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Serious Home Observatories
peatbakke writes: "Here's an interesting article about the affordability of backyard observatories. Rich kids get all the fun at the moment, but it's getting better." Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.
you could use a program like Celestia and look into the heavens from your own computer monitor.
One of the things that needs to be done to help out home observatories is to cut down on light pollution from street lamps.
If you want to see the stars without using a telescope, KStars is an excellent program. It's simply an amazing piece of work.
You can do stuff like click on a star to get a real picture of it from various sources.
It's, of course, free and open source.
I don't have a backyard, you insensitive clod...
I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while now; there really should be some way to take all those wal-mart USB Telescopes and do something meaningful with them.
However, since I refuse to waste space on a NYT cookie, all I can say which is meaningful at all is:
"Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those!"
Sigh.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Some colleagues of mine has a large radio telescope dish in their back garden, with a couple of racks of electronics in the kitchen. Most of this gear, I think, came out of the skip at a company they did some work for, so I don't think you have to be very rich to do this.
When it detects some aliens a red light flashes and a siren goes off. So far they've all been false alarms.
Here
Here is a two great sites filled with reviews and tips on astro. grear.
e views.com/
http://www.cloudynights.com/
http://www.scoper
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
The obligatory whiny, idiotic complaint about having to register for the New York Times.
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observe this!
Timothy, what do you think observatories are for? Remember that old story about how you can stand at the bottom of a well and see the stars during the day because the light from the sun is blocked out? Well, observatories do the same thing. City lights will not be an issue at the level an amateur operates at.
If you have no knowledge of a subject, please be kind enough to shut your mouth.
You don't need $150,000 investment to enjoy the night skies. Begin with naked-eye or binoculars (10x50 allow seeing many deep-sky objects). Next step is a simple telescope - 8" Dobsonian reflector costs under $400. Even computerized "go-to" telescopes are mostly under $2000, except high-end models.
/.ers like - hacking cheap CCD webcams to get long exposure times. This allows to take really great astro pictures even within light-polluted cities. Good place to start is QCUIAG Yahoo group.
Light pollution is a big problem in cities. You may have to drive quite a bit to see the Milky Way.
Join your local amateur astronomy group (even if you don't have an instrument), these guys are generally very helpful and usually have access to some dark and safe observing sites.
A topic that many
Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.
Light pollutions is a huge problem. I realized this myself when I started using a telescope, many nights was I standing just outside our house. Streetlights and light from our neighbours were very disturbing. So one time, I went to a nearby airfield (a very small one) and it was so dark i couldn't see my own hand. Then we looked up and saw the milky way. Not just like a faint barely visible ribbon, but it was really really bright. It was like a wide bright flood of stars across the sky, and it was basically impossible to see any constellations. Haven't seen anything quite like it before or after. Ofcourse, the lack of any artificial light source was only one good thing; the sky was probably more clear than ever. Too bad I left my telescope when I went to college...
Will work for bandwidth
If you're into immediate gratification, the most recent 500 observations are also available. The Yorkshire weather isn't always cooperative, so it might be a while before you get your image.
It's not the same as putting your eye to the lens, but I don't have room for a 46cm telescope, and viewing conditions are far from ideal anywhere in New Jersey!
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
I propose the idea that, like being able to stream mdeia from a shoutcast server, why not create a system of servers that allow a home users to be able to log in and stream a feed of what any number of observatories may be watching that night. Real time transmissions of focussing, change of viewing targets, etc. Show external Dish view feeds, control room feeds. Call it StarCast, StartStream, or whatever. I'd subscribe in a second.
handybundler
Reporting on wealthy New Yorkers who can afford an entire exterior building as an observatory for their 17 year old sun.... it's always news. It's always relevant to /. readers. It's relevant to everyone.
Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.
Getting away from city lights is easy.
Leave the city. The lights won't follow you, I promise.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
One day,.. when I've repaid the ten thousand pounds of debt I owe the bank, my landlord, my brother and various other people that I;ve run up over the last year of (mostly) unemployment;... once I've upgraded this PoS to a reasonable spec machine, and moved up to proper broadband... once I've digitised all my media onto a nice fat RAID file server... in other words, once I find someone prepared to pay me for my ten years' commerical IT experience, five years of Perl and Linux, BSD, security, networking, and system admin skills... even though I've only ever /officially/ worked as a Perl programmer... in other words, when hell freezes over... I'm gonna get me a nice Meade LX200, interface it with my Linux box, get the Astronomical Software distribution, and do some quiet little research into something unsexy like variable stars, something where professional astronomers haven't yet made all progress impossible to the amateur. I've heard it said that astronomy is one of the only remaining areas of science where a dedicated amateur can still produce useful original research. In a parallel universe, where I don't get sacked for advocating Free software (and pointing out that the employer is stealing GPL'd code and selling it without including the source, license, or acknowledgment.)
