Science Daily: Uranus
- NASA's Hubble, New Horizons team up for a simultaneous look at Uranus October 11, 2024
- Key to rapid planet formation August 1, 2024
Year: 2008
Summer Star Party
Rockland Astronomy Club‘s annual Summer Star Party held in Shady Pines Campground is a family event with a playground, swimming pool, ball fields and local attractions of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Alas, Shady Pines closed around 2017 so we moved to Peppermint Park, but that became unavailable in 2020 with the pandemic and we’ve …
Moon 1.2 degress North of Mars
The moon will pass just to the north of Mars tonight with a closest approach of about 1.2 degrees around 11 pm EST. This is just over twice the diameter of the moon. This is best seen with your naked eyes, binoculars, or a low-power telescope. Unlike some part events, Mars will not be occulted …
Spring Equinox
Welcome to the first day of spring! We pass through the equinox point of Earth’s orbit at 1:49 AM EST.
PS102 TV Turnoff Week Stargazing
We’ll be "hosting" a stargazing evening again at Shore Road Park on the ballfields near the 78th Street park entrance. See the map below for the viewing location.
Sunset is not until nearly 7:15 pm, and it won’t be truly dark (well, as dark as it gets in NYC) until after 8:30 pm, but we’ll start shortly after 8:00 pm with views of the first quarter moon and, as it gets a bit darker, views of Saturn and it’s rings. As Saturn advances in its orbit, the rings are moving closer toward an edge-on view which will occur next year.
View Larger Map
The rain date is Friday April 12. As of Tuesday, April 8, it looks like we may be using the rain date….
Sun-Earth Day 2008
The Sun-Earth Day is a focus by NASA on what it means to be "living the the atmosphere of a star." The related NASA website has numerous activities for students and educators, podcasts and more.
Focus Testing
Robert Reeves suggests testing the focus of your lenses as the infinity mark cannot always be trusted. This isn’t necessarily because the manufacturer was sloppy; certain long focal-length lenses may significantly affected by temperature and at some temperatures they will focus beyond infinity (Buzz Lightyear, take note). I decided to do a quick test of …
DIY: Webcam modifications
Here are some links to webcam modifications that I found useful. Ashley Roeckelein Astronomy Pages has several webcam modifications and case designs well worth looking over.
Eyepiece Projection
Recently we purchased T-adapter and T-ring along with the variable adapter for eyepiece projection imaging. The real intent was to start out taking a series of lunar photos at Newtonian focus using an 35 mm SLR. The 1200 mm focal length of our Newtonian should put an image of the (full) moon approximately 10–11 mm …
Wayback Machine is Way Cool!
I knew it existed and always thought it was a cool idea, but today I got to use it. For those of you who think I’m talking about Peabody and Sherman ("Help me Mr. Wizard!"), no, I’m talking about the the Web Archive. For those of you too young to have a clue about Peabody …
Search
.Archives
- October 2024 (1)
- May 2024 (2)
- April 2024 (3)
- September 2022 (5)
- April 2022 (1)
- January 2022 (3)
- December 2021 (4)
- September 2021 (3)
- July 2021 (1)
- January 2021 (1)
- November 2020 (2)
- October 2020 (2)
- September 2020 (2)
- August 2020 (5)
- July 2020 (1)
- November 2019 (2)
- September 2019 (1)
- August 2019 (2)
- September 2017 (1)
- August 2017 (1)
- September 2015 (3)
- August 2015 (2)
- June 2015 (5)
- May 2015 (3)
- May 2013 (2)
- January 2013 (1)
- December 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (1)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (1)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (2)
- April 2011 (2)
- March 2011 (10)
- January 2011 (8)
- November 2010 (2)
- October 2010 (1)
- September 2010 (3)
- August 2010 (2)
- July 2010 (1)
- June 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (3)
- February 2010 (3)
- January 2010 (3)
- December 2009 (6)
- November 2009 (3)
- October 2009 (7)
- September 2009 (8)
- August 2009 (4)
- July 2009 (1)
- June 2009 (2)
- May 2009 (2)
- April 2009 (7)
- March 2009 (1)
- February 2009 (6)
- January 2009 (4)
- December 2008 (4)
- November 2008 (3)
- October 2008 (11)
- September 2008 (4)
- August 2008 (5)
- July 2008 (5)
- June 2008 (2)
- April 2008 (4)
- March 2008 (18)
- February 2008 (9)
- November 2007 (1)
- October 2007 (3)
- July 2007 (3)
- April 2007 (1)
- March 2007 (6)
- February 2007 (3)
- December 2006 (3)
- October 2006 (4)
- September 2006 (1)
- July 2006 (5)
- May 2006 (10)
- April 2006 (9)