Jupiter at 45° Reprocessed

I re-ran my stack and got a tighter alignment. The half-size image looks pretty good, so there's that at least.

Jupiter at 45°

I don't know what I can do get a sharper image. The scope was (should have been) well cooled-off--I ran the cooler for 45 minutes, and this was shot after being out for about three hours. Jupiter was 45° up, which is still low but not awful. Seeing was good--the difference between the good frames and bad ones was very small. I tweaked focus back & forth for about 15 minutes, and am satisfied it's the best I can do. I looked at the collimation on Io, and to me it looks spot on. If I push the wavelets any harder I get ringing around the planet.

The only thing I can figure is it's my collimation skills. I get nice round concentric rings on one side of focus, but they're all spike-y on the other. I wonder if the collimation knobs are installed correctly, or if the the secondary is somehow being "pinched."

10" LX200 Classic, 2.5x PowerMate, NexImage, 500 frames (35 seconds) in alt-az

Lunar Processing, Pt. II

I used five zones this time--the 4 corners and the center. No wavelets at all--just the same three passes of high-pass filtering and an unsharp mask. It's a little noisy still, but I'm making progress with the process.

Original:



Re-Processed:

Lunar Processing

After getting turned on to Tony Gondola's lunar processing workflow, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Here's my first attempt at a six-zone (3 col. x 2 row) stack & mosaic, followed by high-pass filter sharpening.

I enlarged my original 640x480 .mov 150% in Quicktime Pro player and aligned & stacked on six areas in Keith's Image Stacker. I did one pass of wavelets, and am afraid I used to much.

I used PS CS2 to crop the six images and automerge them back into one. I made three passes with the high pass filter at 6, 3 and 1 pixel using Tony's settings.

I reduced the image back to 640 x 480 and despeckled. Alan Friedman is safe from me for a while, but I can see great potential here.

Original version:



Reprocessed:

Baby Blues

Sunday: "You really want to be an astronomer?"
"I'll be anything that lets me stay up past my bedtime."

Monday: "Is this just homework by another name?"

Tuesday: "We're amazed, all right."

Wednesday: "Wow, look at all the streets."

Thursday: "Galileo must have been a bachelor."

Friday & Saturday

Sometimes the weather just won't cooperate. Friday night I was invited to the Audubon Society's evening event to host a little star party for their members. Alas, the clouds moved in hard, and there was even hail overnight, so there was obviously no stargazing. I did bring the iBook and a projector, so we all looked at fake computer stars instead. I had fun, and several people expressed their appreciation, so I suppose it wasn't a wasted evening after all.

Saturday night was better-I took Ian and the two Wades to the Erwin Center and watched the Austin Wranglers play Arena League Football. It's a different game than the NFL or NCAA play, but still a lot of fun. The league works hard at being fan-friendly and it showed. They host an autograph session on the field after every game, and the players & cheerleaders are very accessible. They seemed pleased to have the opportunity as well.

See my pictures from the game here.

A New Version of an Old Joke

George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The main man in China!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you, Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.
George: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you, or will you not, tell me the name of the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he's dead in the Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars.

A Dam Good Friday

It didn't look like it was going to be much of a night last night. The sky was full of crud, and every time an airplane flew over, it left a contrail that just fattened up until it covered a big stretch of sky. By about 11:00 most folks at the dam were packing up to go home, but I wasn't ready to give up just yet. There was a general clearing in the west, and I suspected that the reason those contrails weren't going away was that we had a pretty steady upper atmosphere, which would mean good seeing.

I'm glad I stuck around, because by 0100 the sky was completely clear. There was no wind, the temperature was reasonable enough to not require a jacket, and the dew was just holding off, mostly.



So here's the boring side of Jupiter, with Io just peeking around the edge. Unless I modify my camera, I don't know any technique I'm not using to get the most out of my setup. Collimation? As good as I know how to make it. Focus? The WO focuser is working well, and I've been bracketing my shots to try to find the sweetest spot. Seeing? I can't control it, but last night was as good as we've seen in a long time. Jupiter's altitude above the horizon? It's just 39° up at this point, but even at transit it'll barely top 43°. It's just not going to be a great summer for shooting Jove this year.

