Jupiter, 29 October 1010

Again in the C6, but this time from Mansfield Dam, where I'm not shooting over the roof of the house. This is a 1.5X enlargement.
Best 98% of 500 frames LRGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

Jupiter, 15 October 2010

Thought we needed to see this side of Jupiter for a change. Moon is Io.

Jupiter, 9 October 2010 (C6)

Actual Size



1.5X Resample



2X Drizzle


I've been unhappy with the last few Jupiters--they just weren't as good as the conditions said they should have been--so I decided to try a different telescope. I set the little 6" Celestron C6 up in the back yard and gave it a go.

Wow.

I don't know what's going on exactly with the bigger 10" LX200, but I'm clearly missing something somewhere when the upscaled image from the 6-inch scope is showing better detail than I'm getting from the bigger scope.

Jupiter, 7 October 2010 (SPC900NC)

Just for grins, I shot this with the old SPC900NC webcam. It's OK, but you can tell the difference between the cheap camera and the other one.

Jupiter, 7 October 2010

The angled lines are an artifact on the sensor. I don't know if it's the cover filter or the sensor itself. I tried imaging this with flats, but it didn't take care of it as well as I'd hoped.

I still want to try a different scope as well. I think I'm hitting the limits of my LX200.

No Sleep For the Wicked

Dark blue is good. Three rows of dark blue is unheard of.

Lex Luthor Fail

Sent this in to FAILBlog.

Jupiter, 1 October 2010

These might have been better if I had waited, but I wanted to catch the Great Reddish Spot. First shot was at 9:30, 33° up. Second one was an hour later, 44° elevation. I'm pleased these are as nice as they are for being so low in the sky.

Also tried out a new application (WinJupos) that compensates for the planet's rotation between shots. It take me nearly 2 minutes to complete a series, and in that time Jupiter has rotated enough that the luminance channel I shot first doesn't align perfectly with the the blue channel I shot last. The improvement is subtle, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Jupiter, 30 September 2010

10" LX200, Best 98% of 750 frames LRGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

I gotta get some sleep. This good weather is killing me.

Jupiter, 29 September 2010

That's Europa casting the shadow, and Io off to the right (again).

10" LX200, Best 98% of 750 frames LRGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

Not A Picture of Jupiter

Jupiter, 27 September 2010

10" LX200, Best 98% of 750 frames LRGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

A little soft. We're forecast for excellent seeing after midnight tonight; we'll see if I make it out.

OU Still Sucks

Don't forget, the big game is coming up!



I put up a new CafePress store to point out that no matter what the score, OU still sucks.

The lawyers made me change the shirt. They suck too.

Orbital Mechanics

(Actually, I think Orbital Mechanics is a great name for a band.)

Jupiter, 23 September 2010

Jove's looking kinda dull this year. The southern equatorial belt is missing, and there's not a whole lot of activity in the equator either.

10" LX200, Best 500 of 750 frames LRGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

Jupiter, 21 September 2010

A day past opposition, and we got a break in the clouds. That's Europa casting a shadow on the planet, and Io off to the right.

The color on this one is weird, not sure why. Didn't get a good luminance frame, so this is just RGB.
10" LX200, Best 500 of 750 frames RGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

My Role Model

Have I mentioned how Calvin's dad is my parenting role model?

The new iPod nano

The new iPod nano says, "Hook 'Em!"

First Day, Second Grade

At least he's wearing different shoes this year.

More here.

IC 5070, The Pelican Nebula

The Pelican Nebula is a large area of emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan), close to Deneb, and divided from its brighter, larger neighbor, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust.

X-Bar Ranch, Eldorado, TX
Exposure: 43 x 5 minutes (3:35)
Camera: Modified Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
Scope: AT80EDT
Mount: Meade LXD650
Guider: ST80, Meade DSI
Filter: None
Software: PHD Guiding, Nebulosity, Photoshop

NGC 7000, The North American Nebula

Wikipedia entry.

