Author: Roland Roberts
Perihelion Day!
Today is the day when Earth makes its closest approach to the Sun, around 2pm EST (New York time). If you live in the northern hemisphere, you might find it surprising that the Earth is closer to the Sun during winter than during summer, but it is. The difference in distance is “small,” astronomically speaking, …
Troop 13 Camping at Pouch
Troop 13 Camping at Pouch
Pack 313 Den 4 to Tenafly Nature Center
Pack 313 Den 4 will be visiting the Tenafly Nature Center to complete their Naturalist pin work.
This Month in Physics History: Louie de Broglie
Every month I get the APS News (the dead-tree version, which I can carry on the subway), and the two parts I always read first are the Members in the Media (link is to Oct 2010 issue) and This Month in Physics History. Both of these sections help in putting a personal face on physics, …
ZIP Recovery Tools – Not *Exactly* an Endorsement
I was going to make this just a comment on my previous blog entry, but after spending a couple of hours trying various tools and making notes, the "comment" was getting longer than the original post. So it gets it’s own entry. I’ve kept poking at various tools to try to recover some of my …
Windows XP Ate My Images
In order to save space on my Windows XP laptop, which I use for a lot of my imaging, I used the built-in compression to zip up the entire directory tree from the 2009 Summer Star Party. When all was done, the final archive was nearly 4 GB. Nearly, but not quite. To my horror, …
Life in the Fast Lane?
I don’t think I’m actually in the fast lane, but it sort of feels like it. The past month has had me away for two weeks, one with the Cub Scouts in Alpine, NJ and another at the Summer Star Party in Savoy, MA. Between that and being in physical therapy three days each week …
Modeling the Moon’s Phases
I originally built these models a couple of years ago, but didn’t realize it was something “novel” until I got some comments at this past year’s NEAF where I had brought them for the children’s section. Quite frankly, I think it works well with adults, too, as I’ve heard some well-educated adults propagating common misconceptions …
Performance of AstroTrac TT320X-AG
It’s been a busy year. I bought this at NEAF back in April and have only just now been able to get out and give it a spin. The new feature, of course, is the autoguiding. With the original TT320, the specifications state a periodic error limit of 5 arcseconds per 5 minutes. As it …
Happy June Solstice Day!
For those of you who missed it, yesterday marked the June solstice, the first day of summer. Of course, my children disagree about the “first day of summer” part since they know the first day of summer doesn’t really happen until after school is out and here in New York City, the last day of …