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, …

Windows XP Ate My ImagesRead More

After fighting for a week, I’ve rolled back the Drupal upgrade. Since I posted nearly nothing in the past week (except some comments on the upgrade woes and one event listing which was more of a test), nothing was really lost. I’ll be doing this upgrade the more traditional way which is by staging it …

Site upgrade rolled backRead More

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 …

Life in the Fast Lane?Read More

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 …

Performance of AstroTrac TT320X-AGRead More

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 …

Happy June Solstice Day!Read More

The April 24, 2010 issue of Science News has an interesting article entitled "Gambling on Experience" which reports on research into how we (people) guestimate risk in real life. I call it interesting both because it is an interesting social question, but also because of a recent dialogue about the topic of cell phones and …

Estimating RisksRead More

 This year’s festival is the first week of June, more information here: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/

We’ll be hosting a stargazing evening again at Shore Road Park on the ballfields near the 76th 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 around …

TV-Turnoff Week StargazingRead More

Missouri is my home state.  I grew up in what was then a rural area south of St. Louis, in Arnold.  Seeing the stars at night was no big deal, and something I took for granted. Arnold can longer be considered rural and in the intervening 40 years has gone through the typical suburban sprawl …

Light Pollution in MissouriRead More