Photographed at X-Bar Ranch, between Eldorado and Sonora, Texas.

First time I've dealt with a "meridian flip." With a German Equatorial Mount, when an object passes from the eastern sky to the western sky, you have to turn the mount so that the scope switches sides. Getting the camera realigned close to where it was was a bit tricky, but not terribly hard.

X-Bar Ranch, Eldorado, TX
Exposure: 30 x 2 minutes + 30 x 5 minutes (3.5 hours)
Camera: Modified Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
Scope: AT80EDT
Mount: Meade LXD650
Guider: ST80, Meade DSI
Filter: None
Software: PHD Guiding, Nebulosity, Photoshop

Jupiter, 2 August 2010

First time around for this appearance of Jupiter, and I'm setting the bar high this year. We've had a high-pressure dome settle in on top of us the last couple of days, and the seeing has been, well, astronomical. I set up the gear before going to bed, then rolled out at 0500 this morning to shoot this. CSC said 4/5 seeing, and it may have been better.

10" LX200, Best 500 of 1000 frames LRGB, DMK21AF04, Televue 2.5x Powermate

M17, The Omega Nebula

Here's a third version (1) (2) of M17, aka the Swan Nebula.



Heritage Park Observatory, Cedar Park, TX
Exposure: 90 x 90 seconds (2:15)
Camera: Modified Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
Scope: Meade LX200 @ f/6.3
Mount: Meade LX200
Guider: ST80, Meade DSI
Filter: None
Software: PHD Guiding, Nebulosity, Photoshop

NGC 6888, The Crescent Nebula

Here's another look at NGC6888, the Crescent Nebula.



Heritage Park Observatory, Cedar Park, TX
Exposure: 90 x 90 seconds (2:15)
Camera: Modified Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
Scope: Meade LX200 @ f/6.3
Mount: Meade LX200
Guider: ST80, Meade DSI
Filter: None
Software: PHD Guiding, Nebulosity, Photoshop

Chicago Panoramas

Looking north from Shedd Aquarium.


Looking north from Museum Campus.


Looking east from Sears Tower.

Another Couple of Busy Days

One of these days we'll get back to astronomy …

Meanwhile, here's a bit of 3D work that's different from the stuff I usually do. Client sends over an image from a video: "Can you copy this?"


Modeled in Sketchup, rendered with Indigo.

Say Hello To My Leeetle Friend

Colt M4 Carbine, .22
25 yards, standing, iron sights. Not awful for the first time out. Gun shoots great.

A Proposal For Private Spaceflight

How to pay for a trip to the Moon with private money. Just do it.

A Very Busy Couple of Days

120,000-volt electrical termination, drawn in Adobe Illustrator.

CVS/Pharmacy Ripped Me Off

When I asked about the difference, the clerk told me "Maybe that's the price with a CVS card. Do you have a CVS card?"

Wankers.

NGC 4565

Edge on galaxy in Coma Berenices.

Heritage Park Observatory, Cedar Park, TX
Exposure: 72 x 2 1/2 minutes
Camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
Scope: Meade LX200 @ f/10
Mount: Meade LX200
Guider: ST80, Meade DSI
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Software: PHD Guiding, Nebulosity, Photoshop

It's Funny 'Cuz It's True

Pretty Dang Amazing

This close-up of photographer Thierry Legault's snapshot zooms in on the space shuttle Atlantis and International Space Station as they transited across the sun on May 16, 2010. This photo was taken from Madrid, Spain. Full Story.

A Disappointing Saturn

For whatever reason, I just couldn't get the camera to focus as sharply as I was seeing in the eyepiece.

Heritage Park Observatory, Cedar Park, TX
Exposure: 1500 frames each L, R, G, B
Camera: Imaging Source DMK21AF04.US
Scope: Meade LX200 10", Televue 2.5x Powermate (f/25)
Mount: Meade LX200
Guider: none
Filter: Orion LRGB set
Software: AstroIIDC, Registax, Photoshop

Sunset at LKY Ranch

Binocular Astronomy

My presentation on Binocular Astronomy for the Wine & Starshine benefit is here. (12 MB PDF)

Trade Expert

I'm talking to you, Mike Rowe. Stop it.

