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
Author: Roland Roberts
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 …
Philips ToUCam
Although I wasn’t able to find this at the sort of discount I received on the QuickCam VC, this camera is still worth the money. All comments by users on the QCUAIG mailing list indicate this is a great webcam for astronomical use. I purchased the camera in early April, and have only tried to …
QuickCam VC
I purchased a QuickCam VC from Computer Geeks when they had a batch on sale for about USD $15. I keep going back hoping to find another batch, but so far no luck. Up until this, I had been using a Sony DCR-TRV310, a digital videocamera. The QuickCam VC is similar to the other QuickCams …
Sony DCR-TRV310
We originally purchased the Sony DCR-TRV310 for home video of family events. On a lark, I decided to point it into the eyepiece on night and was pleasantly surprised that I got reasonable images. It just so happened that I picked the moon as a target and it was only slight after the new moon. …