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
Observing Saturn
I never seem to have enough time to get out and observe, much less image, but since the Summer Star Party, I’ve been trying to get out at least once a week even if only for a short period. This usually involves sitting the Dob out in the back alley, then taking a long walk …
Aquila from near Wardell, MO
Shot from near Wardell, MO at the end of July while visiting family. The skies in southeast Missouri are nice and dark, but I was set up near a rice field which made challenging to keep the mosquitos off me while shooting. There was a first quarter moon up while this was being shot, so …
2017 Eclipse
Although I don’t post much here because I’ve been busy with scouts, I’m not completely out of the hobby. Since I have family in Missouri, we traveled into the path of totality with friends and I got to see my first ever total eclipse. All I can say is that there is a big difference between a …
Bright Skies
A few years ago, I remember sitting out in my back alley and trying to gauge the faintest star I could see. During the summer and early fall Lyra is high overhead and has several stars around magnitude 3-5. The Little Dipper is often used for this but from here in Brooklyn that involves looking …
Painful Drupal 7 Migration
I’ve avoided this for a long time. Finally I launched into it to find what it would take. You’ll notice the web site looks a bit different. That’s mostly because I didn’t try to migrate the old theme; I’ll eventually go through and tweak things until it morphs back into something closer. But that’s not …
Preliminary Testing of Focal Reducers and the Mighty Mini for Occulation Timing
I’ve been giving myself a crash course in optics trying to understand how to set up the optical train for occulation timings. Actually, for the primary system I’m hoping to use, “Scotty’s Mighty Mini,” the IOTA Yahoo group has been very helpful where I can just build it from the recommended parts and go. But… if I …
Preliminary Testing of Focal Reducers and the Mighty Mini for Occulation TimingRead More
ASI120MM Astronomy Camera
I received this last year at the Rockland Astronomy Club’s Summer Star Party as a raffle prize. Nice camera, designed as a planetary camera with 1280×960 resolution, small pixels at 3.75μm, compact and light-weight, and best of all, it has an autoguider port. So…at this year’s Summer Star Party, I finally got it out. Yes, …
BSA Astronomy
Summers are always busy and this one was no different. But at least I finally got to do a little astronomy. First there was the update on writing a curriculum for Ten Mile River to try to get the scouts through the astronomy merit badge. The operative word here is “try” because it’s not actually …
Gravity Tunnels, Falling through the Earth
I think I stumbled across this a while back but I can’t remember where. The classic freshman physics question is, assuming a uniform density for the Earth and a perfect, frictionless tunnel cut through the Earth in a straight line, how long would it take to travel between any two points on the surface of …
Superball Physics!
I’m trying to catch up on my reading by skimming through back issues of American Journal of Physics when I found this one in the March issue: “Impact behavior of a superball,” Am. J. Phys. 83, 238-248 (2014). It’s a fun little article that covers some of the basics that you can find elsewhere like how the …