No Really, iDo

Stirring The Pot

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the United States Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the Federal Communications Commission regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of United States Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the United States congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the United States Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the United States Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log onto the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how socialsism in medicine is bad because the government can't do anything right.

M81 & M82, Bode's Galaxy & Cigar Galaxy

Third time around for this pair of galaxies. Had a nasty gradient background that I haven't seen before. The scope was awful close to the roof of the observatory--I wonder if that might have had anything to do with it.

Heritage Park Observatory, Cedar Park, TX
Exposure: 30 x 2 minutes
Camera: Modified Canon Digital Rebel XT (350D)
Scope: Astro-Tech AT80ED 80mm APO refractor, AT field flattener
Mount: Meade LX200
Guider: Meade LX200 @ f/3, Meade DSI
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Software: PHD Guiding, Nebulosity, Photoshop

My Code Name

JCN Splice Illustration

Trying out the Indigo renderer with Google Sketchup. This is part of a high voltage cable splice. The main conductor in the center needs some work, but the neutral wires around the outside look pretty good I think.

Happy Texas Independence Day!

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A TEXAN
by Bum Phillips Bob Wheeler

Dear Friends,

Last year, I wrote a small piece about what it means to me to be a Texan. My friends know it means about damned near everything. Anyway, this fella asked me to reprint what I’d wrote and I didn’t have it. So I set out to think about rewriting something. I considered writing about all the great things I love about Texas. There are way too many things to list. I can’t even begin to do it justice.

Lemme let you in on my short list.

It starts with The Window at Big Bend, which in and of itself is proof of God. It goes to Lake Sam Rayburn where my Grandad taught me more about life than fishin, and enough about fishin to last a lifetime. I can talk about Tyler, and Longview, and Odessa and Cisco, and Abilene and Poteet and every place in between.

Every little part of Texas feels special. Every person who ever flew the Lone Star thinks of Bandera or Victoria or Manor or wherever they call “home” as the best little part of the best state.

So I got to thinkin about it, and here’s what I really want to say.

Last year, I talked about all the great places and great heroes who make Texas what it is. I talked about Willie and Waylon and Michael Dell and Michael DeBakey and my Dad and LBJ and Denton Cooley. I talked about everybody that came to mind. It took me sitting here tonight reading this stack of emails and thinkin about where I’ve been and what I’ve done since the last time I wrote on this occasion to remind me what it is about Texas that is really great.

You see, this last month or so I finally went to Europe for the first time. I hadn’t ever been, and didn’t too much want to. But you know all my damned friends are always talking about “the time they went to Europe.” So, I finally went. It was a hell of a trip to be sure. All they did when they saw me was say the same thing, before they’d ever met me. “Hey cowboy, we love Texas.” I guess the hat tipped em off.

But let me tell you what, they all came up with a smile on their faces. You know why? They knew for damned sure that I was gonna be nice to ‘em. They knew it ‘cause they knew I was from Texas. They knew something that hadn’t even hit me. They knew Texans, even though they’d never met one.

That’s when it occurred to me. Do you know what is great about Texas? Do you know why when my friend Beverly and I were trekking across country to see 15 baseball games we got sick and had to come home after 8? Do you know why every time I cross the border I say, “Lord, please don’t let me die in_____”? Do you know why children in Japan can look at a picture of the great State and know exactly what it is about the same time they can tell a rhombus from a trapezoid?

I can tell you that right quick. You.

The same spirit that made 186 men cross that line in the sand in San Antonio damned near 165 years ago is still in you today. Why else would my friend send me William Barrett Travis’ plea for help in an email just a week ago, or why would Charles Stanfield ask me to reprint a Texas Independence column from a year ago? What would make my friend Elizabeth say, “I don’t know if I can marry a man who doesn’t love Texas like I do?” Why in the hell are 1,000 people coming to my house this weekend to celebrate a holiday for what used to be a nation that is now a state?

