Author: Roland Roberts

We returned last night, tired but happy from this year’s NEAF conference.  The vendor turn out was good and overall attendance appeared good, too, although it was  little hard to tell from our perspective.  We spent most of the two days in the children’s area helping with the various activities including a comet demonstration (followed …

NEAF and NEAIC: Until Next YearRead More

Apr 21, 5:15pm — I’m going to plan on going to the park at around 8:30 unless it is completely overcast.  But I do not expect the weather to be suitable for viewing at all.  Please use your common sense and have a look at the sky.  If you can only see clouds, or if …

TV Turnoff Week StargazingRead More

J-P Metsainio is giving a talk on his techniques for using narrow-band imaging to produce very sharp high contrast color images.  The technique appears to be a very clever application of the idea of using lower resolution in the color channels and blurring the noise (to reduce grain). The critical first step in his technique …

NEAIC: Tonal MappingRead More

Well, I’ve made it to NEAIC (again).  This year promises to be better than ever with an opening talk by Tony Hallas discussing CCD Noise (I’m sitting here listening to him now).  Vendors have contributed some very nice goodies for Friday’s raffle (and some of the vendors aren’t even here). Tonight there is a remote …

NEAIC In Progress!Read More

As part of 100 Hours of Astronomy, I will be hosting stargazing at Shore Road Park, near the ball fields.  This was scheduled for Friday night, but the weather didn’t quite work out. Update 7:30pm: Well the weather forecast and reality seem to be rather different.  The forecast claims it  is currently partly cloudy, but …

CANCELLED: Stargazing at Shore Road Park (Rescheduled)Read More

As part of 100 Hours of Astronomy, I will be hosting stargazing at Shore Road Park, near the ball fields. As usual, we will meet on the ball fields near the 75th Street entrance.  Walk down the ramp to the path and you should be able to see us. Update: Friday 2:50pm. The current forecast …

Stargazing at Shore Road ParkRead More

Science News is reporting on a first of its kind: an asteroid that was tracked all the way to its impact on Earth. The asteroid was apparently about the size of a car (hmm, would that be a Hummer or a mini-Cooper?) and since the trajectory was well-tracked, the impact site in northern Sudan was …

Asteroid Impact in Nubian Desert TrackedRead More

Well, it’s good news bad news time.  I was excited to find these via an article in the Physics Teacher.  Clearly, I haven’t been paying attention, because they’ve been mentioned before, but the item which caught my attention was an article that used a program called Tracker to analyze 2D motion.  I immediately thought of …

Open Source Physics Educational Java ToolsRead More

Well, sort of.  I got out briefly tonight with my wife’s Canon 12×36 IS binoculars (that’s Image Stabilized).  The position of Lulin is easy enough to find with Saturn less that 6º away and two reasonably bright star nearby to help zero in on its location – Leo 59 at mag 5 and Leo X-63A …

C/2007 N3 Lulin from BrooklynRead More

The canonical website for information is http://www.100hoursofastronomy.org/.  This page will be updated with new local to New York and Brooklyn.  Keep in mind that there is a weather component to this event, but I hope to be able to sponsor both night viewing and some solar viewing, although the Sun has been very quiescent (no …

100 Hours of AstronomyRead More