Weekly View of Old Sol

[Jim Koepke]

A friend sent this to my email:

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jtk

[Doug Dawson]

A friend sent this to my email:

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jtk

In the ancient world, the priests had nothing better to do with their time than to sit outside staring at the sun every week and marking down where it was. They were able to come up with some amazing feats of “predictive astronomy”. Stonehenge, anyone?

No internet, no tv, it was like Soviet Russia.

Kids these days are so spoiled.

[Jim Koepke]

Watching the stars may be one constant throughout the history of mankind.

Here is an article on an ancient observatory in China > https://www.tour-beijing.com/attraction_guide/ancient_observatory.php#.X8a0MKpKiUk

jtk

[Bill McNiel]

Very cool graphic James, thanks for posting.

[Mel Fulks]

Yes, it is beautiful. I enjoy my kitchen cieling noon mark and often write in my
scientific note book the exact time of meridian crossing. It's a pretty accurate
solar system ...but not as accurate as my Costco atomic clock !

[John K Jordan]

For anyone interested, that shape is called an analemma. It's usually (or used to be) printed on globes.
Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma

JKJ

[Frank Pratt]

For anyone interested, that shape is called an analemma. It's usually (or used to be) printed on globes.
Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma

JKJ

Now that I've learned what an analemma is, I wonder what other important fact will get pushed out of my poor brain to make room

[Bill Dufour]

the equation of time will be lost to your brain. You did have that memorized didn't you?
Bill D

[Frank Pratt]

Of course :rolleyes:

[John K Jordan]

Now that I've learned what an analemma is, I wonder what other important fact will get pushed out of my poor brain to make room

You will probably lose something important and irreplaceable, such as what you had for lunch yesterday.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I recently got this 10” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and it has really been a delight. Jupiter and Saturn have been chasing each other across the sky for the last few months. I can see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. I love that the moons change position each night. It is so amazing to watch. We have a local observatory that allows guests once a month to view through their telescope. I saw Jupiter through their scope and it looked like you could just reach out and touch it. I fell in love!

I have used celestial navigation for dead reckoning for years, and so I keep close tabs on the stars and planets that are currently visible. When one is in retrograde, it is always interesting and a bit mind-boggling. Even more mind boggling is that all this was figured out long before computers, calculators, satellites, and other modern tools. It really amazes me.

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[Bill Dufour]

Rip: Arecibo
Sorry to hear the big radio telescope in Pureto Rico has collapsed. Truly the end of an era. I remember James Bond running around on it in a movie.
Bill D.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/01/940767001/arecibo-observatory-telescope-collapses-ending-an-era-of-world-class-research

[John K Jordan]

Excellent! You are having too obviously much fun! I can see some of the moons of Jupiter with binoculars (image stabilized) but the scope is SO much better.

That scope will nearly blind you looking at the moon! For mine I had to make a cardboard shield with a small circular cutout to restrict the light.

Do you take any photos? Share, share!

Mine is a Meade. I used to take it out a lot to show planets to groups of kids. I was able to see the impact marks from the comet that broke up and hit Jupiter in '92 - I could see them from the road in front of my house when we lived in the city! Once I had Saturn in the view for kids at the church and one boy looked through the eyepiece then went around to look at the front of the telescope - he thought I had pasted a picture of Saturn there. (It was a spectacular view!) Great for comets too - caught Haley's in '86 and got some good photos. (For most comet pictures I piggyback a camera and use the telescope just for the motor drive. :) This is Hale-Bopp:

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Another viewing favorite is the Andromedia galaxy and the Great Nebula in Orion. They say you can see color the nebula with a 12" scope or larger but all I see with the 10" is monochrome. :(

But the most fun is a solar eclipse! Several times I took the big scope and another smaller one to schools and the teachers brought out classes to see. I have a good solar filter for the 10" scope but I also set up a 4" scope and projected the image onto a sheet of paper shaded in a cardboard box. Kids could stand in like to look through the big scope one at a time but several at once could see the projected image! (This photo was during the 2017 eclipse.)

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This was as the eclipse started - This photo was with a Canon DSLR, not through the scope. You can still see the sun spots but it was much better through the scope!

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Once a friend and I gave a talk to some elementary classes and used balls and a flashlight to demonstrate how the earth, moon, and sun worked together then we all went outside to see the actual eclipse. Good clean fun!

Hey, if you haven't tried it, try using a green laser pointer at night (red won't work well). For pointing out stars, constellations, or planets to others the green laser is amazing! (Just be careful if a plane comes over!)

JKJ


I recently got this 10” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and it has really been a delight. Jupiter and Saturn have been chasing each other across the sky for the last few months. I can see the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. I love that the moons change position each night. It is so amazing to watch. We have a local observatory that allows guests once a month to view through their telescope. I saw Jupiter through their scope and it looked like you could just reach out and touch it. I fell in love!

I have used celestial navigation for dead reckoning for years, and so I keep close tabs on the stars and planets that are currently visible. When one is in retrograde, it is always interesting and a bit mind-boggling. Even more mind boggling is that all this was figured out long before computers, calculators, satellites, and other modern tools. It really amazes me.

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[Malcolm Schweizer]

That is a great comet picture. I bought a camera mount for mine and the Fuji XProII doesn’t play well with it. It seems to be needing some sort of electronic data. It won’t get a clear image. My other camera is a Lumix and it is on the blink. I was so bummed at the issues I had with the camera attachment because I really wanted to get pictures. All I have so far are pics of the moon from sticking the iPhone up to the lens, which worked sort of well.

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[John K Jordan]

That is a great comet picture. I bought a camera mount for mine and the Fuji XProII doesn’t play well with it. It seems to be needing some sort of electronic data. It won’t get a clear image. My other camera is a Lumix and it is on the blink. I was so bummed at the issues I had with the camera attachment because I really wanted to get pictures. All I have so far are pics of the moon from sticking the iPhone up to the lens, which worked sort of well.

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Nice moon shot!

I had to buy an adjustable weight bar to fit on the bottom of the telescope to balance the weight of the camera. It's surprising the camera expects something from the mount. Does the mount have electrical contacts you can cover with tape or something to make it into a "dumb" mount? Or hold it on with duct tape?! My mount will work with any camera. (I always used a Nikon F film camera with the roof prism replaced with a waist-level finder and the focus screen replaced with a straight ground glass. I don't even know is such viewfinder options are available for digital cameras now.

The phone to lens works amazing well, with telescopes, microscopes, and binoculars. We may have the first iPhone photo of the Andromedia galaxy through image stabilized binoculars!

I've taken microscope photos with my cell phone, this one of blood cells. (The guy at the blood donation place filled a small vial I brought with a little extra blood!)

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In Glacier national park I got photos of a moose with a cheap point-and-shoot camera held up to my pocket-sized Lietz roof prism binoculars. I had to zoom in a tiny bit to avoid vgnetting. The first picture is through the binocs, the second is with the little camera zoomed in as much as possible. The hardest thing was keeping the camera aligned with the eyepiece while laying on the ground stabilizing the camera on a wet log!

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I see you can now buy a cheap adapter to hold a phone at the right position on a scope ocular or other lens.


JKJ