But I digress.
In the back of Astronomy magazine you can see many ads for home domes like these. That, I think, would give you absolute maximum geek points...
Sigh. Life is hard.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
If you are tooling around the inland waterway area of Stone Harbor, NJ, in one of the multi-million dollar beach houses, there's a large (10-20ft dia) silvered dome on one of the waterfront places.
No idea who owns it or anything, but it's definitely a nice cap to a beautiful house. Retracting door, rotating dome, etc...
When we were there, it was covered with a tarp, possibly for repairs or something, but you could still tell it was an observatory.
We already have a 30 foot dome, a 30" Dobsonian, 12" reflecting binoculars, and more.
http://www.astronomycentre.org.uk/
This includes grinding the mirror yourself, by the way. With a bit of care and patience, you can grind and polish a mirror that is accurate to within 1/10th of a wavelength of light.... that's quite a bit better than what you usually end up with when buying one from a store. I'm in the process of polishing a 16" mirror at the moment.... my first! The 16" blank, along with an 8" blank for a smaller scope and all the grinding/polishing materials cost me around $300. That doesn't include the optical tube assembly or aluminizing the mirror, but the mirror itself is usually the most expensive part anyway.
There are also those who add their own "go to" drives and such, but that seems like a bit much for me... at least with THIS scope.
My guess is that you can find an astronomy club near by with several members who can help.
More info for those interested can be found at The ATM Site (not my site).
Clear Skies,
Joe Mirando
The guy who wrote the article is named bukkake and he posts about "backyard observatories." I think this is a troll article.
In 1995, my wife and I rebuilt a 1977 VW bus and left the West Coast for a three month tour of the Southwest. One of the best decisions we made was to bring along an amatuer astronomy book and a pair of binoculars. We spent many nights wrapped up in mummy bags on lawn chairs alternatively finding new (to us) features, listening to the coyotes howl, and drinking freshly made cups of Peet's coffee.
We were content with our equipment until we spotted a man in Jaoshua tree with a brand new camper EuroVan and a beautiful telescope. Looking back, however, the van, book, and binoculars were the best choices for our budget, skill levels, and do it ourself attitudes.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
Why are so many slashdot stories linked to nytimes registration pages that ask my sex, code, position, function, range and a million other spam collector trivia?
Is slashdot getting percentages for people referred for registration or something? I don't feel like answering this interview for nytimes and I don't understand why slashdot expects me to have to do so in so many of the stories...
Is there a way to avoid the registration like the old 'partners' in the url or something similar?
Late this year, a few of my net acquaintances will be meeting in two spots (S. Africa & S. Australia) for the pending doom and end of the world... oh wait... its just a total eclipse.
.01C. I can get non-moving distances to about .1mm, I can get weight to about .1g but I can get time to a few nanoseconds so I need to devise and expierment that uses just time. I've been thinking that I can get a disk spinning, I should use a simple optical coupler (like whats in your mouse) and a good timing circut to get some very precise timings. Now if I can build a disk that is well balanced but non-uniform density, that means its angular speed should be effected by the same force thats pushing a pendulum slighty to its side. The problem is the pendulum will contine to rotate as the force is applied but my spinning device will only see the force when the force is applied to one side of the disk. The smaller the disk, the shorter this time is since the shadow of the moon is travling at a rate of about 500m/s. The phenomenon I'm looking for will happen twice for about .0002 seconds. If I miss it this time there will be another 7 chances over the next decade.
There have been some examples where pendulums swing funny durring elipses. I want to see if I can recreate this and I'm looking for help to do it on the cheap. The current expirments show that a swinging uniform sphere will have some side forces on it. My problem is measuring things in the field. I can get temps to about
The point the society is trying to make is that 50%-70% of the light from outdoor lighting is wasted (points to the sky, not the ground). This causes light pollution and doubles electricity bills. Their solution has been to design alternate lighting fixtures that fit ordinary light poles.
