When you look though an astronomical telescope, the image appears upside down. Since additional optics needed to flip the image are likely to slightly degrade the image we don't bother flipping the image.
Since astronomers have been images/drawing planets seen south down in telescopes for a hundred plus years, normal convention is to leave the image south down.
Of course NASA decides to do things their own way, so when they publish images from the Hubble Space Telescope they normally put north up (This "NASA's always right" attitude explains alot, IMHO).
Personal examples are drawings of Mars I've made this year are here.
My parents own a small AM station. Aside from the bandwidth issues (a lot of bandwidth for just a few users), the artists, unions and others in a money grab killed streaming for most radio stations.
In our case, we'd have to pay royalities for not only the songs played (we already pay royalities to play them on the air in the first place), but would then also have to pay royalities to the artists who provide music for advertisements.
Note, this last one affects almost all radio stations, even sporting events.
When the music artists union pushed this through a couple of years via a strike, most stations just rolled over and gave up. The cost of bandwidth and low number of users already made streaming difficult a best. Tracking ads and writing those checks were too much.
We have explored some niffy technologies that basically block out the ads, but then you can't charge for the additional audience, unless you had locally produced ads.
The difference between 2001 and 2003 is actually quite striking. I'm seeing much more detail, partly because of the larger size, but also because Mars is higher in the sky, so the air is more steady.
The number one mistake most beginning Mars observers make is to not really look. A 30 second glance isn't enough. A five minute watch is better - that at least five actual minutes of eye against the eyepiece. Only watching for a long period of time will you see those moments of very good seeing (steadiness) where lots of detail pops out and becomes visible.
There is reason to get excited by this approach, and if you are really itching for 2005, then use this time around, to train your observing skills - and perhaps drawing skills - to prepare yourself for 2005. The more eyepiece time that you have, the more that you see.
JMHO
Here is my
Mars blog. I think I'm up to about 25 drawings this time around. Don't know if I'll beat my record of 55 drawings that I made in 1988.
The idea of a MARC train with a few hundred people getting into an accident because CSX's dispatching center is down, is nothing compared to a freight train with hazardous material wrecking in a large city (since railroads grew up at the same time most large cities did... they run THROUGH the cities, not around them). Fire, gas, explosion, you name it, it could have happened.
And it's not MARC's problem... they only run on CSX's tracks.
Re:They tried this with medium bombers as well
on
Nuke-Lobbing
·
· Score: 1
There is a very nice article on this topic, including details about B-47 doing the idiot loop in the May issue of Air and Space Magazine.
Traditionally, events of this sort are called nova by astronomers.
Nova events that are visible to the naked eye don't happen every day, but aren't all that uncommon. In my 20 years of being an active amateur astronomer, I've seen a half dozen or so. Most are very dim and require the use of some sort of chart to tell the nova from nearby stars.
When they are this dim, it is a requirement to get out under dark skys and away from the CRT or LCD.
Nova events that don't get as bright as six or seventh magnitude require some sort of optical aid - perhaps just binoculars - to see. These sorts of events happen all the time.
At mag 4.5 this is a pretty bright star (greek letter named stars usually are pretty bright since they were cataloged hundreds of years ago before the invention of the telescope).
Thus, this one might get bright enough to actually be pretty easy to see. Only time will tell.
After all, as far as we know, some other star has gone supernova and the light will only reach Earth today in the form of an daylight object, or something that is as bright as Venus or even the Moon.
"Although some planets, most notably Jupiter, are covered in clouds, it's the first time the process of evaporation and cloud formation has been spotted in space, said Caltech scientist Michael Brown."
I've watched evaporative process cloud formation on Mars... that's been witnessed for a least a hundred years.
But of course cloud formation on Mars or Titan does not take place in "space". Sigh.
US Government websites must now be built to an accessiblity standard called Section 508.
What do you think of the Section 508 standard? A few Govt webmasters sometimes bemoan that it doesn't allow them to use the most sexy stuff. Although if you build to 508, your site will work for just about everyone.
Do you think Section 508 is a good model for private industry to use?
