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Getting Into Space, One Way Or Another
EccentricAnomaly writes: "David Cash has some interesting
pictures of the International Space Station made with a
Celestron telescope and webcam. This makes me want to get back into
amateur astronomy ... in part, as a fun way to learn image processing." The resolution Cash achieved with consumer-grade equipment (Celestron Ultima 9.25 telescope and Philips Vesta Pro camera) is amazing. Demanding a slightly more visceral approach to space is "Rocket Guy" Brian Walker, who plans in the near future to launch himself to around 30 miles up in a home-brewed rocket. An unnamed reader points out the current feature on Walker over at space.com.
It would indeed be an incredible feat.
Not to mention the possibility that, having successfully pulled it off, he gets swamped with cash from other space investors who want him to build private rockets just like this for those crazy enough to follow in his footsteps.
If he pulls it off, it's the beginning of a new space race, mark my words. The 'racetrack' this time: our own backyards...
I hope he makes it. I really, really hope he does.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Demanding a slightly more visceral approach to space is "Rocket Guy" Brian Walker, who plans in the near future to launch himself to around 30 miles up in a home-brewed rocket.
All I can think is that this guy is setting himself up the bomb...
Slashdot's getting to me.
Here's a link to his site.
-John
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
The author just used a pretty standard webcam, so we're talking $100 here, plus $50 in mounting gear. Note that if you mount the camera in place of the eyepiece, you can skip my recommendation of getting a really good eyepiece and let the camera serve.
You can also use any 35mm camera with a telescope, using a simple t-adapter ($40) to attach it. If you spend, oh, $500 you could get a digital SLR and then have fun using that.
But ultimately, I say go with a C-8 and good webcam and do it for under $2000. I like the C-8s because they are highly portable, easy to set up, and fun!
Pick up an issue of "Sky and Telescope" for prices before you start shopping, of course.
A.
http://www.perljam.net/misc/iss/www.djcash.demon.c o.uk/astro/webcam/webcam.htm
-ted
Did you guys catch that the ISS was tracked *by hand*? Admittedly, only about twenty frames out of a 50MB AVI actually included the ISS, but hey that's still pretty amazing.
It can be tough enough (as an amateur, at least) to find and track a planet when you already know its precise coordinates. Finding the ISS by hand, I'd imagine, takes some impressive cojones.
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You take ten or twenty pictures right in a row, assign them all a translucency value (20 images, each is only 5% opaque) and stick them on top of each other, lining up some specific feature or by simple edge detection. Minimizes atmospheric effects and effects from the CCD camera.
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The FAA regs (FAR 101) used for model/high power rocketry specifically refer to "unmanned rockets", not "unpiloted rockets", so it isn't at all clear how something like this is regulated.
I have sent a query to the FAA about getting waivers for the manned rockets my team is working on, but it got booted up to Washington a couple weeks ago, and I haven't heard back yet.
John Carmack
The 6 inch had a decent figure but I didn't know I could send it away to be vacuum aluminized, so I chemically deposited silver on it using chemicals I bought at the University of Idaho chemistry stockroom. Take my advice, it's much better to get a mirror aluminized.
I hurried a bit too much on fine grinding the 10 inch and wasn't happy with it, so I tried again with my 8 inch and was much more patient, and got excellent results from it (1/10 wave according to Chabot Amateur Telescope Maker's Workshop's Paul Zurakowski).
Grinding telescopes and being a sciency kind of guy led me to study astronomy at CalTech where I assisted CalTech astronomer Jeremy Mould in observing the the Palomar 60 inch and 200 inch telescopes - the experience of a lifetime for an amateur astronomer.
It's been about 18 years since I last worked any glass but I just bought an 8 inch plate glass kit from Dan Cassaro. You can buy Pyrex kits and optical glass (suitable for lenses) from Newport Glass.
I'm starting to write about the telescope I'm about to work on here.
If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area check out the Eastbay Astronomical Society's Chabot Amateur Telescope Maker's Workshop (there's an observatory there too, it's in Oakland), Fremont Peak Observatory, which has a 30 inch reflector that's open to the public, with regular gatherings of amateurs who bring their telescopes up there, and the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers - the Sidewalk Astronomers set up telescopes on city sidewalks and introduce people to astronomy by inviting them to look through their scopes.
You can get books on astronomy, and importantly, the specifics of how to actually grind and polish a telescope from Willman-Bell and Newport Glass.
Check out this guy who made a ribbed mirror blank by cutting out a pattern from one disk of glass with a water jet and fusing it to a solid sheet in a furnace.
Visit Google's index of Amateur Telescope Making, particularly http://www.atmpage.com.
If you want to get into amateur telescope making, take advantage of an immensely valuable resource that wasn't available to me when I was a kid - subscribe to the ATM List - here's the FAQ.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
You've all seen the big blue Meade scopes, the 8", 10" and maybe a 12" down at "Nature Store" and places like that. All those scopes (all these are SCT's, or Schmitt Cassegraine Telescopes) and the Celestron SCT's have a pretty mediocre reputation for quality. However, people say the 9.25" model is a winner. It has a differently designed set of mirrors than the other common SCT's available.
Note the sequence of ISS images -- some are blurry, but one in the sequence is sharp.
Ground based telescopes are limited by convection cells that roil the image. Anybody who's looked at a planet through a small telescope pushed to the limits of its usable magnification has seen this.
However, there are brief instnaces where you happen to be looking through a patch of stable atmosphere, as can be clearly seen in the image sequences -- one is much clearer than the others. Ron Dantowitz from the Boston Museum of Science discovered the technique of using individual video frames (actually he used half frames from an NTSC CCTV camera) to get unprecedented resolution images of satellites from small telescopes. For instance he has taken ground based pictures of the shuttle where you can see whether the cargo bay doors are open or closed. He put images of spy satellites on the web and got a prompt visit from some NSA spooks who wanted to know how he got them. The cool thing about this is that works in broad daylight, so you don't have to be up freezing your butt off after midnight.
here are some samples, unfortunately without captions, and here are a few with captions.
The ISS pictures in the article were even better; perhaps the state of the art has advanced, or the observer was lucky.
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