Anyway, here's a three-frame animation shot in just six minutes. The big guy moves fast!

The Military Life

I came across this curiosity today and thought, I didn't spend but a month sleeping on a rack like that and I didn't find it very much fun at all. This is a toy?



Then I wondered if I could get a little R. Lee Ermey doll to go with it.



It turns out you can.

2006 LKY Ranch BBQ & Spring Frolic

The wind blew 30 mph all weekend, so no astro pics, but the rest of the photos and a short video are here.

Jupiter & Ganymede

Patience finally pays off. At 2:00 this morning Jupiter was 40° up, which is about as good as it's going to get. I could see the seeing rippling across the disc, even with 3/5 seeing. Red Jr. is just visible at around 2:00 on the image.

A couple of guys driving a 1970 Camaro and 67 Mustang stopped by looking for their dog. They both looked at Saturn, Jupiter & the Moon and were suitably blown away. It's funny--sometimes I think astronomy is about the geekiest hobby possible, but when 20-something hot-rodders proclaim the view of Saturn "the coolest thing they've ever seen," well, maybe it's not so geeky after all.

Star Hoping

That's when you point the telescope at the sky and hope you see something.

Like last night. I didn't want to set up the LX200, so I took the little 6" dob into the back yard with my red flashlight and Star Atlas. I did pretty good on M81 & M82, but totally failed on the Leo Triplett. To be fair to myself, the transparency was only so-so, 6 inches isn't a whole lot of aperture, and my star-hopping skills are practically non-existant.

Meanwhile, here's a new design at CafePress!

Damned If You Dew

There must have been at least 25 telescopes out at the dam last night for maybe the best night so far this year. I was late getting set up, but got nice views of the Leo Triplet (M65 group), and a whole mess of galaxies in Virgo.

I planned on staying out until 0200 to shoot Jupiter. The Great Red Spot was coming around and seeing was holding up pretty well. What I was unprepared for was the cold. By midnight it was in the 30s, and one fellow's thermometer read 34° at 0100. I held on, mostly by hanging out in the car or in front of Bryan's dam heater, but the iBook crapped out. I'm guessing it was a combination of the cold and dew, but the NexImage image was filled with the same herringbone noise I saw last time it was cold.

I got as far as focusing, but was geting so cold and miserable myself I decided to pack it in and wait for a warmer night.

So--imagine a nice picture of Jupiter here.

Saturn Variations, pt. 2

Brad Carlson, aka RedIrocZ-28 on the Cloudy Nights forums did a nice job touching up the latest Saturn:



CSC is forecasting 4/5 seeing for Friday night, turning to 5/5 early Saturday morning. Who needs sleep?

Saturn Variations

CSC said 3/5 seeing, but it may have been better. I shot 2k-frame streams, and stacked about 1500-1800 in Keith's Image Stacker. 10" LX200, 2.5x PowerMate & un-modded NexImage.


Nice view of the Crepe, but low contrast on the planet.



Same shot with highlight contrast enhanced. Kinda crunchy.



High (low? opposite) gamma capture. Sharpest of the lot, but no sign of the Crepe.

Spacewalker T-Shirts

I've put up a new CafePress store with this original illustration.

Gassendi & The Crepe Ring

Sounds like a great name for a band.