Of course that's assuming the meteors are half bright and half dim. In 1999, the show was very nice, but almost entirely made up of bright fireballs. In 2001, there were fewer brighter ones and many more dimmer meteors.
Yes, putting trees, or even a house between you and the moon might make a difference. Also, wish for very, very transparent - no haze or muck - sky. The more transparent the sky, the less moon light is reflected and the darker the sky will appear.
The almost full moon will really impact this show... it will be best to wait until very early morning - 4am on the US east coast when the Moon is about to set, but before morning twilight starts to brighten the sky. Put something - like trees - between you and moon.
If you are out while the moon is up, you will learn just how bright the moon really is when you are away from city lights. After 20 minutes, you won't need a flashlight. Be sure to notice how you can't detect color very well.
While the moon is up, you will only see the brightest of the meteors, so don't expect anything like last year. Just hope and pray for a storm during the narrow moon set/twilight window.
US Government webmasters are required to meet basic accessibility "standards" through what is called "Section 508".
Companies that want to make their sites more accessible, but don't want to build their own standards could always adopt the 508 standards and perhaps pick up some legal cover in the process.
Most of the rules are basic. It does hamstring you out of some of the more sexy things (flash is difficult) but it also keeps you true (you tend not to waste taxpayer's $$$ having to make silly flash intros).
If you have diehard GUI html designers in your shop, there are several plug-ins for Dreamweaver (and others) that force the code to be 508 compliant. Vi can write 508 code just fine.
Many COTS vendors now also have 508 compliant versions of their s/w, otherwise they can't sell to government.
To learn more, good place to start is the Section 508 homepage.
If you want to see Aurora - and want your children to see aurora, visit the website for the International Dark Sky Assocation and educate yourself and your friends about light pollution. Most people don't see them these days because glare and light pollution from lousy outdoor lighting blocks the view.
And better yet, join IDA, even if you can't be active, your membership helps.
Urge your local leaders to use full cut off, non-glaring outdoor lighting. Local action is VERY effective with dealing with light pollution.
Futhermore, when you put a sheild on a light and direct the light downwards, you can use a less powerful lamp and save both energy and money.
Oh, and by the way, that means less emmissions. Which means YOU can have an effect - and make MUCH more of a difference then just writing your Congress critter.
Finally, if you really want to see aurora, get outside more often. You won't see them from in front of your CRT. They sometimes only last a few minutes, so don't depend on Email to alert you.
Low Earth Orbit really impacts day to day operations of a telescope like this. HST isn't nearly as effienct as some past space telescopes (IUE comes to mind) because of LEO issues (Earth blocking half the sky, the Van Allen belt wrecks electronics, temperature varition per orbit, etc).
NGST is also mostly a infrared telescope, so it needs to be cold. It's colder at L2 and you don't have to deal with the hot/cold cycles of LEO.
If built right, the ground engineers can work wonders using software fixes. Lots and lots and lots of history of NASA doing this over and over - from IUE to Voyager to Galileo.
Finally, LEO suggests relying on the shuttle. HST did that - originally ST was supposed to be serviced a couple of times a year. Instead, it's going to get serviced four or five times in 10+ years. Given current shuttle problems, the lack of a replacement for the shuttle and the IIS work load, I wouldn't count on the shuttle for anything other than ISS work for the next 15 years.
Not that Webb wasn't a great man and great leader, but it would have been better to name this telescope after an astronomer - like Hubble - and not an adminstrator. The great orbiting observatories of the 80's and 90's were named after astronomers.
This is a sad case of NASA tooting their own horn and trying to relive a happier past.
Any place that sells products to make astronomical mirrors. One example is Newport glass works. Look under their Astronomical catalog. Fusco Abrasives used to sell it.
I've had hands on contact with pitch for many years since you use it to polish and figure astronomical mirrors - a hobby of mine. It is pitch's odd behavior that makes it possible to even make (figure) and astronomical mirror (since you force the glass into a non-spherical shape).
Amateur Telescope Makers often call pitch "funny stuff" since it will behave in different ways with just minor changes in the environment or handling.
