tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50978367297117013782024-03-13T04:32:57.284-07:00Eastside Astro-BlogWelcome to the Eastside Astronomical Society blog page. This blog is used to share information found on the internet about astronomy, space travel, science, and other interesting items that may fit in.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.comBlogger639125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-70082754118040434572017-03-05T13:29:00.001-08:002017-03-05T13:45:05.267-08:00Fun space infographics - Non-planets and SpacecraftEvery now and then I come across some nice infographics. Here is a nice one showing the moon and other "non-planets" of the solar system. Even though a few of them do seem to be planet sized (Pluto's downfall to "dwarf planet" as we are familiar with!). All these images are actual photos of these objects. Click to see full size, this would print into a nice poster!
Below that Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-61809578649190002022017-01-16T12:37:00.003-08:002017-01-16T12:37:20.166-08:00Last Man on the Moon: Gene Cernan 1934 - 2017 Another space pioneer is gone. First John Glenn - first in US to orbit. Today we lost Gene Cernan - last person to walk on the moon.
"As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. As I take these last steps from the surface for some time to come, I'd just like to record that America's Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-2554893065371561162017-01-06T13:33:00.003-08:002017-01-06T13:35:51.457-08:00Just a tiny blue planet - with so much troubleThis is us - seen from Mars orbit. 127 million miles away (at the time this was taken in late November). Approximately 11 light minutes for the signal/photo to reach this tiny blue planet.
If there is life on Mars that looked up with a telescope at this neighbor planet, would they even know the little place contained such turmoil? The little intelligent beings that crawl aroundTomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-4978171367667421392016-12-09T12:18:00.002-08:002016-12-09T12:20:42.142-08:00Godspeed John Glenn -- 1921 - 2016As years go by, we get farther from the pioneering days of space travel. Back in the 60s we had guys with the "Right Stuff" who strapped themselves to the top of ICBM missiles which the warhead was swapped with a small "spam can" space capsule. The problem was (at least with the Atlas rocket) the thing had a tendency to explode on launch, which later was reduced enough to a "safer" level Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-82111462553443145422016-08-08T12:39:00.002-07:002016-08-08T12:39:57.666-07:00Perseid Meteor Shower - August 11-12We have had a few inquiries about the Perseid meteor shower in the club email. As usual, we aren't planning any events since lately it seems that anytime we try something, the clouds always find out and crash our party!
Yes, I am a firm believer in Global Climate Change - no matter what certain government people say (without getting political - you know who they are!).
I came across a cool Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-74214613305466218072016-07-22T00:42:00.002-07:002016-07-22T00:44:11.593-07:00Apollo 11 landing - 47 years later. A few days ago it was 47 years since Neil and Buzz landed on the moon (let's not forget Mike Collins in orbit in the CM!) and became the first humans to walk on the moon.
The Smithsonian has been scanning the inside of the CM "Columbia" to exact details. There is an article on the page showing how they carefully did this.
Here is an extremely cool virtual reality view inside the Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-69585006153384387842016-05-01T10:26:00.002-07:002016-05-01T10:27:58.823-07:00Jupiter season is here!Been a while once again since I posted new images, but finally got some clear skies again. Jupiter is well past opposition, and slowly getting smaller. Not enough yet to give a bad view though.
I also finally figured out how to use BackyardEOS and the "new" Canon 60Da for planetary imaging. I finally ditched the $20 Ebay webcam method - at least for planetary images.
Also Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-37720694665941599622016-03-24T11:10:00.000-07:002016-03-24T11:10:40.461-07:00Something to remember during election insanity.Every 4 years we go through this ordeal of electing a new world leader
for the US. Not sure if it's social media that makes it even more
annoying every time, or humanity is really getting that clueless. I'm
not pointing fingers in this. Keeping this posting generic and in the
"middle". Gay/Straight, black/white/red/brown,
employed/unemployed, rich/poor, ugly/handsome,
Bernie/Hillary/Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-88148329364726620712016-01-13T12:54:00.000-08:002016-01-13T12:54:00.189-08:00Finally! Observatory can probably be called "operational".I recently got the observatory running on remote control through wireless connection to the home network. Not that it was difficult, but just since I finally tried to open a port through Windows firewall to allow remote access since I was blocked from the network by all that protection.
It's connected though an 802.11AC connection. I forget the speeds off hand, but somewhere Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-44715636566125948952015-12-29T16:50:00.000-08:002015-12-29T16:50:04.310-08:00Remote Clear Skies
Something kind of fun that showed up in the club email account. Of course we can't control the scope without a paid account, but we can see what some of the remote scopes are aimed at in live views.
Get your fix under our cloudy Seattle skies!
| Connect to the SLOOH site |
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-74553713517939297032015-10-03T21:48:00.000-07:002015-10-03T21:48:48.590-07:00Crappy or good...the Apollo photos. I've been familiar with Kipp Teague's Project Apollo Archive for many years. If you haven't seen that site and you are an Apollo enthusiast, you are missing out. Check out that site!
I just saw that he has shared a huge "Saturn V" sized load of photos that was just published on Flickr the other day. Very cool stuff!
This is all the photos taken from the different Apollo Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-59046671007702010402015-09-30T21:42:00.002-07:002015-09-30T21:42:27.810-07:00This week's Supermoon Lunar Eclipse.Wow! Sometimes our Seattle crud just forgets to squat over the Puget Sound area and ruin all the fun when something happens in the sky at night. This week's lunar eclipse which lined up nicely with a "supermoon" was totally visible from here.
