http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ZMscMp8UM

You can also use it to identify those slides you took of the sky and forgot to label ! I have used it to locate the stars in an image with a fireball on it.

We had 180 orbits to determine a Cepheid distance to the Coma cluster. Unfortunately, the Advanced Camera for Surveys died in the middle of our observation interval.

The Hubble Heritage team took our images and a couple of their own and combined them to produce the beautiful image in the link.

Cheers,
Doug

I assume you are ‘the’ D. Welch ???

–Ben

Doug

The “experiment” is called the Pierre Auger Observatory. The website is here: http://www.auger.org/
The most recent – and provocative – paper summarizing the results of the project can be found here:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1975v1

-Doug

loved the childhood memories revealed !!

http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?video?BI_Lecture_20091010_834130_LKrauss

If you are interested in cosmology I highly suggest you read Barbara Ryden’s “Introduction to Cosmology”.

Next opposition is in January, 2010. It won’t be as big as 2003, so you’ll want to crank the power up a bit more. And, of course, wear your electric sox. Or, check it out from Australia.

Your eyes, if they’re good, can see detail, pixels, if you will, to about 3 arc minutes. So think of the Moon as maybe 10 pixels across. It’s not much.

I’ve not gotten a copy of the Mars email in a couple years. If someone wants to send me a copy, my username at yahoo will work. Don’t worry that i might get too many.

So, i got to see the scar on Jupiter (not just Harry’s head) and Mike didn’t? Well, i live south of the wedge – a weather pattern here in Michigan. So he might not have gotten the chance that i did. It happens, though mostly the North side is clear.

Every filter change required me to climb a very tall ladder!

Cheers,
Doug

http://telescopereflections.blogspot.com

So I took a few minutes to take in the dippers and the teapot. I checked out the Summer Triangle hinting at starry nights while camping. The moon was just bright enough to wash out the Milky Way.

Michael, you can observe the sky from your driveway and with your kids. Mine don’t remember seeing Comet Hale-Bopp, but they enjoyed it while it was here. Most of their observing is naked eye.

Even young kids can easily find Orion, and he’s up in the evening and part of the Globe at Night project.

Keep in touch with the stars. They’ll wait.

I also am at the observatory every clear night, even as I type this, but I run it from inside so am working even at -40. BTW -15F is -26C. +15f is -9.4C

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/organizations

Yes, i’ve seen Lulin. The light pollution at my house and/or crappy finder charts prevented me from finding it in my xt10i (xt10 in cold weather). But one of the guys brought his 8″ dob to a club meeting, and several of us saw it, until our toes froze.

It was best for me on February 23, 24, and 25 when it was near Saturn. The center was concentrated, and I could faintly see the tails in both directions. I needed the 20×80 binocs to see that much.

If you missed it, realize that it wasn’t nearly as good as Hale-Bopp, Hyakutake, or Holmes. But for me it was better than Halley.

What’s with all the H names for comet discoverers?!

mnphenow: Someone spraying light in all directions on an adjacent property definitely impacts on my ability to use my property as I wish (eg, for astronomy). Shouldn’t I have protection from that? Councils setting an example is not enough, developers need to be rail-roaded into being considerate neighbours (I know, I work for a lot of them).

Of course, you know I can’t very well completely agree with you on anything. I vehemently disagree that cities should create or modify ordinances concerning light pollution. Cities themselves should make the right choices of lighting fixtures, for economic reasons and for all of the other great reasons. They should set a good example for their neighbors. They should join us in educating the public on this issue. They should not impose new restrictions on people’s right to use their own property as they wish, so long as they do not injure or damage the property of their neighbors.

- Not like Enya
- Can hear once a day without being too annoying
- Initially funny, then annoying
- Then its that kinda thing where you have to hear it because its catchy and you like to sing along to it..

Fanbloodytastic. Thanks George.

On the carbon star one, I should have realized I needed a telescope to see it as reddish. My 20×80 binoculars could show it but only faintly.

I liked the variable star nomenclature and your big numbers podcast. I used the big numbers with my son later that day – adding the exponents. We both *knew* that you could do that, but you provided context.

Lol, I think he might have been on something a little stronger to come up with this theory

Cheers, Ian

But what does it have to do with termites ?

Mike
ex termite exterminator

I ran across a 3D stereo photography web ring that may have some helpful links.

I really like doing stereo without the glasses.

I’d think that getting astronomical images from sufficiently different locations may be a problem. Good idea to use simulations.

Regardless, this is a date in history, November 13,2008 that will be as remembered as well as the date March 13, 1781, when William Herschel discovered Uranus.

Bravo!

I would call this project an “iPhone killer app”. Of course, yours survived. What they say is “if at first you don’t succeed, then sky diving is not for you.”

Dark sky site: Uranus and m31 were naked eye objects. The horse head and flame nebulae with eyeball at the 22″ Dob.

The iPhone 3G uses the LIS331DL accelerometer which has a user configurable range of ±2g or ±8g. The FS (“full scale”) measurement range in Table 3 of the LIS331DL datasheet shows that when the FS bit is set to 0, the “typical” range is ± 2.3g which looks pretty much like where your accelerations maxxed out. So you basically have no idea what the true acceleration was during the ascent phase once it got beyond +2.3g. The good news is that this implies your iPhone went higher than the altitude you get just integrating the vertical acceleration curve twice.

Cheers,
Doug

I liked the idea that you planned to use the data to be able to track down the iPhone like a geocache. But it sounds like you don’t have data for the last part of the descent.

Keep us posted on your progress.

The 5.5 year cycle is discussed here at the site Michael suggested.

In my spare time (none), I should make sure each of the bodies mentioned have an entry in Slackerpedia Gallactica.

I like her naming solution. Essentially, it forces us to use another term for the major planets and lets us use the more general term generally.

The URL is http://www.theworld.org/technology

But I’m not sure which reporter you were referring to in your podcast.

I like that science cafes try to involve people who don’t know that they would be interested in science. Those of us who are immersed in science forget that there are people who avoid it. That concept is great food for thought for me as I try to recruit young people into science careers.

Or is that too much to expect from a slacker?

)

Cheers,
Mike

But, that said, FG Sge is certainly an amazing variable. I remember observing it in the 1970s, when it was an easy object in a small telescope. Even at that time, the idea that it seemed to be racing across the HR diagram like an express train seemed totally unbelievable.

Peter Hornby

Thank you, Michael for catching that on video and sharing it.

I disagree that Aaron could no longer be a Slacker Astronomer. Slackers know when to work hard and when to relax and not take themselves too seriously. Being a slacker is a state of mind.