• Category Archives Astronomy

  • Where were you when……

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    Where were you when man first walked on the moon?
    Where were you when the space shuttle first launched into space?
    Where were you when Felix Baumgartner jumped from 128,100 feet and broke the sound barrer with his body?

    I was three years old when man walked on the moon. I have no idea where I was, or even what my Dad was doing. (Dad, care to answer that one in the comments?) Im not even sure where we were living at the time…..

    Space shuttle? Easy. I was a 13 year old living in Darwin. The time zones were such that it was going to be hard to see it live. (Ah to think there was a time in my life when I actually slept!) At the time, we did not own a VCR (Google it) and so I went into the school library the next day and asked to see the tape.
    There was a common room and a buch of kids in there at lunch time, I was the only one watching the TV. I got goose bumps. All the other kids just kept on talking with their backs to the TV.
    To think that the Hubble space telescope would be launched from the platform years latter, and I would end up giving tours on the telescope that Hubble used to strengthen his case of the expanding universe is just amazing.

    Felix? I was parked in a servo at Lake Arrowhead, watching it on my cell phone.
    Its been months since Freddy and I went for a drive. It was a beautiful day and for ages I have been wanting to take her up theresince Terry and I did it on the Goldwing. (Yeah, sad that it took 4ish years, but there you go, busy, not dead).
    I knew Felix was due to jump, I got up at 3am a few days ago to watch his first attempt that was canceled due to weather…. So I started watching at home before we left (actually, before Freddy got out of bed).
    The drive up there was interesting. We took a different way than Terry and I went, more back roads… Great roads, but enough to say, my cell phone data coverage was not so good, so the YouTube stream kept cutting in and out. Aghh!
    We got to Lake Arrowhead just as he was reaching 120,000 feet and had to get some petrol. Perfect. We just pulled forward of the bowser and parked it for a bit.
    Freddy was antsy to say the least. Me? I was in raptures. Both for what was going down (Felix) and for the amazing technology that was allowing me to watch it live.
    I remember reading about Kittinger’s jump when I was about 8 or 10. I was totally blown away from the pictures I saw in the book of a man and the earth and nothing in between. It was nothing like I had ever seen before.
    The cell phone coverage was okish, but YouTube was totally overloaded so I had to refresh the page a few times, which just drove me mad, but I saw him step off the ledge live.
    It. Was. Amazing.
    I watched it till he landed and then we just kept driving.

    Well done to Felix and the whole team.
    Thanks Freddy for putting up with your geek.
    It was nice to get out and see the blue sky from 8000 feet. Pretty amazing that I can get to that altitude in an hour and a half drive from our house. (I stil want to get up there on a moonless night in fall/winter/spring and take some photos of the stars).
    Speaking of photos, I took my camera today and did not take a single photo……

    Oh, and we are never taking a long drive in the Rangie again.
    (We will save that one for another blog another day).


    Astronomy Life in the USA

  • First time laps with new camera software

    Posted on by beno 3 Comments

    I got some new software for my camera… This probably deserves a blog entry all on its own as you can imagine if Im running it, its not your usual software and not exactly Canon approved….That said, its amazing. Just astonishing what these guys have managed to do. For me, its like getting 3-4 new cameras all in one hit.
    Probably an even better way to tell you how amazing this stuff is… your sitting down right?….. is by telling you I printed out the ~40 page manual for it… Yeah. Probably the first time in …..oh…. I want to say 10 or more years that I have done that… Yeah, this software is amazing and a little complicated in the sense that it really pushes what the camera can do and a lot of the functions are interlinked, so you really need to keep track of what does what.

    Ok, that was a long preamble.
    Bottom line. The software has a time laps function.
    If you have been keeping track, you know that this is something that interests me a great deal…. I probably should dig up the first couple I did from the roof our place in Buninyong with a web cam stuffed in a box with a bit of glass hot glued on the front as a window… but I digress…..