I'll count this as the first eclipse from the new Crest Astroshack. Here are some photos taken with the Orion 80ED scope and the Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-6389905332694667252015-09-17T14:53:00.001-07:002015-09-17T14:53:40.018-07:00A few more recent test images from the Crest Astro-shackBehind on the blog a usual, but here are a few more photos from the newly operational observatory. I still have to try out some "serious" imaging with darks, flats, lots of stacked frames, and the required frustrated cussing!
These are just some more quick test images to see how the autoguiding is working. It's working fairly well, I still have some star elongation, but there Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-49789172022179023232015-09-17T14:47:00.003-07:002015-09-17T14:47:31.431-07:00Scale Model of Solar SystemOf course they don't include Pluto, but this is a pretty cool short video about some guys that make a scale model of the solar system.
| More about the project here |
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-36451958014278569872015-08-21T17:34:00.000-07:002015-08-21T17:34:10.807-07:00First Stacking of DSO from Crest Astro-ShackI guess I can call this the first "official" deep sky image from the new observatory since I did stack these with a dark filed. Seven shots at ISO 1000, f/6.3 with Canon 60Da, CLS filter, Meade LX200 classic 12", StarShoot Autoguider on piggyback Orion 80ED Apo, and 5 minute exposures.
Stacked with DeepSky Stacker and Gimp processing.
Nothing special, I can complain about Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-92127204668320105642015-08-21T11:28:00.002-07:002015-08-21T11:28:38.589-07:00Just some pretty photosJust some pretty photos of the observatory during a recent colorful sunset, and in operation at night.
Sunset over Crest Airpark's only observatory
Nothing better than warm summer nights!
Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-5446148972806798062015-08-21T11:24:00.002-07:002015-08-21T11:24:55.531-07:00First light!Not sure if the official "first light" should be something really pretty, stacked, processed, Photoshopped, then proudly displayed. These are just some rough "test images" while I work out guiding issues. I did take a series of M33 that are probably good enough to stack and tweak, but I'll get to that next.
Last night I was able to find comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy at 10.5 magnitude quite Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-60901331811377824542015-08-21T11:13:00.004-07:002015-08-21T11:26:04.207-07:00Latest Astro-shack update
Building the computer
Once again, it's been a long time since I added any updates to this page. So here is the latest. I got a new main computer for my home use, so my older Windows 7 machine was assigned to the duties of being the new observatory machine. I did some drive swapping and put a solid state hard drive in there for fast boot (for when the thing crashes, I Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-82710746697872864662015-06-18T10:55:00.001-07:002015-06-18T10:55:50.781-07:00Our new "Gemini" two seater. As some of you know, Traci and I are building an airplane in our home hangar here at Crest Airpark. Do we ever have enough projects around here to work on? In addition to building the new Astro-shack, working on growing a home business, maintaining the yard, and managing a bunch of cats.
Our latest addition to the airport home is a 1973 Cessna 150L that we just picked up from Prosser Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-69870826037245632482015-06-18T10:37:00.000-07:002015-06-18T10:37:05.732-07:00Everything GeminiJust a fun thing I stumbled across in the aimless internet wanderings. Actually, this showed up on Facebook on one of the many space geek groups I'm in.
Kind of a fun interactive page full of diagrams and stuff from the Gemini spacecraft. If you look at the main pane images, click on some of the buttons and controls - a new page pops up with a short description of the Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-82868093571728903292015-06-01T11:57:00.001-07:002015-06-01T11:57:19.031-07:00Big Blue is home finallyBig Blue finally was dragged out of storage on the same wagon as the cement, pier and rocks dug out of the hole. (It's a useful thing around here!).
The scope is about 80+ lbs but Traci and I together were able to get on each side of it and lift it up on the pier. The height in relation to the dome opening turned out perfectly. As expected (yes, even with the low Hobbit sized Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-15700962419014186362015-06-01T11:48:00.003-07:002015-06-01T11:50:36.295-07:00Danger - black hole where not even eyepieces can escape
Dangerous hole!
I realized once this was installed that I had a very dangerous situation that could result in a very difficult retrieval. The hole at the top of the pier could easily attract and suck in telescope mounting nuts, eyepieces, evening observing snacks, cell phones...or anything that fits in an 8x8 inch opening!
Safely covered
Fixed that problem with some scrap and covered Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-13784463820028786082015-06-01T11:32:00.000-07:002015-06-01T11:32:09.855-07:00Drilling the holes for the bolts
Drilling template
After a lot of discussion, thoughts and other positive negatives about how to mount this thing, we figured that the best thing do do would be do use anchor bolts to hold this thing to the ground. The last one I built I had threaded rods embedded into the cement as it was poured. The bolts used were 1/2 inch diameter and about 7 inches long.
A template was cut out Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-40209661073285418022015-06-01T11:23:00.002-07:002015-06-01T11:23:46.906-07:00Moving the pier out to the Astro Shack
Moving day
The monster has moved from the hangar finally. We used the garden wagon to haul this thing out across the yard to the observatory. I think the whole thing is over 130-lbs total and if you drop it on your foot, it would be a bad day.
Centered and marked
If you review the previous posting, the rebar was arranged to carefully avoid where the bolts would be drilled Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097836729711701378.post-81397737544344572832015-06-01T11:15:00.002-07:002015-06-01T11:16:36.194-07:00Cement base poured - and a memorial.
Ready for cement
A little bit of Alex in there
Again, a long time since I've updated this, so here is some catch-up on the construction of the Crest Astroshack. We finally got the base cement mixed and dumped into the hole. The hole wasn't quite as deep as I hoped, but digging in our backyard really, REALLY sucks!
It's probably just under 2 feet deep, but with all the pebbles, Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00177443374751333878noreply@blogger.com0