Mare Humorum: "On the north 'shore ' is one of the most beautiful and intensively observed lunar formation, the walled plain Gassendi, about 55 miles in diameter. It has a curious lop-sided appearance and its walls are quite high and complete except on the extreme south where there is a gap. It seems that in the remote past the fluid material of the Mare Humorum destroyed this part of the south wall of Gassendi and flooded the south part of the floor. At the center is a splendid group of mountain peaks, the highest of which rises to 4000 feet. On the south-east part of the floor is the remnant of what was probably once a nearly concentric interior ring. Gassendi is notable because of the variety of details on its interior, among which are about 30 or 40 clefts. Two of the most prominent of these diverge from the central mountains over the floor in a south-west direction. Associated with these are two craterlets that are very bright at full moon. These and other clefts in the south-west part of the floor are easily visible in a four inch telescope but the others that are on the east half of the interior need large apertures to be seen. They criss-cross or run parallel in a complex manner and cannot all be seen on any one occasion. Good seeing, the right angle of illumination and favorable libration are essential for their successful visualization. The cleft system has been charted by different observers and there is a strange diversity among the different delineations. In fact, it has been said: "Every Man his own Gassendi". The north wall of Gassendi is intruded upon by the crater Clarkson and just to the east of the wall of Gassendi is sliced through by two prominent gaps that continue across the floor as two parallel clefts. On the east wall is a curious crater-like depression from which extends on the outside in a south-east direction the Percy Mountains defining the north-east border of the Mare Humorum." The Moon Observer's Handbook by Fred W. Price.

I shot this on a breezy night at the dam with pretty good seeing (3-4/5) using the LPI in the LX200 with the TeleVue 2x barlows. I compared the Meade LPI side-by-side with the NexImage, and for lunar imaging the image differences are too close to call. The LPI does have a different pixel size, so it has less apparent magnification.

---

I finally captured the "C" Ring around Saturn, aka the Crepe Ring. It's a pretty low contrast feature, so I turned the gain up on the camera much higher than I had been. The down side is that the image is noisier than usual, but that's OK.

Truth is, I was pretty disappointed when I was shooting this since the capture was so noisy. I was sure that the whole thing was going to be sucky, so now I'm extra pleased.

NexImage/LX200/TV 2x barlows. 600/1000 stacked in KIS, final processing in Photoshop.

Twenty Years Ago

And sixty pounds lighter.


This must have been the summer after my freshman year--1984. Clint's old boat on Lake Conroe. David took the picture.


David took this one too. Spring semester 1985, sophomore year. I was living on campus at J324 Prather Hall, and my phone number was 495-DUMB, but I don't remember my roommate's name that semester. (Marc?) I do remember he kept sweat-soaked hockey gear in the closet and was a cheapskate moocher. Anyway, I must have had a really repulsive personality, because if I couldn't get laid with body ...

Pants on Fire

It's not my fault that politics is so interesting these days; CNN keeps lobbing up these softballs, and I'm compelled to swing at them.

"He lied so the plot could proceed unimpeded," Robert Spencer said in his opening statement. "He lied, and 3,000 people died."

Is Spencer referring to A: Admitted al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui, or B: George W. Bush?

Not Too Shabby

CSC said 3/5, so I went for it. Dropped the frame rate on the NexImage from "best" to 5 with interesting results--the image is actually noisier. I took a minute to tweak collimation beforehand too, and it may have helped. If it was out, it was a very close, as I just barely touched it.

Will the Real Patriot Please Stand Up?

OK, one more political post. I thought it was ironic that this moron said this while discussing renewing the "Patriot" act:

"Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead," Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, told the Senate.

Looks like we've come a long way from "Give me liberty, or give me death."

Religious Freedom in Texas

I was renewing my vehicle registration today when I came across an insert urging me to purchase these religious license plates for my car:




It struck me as being awfully close to the State promoting religion, a specific religion, namely Judea-Christian monotheism. I doubt we'll ever see Texas plates expressing "Allahu Akbar" or respecting "the Goddess" (which is ironic if you look at all the pentacles around Austin these days).

I even looked it up in the Texas Constitution. Article 1, section 6: "... No preference shall ever be given by law to any religious society ..." That's pretty clear to me. And we all know about the First Amendment to the US Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

So what's the deal? Am I off-base here, or is the State?

Three Weeks Later

Finally, a clear night. This is a pretty typical shot it seems. I'm so close, but still not quite where I want to be. I'm going to try again to collimate, but I'm not convinced that I'm not simply battling the atmosphere itself.

I'm trying to get a pier built in the back yard for a more permanent setup. I'm learning about concrete almost as fast as I am about astronomy.

My Exciting Life

I finally fixed the freezer door so we once again can get ice by pushing a cup into the slot. Which is fine, but I'm not looking forward to the boy learning about it.