I know people who use this sytem in backyard observatories. The current implementation can correct for all sorts of problems in the mount, and compares favorably with the software used by professional observatories.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Hello all,
The amateur astronomy club that I am president of is building a robotic telescope. We just put up a new building to house the telescope. We also have a 16" like the one pictured in the article. There is nothing like tasking a telescope to go out and take pictures of the things you want to see. The problem with Hubble and other large telescopes is that amateurs can't gain access. These 16" scopes are great becasue they can see almost as well as some of the larger professional scopes with much less cost.
Our new building cost us 20K so we didn't spend any where near what that guy in the article did. You can actually build a very nice observatory for about 1000 dollars.
I would put up a url but our webserver can't handle the traffic from slashdot.
Ever tried that in the New York metro area? The lights do follow you! You can go from New York to Philadelphia without encountering a single dark spot...
I know you're a city boy, but there is a thing called "the country". I think the dude is talking about driving from the city to the country, not from a "city to a city".
GEODSS is rumored to have the ability to illuminate its targets with a laser. (A USAF site in Maui is known to have such capabilities.)
GEODSS was the first major computerized telescope system. It's an old system from the late 1970s, modernized in the 1990s. Back then, it took a huge military project to build something like this. Now, it wouldn't be that big a deal. With computer-controlled CCD telescopes widespread, this could be a good amateur project.
Most of the work is in the back-end data processing. The goal is to take all the images coming in, compare them with star maps and satellite ephemeris data, and see what new stuff turns up. Track satellites. Find space junk.
Doing this standalone could be fun, but the real payoff would be a network of amateur sites that cooperated over a peer to peer network. As soon as one finds something interesting, it should immediately communicate that to other sites so they can point at the same target if in view.
And I think that the city boy is informing you that it is impossible to find "the country" in such a megapolitan area.
The kinds of skies that I grew up with can't be found anywhere on the East coast of the US, including places like Vermont and New Hampshire. The combination of air pollution and light pollution has pretty much destroyed astronomical viewing conditions in all but the most remote places.
This problem is not confined to the most densely populated areas, either. If you go to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, they'll tell you about how the views from the various overlooks have degraded over the past few decades due to air pollution. Mesa Verde is in a location that's pretty "country", 9 miles from the tiny town of Cortez, and 35 miles from the only slightly larger town of Durango.
This level of pollution translates into poor astronomical viewing, and it's much worse when you're not that far out in the country.
Astronomy clubs in New York go to pathetic viewing locations in small parks along highways north of the city, where you can still barely see the Milky Way with the naked eye.
The bottom line is that the country which you so fondly fantasize about barely exists in the U.S. any more.
He started a group known as The Amateur Sky Survey, which has been working on software for analyzing the images from his cameras. After three years of scanning the celestial equator, we published a paper containing over 10 million measurements of stars in several passbands. You can read a preprint or the paper itself if you subscribe to PASP.
Based on our experience, I'd say that one of the hardest things about turning a backyard observatory into a serious scientific instrument is the bookkeeping: carefully recording all the necessary information and calibrating your results against the standard catalogs is a real pain, and doesn't have the same sex appeal as building the hardware or the software. But it's just as necessary.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
I don't know, Maine still has some amazing skies.
As the blurb points out the main problem is with city light pollution. This is actually a problem that could be greatly reduced with very little costs. For the most part it's a matter of using a different kind of light that costs about the same.
;).
Most municipalities have ZERO awareness of this issue, and all it takes is a quick post (don't bother with email) to get the ball rolling.
For more info, check out the Dark Skies homepage:
http://www.darksky.org/ida/index.html
For those of you who were wondering, yes, there is an activist group for every conceivable topic
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
This has some cool features. From the website:
"Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit."
Check them out.
It's a serious problem for anyone that wants to see stars without leaving all of civilisation. Check out the difference:
The night sky from a Dark site
The night sky from a city.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
You're right - Maine is good, since it's so large and relatively unpopulated. And there are still plenty other similarly good locations. I'm not saying you can't get "amazing" skies any more, but rather that they've deteriorated relative to what they used to be like, and what they're like in some less populated parts of the world. Getting away from the cities makes an enormous difference, but doesn't usually eliminate the effect. Finding a place where there is absolutely no visible light pollution, even on the horizon, is increasingly difficult.
