You may have heard of the Big astronomy event… the Transit of Mercury across the Sun.
Well… this is the view we had from our location….
No Sun. No Mercury. Just cloud.
Very disappointing!
The next event will be 2032 Nov 13… but not visible from North America.
After that 2039 Nov 7… 20 years down the road!
The latest linux fedora distribution came out a few days ago.. and for once I actually missed the event.
So starting yesterday, I started the twice a year process of upgrading all of the linux fedora servers. It is getting better and better!
The first one went without error and completed within 15 minutes. The next two also went without issue and completed within 30 minutes.
The base process remains the same:
sudo dnf upgrade –refresh
sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
sudo dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=31
sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot
sudo dnf system-upgrade clean
Since yesterday, 5 servers and 1 workstation have been upgraded and so far only one had boot grub issues. Those issues have been fixed.
Two days after work or prepping for garlic planting. about 3 1/2 hours in total to crack open about 150 bulbs to get 847 cloves for planting in 142 rows of six each.
Working inside to do this part really helps in the field when planting. IT used to take us two full days in the garden, cracking and planting. Now we hope to be done outside in only a few hours.
This year we have at least 99 types, some of which are named the same but come from different sources.
acropolis greek
aglio Rosso Creole (2019)
armenian (2015)
artichoke formidable
barcelona red sp
bubbas chesnock
carpathian
chesnock red
chilean silver
chloe
crème de la rasa (2018)
czech broadleaf
dujanski
f3V
Fishlake F1
Fishlake F21
Fishlake F23
Fishlake F3
Fishlake F30
Fishlake F40
Fishlake F7
french
genki
georgia crystal
georgia fire
georgian (2018)
german red
german white
hungarian(2015)
inchelium
italian lorenz
italian purple (2019)
italian sicilian (2018)
japanese
japanese sikura
khabar
koji (2019) Perth
korean purple
kostyns red russian
kostyns red russian (2019)
lacota (2019)
lucian sicilian
magnificent
marino (2016)
mennonite
metechi
mexican Red Silver
music
music (2019)
musical/music
newfoundland (2019)
northern quebec
northern quebec (2019)
northern siberian
northumberland (2018)
omas
persian star (2015)
persian star (2018)
phillipino
polish jenn
port au george (2018)
purple glazer
purple stripe sicilian
railway Creek (2019)
red rezan
roja (2019)
rose de lautrec
rose de lautrec (2019)
rosewood (2015)
russian red
russian red (2019)
saltspring Select(2016)
seversky palisek
shouldice
siberian
sicilian gold (2019)
sicilian gold (2016)
silverskin40
slovak
solent wight
spanish antihelion (2015)
spanish roja
spicy korean
susan Delafield/Music (2016)
sweet candy (2015)
tibetan
transylvanian
ttv5
us polish
us republican
us romanian
vampire (2018)
wettergren (2016)
wettergren (2019)
wild garlic
wyld garlic
yugo (2018)
yugo red (2019)
zemo
True Field of View
In the past, when imaging Jupiter. I did a full field image run, put the image up on the screen, found out the apparent diameter of Jupiter and physically measured the screen and Jupiter to determine TFOV.
This past weekend, Kim & I tried it out on a star. Using firecapture and the reticle turned on, we centered the star, stopped the tracking and timed how log it took to hit an edge. Luckily for us, it went on a diagonal and exited almost exactly at the corner in 12.69 seconds.
* drift test for FOV wth ASI290MC camera, no reducer, no barlow, on the Torus telescope D=400mm F10, FL=4000mm
12.69 seconds from centre to top right corner exit.
camera pixel resolution=1936×1096.
The centre reticle location is 1/2 of that, so 548×978
Using right angle geometry, the diagonal is 1121 pixels, full diagonal would be twice that or 2242 pixels
calculate drift 1/2 FOV is 12.69 seconds
full FOV is 25.38 seconds
360 degrees / 24 hours = 15 degrees/hour
15 degrees/hr / 60 minutes/hr = 0.25 degrees/minute (15 arcmin/minute)
15 arcmin/minute / 60 seconds/minute = 0.25 minutes/second (15 arcseconds/second)
So just count how long it takes in seconds for a star to move across an eyepiece’s FOV and multiply it by 15 to get the FOV in arcseconds.