In other news, I'm thinking about getting one of these for the back yard. What happened to trying to decide which bar to go drinking at?

Winter Olympics

I still love watching the downhill and the bobsledding, but my new favorite Winter Olympic sport has to be snowboard cross. Which is weird, because I've never gotten into the whole snowboard "scene," preferring regular skiing. (I always claimed it was because I didn't have a goofy hat.)

A Mild Rant

I'm a member of several mailing lists, and I see this sort of thing happen way too often. Someone has a problem, and asks how to fix it. Today was, "I've stripped a screw head. How can I get the screw out?"

So I go to Google, type in "remove stripped screw," and in 0.21 seconds I've got 363,000 results on how to remove a stripped screw.

Is it really that difficult for people to do their own searches?

I worked with a woman at a job years ago. She was moaning and carrying on about how she couldn't find the lyrics to some song. Fifteen seconds into her rant, I was reading the lyrics aloud. Pissed her off mightily, but I didn't care.

Dam Astronomers

I opened a Dam Astronomers Cafe Press store with this design:




Please buy lots of stuff!

"Bush Urges End To Cartoon Violence"

Today's top story on CNN.com:



Could this mean the end of Itchy & Scratchy?

Seeing: 4/5

Finally, a decent night! I just came in from imaging this. Saturn at 260x was tack-sharp in the eyepiece. The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Helping Out

Jay posted a request yesterday for volunteers to come out to the elementary school where his wife teaches for a star party. I packed up the big scope and the 6" dob, and headed over after work. We lucked out--it was cloudy as we set up, the sky cleared right at sunset, and 2 hours later when all the kids were through, the clouds came back.

Observations: Everybody loves looking at Saturn. The Orion Nebula is cool, but Andromeda is unimpressive in city skies. Kids like watching the scope slew from one object to another almost as much as looking through it. Everyone wants to see the lunar landers, and are disappointed when I explain you'd need a telescope with a 200-meter mirror. I can't explain why Saturn is the only planet with rings. It's not, but that's even harder to explain.

And here's a really unimpressive first-light imaged using the new focuser. It looked sharper in the eyepiece is all I have to say.

Grumpy

Thursday night I walked the dog about 9:00 and noticed how clear the sky was. As we walked, I also noticed how steady it was. Sure, there was a little twinkling down low, but overhead was really quite still.

"Cool," I thought. "I'll be able to try out the new two-speed focuser."

So I set up in the back yard, plugged the $2.00 SCT cooler in, and headed back inside to catch The Daily Show while the scope cooled off.

Thirty minutes later, I headed back outside to look at an entirely featureless night sky. We went from 0 to 100% cloud cover in just 40 minutes.

So you'll just have to imagine a really nice picture of Saturn here. Tonight's the opposition, so I'm a little bummed to be missing it. CSC says clear tomorrow night, but we're back to that 2/5 seeing. We'll see (or not).

Meanwhile, here's a picture I took today that turned out better than I expected. I can't tell you what it is, yet, but I think it's neat.

Saturn Rising

This would have looked better if I had waited another 3 hours. Or, three hours after I took this it could have been cloudy. You takes what you can gets. Seeing maybe 3/5--not all that bad, but some mid-level clouds forming.

A Long Dry Spell

I've been heeding Dooce's advice about not blogging about work ("Be ye not so stupid."), so when you've had a week that was nothing but work, it doesn't leave much to say.

The astro front's been pretty quiet for a while now. It's either been cloudy, or clear with lousy seeing. Warm days and cold nights might be nice weather, but the rapidly dropping temps play havoc with picture-taking. It's also been surprisingly windy--which just stirs up more cedar pollen. Arrrgh.

I did acquire a new piece of gear--a William Optics crayford focuser. It's a nice piece of kit, but the purchasing experience left something to be desired. I wanted a two-speed focuser for imaging, and all of the pictures of the focuser on this page are of a two-speed unit. There's no text describing it one way or the other. Add it to the shopping cart brings you to a page with a picture of a single-speed unit, until you click the "click to enlarge" link.