I don't know the homeowner, but one of my neighbors in the hills has a FULL observatory with a mechanized dome in his backyard. If you are ever behind the country club in San Jose, look up in the hills and you might see it.
Sebastian's Comet Hunt is a great news site detailing SOHO comet discoveries, and there's links there that shows anyone (even tyros) how to pick these comets up.
With this guy's telescope budget alone, one could have a great Dobsonian plus a phenomenally performing APO refractor plus have enough left over to throw in a pair of good astro binoculars with a nice parallelogram mount. That's a whole lotta astronomy, much of it portable.
The Meade 16" is an impressive looking piece of equipment, and it does a job. But being impressive looking doesn't equate to impressive performance. I suppose some people are seduced by fancy advertising claims and the look of a beefy fork mount and pier. But the status of a fixed observatory is outweighed by the fact that astronomy is the most fun as a movable hobby/profession. Plus there's still the problem that a SCT has technical issues that limit its use. One could still spend $150,000 for an observatory for the binoculars + APO refractor + Dobsonian, but one doesn't need to. I'd spend much less on the observatory and use the savings to go to places of optimum seeing, taking my observatory with me.
To some people everything is form over function. This guy now has a minimally useful east coast observatory that cost him nearly $200,000. What a waste. I'll bet his friends are impressed, though. So maybe it serves it's true purpose.
Here is how the process works:
- You download
.wav files that were collected on the large dish at the university of Kentucky. - You analyze the data on your PC with the signal analysis program of your choice.
- You choose your own search strategy limited only by your creativity, determination, and talent.
- Any potential interesting hits are to be posted and discussed on the project website.
The project is very educational and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest beyond using a screen saver to search for SETI. Also for those considering building a SETI station in their own backyard, the knowledge learned working with the ukentucky project will be 100% transferable."I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt."
No, Microsoft didn't remove the CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM prompt from Windows XP. But Windows XP has reduced functionality, in many ways, not just in the command line. The command line is a big embarrassment because of its limited capabilities, but at least in Win 95 it worked. With every version since then it has worked less well. (There are two kinds of command prompt, and, according to Microsoft employees, the differences between them are not documented.)
The command line prompt sometimes begins to display short file names. Microsoft employees say that Microsoft has no fix, although someone not connected with Microsoft did make a work-around.
Cutting and pasting into a command line program often puts successive extra spaces before each line. Microsoft employees say that there is no plan to fix this.
The fast paste mode that is in Windows 98 is gone in Windows XP. Microsoft employees say there is no plan to fix this.
When using the command line interface, Windows XP doesn't always update the time. After several hours, the time reported to command line programs can be several hours in error.
There is a DOS program called START.EXE that can be used to start other programs. But it does operate the same way as in other versions of Windows. It starts a program, but cannot be made to return control to the command line program as previous versions did. There is no technical reason for this; it is just one of the shortcomings that are allowed to exist.
People often say that DOS has gone away. But Microsoft still calls the command line interface DOS, and in Windows XP Microsoft has added new programs for configuring the OS that work only under DOS.
Sometimes when you press a key while using Windows XP, it is seconds until there is any response. Apparently there is something wrong with the CPU scheduler in XP, because there are a lot of complaints about this in the forums and MS people have said that they are working on it. On one particular fresh installation of XP, on an Intel motherboard with either a Matrox G550 or an ATI Radeon video adapter, it requires 18 seconds to display a directory listing of 94 items. This is apparently related to a bug in the video software, not the adapter drivers.
Something is wrong with the Alt-Tab display of running programs under Windows XP. If there are a lot of programs, not all of them are displayed. The order jumps around in a seemingly random way.
Although articles often say negative things about Microsoft, I've never seen an article that fully documents how bad the situation really is. Microsoft's management is so bad that the company has become self-destructive. For example, Windows XP is spyware. Here is a list of ways Windows XP connects to Microsoft's servers:
- Application Layer Gateway Service (Requires server rights.)
- Fax Service
- File Signature Verification
- Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (Requires server rights.)
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server (Wants server rights.)
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Microsoft the music you like)
- Microsoft Network Availability Test
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Run DLL as an app
- Services and Controller app
- Time Service, sets the time on your computer from Microsoft's computer.
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. Microsoft has never said why.
- Microsoft mouse software has reduced functionality until you let it connect
to Microsoft computers.