Because the spirit that made that nation is the spirit that burned in every person who founded this great place we call Texas, and they passed it on through blood or sweat to everyone of us.

You see, that spirit that made Texas what it is is alive in all of us, even if we can’t stand next to a cannon to prove it, and it’s our responsibility to keep that fire burning. Every person who ever put a “Native Texan” or an “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could” sticker on his car understands.

Anyone who ever hung a map of Texas on their wall or flew a Lone Star flag on their porch knows what I mean. My Dad’s buddy Bill has an old saying. He says that some people were forged of a hotter fire. Well, that’s what it is to be Texan. To be forged of a hotter fire. To know that part of Colorado was Texas. That part of New Mexico was Texas. That part of Oklahoma was Texas. Yep. Talk all you want. Part of what you got was what we gave you. To look at a picture of Idaho or Istanbul and say, “what the Hell is that?” when you know that anyone in Idaho or Istanbul who sees a picture of Texas knows damned good and well what it is. It isn’t the shape, it isn’t the state, it’s the state of mind.

You’re what makes Texas. The fact that you would take 15 minutes out of your day to read this, because that’s what Texas means to you, that’s what makes Texas what it is. The fact that when you see the guy in front of you litter you honk and think, “Sonofabitch. Littering on MY highway.”

When was the last time you went to a person’s house in New York and you saw a big map of New York on their wall? That was never. When did you ever drive through Oklahoma and see their flag waving on four businesses in a row? Can you even tell me what the flag in Louisiana looks like? I damned sure can’t. But I bet my ass you can’t drive 20 minutes from your house and not see a business that has a big Texas flag as part of its logo. If you haven’t done business with someone called AllTex something or Lone Star somebody or other, or Texas such and such, you hadn’t lived here for too long.

When you ask a man from New York what he is, he’ll say a stockbroker, or an accountant, or an ad exec. When you ask a woman from California what she is, she’ll tell you her last name or her major. Hell either of em might say “I’m a republican,” or they might be a democrat. When you ask a Texan what they are, before they say, “I’m a Methodist,” or “I’m a lawyer,” or “I’m a Smith,” they tell you they’re a Texan.

I got nothin against all those other places, and Lord knows they’ve probably got some fine folks, but in your gut you know it just like I do, Texas is just a little different.

So tomorrow when you drive down the road and you see a person broken down on the side of the road, stop and help. When you are in a bar in California, buy a Californian a drink and tell him it’s for Texas Independence Day. Remind the person in the cube next to you that he wouldn’t be here enjoying this if it weren’t for Sam Houston, and if he or she doesn’t know the story, tell them.

When William Barrettt Travis wrote in 1836 that he would never surrender and he would have Victory or Death, what he was really saying was that he and his men were forged of a hotter fire. They weren’t your average everyday men. Well, that is what it means to be a Texan. It meant it then, and that’s why it means it today. It means just what all those people North of the Red River accuse us of thinking it means. It means there’s no mountain that we can’t climb. It means that we can swim the Gulf in the winter. It means that Earl Campbell ran harder and Houston is bigger and Dallas is richer and Alpine is hotter and Stevie Ray was smoother and God vacations in Texas. It means that come Hell or high water, when the chips are down and the Good Lord is watching, we’re Texans by damned, and just like in 1836, that counts for something.

So for today at least, when your chance comes around, go out and prove it. It’s true because we believe it’s true. If you are sitting wondering what the Hell I’m talking about, this ain’t for you. But if the first thing you are going to do when the Good Lord calls your number is find the men who sat in that tiny mission in San Antonio and shake their hands, then you’re the reason I wrote this night, and this is for you.

So until next time you hear from me, God Bless and Happy Texas Independence Day.