Wockets.org

I made this awhile ago, but forgot to post it.

While I was taking photos of M42, something passed across the field. Far to slow to be in LEO. Probably a medium to high orbit satellite or space junk. It’s moving too fast to be an asteroid or anything like that.

Each exposure is 20 seconds long, with about 10 seconds between them. The entire animation covers the span of about 2 and a half two three minutes, depending on the real timing.

After posting an image, I should probably detail the new astrophoto setup at the Observatory.

The big black thing is the Losmandy G11 sitting on a metal pier. It’s a very nice, heavy duty, and expensive mount (Though not Astrophysics expensive), donated by Pat Peak. On it, the white tube is a 80mm Megrez II Semi-APO built by Williams Optics. The black thing with cooling fins on it hanging off the back is an ST-8 CCD camera, built by SBIG. It contains a primary imaging CCD, a secondary guiding CCD, and a cooling system to chill the CCDs to low temperatures, to reduce noise. It can also be water cooled to help cool it even further, if needed. Pumping water into several thousand dollars of electronics is not my idea of a good time, so I have not tried it.

This setup gives a fairly wide FOV, perfect for Andromeda and Orion.

It is controlled from the laptop on the desk, which contains almost every piece of astronomy software known to man - CCDSoft being the most used. It also has CCDOps and MaximDL, as well as FocusMax, CCDStack, CCDInspector, and lots of other stuff which I may or may not know what they do. It’s usually remote controlled from the warm room, behind the windows, where a wonderful heater keeps you from freezing to death. All hail VNC.

Taken with SBIG ST-8 CCD through a Williams Optics 80mm Megrez II refractor, on a Losmandy G11 mount. Ten 20 second exposures combined in CCDStack.

Hopefully I’ll have some astronomy stuff to post soon, we’re working on a new astrophotography setup, using an 80mm refractor.

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage, torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians, which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side…. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

George Orwell

Read it at Dynamics of Cats.

Solar Cycle 24!

The first reverse polarity sunspot has appeared on the sun. What does this mean?
The sun has reached solar minimum, the solar cycle is restarting, and activity will now be increasing again, towards the solar maximum in 2011 or 2012.
More details here.

White Dwarf Pulsar

Astronomers have found a White Dwarf with a hard x-ray beam. Usually a staple of neutron star pulsars. Their fast rotation and strong magnetic fields act as a particle accelerator, capturing and accelerating high velocity charged particles we see as cosmic rays. When these particles are ejected from the magnetic field, interactions produce a beam of hard (high energy) x-rays. When this beam sweeps over us, we see it as a spike in x-ray emissions.

This is the first white dwarf to show such a periodic spike, and shows they too are capable of this feat.

Details here.

Chinese Lunar Orbiter Returns First Pictures

Chang’e 1 has returned its first pictures from the moon. Contrary to rumors, they are not fake.

Details and pictures at the Planetary Society.