These are just the ones I know. There may be others.So, if you use Windows XP, your computer is dependent on Microsoft computers. That's bad, not only because you lose control over your possession, but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs quickly. For example, as of July 7, 2002, there are 18 unpatched security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a terrible record for a company that has $40 billion in the bank. Obviously, with that kind of money, Microsoft could fix the bugs if it wanted to fix them. Since the bugs are very public and Microsoft has the money, it seems reasonable to suppose that top management at Microsoft has deliberately decided that the bugs should remain, at least for now.
It seems possible that there is a connection between all the bugs and the U.S. government's friendly treatment of Microsoft's law-breaking. The U.S. government's CIA and FBI and NSA departments spy on the entire world, and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft software help spies.
Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a file called the registry in which configuration information is written. If this one (large, often fragmented) file becomes corrupted, the only way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point of failure. Microsoft apparently designed it this way to provide copy protection. Since most entries in the registry are poorly documented or not documented, the registry effectively prevents control by the user.
Note that Microsoft does not support making functional complete backups under Windows XP. Look at Microsoft's policy about this: Q314828 Microsoft Policy on Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installation. Only those who work with Microsoft software will understand the true meaning of Microsoft's policy. Since almost all programs use the registry operating system file, if you cannot make a functional copy of the operating system you cannot make a functional copy of all your application installations and configurations. There are other software companies that try to fix this, but they don't work well, and Microsoft can, of course, break their implementations, as they have often done with other kinds of competitors.
Because the configuration information for the motherboard and the configuration information for the are mixed together in the registry file, the registry tends to prevent you from moving a hard drive to a computer with a different motherboard. That's another implication of the above Microsoft policy. So, if you have a motherboard failure, and a good complete backup, you may not be able to recover unless you have a spare computer with the same motherboard.
Note that Windows XP Professional can support only ten simultaneous incoming network connections. If you want more than that, you must use Windows 2000 server, and pay much, much more. (There is no Windows XP server yet.) Many businesses have very light network traffic; they just move files from staff member to staff member; they really don't need a dedicated server computer. The staff computers could easily handle the load except for this artificial limitation.
Apparently because the Windows XP GUI comes from Windows 98, Windows XP has the same problem with desktop icons that Windows 98 has. The icons sometimes flicker. Sometimes they move themselves around, particularly after the user switches monitor resolutions. Also, sometimes the taskbar settings un-configure themselves, as they do in Windows 98.
Only technically knowledgeable people know how to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Passport account during initial use of Windows XP. The name Passport gives an indication of Microsoft's thinking. A passport is a document issued by a sovereign nation. Without it, the nation's citizens cannot travel, and, if they leave, won't be allowed back in their own country. In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer. Most people are both honest and intimidated. Apparently about 95% do whatever they are asked on the screen. They give their personal information to Microsoft. They don't realize that, if they feel forced to get a Passport account, they should enter almost completely fictitious information, since the real question is not "What is your name and address", but "Can we invade your privacy". The honest answer to this is "No, you cannot invade my privacy", and the only effective way to communicate that is to give completely fictitious information. Since it is the educated people who have computers, Microsoft is building a database of the personal lives of educated people. Microsoft knows when they connect and from what IP address (which tends to show the area), what kind of help they ask, and information about what they are doing with their computers, including what music they like. It is not known, and there is no way to know, how much Microsoft or other organizations make use of this information, or their plans for future use.
Not only has Windows XP definitely gone further in the direction of allowing the user less control over his or her own machine, but with Palladium, Microsoft apparently intends to finish the job: Microsoft will have ultimate control over the user's computer and therefore all his or her data. Even now, under Windows XP, a recent security patch requires that the user agree to a contract that gives Microsoft administrator privileges over the user's computer. The contract says that if a user wants to patch his or her system against a bug which would allow an attack over the Internet, he or she must give Microsoft legal control over the computer. See this article also: Microsoft's Digital Rights Management-- A Little Deeper. You may need to be a lawyer to take apart the crucial sentence. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [my emphasis] use other software on your computer" legally includes this meaning: "These updates may disable your ability to use other software on your computer." Note that the term "security related updates" is meaningless to the user because the updates have no relation to user security. So, the sentence effectively means that Microsoft can control the user's computer without notice and whenever it wants. That kind of sentence is known in psychology as "testing the limits". If there is no strong public complaint about this, expect to see more and stronger language like this.