The cool thing is that someone figured out how to make use of the properties long before we understood why it does what it does.
I seem to remember slashdot reporting on FISA a few months back and the out cry on/. was that unless procedings were all public, the court was just a rubber stamp for the Justice Dept.
I saw this on the CNN website and thought it was a lame shot at some publicity... I saw similar animations done by amateurs within hours of the close approach.
Nice job for some students, but enough for national press attention? Slow news day for slashdot, I guess.
This seems to be the first time robots are used as tools for combat...
In WWII, the German army used a remote control tank that was filled with explosives and driven into a target. A photo is
here (about half down the page).
While not a true robot (I think these were control via wires), they were used in combat a good bit, including attacking landing craft during the D-Day invasion.
Another German tank, the Borgward IV was a surviable remote control vehicle driven by radio and was used to lay mines, telephone wire and the likes.
This is all too funny... I only have to read a few comments to get the general direction of the more-or-less liberal leanings of most/. readers.
The funny part, for me at least, is years ago I worked at NSS and knew a number of folks mentioned in the article and bashed here on./. Most of the NSS management were screaming liberals. Some of the NSS directors were liberals with a few libertarians thrown in for good measure.
I first heard this viewpoint aired at a NSS conference in 1991, so it's hardly a Bush thing or very new. At first, I thought the idea was nuts.
These years later, I'm convinced it is the only way we will ever settle space. Period. And in the end saves the human race.
When you toss away the idea of private ownership of property off planet Earth, you toss away any long term hope for the human race.
You put your own, bloody, mighty-high, liberal, barely hidden Marxist values in front of the very simple fact that we could be wiped out in six months by a chunk of rock.
You toss away the fact that unless we get off this rock, we will someday die. Might be a few billion years off, but it will happen.
Funny to think that there isn't a sysadmin, network designer or systems geek on slashdot that doesn't work everyday to make their network/systems/farms/whatever more redundant.
But you don't think a second about providing for a backup for our DNA and collected knowledge of the human race.
And if you think that someday, a Trek-like, UN, style world government will do the job, you are dreaming, have watched way too much Trek and don't really grasp human nature.
Europeans who bash this idea as a nationalist American plot fail to understand that the US is where it is today because of the private enterprise and the risks people will take with their money and their sweat to better themselves. If you don't like it, do what your ancestors did and stay home.
Liberal environmentalists who bash this idea really take the cake. The settlement of space is, in the end, the most likely savor of the Earth's resources. Why continue to tear up the Earth when most basic resources can be harvested from lifeless solar system bodies like the moon or NEA's?
Don't form an immediate opinion on this. Think about it real hard, and search yourself real deep before just tossing this to the side.
that means what we are seeing of Palomar 5 actually took place around 75,000 years ago. I am no astronamer or astro physisist but is it possible that Palomar 5 is already gone.
Of course what I saw was 75k or so years old also. It is so strange to see referenced on CNN a pretty obscure object that perhaps less than 100 people have seen with their eyeballs (I first saw it in 1988) and not that many people had heard about prior to yesterday.
Slashdot Mirror
Since astronomers have been images/drawing planets seen south down in telescopes for a hundred plus years, normal convention is to leave the image south down.
Of course NASA decides to do things their own way, so when they publish images from the Hubble Space Telescope they normally put north up (This "NASA's always right" attitude explains alot, IMHO).
Personal examples are drawings of Mars I've made this year are here.
In our case, we'd have to pay royalities for not only the songs played (we already pay royalities to play them on the air in the first place), but would then also have to pay royalities to the artists who provide music for advertisements.
Note, this last one affects almost all radio stations, even sporting events.
When the music artists union pushed this through a couple of years via a strike, most stations just rolled over and gave up. The cost of bandwidth and low number of users already made streaming difficult a best. Tracking ads and writing those checks were too much.
We have explored some niffy technologies that basically block out the ads, but then you can't charge for the additional audience, unless you had locally produced ads.
Google Sky Publishing, who also publishes Sky and Telescope magazine.
