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Local seeing is not good

Oct13
by kevin on October 13, 2022 at 09:13 and modified on October 13, 2022. at 09:17
Posted In: astronomy

Tuesday evening around 20:00 local I opened up the observatory with the intent to do an optical collimation and some imaging of Saturn and Jupiter. It was hazy, The near full waning moon was up and wiping out most constellations and actually also had a glowing halo around it. Not good.
My method of collimating is to use the same optical setup as when I am imaging, ie a 90deg diagonal, a x2 barlow and the imaging camera.
I picked a bright start overhead, Vega in this case, run the focus out, check the symmetry, run it back through the middle of focus and back out the other side and check symmetry again.
If it looks symmetrical, it is collimated. If it does not, then it is not.
I looked, ran through it several times, and I could not make the judgement call about yes or no.
I include three images below, you take a guess.


After that I went ahead and did a series of runs on Saturn (almost due south and at highest altitude) and then Jupiter, shutting down before 21:00 local

This was the best of Saturn, best 2% of approx 4K frames,
and the best of Jupiter that night, the best 25% of approx 10K frames.

Both planetary images are disappointing.
Later on it was mentioned that it was probably never a good idea to try and collimate on a night of bad seeing or transparency. Will have to try again under better conditions!

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20 years of frost

Oct07
by kevin on October 7, 2022 at 08:28 and modified on October 7, 2022. at 08:34
Posted In: weather

Weather station

This is the data from our weather station located current in our vegetable beds out back.
The station is approx 2m above ground in a grassy/earthen area, well area from the house and greenhouse
We have great confidence in the accuracy of the temperatures as we have compared them against other references including alcohol thermometers, other electronic thermometers and frost on the ground itself 🙂

This displays the number of nonfrost growing days in any given season.

This year light frost growing days were a little above (147 days) average (143 days), while this years heavy frost growing days (155 days) were below average (164 days).

A formatted PDF is available:
frostgrowanalysis 2003-2022

StarlightCascade Gardens & Observatory Weather Station
Yarker Ontario Canada
LIGHT FROST (-1C) HEAVY FROST (-3C)
Year #days #weeks Year #days #weeks
2003 Apr30-Oct23 176 25 2003 Apr24-Nov08 198 28
2004 May08-Oct11 156 22 2004 Apr16-Nov03 201 29
2005 May17-Oct20 156 22 2005 Mar13-Oct21 222 32
2006 no data no data 2006 no data no data
2007 May18-Oct12 147 21 2007 May13-Oct13 153 22
2008 May06-Oct06 154 22 2008 Apr30-Oct07 160 23
2009 May13-Sep19 129 18 2009 Apr17-Oct12 179 26
2010 Jun13-Oct10 119 17 2010 Jun11-Nov01 143 20
2011 Apr22-Sep17 149 21 2011 Apr22-Oct06 167 24
2012 Apr30-Oct08 162 23 2012 Apr30-Oct12 165 24
2013 May14-Sep16 125 18 2013 May14-Oct29 168 24
2014 May18-Sep19 124 18 2014 Apr25-Sep19 147 21
2015 May23-Oct10 140 20 2015 May23-Oct17 147 21
2016 May18-Sep25 130 19 2016 May10-Sep25 138 20
2017 May11-Oct01 143 20 2017 May10-Oct17 160 23
2018 May12-Oct05 146 21 2018 Apr23-Oct14 174 25
2019 Apr29-Oct05 159 23 2019 Apr29-Oct05 159 23
2020 Jun01-Sep15 107 15 2020 May14-Sep19 128 18
2021 May31-Oct19 141 20 2021 May30-Oct22 145 21
2022 May05-Oct03 147 21 2022 May01-Oct03 155 22

min 107 15 min 128 18
average 143 20 average 164 23
median 146 21 median 160 23
max 176 25 max 222 32
stddev 17 2 stddev 23 3

Last Updated 2022October07
All data comes from our weather station located just outside Yarker Ontario Canada
http://starlightcascade.ca/weather/
https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IONTARIO51
https://www.pwsweather.com/obs/YARKER1.html

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Jupiter 20220930

Oct01
by kevin on October 1, 2022 at 15:54 and modified on October 1, 2022. at 16:04
Posted In: astronomy

This is the first image of Jupiter since the 2022 opposition (4 days past opposition).
Altitude was at max , seeing and transparency were average, but the focus still was not sharp. Think maybe it is time for another collimation test.
The moon callisto is just visible to the upper left and Io to the center right.