    The new software is pretty clever, it takes the first photo and analyzes the image and then tries ramp the shutter speed and ISO setting to keep things nice and even.
    When we went out, I had some trouble setting the reference image, so it shot all the other frames a bit bright, but anyway, here are the results.

    There are some comments at the bottom of the video you might find helpful.
    I know its not the best, but I learned a great deal and am looking forward to going out there again and will make a few changes.
    So consider this an engineering release rather than art.

    Oh, and it was taken at Freddy and I’s favorite spot, Indian Springs.


    Astronomy Photography

  • Thanks Sue

    Posted on by beno 2 Comments

    When Dave came over, he bought one of my few requests with him…. A sticker for the back window of my car.
    Its been a long time coming, but I finally got around to putting it on this week.

    I think they look fantastic, and I just hope they last for a long time to come.
    Thanks very much to Sue for sending them and to Dave for bringing them with him.

    I so much love this constellation, its nice to drive around with it on the back of my car.
    I also like how subtle it is. Most people will not get it, but if you know, you will know straight away.

    Nice one.


    Astronomy Life in the USA

  • Vandenberg Air Force Base Launch.

    Posted on by beno 1 Comment

    I dont know why I keep defending my position on this… I think by now, every one knows and agrees that I am not a nerd… In fact, just a hint of geek goes my way now and then.
    So, that said, Im sure it will come as a bit of a surprise to some of you that I admit to getting up when my alarm went off at 2:30am this morning.
    The sad thing is that I had only gone to bed about 3 hours before that. Zim was over. Why so late will be revealed in another post soon (hopefully), lets just say I think you all enjoy the reason for our lack of sleep.
    Anyway, 2:30 came a little too soon, but I had set that alarm on Monday, so in a way I had been looking forward to getting up at the wee hours of Friday for a while.
    Let the record show that I even polled each family member if they wanted to join me in waking. But sadly, the geek only runs so deep in the rest of them.

    As you can guess from the blog title, I was up to watch a launch from Vanderberg Air Force base.
    They were launching a Delta II rocket that was taking NASA’s National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) mission. The translation of which is that they have a whole bunch of instruments to monitor the planets atmospheric parameters.
    In an even smaller nut shell, it will enable the current 3- to 5-day short-term weather forecasts to be improved from 70 to 80 percent to better than 90 percent and to be extended to 5 to 7 days with 80-percent accuracy.
    In other words, its a pretty big deal for those people lucky enough to live where they actually have weather.
    The bottom line for me at 2:48 this morning was that the sucker weighs in at about 4,500 pounds (2,041 kilograms)!!! This guy needed 6 solid rocket boosters strapped to the side to get off the pad!
    So what did I see?
    Well, of course I just had to take my camera….
    Sadly it was really really low to the horizon and so well and truly into the light pollution envelope of Temecula, so the results are not all that ‘flash’, but here they are…..

    First sighting it looked a lot like the ISS going over, a little more orange and a little quicker, but if you have seen that, you know what first contact looked like.
    It brightened up a little and then got really cool.

    What the photo totally fails to capture because it was ‘live’ and very faint was that toword what was to become the end of the first stage burn was a very very clear shock wave or bow wave flaring out from the point of light. It looked a lot like a comet, only by this stage it was really moving.
    The last exciting bit came then as the first stage finished and dropped off and then the second stage lit up.

    You may have to do the whole click on the photo, when it loads, click again thing so you can see it full size.

    Here you can see the ‘smoke’ that was left from the finish and start of the next stage. (Just ignore the plane light trail below it, it had nothing to do with the launch).
    After this, it got really low to the horizon and really faint, so no photos, but I followed it by eye until it was gone.

    If you have a solid net connection and 3min 48 seconds, you might enjoy this official video of the launch.

    All in all, a pretty nice show and I am really glad that I caught it….. did not get a lot of sleep after the event, so I am really looking forward to catching a few zzz in the Rangie at lunch time.

    Once again, just to be clear. I am not a nerd! Im sure that lots of people would have been out to see this if they had been aware of it!


    Astronomy Life in the USA Photography