• Category Archives Astronomy

  • LGS.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Its a little late….. Hey, I have said it before and I am going to keep saying it, I have never worked so hard in my entire life…. Its both good and bad, the days fly by, but I miss my days off…the bottom line is that things take longer to do! Anyway, if you have been reading my micro blog, you would have known that I headed up to Palomar Mountain for two reasons;
    1. To go for a night ride. I love riding at night and I have not really been out since I put the new globes in the bike……The HID head lights are the go…. they are just fantastic!  I need to do the web page on them, I really do, but I am a tad busy, I mentioned that right? Anyway, went up the short twisty way, came home the long back way. Nice. Got home about 1:45am. Hey, that’s about Gary time, we should go for that same night ride when he comes over….hmmmm…. wonder if he would feel any better about being on the back of the bike if its pitch black except for the cone of ‘daylight’ coming out the front of the Goldwing???

    I went up to look at the LGS. No, not LSD, LGS…. it stands for Laser Guide Star.
    <Warning, light geek content following>
    What happens is that when you take a photo of stuff in the night sky, generally you guide the telescope on a star next to said object. Some times however, there is no nearby star. What to do? Make your own is the answer.
    Get a pretty powerful laser, at just the right color, shoot it into the sky and look at the ‘dot’ at the ‘end’ with said telescope. Hey presto, one star that you can guide the telescope with.

    But wait, there is more.
    Some bright spark figured out that the laser star ‘twinkles’ just the real stars because the fake star has to reflect its light back through the same unstable atmosphere as the real stars.
    Here is where it gets really cool. What if you took that twinkling laser star and used a really thin mirror and connected it to a computer and bunch of actuators and warped the mirror really quick and effectively de-twinkled the star? It would be like you put the telescope into orbit and could take super clear photos of objects .
    So, every now and then, thats what they do at Palomar Observatory.
    I wanted to see it, so I rode up and checked it out.
    Its pretty cool. (Hey, its a geek thing, so just nod your head, smile and pretend to be interested, it will be over soon).

    Besides, it was a nice mild night for a ride and I couldn’t sleep anyway…….

    Here is the start of the photos I took.


    Astronomy Goldwing Life in the USA

  • Inside the Hale Telescope.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    This coming Sunday Freddy and I will be giving our first ever public tour of the Hale Telescope, cant speak for Freddy, but I am nervous and excited.
    As you regular blog followers would know, last month we did some training. One of the training sessions was that we got to go pretty much all over the place (prime focus about the only spot left on my list).
    That way we can answer most questions along the lines of ‘Whats behind that door?’ It also means we know our way around the observatory and can thus move the group efficiently.
    Here are some photos of me in said very cool places……..

    I am the guy on the far right….. Even looking at this photo now, its hard to believe that I was right there!


    This one is taken inside the east arm…..note the smile…. I was pretty happy to get to go to these places that I had only read about.
    Can you really get this???… I am INSIDE the Hale Telescope…. ok, ok, well, I know that one or two of you will get it. It was VERY cool.

    Here is one of me in the cassegrain cage, it is where all the good stuff is….. Once again, you can tell I am pretty happy to be there!

    Lastly, here is a photo of Freddy and I mucking about with the new display that is at the outreach center;

    You can click on any of the photos to get larger versions if you are so inclined.

    Anyway, Im sure in due course you will hear how the first tour goes…….


    Astronomy Life in the USA

  • Star party.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Saturday night there was a club star party at one of the members house.
    Freddy and I drove about 40 minutes out of town to go.
    There was real nice company, nice telescopes, nice dark skies and the woman set up inside in the warm, so it was good all round.
    A few of the guys gave me a bit of a tour and I am slowly getting my head around these northern skies.
    There was a ‘vacant’ 12inch dob that another guy and I took turns with, it was a lot of fun.

    I took this photo of the host at his laptop setting up an imaging session.

    (Notice that Orion is the right way up, his sword is hanging down!)

    Thanks Terry, it was a great night, hope your photos work out.


    Astronomy Life in the USA

  • Yeah, yeah, I know, I know…..

    Posted on by beno Comment

    I said I would ‘never’ do any post processing on my photos….. well, I know better than to try and defend my actions against you lot, so here they are;

    This one is just Ok, its interesting because you can see markings on the paint that you cant see in a normal photo.

    This next one is the one that I like the best. It has a real, old industrial feel to it. A kind of old-meets-new, and its exactly how I feel a lot of times when I look at the telescope…. I mean it was built in the 1930’s and yet here we are doing state of the art astronomy on it. This processed photo reflects that (well, in my minds eye it does).

    So, let the record show that these photos are NOT the desired post processing results I was looking for.
    They are just some interesting effects that I found along the way.

    IF I can get the results I am looking for, you will know via this blog, until then, I aint saying nothing about what I am never going to do!


    Astronomy Life in the USA Photography

  • I have been wrong.

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Its not something that will be as big a deal for the regular readers of this blog as for me, but, well, I was surprised, and sprang to immediate action to right my wrong.

    What am I talking about? All this time I have been calling it Mount Palomar, but I found out in yesterdays Docent training that I have been wrong. Its proper name is Palomar Mountain. (Pretty cool site there, click around a bit and see what you can see).
    I got home from training and straight away changed the names on my web site pages.
    Its tough to catch myself when thinking and talking about it, but I aim to get it right!


    Astronomy Life in the USA