The number one mistake most beginning Mars observers make is to not really look. A 30 second glance isn't enough. A five minute watch is better - that at least five actual minutes of eye against the eyepiece. Only watching for a long period of time will you see those moments of very good seeing (steadiness) where lots of detail pops out and becomes visible.
There is reason to get excited by this approach, and if you are really itching for 2005, then use this time around, to train your observing skills - and perhaps drawing skills - to prepare yourself for 2005. The more eyepiece time that you have, the more that you see.
JMHO
Here is my Mars blog. I think I'm up to about 25 drawings this time around. Don't know if I'll beat my record of 55 drawings that I made in 1988.
Clear Skies
And it's not MARC's problem... they only run on CSX's tracks.
There is a very nice article on this topic, including details about B-47 doing the idiot loop in the May issue of Air and Space Magazine.
Nova events that are visible to the naked eye don't happen every day, but aren't all that uncommon. In my 20 years of being an active amateur astronomer, I've seen a half dozen or so. Most are very dim and require the use of some sort of chart to tell the nova from nearby stars.
When they are this dim, it is a requirement to get out under dark skys and away from the CRT or LCD.
Nova events that don't get as bright as six or seventh magnitude require some sort of optical aid - perhaps just binoculars - to see. These sorts of events happen all the time.
At mag 4.5 this is a pretty bright star (greek letter named stars usually are pretty bright since they were cataloged hundreds of years ago before the invention of the telescope).
Thus, this one might get bright enough to actually be pretty easy to see. Only time will tell.
After all, as far as we know, some other star has gone supernova and the light will only reach Earth today in the form of an daylight object, or something that is as bright as Venus or even the Moon.
Is is astrophotography if you don't do photography - silver halide on plastic/glass?
This is _astroimaging_.
Just a nit, but it is good to use the right terms, especially if you are a geek and want to sound geekish.
"Although some planets, most notably Jupiter, are covered in clouds, it's the first time the process of evaporation and cloud formation has been spotted in space, said Caltech scientist Michael Brown."
I've watched evaporative process cloud formation on Mars... that's been witnessed for a least a hundred years.
But of course cloud formation on Mars or Titan does not take place in "space". Sigh.
What do you think of the Section 508 standard? A few Govt webmasters sometimes bemoan that it doesn't allow them to use the most sexy stuff. Although if you build to 508, your site will work for just about everyone.
Do you think Section 508 is a good model for private industry to use?
Yes, putting trees, or even a house between you and the moon might make a difference. Also, wish for very, very transparent - no haze or muck - sky. The more transparent the sky, the less moon light is reflected and the darker the sky will appear.
The almost full moon will really impact this show... it will be best to wait until very early morning - 4am on the US east coast when the Moon is about to set, but before morning twilight starts to brighten the sky. Put something - like trees - between you and moon.
If you are out while the moon is up, you will learn just how bright the moon really is when you are away from city lights. After 20 minutes, you won't need a flashlight. Be sure to notice how you can't detect color very well.
While the moon is up, you will only see the brightest of the meteors, so don't expect anything like last year. Just hope and pray for a storm during the narrow moon set/twilight window.
Companies that want to make their sites more accessible, but don't want to build their own standards could always adopt the 508 standards and perhaps pick up some legal cover in the process.
Most of the rules are basic. It does hamstring you out of some of the more sexy things (flash is difficult) but it also keeps you true (you tend not to waste taxpayer's $$$ having to make silly flash intros).
If you have diehard GUI html designers in your shop, there are several plug-ins for Dreamweaver (and others) that force the code to be 508 compliant. Vi can write 508 code just fine.
Many COTS vendors now also have 508 compliant versions of their s/w, otherwise they can't sell to government.
To learn more, good place to start is the Section 508 homepage.
And better yet, join IDA, even if you can't be active, your membership helps.
Urge your local leaders to use full cut off, non-glaring outdoor lighting. Local action is VERY effective with dealing with light pollution.
Futhermore, when you put a sheild on a light and direct the light downwards, you can use a less powerful lamp and save both energy and money.
