Day: May 4, 2006

Patterson’s talk focussed on photometry and began with a survey of areas where photometry plays a major role: asteroids, supernovae, and variable stars. Up to about 1910–1920, the area was dominated by amateurs, the best of which were often hired by the universities. Post World War II, that changed, largely due to money as the …

NEIAC Pro-AM Collaboration TalkRead More

I contacted the Mayor’s Office of Correspondence again today to get an ETA on the response to my letter of one month ago (happy anniversary?). While the front office person was again polite, even friendly, she couldn’t give me an ETA saying that it was assigned to someone who was looking into why I hadn’t …

Still Wating on Mayor’s OfficeRead More

Don Parker gave a fascinating and humorous talk on planetary imaging which has got me ready to head back out with my ToUCam to try some more imaging. I’ll have to work through some of his formulae to see how I ought to be setting up my camera and, given that I live under a flight path to LaGuardia, I might have to consider replacing the ToUCam with something that supports USB 2.0 so I can take images at a higher frame rate to try to beat both the seeing conditions and the lovely jet wash induced turbulence.

After an adventure getting out of NYC (got halfway through Manhattan and realized I had left my wallet at home, necesitating a return home to retrieve it), then finding that the first talk actually began at 9:00am, not 8:00 which was breakfast.