This Register article shows the direction Microsoft is going: MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Microsoft is well down that road. See this ZDNet article, also: MS: Why we can't trust your 'trustworthy' OS.
Microsoft's self-destructiveness does not mean that the user should be self-destructive. There is no need to apologize for using Microsoft software. The correct solution to abuse is persuading the abuser to stop being abusive. Once I posted to a Slashdot story a link to an article on a web site of mine. By far the majority of visitors from the Slashdot story used Microsoft operating systems. Rather than feel embarrassed because Microsoft is abusive, action needs to be taken to prevent the abuse. If you are against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.
These Microsoft policies mean that any government which wants to be independent of the United States government, and any government which represents itself as controlled by the people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems, or other Microsoft proprietary systems.
- posted by poopbot: lovely snot! wonderful snot!
lkE4dVASXh Post #333
Someone else posted this link within the past week on Slashdot:
http://nationalatlas.gov/natlas/natlasstart.asp
Once the page has loaded, go to the top right frame titled "Map Layers" and scroll down to the "People" section. Try selecting the "Nighttime Lights" option and then click the "Redraw" button over on the left underneath the main map. It gives a good rendition of where the greatest sources of light are.
Perhaps a better way of estimating possible light polution is to instead select "Population per square mile - 1995" in the "Map Layers" frame, and then redrawing the map.
It's too bad they don't have population density information for Canada at that site.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
An excellent page, thank you.
Here's my dream...
16" - 24" schmidt-cassengran mounted on a *very* fast computer controlled mount. Set it up in some dark skies (eastern washington/oregon/california). Put a nice fast exposure CCD camera in it and connect it all to a linux box with a sattelite database.
1) point the telescope at a particular part of the sky and set the mount to counteract the earth's rotation.
2) continually scan the CCD image for moving objects (i.e. sattelites)
3) calculate trajectory and orbit and set the telescope to track it (this is where the fast mount comes in).
4) take a nice long exposure of the sattelite while filtering out the star trails. Also, look up the orbit in the sattelite database.
5) Identify the sattelite and record the sighting and image in the your personaly observation database.
The interesting thing will be when you start photographing sattelites that aren't listed in the public sattelite databases...hrm, what could that be?? a spy sattelite perhaps?
I'll have to do the physics to figure out how big a primary mirror has to be to resolve a 1 meter size sattelite...if it is too large for praticallity then use two much smaller ones and iterferometry.
I'd love to spend my weekends sifting through all of the "unknown" sattelites and examining the images I took of them...
The Czech Republic recently became the first country in the world to pass a dark-sky law. From what I've heard, it works. The idea is simple enough: shine the light on the things you're trying to light up, and quit shining so much of it into the sky. Details are here (as well as lots of other places).
:o)
For those who think this doesn't matter, wouldn't it be swell if light polution became so pervasive that we couldn't see that next mass-extinction event meteor heading our way? The headlines read: Doomsday Meteor Arrives Unannounced. Subtitle reads: At least the few survivors had a well-lit view of the damage.
Have them come over and look through your telescope. Explain why the view is limited due to the streetlights and that 300w halogen bulb so the dog can see when it's barking at night.
Works pretty good.
The ironic part is that americans can't even see the sky because of the air pollution, while US government insists in standing against the Kyoto protocol that regulates carbon emissions.
The ironic part is that americans can't even see the sky because of the air pollution
What the hell are you talking about? Spoken like a typical European who knows nothing about the US. Do you have any idea how BIG the US is? The amount of land that has any sort of air pollution problem is probably 0.1%. And as I happen to live in Los Angeles, I can assure you that the air pollution is not that bad. It's the light pollution in LA that makes it hard to see stars.
Another thing the poster to which you're responding fails to recognize is that CO2 is not a major factor in air pollution, at least the sort of air pollution that would obstruct astronomy.
Incidentally,though, the steps which one would logically take to lessen the problem of light pollution would also greatly lower electrical consumption and thus CO2 emissions and other forms of air pollution. Some examples: lower light output to the minimum needed to illuminate an area or object, use reflectors to prevent light escaping into the sky, turn off unnecessary lights after the end of the business day.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I hope so.
Dark skies are a prerequisite to any optics based astronomy. Why are we using so much money to shine light up into the sky? If half the light is going up instead of down, then we're losing half your lighting money for nothing and lowering the standard of living.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.