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Fireball 20220924 00:36:05 UTC

Sep26
by kevin on September 26, 2022 at 07:36
Posted In: astronomy

Greetings!
Another great fireball event captured by the UWO Yarker 10 (SCGO allsky2) camera system Friday evening at 20:36:05 EDT.
At least 5 people saw this visually, directly at the 22nd annual Fall’N’Stars Star Party in southern Prince Edward County Ontario on the weekend. All of the others were looking elsewhere, only to see the ground light, up, moving shadows, and attempted yelling at whattheythought were people and headlights or white flashlights!

The video shows a 5 second event with a lot of flickering/breakup

The allsky camera system shows the event well to the south. At FNS2022, the meteor started nearly overhead and tracked south.
We believe this means that it was relatively low altitude.
The video is below:

https://starlightcascade.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ev_20220924_003605A_10A.mp4

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SCGO Garlic Harvest 2022

Sep22
by kevin on September 22, 2022 at 14:57 and modified on September 22, 2022. at 14:58
Posted In: gardening, garlic

garlicplanting2022 PDF

The first draft of the results of the 2021-2022 garlic crop at SCGO.
There is still more data that needs to be transcribed but this is the first look.
Approximately 95-3=92 types of garlic and 1464 bulbs of garlic were harvested in July 2022.
We actually planted more but lost a few types over the winter.
The average heaviest bulbs types were:
Armenian (54g)
italian purple (2019) (56g)
khabar (52g)
mennonite (50g)
newfoundland (70g)
northern quebec (54g)
roja (99g)
rosewood (51g)
russian red (56g)

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Autostakkert, CPU and RAM part 2

Sep10
by kevin on September 10, 2022 at 06:41 and modified on September 10, 2022. at 06:51
Posted In: tech


Greetings!
This is Autostakkert! v3.1.4 – 64 bit

I have gone through three computers in the last two years, that I use for astronomical image processing. Each one was a little faster than the others and where we stand today is a fairly new
Ivanova2021 win10pro64bit 21H2 Core I5-6500 @3.2GHz, 8GB; 240GB SSD 8GB DDR4 1x8GB (4 slots) sda 240GB SSD lexar sdb 6TB WDBlue data; sdc 4TB external USB3 data backup 1920×1080 HDMI; 6xUSB3; 2xUSB2 $260CDN x2DP,x1VGA BIOS 2021Nov18

And it is still TOO SLOW. I think that maybe I am processing larger images, to higher degrees of quality? So I thought.. where may there be a potential bottleneck? Don’t know… have to run some benchmarks.

Part 2 Update.
The 1x8GB DDR4 RAM stick arrived, was installed and is up and running. The benchmarks were rerun and this is the results
16GB using 12.5GB RAM 93% total in use
1/4 thread stacking 990 sec about 3% improvement
2/4 thread stacking 510 sec about 3% improvement
3/4 thread stacking 349 sec about 3% improvement
4/4 thread stacking 269 sec about 18% improvement
8GB
1/4 thread stacking 1017 sec
2/4 thread stacking 527 sec
3/4 thread stacking 363 sec
4/4 thread stacking 327 sec

You will note that it used up to 12.5GB of RAM during processing… more RAM than the whole computer did previously… so the short answer is yes, Autostakkert was RAM limited/bottlenecked with only 8GB.
I am unsure why there is such a huge improvement when using 4 threads versus the others.. will have to try some more examples I guess.

The next obvious experiment is to buy *MORE RAM* and try it again!

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Autostakkert, CPU and RAM part 1

Sep08
by kevin on September 8, 2022 at 16:03
Posted In: astronomy, tech

Greetings!
This is Autostakkert! v3.1.4 – 64 bit

I have gone through three computers in the last two years, that I use for astronomical image processing. Each one was a little faster than the others and where we stand today is a fairly new
Ivanova2021 win10pro64bit 21H2 Core I5-6500 @3.2GHz, 8GB; 240GB SSD 8GB DDR4 1x8GB (4 slots) sda 240GB SSD lexar sdb 6TB WDBlue data; sdc 4TB external USB3 data backup 1920×1080 HDMI; 6xUSB3; 2xUSB2 $260CDN x2DP,x1VGA BIOS 2021Nov18

And it is still TOO SLOW. I think that maybe I am processing larger images, to higher degrees of quality? So I thought.. where may there be a potential bottleneck? Don’t know… have to run some benchmarks.