TFOV(diagonal)=15*Time
TFOC(diagonal)=15*25.38=381 arcseconds = 6 minutes 20 seconds diagonal
ZWOASIM290MC FOV 1936×1096 pixels gives 329 x 186 arc seconds rectangle
Turns out this method is WRONG! (*Unless* you are using a star with a declination of 0)
Use this formula instead:
The True Field Of View (TFOV) is then:
TFOV = 15.04*T*Cos(delta)
where “delta” is the star’s declination, “Cos” is the Cosine function, and “T” is the measured drift time interval. If the time is measured in minutes, the true field will be in minutes of arc, and if the time is in seconds, the true field will be in seconds of arc. For example, if a star has a declination of 25.5 degrees (ie: 25 degrees 30 minutes), and a measured drift time of 2.75 minutes (ie: 2 minutes 45 seconds), the true field of view is then 37.3 arc minutes in diameter. For stars within 3 degrees of the celestial equator, the Cosine function can be approximated to 1, and the formula becomes:
We used a star near saturn (mag 0.52 38 arcseconds with rings)
HIP 93423 mag 6.2 dec -22deg 39min = 22.65 degrees
cosine 22.65 degrees is 0.923
TFOV=15.04*25.38seconds* 0.923= 352 arcseconds (less than original calculation of 381)
so ZWOASI290MC TFOV= diagonal 352 arcseconds, rectangle 303×172 arcseconds
Then someone mentioned you can do the same with just the focal length and the camera sensor chip size, which led to this
formula:
I found: sensor size (mm) * 135.3/focal length (inches) = arcminutes
mixing units seems to be just wrong, but perhaps the fudge factor of 135.3 accounts for that?
the camera sensor size is 5.6×3.2mm
focal length of 4000mm=157 inches
5.6*135.3/157= 4.8 arcminutes
3.2*135.3/157=2.8 arcminutes
drift solution:
ZWOASI290MC TFOV= diagonal 352 arcseconds, rectangle 303×172 arcseconds = 5×3 arcminutes
So the two answers are reasonably the same, within error limits.
Its that time of year… time to plant the garlic cloves before the ground freezes.
So this past weekend, we cleared out the VegBed4 of tomatos plants, stakes, basil, flowers and more.
It is about 28’x29′ or about 800 ft^2 give or take.
Added to that was 16 bags of composted manure, 15kg each, about 240kg total.
The big tiller fired up and we went through the entire bed in about 15 minutes.
There is still a lot of grass around the fencing, so we won’t be planting in it… there was actually about a 21′ line available North-South.
So we pegged two posts and ran a string between the two and then went through and made sample dibbles 8″ apart to see how many dibbles we could get in 21′.
The answer turned out to be 32 dibbles of 6 holes each.
Then we went in the East West direction to see how many sub-beds could be fit in the garden, with a 1′ gap between each for a walking path.
That turned out to be about 4 sub-beds in the 21′ long length and about 3 more sub-beds in about 16′, guesstimating maybe 25 dibbles in those sorted rows.
So we should have:
(32*4) + (25*3) = 128+75 or about 200 dibbles of 6 holes each, giving us a maximum planting of approx 1200 cloves.
We have cover cloth for use in the spring to try and slow down the leak moth issues, and we are also investing in some irrigation tape, to regularly water them in the spring and summer up to the end of June. This leaves July for them to dry up in time for harvest near the end of July.
So.. for the next few evening we prepare… predetermining what types and how many of each to plant (in increments of 6), get signage premade (cause if you don’t sign it when you plant it, you may never get around to it!), bagging those and also preparing 1″x2″x18″ stakes to staple the signage onto.
Hopefully on planting day, it will be warm, clear, not raining and not take more than 3 or 4 hours.
From 2018:
So the old signage comes off the short stake and gets reattached to the new 2 and 2/3′ long stakes. In addition, with multiple rows of the same type, we need to create some new markers so that *each and every row* has signage.
New for 2019:
Stakes that tall are too tall… you often get caught on sticks as you go through the bed… so we are cutting down stakes from 2.7′ to maybe 1.5′
2019nov11
The transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun is fast approaching!
Time to start thinking and preparing for the event. This graphics shows that the entire transit will be visible for us in eastern ontario canada.
From wikipedia:
Transits of Mercury occur in May or November. The last four transits occurred on November 15, 1999; May 7, 2003; November 8, 2006; and May 9, 2016. The next will occur on November 11, 2019, and then on November 13, 2032. A typical transit lasts several hours.
