades just a few minutes after civil sunset, at 6:00pm I put a small 60mm refractor on the Moon and was rewarded with a nice view of a shadow ray in Clavius on the Moon and 5 Pleiadan stars shining from a steel blue-grey sky. Taygetae 19 Tau, Mai 20 Tau, Electra 17 Tau, a fainter Celaneo 16 Tau and the Moon were visible in a 1.2 deg TFOV. One field away, Alycone 25 Tau and Merope 23 Tau could be seen. At 6:03pm, Taygeta winked off during ingress behind the dark limb. Celaneo 20 was a lunar grazer that passed a few arc minutes below the south pole and terminator, but was never obscured. The sky color was quite pleasing and I think in the future I will look at the Moon under similar conditions instead of waiting for it to get dark. By 6:15pm, Maia 20 Tau was just beginning its own lunar south pole graze. I packed it up for while. At 6:55pm, I again set up the small refractor to watch egress of two Pleiaden stars on the bright limb. Mai 20 Tau was ending its wide-field graze-pass of the south pole. At about 7:00pm, I took a break from the eyepiece, looked up and there was a great pass by the ISS at about -2 mags from the northwest to the south east at about 35 degs alt. (Checked and it shows up on the NASA ISS Sighting Calculator. I had not thought to check for ISS overflights tonight.) A few minutes later, fainter 5.6v 18 Tau egressed on the bright limb. With 60mm of aperture, I did not see the moment of egress. It was overwhelmed by bright limb. About five minutes after egress it was sufficiently far (2 or 3 arcminutes) from the bright limb to be detected. This was a rare nice observing day for me: At 5am, I went out and took a look at Comet Lulin, a peak at Saturn and the "Y" shaped Struve 761-762 system around sigma Orion. Around 11:30am, a quick peak for small prominences off the Sun's limb with the PST. 6pm - Moon and an occulted star ingress. 7pm - Satellite overpass and an occulted star egress. I decided to pass looking for Comet Kushida in Tau. The Moon was within 20 degrees and it did not seem to be worth the trouble, but I see Patrick got an image. Overslept on the 1:22am Vandenberg launch. - Kurt Some background reading: Weaver, H.R. 1947. The Visibility of Stars without Optical Aid. (Visibility of stars near sunset.) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1947PASP...59..232W

5 8

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Search for Comit Lulin
by Canopus56 04 Feb '09

04 Feb '09

Raeburn, Sorry you could not see it. It is there. You can also follow along with other images and observing reports on the Cloudy Nights Solar System Forum: http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/lunar Spaceweather.com also has a good photo gallery: http://spaceweather.com/ http://spaceweather.com/comets/gallery_lulin_page3.htm - Kurt

7 21

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Observing report - Moon passes Pleiades
by Canopus56 04 Feb '09

04 Feb '09

In rereading my obs rep, I noticed I left off the key egress that was the whole point of the exercise. Please add: At about 5 minutes after the hour (7pm), Taygete 19 Tau popped out from behind the Moon. - Kurt

1 0

CCD camera for sale
by Patrick Wiggins 04 Feb '09

04 Feb '09

Now that I'm using the ST-10 I really don't need the ST-237 any longer. www.sbig.com/pdffiles/p237man.pdf Comes with software and filter wheel with filters. I still have to look around the web to see what used ones are selling for but thought I'd post this now before I change my mind about selling it. :) Any interest? patrick

1 0

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Non-Observing report - Moon passes Pleiades
by Canopus56 04 Feb '09

04 Feb '09

Joe, LOL - very humorous description of wrestling with your gear. We've all been there. I often wrestle with the question of what is the best scope to pull out - the complex light bucket with lot's of setup time or the small manual scope. I hope there's no hard feelings based on my recommendation. I was using 35x (20mm on 700 mm f/l) and 77x (9mm) in the small 60mm refractor. I would guess 8x or 5x in the 50mm finder didn't darken the sky at sunset enough to give the Pleiaden stars enough contrast to be visible. The moral of the story is sometimes the bigger high cost tool isn't always the best tool for the job. A simple hammer drives a nail just as well at the electric air pump powered nail gun. No frost or dew on concrete in the Aves. Where do you live - a bog? -:) - Kurt

2 1