So I took a sample image, filename: 2022-09-03-0312_9_kk-L-Jupiter.ser
filesize 5,339,633KB = 5.3GB
8522 frames, 8bpp
file on local C:\data SSD drive
And ran it through autostakkert! v3 four times, increasing the thread options from 1/4 to 4/4.
There is INDEED a difference!
The process was the best 10% using 75 Alignment points, drizzle x1.5 and saved as a .PNG
The CPU% and RAM% did increase and the processing time did drop:

number of threads 1
CPU% 27%
RAM GB 3.8
stacking time 1017 sec

number of threads 2
CPU% 40%
RAM GB 3.9
stacking time 527 sec

number of threads 3
CPU% 55%
RAM GB 5.6
stacking time 363 sec

number of threads 4
CPU% 75%
RAM GB 5.6
stacking time 327 sec

So far so good… use all the threads. Next up.. RAM. at 8GB and it seems that autostakkert uses all of what is available.
Soooo.. we have ordered more RAM and will rerun the above processes with 16GB onboard! DDR4 !

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Jupiter 2022 Sept 02 evening

Sep06
by kevin on September 6, 2022 at 19:28 and modified on September 6, 2022. at 19:40
Posted In: astronomy

And again a first in ages… a second imaging run in the same day, the first early on Friday morning, this second run late on Friday evening. Jupiter is still very low in the east.. only 29 degrees altitude .. and boy is it fuzzy!

The north equatorial belt is fuzzy and only really identifiable because I know north is up and it is a little darker and thinner than the southern belt.
This is the best 25% of 4500 frames and the exposure was also much longer than normal due to the secondary mirror dewing up.
We are still working on that!

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Saturn 20220902 Evening

Sep05
by kevin on September 5, 2022 at 16:55 and modified on September 6, 2022. at 17:32
Posted In: astronomy

And this is from the same day as last but in the evening observing session… first time in ages that there was a morning and an evening session!

Too bad that seeing and transparency were poor. This is the best of of 12 runs of 180 seconds.. not nearly as good as the past few days.
Altitude was only 25 degrees and this was the best 25% of 4000 frames.
The Cassini division is barely visible and only about 5 cloud bands can be seen in the northern hemisphere.

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Verona 2022 Garlic Fest

Sep04
by kevin on September 4, 2022 at 12:51 and modified on September 4, 2022. at 13:03
Posted In: garlic


The 2022 Garlic Fest in Verona has come and gone .. and that reminds me that the SCGO garlic harvest has come and gone as well.

The weather was perfect and the vendors numbered a few more than last year. It was busy but not overwhelmingly so. We were able to browse, engage with the vendors and make purchases without much waiting if any at all.

It was a 2nd good year in a row for our SCGO garlic yield. The tape irrigation system we believe plays a large part of it.. regular morning watering for a couple of hours keeps the garlic well hydrated without the ups and downs of floods and droughts.

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Jupiter 2022Sept02 morning

Sep04
by kevin on September 4, 2022 at 10:57 and modified on September 4, 2022. at 10:59
Posted In: astronomy

From the morning of Friday 2022 Sept 02 after doing some runs of imaging Saturn.
As it turns out, this 4 or 5th imaging session, the exposure started to drop and it has turned out NOT to be bad transparency over Lake Ontario but rather the secondary mirror dewing up.
This was good to know. During the day we added a 25″ dew heating strap to the outside of the OTA near the primary mirror. This will help keep it from dewing up and hopefully some heat on the interior will waft up the OTA and help keep the secondary from dewing up later tonight.
The Great Red Spot had just past center and was heading off the field of view. 36 runs in total were completed, most under mirror dewup conditions.
After cleaning the optics, there were still some dust motes that came along.

Tests were completed with the best 10%, 25% and 40% and the best 10% were used for these images.

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Saturn 20220902

Sep03
by kevin on September 3, 2022 at 08:29 and modified on September 3, 2022. at 16:14
Posted In: astronomy

Saturn on the morning of Friday 2022Sept02. North is up, altitude only 28 degrees above the horizon. I count seven distinct cloud bands north of the rings. I found a good map from The Strolling Astronomer, the Journal of the ALPO, Spring 2007 issue Volume 49 #2, page 39 to help name some of these cloud bands.
There is definite chromatic abberation going on, blue on top, red on bottom.
This was the best 10% of 5700 frames captured using the 20cm Vixen 200L telescope, the Antares x2 barlow and the ZWO ASI 290MC camera.

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