Oh, and by the way, that means less emmissions. Which means YOU can have an effect - and make MUCH more of a difference then just writing your Congress critter.
Finally, if you really want to see aurora, get outside more often. You won't see them from in front of your CRT. They sometimes only last a few minutes, so don't depend on Email to alert you.
NGST is also mostly a infrared telescope, so it needs to be cold. It's colder at L2 and you don't have to deal with the hot/cold cycles of LEO.
If built right, the ground engineers can work wonders using software fixes. Lots and lots and lots of history of NASA doing this over and over - from IUE to Voyager to Galileo.
Finally, LEO suggests relying on the shuttle. HST did that - originally ST was supposed to be serviced a couple of times a year. Instead, it's going to get serviced four or five times in 10+ years. Given current shuttle problems, the lack of a replacement for the shuttle and the IIS work load, I wouldn't count on the shuttle for anything other than ISS work for the next 15 years.
This is a sad case of NASA tooting their own horn and trying to relive a happier past.
Any place that sells products to make astronomical mirrors. One example is Newport glass works. Look under their Astronomical catalog. Fusco Abrasives used to sell it.
Amateur Telescope Makers often call pitch "funny stuff" since it will behave in different ways with just minor changes in the environment or handling.
The cool thing is that someone figured out how to make use of the properties long before we understood why it does what it does.
Perhaps one of the most boring things a human can have to do... especially the weddings.
Something like this might force a lot of artist wanna-bes to get real jobs
Guess that hasn't been the case.
Refreshing.
Nice job for some students, but enough for national press attention? Slow news day for slashdot, I guess.
In WWII, the German army used a remote control tank that was filled with explosives and driven into a target. A photo is here (about half down the page).
While not a true robot (I think these were control via wires), they were used in combat a good bit, including attacking landing craft during the D-Day invasion.
Another German tank, the Borgward IV was a surviable remote control vehicle driven by radio and was used to lay mines, telephone wire and the likes.
The funny part, for me at least, is years ago I worked at NSS and knew a number of folks mentioned in the article and bashed here on ./. Most of the NSS management were screaming liberals. Some of the NSS directors were liberals with a few libertarians thrown in for good measure.
I first heard this viewpoint aired at a NSS conference in 1991, so it's hardly a Bush thing or very new. At first, I thought the idea was nuts.
These years later, I'm convinced it is the only way we will ever settle space. Period. And in the end saves the human race.
When you toss away the idea of private ownership of property off planet Earth, you toss away any long term hope for the human race.
You put your own, bloody, mighty-high, liberal, barely hidden Marxist values in front of the very simple fact that we could be wiped out in six months by a chunk of rock.
You toss away the fact that unless we get off this rock, we will someday die. Might be a few billion years off, but it will happen.
Funny to think that there isn't a sysadmin, network designer or systems geek on slashdot that doesn't work everyday to make their network/systems/farms/whatever more redundant.
But you don't think a second about providing for a backup for our DNA and collected knowledge of the human race.
And if you think that someday, a Trek-like, UN, style world government will do the job, you are dreaming, have watched way too much Trek and don't really grasp human nature.
Europeans who bash this idea as a nationalist American plot fail to understand that the US is where it is today because of the private enterprise and the risks people will take with their money and their sweat to better themselves. If you don't like it, do what your ancestors did and stay home.
Liberal environmentalists who bash this idea really take the cake. The settlement of space is, in the end, the most likely savor of the Earth's resources. Why continue to tear up the Earth when most basic resources can be harvested from lifeless solar system bodies like the moon or NEA's?
Don't form an immediate opinion on this. Think about it real hard, and search yourself real deep before just tossing this to the side.
And here I thouhgt that stars were much larger than moons.
I think they mean Pal 5's ex-stars are scattered across a trail that stretches across an arc of 20 moons across our nighttime sky.
No, I just saw it a couple of years ago in my 20-inch telescope. :-)
Of course what I saw was 75k or so years old also. It is so strange to see referenced on CNN a pretty obscure object that perhaps less than 100 people have seen with their eyeballs (I first saw it in 1988) and not that many people had heard about prior to yesterday.