Start 12:35 UTC
Mid 15:20 UTC
End 18:04 UTC
Total transit time = 18:04-12:35 = 5 hours 29 minutes.
Daylight Saving Time switches on Sunday 2019 November 03!
We are 5 hours behind UTC so for us the transit starts at 07:35 EST and ends at 13:03 EST.
our plans are to:
1) video the entire event with a camcorder with a solar filter
2) take still images every few minutes with a DSLR camera and a 300mm lens with a solar filter.
3) take still images with an astro camera on a telescope with a solar filter.
The path takes it very close to being across the middle of the sun as well.. providing for a longer transit time.
charger
This is a 2-3 year old ryobi 40v lithium battery charger. It has stopped working. I wondered how complex it could be inside… a transformer, a bridge rectifier and maybe a capacitor or two to smooth out rough edges. First I had to find a &@#$)@# torx screwdriver as they don’t seem to want people to look inside.
This is what I found:
inside charger
A replacement charger is in the $140-200 range so cobbling together something that will charge would be very nice!
We started work on indexing the library. We are trying out various processes on other collections to find the best method before we look to the science library (the largest).
The older method of getting all details including publisher, date, printing, edition, isbn, 2ndary titles, extra authors or editors.. was too much.
Now we are starting to settle on author, title and if we still have it on the shelf 🙂
General science fiction has topped out at over 1000 volumes.
Above is a snapshot of the Star Trek genre. We found it easier to take an image of the bookshelf and then manually transcribe the info from there, rather than moving the books to the computer or going back and forth. We have also tried a barcode scanner and software, but the vast majority of our books were published before ISBN came into effect…
So far the Treks have gone over 200.
A guess at the science section.. over 2000? the gardening section? over 500.
Sunrise one recent morning looking over the TARDIS observatory, the Serenity Observatory and the SuperSID antenna.
Great way to start the day.. especially with hot-water-passed-through-ground-up-coffee-beans!
Renowned Comet Hunter David H. Levy will be at Stirling Hall Theatre A on Queen’s University campus at 3:00pm on Sunday 2019 September 08, to speak to members of the RASC Belleville Centre and Kingston Centre. This is open to the public and there is no charge for attending.
Bio:
Dr. David H Levy, Wendee’s Husband
A short bio for a tall man.
David H Levy is arguably one of the most enthusiastic and famous amateur astronomers of our time. Although he has never taken a class in astronomy, he has written over three dozen books, has written for three astronomy magazines and has appeared on television programs featured on the Discovery and the Science Channels. Among David’s accomplishments are 23 comet discoveries, the most famous being Shoemaker-Levy 9 that collided with Jupiter in 1994, a few hundred shared asteroid discoveries, an Emmy for the documentary Three Minutes to Impact, five honorary doctorates in Science and a PhD which combines astronomy and English Literature. Currently, he is the editor of the web magazine Sky’s Up!, has a monthly column, Skyward, in our local Vail Voice paper. David continues to hunt for comets and asteroids, and lectures worldwide.
Stirling Hall is located at 64 Bader Lane, just off University Avenue. Street parking is available at no charge on Sundays as are the Queen’s University surface parking lots.
David has recently published his autobiography. Copies will be available for purchase at the event amd the author will be available for signing afterward.
It’s been over twenty years now of processing data from radio telescopes looking for signals of intelligence. There has been an ebb and flow of the data collected vs the processing power to go through it. We seem to be in a time of more processing than data gathering again.
First Seen : Mon, 12 Apr 99 07:58:51 -0400
Overall Rank : 11,983 of 4,795,232
Percentile : 99.75011%
There is a nice article talking about the 20th anniversary here:
https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/5/24/18637942/seti-home-aliens-citizen-science-extraterrestrial-life-20th-anniversary
Zowee! A Big One! Meteorite that is.
This is a combined image of 8 all sky cameras capturing the event on Wednesday morning, 2019 July 24th at 02:44 EDT (06:44 UTC).
Our camera is middle row, 1st column, listed as “yarker” in the lower right identifier.
Also below is a video, 14Mb of the event:
The NASA page is at https://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/skyfalls/events/20190724-064340
There is a good chance of some surviving to impact the ground, to the southwest of Bancroft Ontario
The UWO release https://news.westernu.ca/2019/07/fireball-space-meteor-ontario/
The AMS Event: https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/event/2019/3146
Spaceweathers’ coverage: http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=25&month=07&year=2019