Well, it turns out you will indeed receive a single-speed focuser. WO has a good return policy, and they were willing to let me exchange the single-speeed for a dual speed. I countered by asking for a deal on the two-speed upgrade they sell, and they agreed, so I'll wind up with what I wanted for a fair price. But man, what a hassle!

In other news, I've been following a discussion on Cloudy Nights about an inexpensive observatory dome. The name went through several revisions, and guys were posting logo ideas. Most of the submissions were, um, amateur, so I tossed a couple of ideas out as well. After all of the revisions, here's what we finally wound up with:


I'm not crazy about the star, but I think the final logo turned out pretty well. I gave it away--an agency would have charged $1,500. I think I should get a dome out of the deal, but I'm happy just to have the work recognized.

iSight

I got Mom an iSight camera for Christmas to go with her Mac mini. I gotta say, sure Apple hypes their products (the famous Reality Distortion Field), but this thing works great. We may not have gotten our flying cars for the 21st century, but we got our picture phones.

Also, I don't know about the Winblows side of the world, but do you know how complicated it was to set up her Mac with high-speed internet? You gotta plug the thing in. I mean really, unless they get it a little more simple, I don't think this whole inter-web thingy is going to catch on.

A Punchline That's Just Waiting For A Joke

On CNN today: "Pamela Anderson calls for removal of Colonel's bust."

So-So Saturn & Mars

CSC said 3/5 for seeing, and that seems about right. A high-frequency vibration. Temps were falling pretty steadily all evening, too.

These were shot with the 2x barlow instead of the 2.5x PowerMate, so they're a shade smaller than usual.

South Mall

Click for full-size.

The original file for this 3-shot mosaic is 47 MB--nearly 300 dpi for just shy of 11x17. I think I need to print a poster.

National Champions

Click for full size.

From the East Mall. It was a great big party atmosphere on campus--still.

Moon+Mars

Dam Mars

Down to 11 arcseconds. Through the eyepiece, Mars is little more than a small, bright disc.

I had camera/computer weirdness Friday--a herringbone interference pattern on the screen. I borrowed another, brand-new NexImage and saw the same thing, so it had to be something in the laptop. Tried it again last night in the driveway and everything was fine. All I can figure is that the iBook was cold, but it's been colder before, I think.

Speaking of last night in the driveway, the wind started blowing. And then it blew some more. And then a little more. The scope, mounted in alt-az and on the anti-vibe pads, was moving around so much I couldn't keep Saturn on the chip.

And the seeing during all this blusteryness? Probably 4/5. I can't win.

M1, The Crab Nebula

Photographed from Mansfield Dam, Austin, Texas. Meade 10" LX200 @ f/6.3, Canon Digital Rebel XT, 29 x 30 seconds. Stretched & sharpened in Photoshop.

13-0

Holy crap! We won! This town is going to erupt.

I gotta go take a Xanex or something. Wow! National champions, baby!

Just Shut Up Already

Keith Jackson should just retire already. What a buffoon.

Happy New Year

We had a Dam good Friday night: good transparency, good seeing, and moderate temperatures. Most all of the regulars except Todd were there, and we had several visitors. I got to spend some time with a family looking to buy their first scope, and I hope they left less confused than they were when they got there.

I didn't set up to take any pictures--I haven't spent much time lately just looking through the eyepiece, so it was a nice change of pace. Besides, I was going to the Ranch the next day where the stars at night are big and bright.

And Saturday night at Linda's started out beautifully. Clear as a bell, and probably 4/5 seeing. I spent a little time tweaking the collimation on the LX200, then shot this image of Mars:



The breeze was blowing pretty good, but I hoped that it would die down as it got later. I came in to process the Mars shots (and have some champagne). I was planning on heading back out to try M1 (the Crab Nebula) with the Rebel, and was really looking forward to a new Saturn with the new collimation.

The wind was actually picking up when I went back out, and what the --? Fog? Yup. We were fully socked in. *sigh* At least I got a decent Mars.

And of course tonight's CSC calls for more of that 4/5 seeing, but there's no way I can stay up until 0200 and be functional at work tomorrow. It's just not fair, I tell ya!