Fun space infographics - Non-planets and Spacecraft

Every 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 is another one, this one showing all the spacecraft from Earth and where they travelled in the solar system - past and current. 

| Click here to pick different images sizes |

 

| Again, a bigger image can be found here |

Last 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 challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. Godspeed the crew of Apollo Seventeen."

-- Gene Cernan Apollo 17

Just a tiny blue planet - with so much trouble

This 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 around on the surface of this planet placed the spacecraft and camera in Mars orbit - that now points back with great clarity - at their home planet.

Sure we say this all the time when looking back from space, but we are entering a new level of problems with a certain new world leader, who I won't give the dignity of naming in this blog.  I want too keep this blog fairly neutral and aimed at science and other cool stuff, with only small hints at politics.

| More info from JPL site about this photo |

Godspeed John Glenn -- 1921 - 2016

As 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 that an astronaut could be put on top.
The race was on, and Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space - and orbit - while the United States only stuck our toes into space on brief launches with Redstone rockets.
Yesterday we lost John Glenn - the last of the original Mercury 7 astronauts at 95 years old.  Another chapter of early manned spaceflight has closed forever.   John had a good 95 years.  First American to actually ORBIT the earth, even came back early when there was indication that his heat shield may be deployed.  He later was "too valuable" to fly in space again, so he left NASA went into politics as a democratic senator.  He left politics in 1997.  He bugged
 and nagged NASA for 2 years to convince them to let him fly in space again on the space shuttle.  His successful plan of "studying what happens to old people in space" won them over and they let him fly as an experimental subject in October 1998 on STS-95 on Discovery.
Very cool that he was on both ends of the manned space program (up to that time - we'll have Dragon, Orion, or some other manned spacecraft in the US fleet one of these days!).

What a life!

You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what you're interests are and ambitions.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_glenn.html

 You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what your interests are and ambitions.  -- John Glenn

You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what you're interests are and ambitions. John Glenn
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_glenn.html

You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what you're interests are and ambitions. John Glenn
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_glenn.html

You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what you're interests are and ambitions. John Glenn
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_glenn.html

John and the original 7

With Freedom 7 - first US to orbit

...and another 7 - on STS-95

| NASA's Tribute to John Glenn |

Perseid Meteor Shower - August 11-12

We 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 infographic that shows pretty much everything you need for viewing the meteor shower.

Apollo 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 spacecraft.  If you explore around, you'll even find notes here and there that the crew wrote on the walls.   Now I just need to find some VR goggles of some sort for my iPhone and I could really play astronaut!

View from Neil's seat

| Apollo 11 "Columbia" in 3D |

Jupiter 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 processing a different way now to which is easier and seems to have better results.  Run the .AVI file through Astrostakkert first to evaluate and stack the images.  Then load into Registax and use the Wavelets feature to adjust the detail and sharpness of the image.  In the past I was using Registax for everything, and the evaluation/stacking is just a bit more complicated on that software that I never quite mastered it well.  When I though I did, the next version would come out and complicate things more!

Jupiter with Io shadow (just before seeing went to crap)

Nice view of the GRS

Something 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/Trump/Cruz, healthy/sick, fat/anorexic, smart/stupid, hairy/bald, religious/atheist, terrorist/victim, literate/illiterate, NRA/no guns, tall/short, Democrat/Republican/Communist, old/young....you get the point.
I've posted this before, but with another terrorist attack and other current events, just take a few minutes, clear your mind, turn up the volume and watch this.
Carl Sagan was so right -- but people always seem to forget.

Finally! 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 around 400+ Mbs when I have the antenna set right.  That's fast enough for a decent remote desktop connection.
Here is one of the first images taken totally on remote control.  It was about 29 degrees out that night and just miserable outside - but very clear.  I ran out and hooked up the camera, aligned, got calibrated the autoguiding, focused what I needed to focus, then ran back in the house.
It all worked very well!  I did have some minor dome/scope alignment issues, but I'll work on that.  
Here is the Horsehead and Flame nebulas in Orion.  7 images at around 5 minutes each, ISO 800 and a few at 1000, Canon 60DA with CLS filter, imaged through Orion 80ED, guided with Starshoot autoguider on a 50mm finder. 

A little snow, but cleared up nicely after this.

Success! Indoor control of the observatory.

Not a bad image of Horsehead.  Easy to see the darker skies here at Crest!

Remote 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 |

Crappy 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 missions, even the crappy, overexposed, glare filled, or just plane ugly selfies (before they were know as "selfies" back then). 
Grab a cuppa or snack of some type and check out the photos, you could get stuck for a while viewing these!

| Flickr Project Apollo Archive |

This 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 Canon 60Da.  I pulled out my CLS light pollution filter for the event (I normally never take that out of the camera for deep sky stuff) since the moon IS light pollution anyway!

Just past totality

Earth's shadow uncovering the moon again.

The light is not from the moon, but annoying neighbor's annoying light trespass. 

A few more recent test images from the Crest Astro-shack

Behind 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 are ways to "cheat" a little, when processing, but I really hate doing that!

M-16 Eagle.  Always a cool target!

Not a bad start at the Crescent Nebula.

Scale Model of Solar System

Of 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 |

First Stacking of DSO from Crest Astro-Shack

I 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 a lot of things in this image, but I have a lot to re-learn about this since I've been away for a couple years and forgot a lot!

M33 

Just some pretty photos

Just 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!

First 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 easily, so things are running well enough to find the dim fuzzies!

M33 at f/6.3 ISO100 5mins

M13 at f/6.3 ISO1000 2mins

Guiding problems, but the comet is in the middle

Latest 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 don't want to sit around waiting too long!).  Fortunately, the Microsoft anti-piracy check let me install it without a call to India for activation, since it was the same motherboard and just a new drive.  (Don't ask me my opinion on that crap!).

Corner operating desk

All the astro stuff has been installed and I built a little corner desk in the observatory to put the monitors and keyboards.  I still need to work out the optimal place for the computer since there are a lot of cables that run through the place to control the dome, scope and cameras. I started in the opposite corner, tripped over things a lot, then move it to a place next to the pier.  I'll probably build a raised floor with a computer space underneath for the next project.
So I guess it's operational now, and have just been doing tweaks on alignment and other things.  ASCOM drivers are finally working well, and the dome syncs up with the telescope! (Or getting close at least).

It's alive!

I recently found a good deal on a 50mm Williams Optics guide scope and camera, so I'm playing with that as a guider option.  Still seem to have some drift that I need to work out.  I think it's almost down to the PHD Guider software that I just need to get the right settings in. 
A few very rough samples of photos have been taken, mostly  just mess with autoguiding rather than anything pretty.  That will come soon I hope!

Nice Ebay find for $270!

The little white thing is the new guider.

Our 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 last week.   The plane flies great, has a strong engine with fairly low time, and best of all will get us airborne and make us feel like we fit in with our other flying neighbors around here! 
It does need a little cosmetic work mainly replace cracked panels in the cockpit (very common with these vintage planes) and some other improvements.
Eventually, we may add commercial insurance so I can do a little flight training in it, but that's later on as we work out ideas and get a few projects done around here.

Jet thinking of the bird hunting possibilities with a C-150

Everything Gemini

Just 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 control that you clicked on.  I think a lot of work has gone into this web page! 
There are a lot of diagrams that I haven't seen before. Fun stuff!

| Gemini Spacecraft Guide |