Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Gardening and Astronomy Adventures outside Yarker Ontario Canada
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Current Moon Phase


Waxing Gibbous Moon
Waxing Gibbous Moon

The moon is currently in Virgo
The moon is 9 days old

Distance: 58 earth radii
Ecliptic latitude: 2 degrees
Ecliptic longitude: 158 degrees
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Jupiter 20170527

May30
by catz on May 30, 2017 at 06:36 and modified on May 30, 2017. at 13:02
Posted In: astronomy

First time in a month and 10 days to attempt to image Jupiter. Popped outside quickly around 21:00 EDT, pointing was bad, tracking was bad. 1st attempt at 30 seconds could not keep it in the FOV.

2nd attempt worked a little better. seeing was poor, transparency was average with an exposure of 40ms.

Serendipity did strike as, unbeknownst to me, Io had just finished transitting and Io shadow was still there as well.

These settings are those used by Christopher Go and are a little more robust then I would choose, yet his settings show off the detail better than mine did.

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Middle of May

May16
by catz on May 16, 2017 at 09:51 and modified on May 16, 2017. at 09:53
Posted In: gardening, life the universe and everything, weather

Here we are in the middle of May already.

The Black Flies, here for two weeks now, continue to inhibit all outdoor activity. Event with bug hats, jackets and gloves, they still get inside and leave nasty bites.

That and the 133mm of rain this month have left the gardens mostly unplanted. We are slowly working on the beds with a new 4’x16′ bed going in, made mostly from leftover parts of an older bed that was behind a short row of lilacs 15 years ago… now tall lilacs that completely keep that section in shade.
All of the seeds started in the house (some in the lightbox above) have been moved out to the greenhouse.

The newest vegbed had planting started in it (veg#10) yesterday with carrot seed going in.
The garlic may be doing well.. it has been hard to go out back, into the kingdom of the black fly!
Weeds and grass continue to establish themselves in the large veg4 and 5 beds. Need to get that tiller in to cultivate quickly. Oh wait…

Work continues on repairing the numerous tires that have developed leaks over the winter. Two on the wheelbarrel, one on the wagon, two on the tiller, 4 on the tractor. I am afraid to even look at the bicycles.

The allsky2 camera system continues to be down. Not enough time to finish the troubleshooting.. there is a spare camera around here someplace!

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cool spring

May09
by catz on May 9, 2017 at 09:25 and modified on May 9, 2017. at 10:14
Posted In: weather


This is a southbound view of Highway #38 near Murvale, with the flood waters receded back from the eastern lane. Yesterday it covered the eastern lane and the western lane was also affected. The heavy rain (115 mm to date this month) has caused a lot of high water, but all in all it has been managable in our area. There have been actually fewer local yards and ditches and fields flooded than we have seen in the past, and yet some new events have occurred, like the flooding of highway #38.

To top that off, this morning was our latest in the month recording of snow

Needless to say, plants into the ground have been delayed by at least 2 weeks more likely 3 or 4 weeks. The peas and garlic are about the only things above ground at the moment. All of the other plants started from seed are still in the house, most likely to be moved out into the greenhouse this weekend.

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Jupiter 20170417

Apr18
by catz on April 18, 2017 at 12:51
Posted In: astronomy


After an annoying hockey game last(Monday) night (Boston lost), I attempted some imaging of Jupiter. After 30 minutes of attempting to obtain a successful alignment, i said nasty words and attempted three imaging runs, manually guiding for each of 30 sec, 30 sec and 120 sec. The telrad is still broken… sitting here at my desk awaiting some rewiring (I hope only rewiring!).

Just as the first run started, clouds had snuck in from the South. In any event, the GRS is apparent and these are the same registax wavelet settings as last time (even though I said I would reduce them a touch… haven’t gotten to that yet).

Apparent diameter is still sitting around 44 arcseconds and altitude was 33 degrees.

Also of note at 21:43 EDT I happened to look up to see *something* flaring brightly (brighter than Jupiter), overhead like an Iridium flare.. slow moving, I caught it near peak flare and then it faded quickly… only Heaven’s above did not list any. I then searched out all satellites but did not see a likely candidate.

Will have to check the main observatory clock against reference sources as well as the computers themselves to see if all are on the same time page as it were.

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Peas are in the ground

Apr17
by catz on April 17, 2017 at 13:38 and modified on April 21, 2017. at 05:56
Posted In: gardening

The Peas went into the ground this past weekend, into Veg9, a 15’x4′ raised bed that hosted tomatos last year. Kim double planted over last year, so we should get a *lot* of peas. Prior to that she mixed in by hand two bags (15kg each) of composted sheep manure from Home Hardware.
They should be up in about a week or so.

This bed was made from minigarden ties, about 3″x5″x8′ each. It is still a little low to the ground and we will be adding either another coarse of garden ties, or maybe something else like 2″x6″ planks, to allow one to sit on the edge a little easier.

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Jupiter 20170414

Apr17
by catz on April 17, 2017 at 07:58 and modified on April 17, 2017. at 13:33
Posted In: astronomy

This is another good imaging run on Friday evening, 2017 April 14th. Only 12 runs done and the third one needs some trimming as Jupiter hit an edge of the Field of View. Pointing was off by 10+ degrees and tracking was so poor it required almost constant correction. Had to use a replacement telrad that was not calibrated to this scope either

In any event, the GRS was finally in view! Always nice to see. A lot of detail with seeing and transparency being about average.

I’ve changed the aspect ratio of the processed image from about 1 to about 0.8, ie from 400×400 to 400×050, in order to get better results when printing to 4″x6″ photos.

This run I used the same registax settings the run from Thursday night, and yet they look way more overprocessed.. ie artificially high contrast. I may redo them to lessen the effects next time around.

The best image was from just after midnight, the 2nd one, exposure times were down to 40ms as Jupiter climbed higher.

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Jupiter 20170413

Apr17
by catz on April 17, 2017 at 07:56 and modified on April 17, 2017. at 13:33
Posted In: life the universe and everything

This is from Thursday evening, after we left the dinner.

.Possibly the best results of the year, in terms of size, seeing and transparency. Wish I could have stayed awake longer, only stayed out until 11 pm EDT when Jupiter was still relatively low. Was too tired in any event, dropped the telrad finder and broke it while taking it off the scope so the roof could close. arrgg.

Offhand it looks like one image in the middle is the best.. on the animation you can see the seeing bounce around a lot in quality

The little black spec that sometimes appears on the left of Jupiter is a dust artefact on the camera glass window, the camera sensor or the x2 barlow lens. I have cleaned the glass and barlow and if anything… they got worse

No GRS, but a lot of surface detail is nice, albeit low resolution.

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Jupiter 20170408 – Opposition

Apr10
by catz on April 10, 2017 at 15:42 and modified on April 10, 2017. at 15:48
Posted In: astronomy

Another long day, but the skies had cleared and KAON ran a little late. Managed to get the observatory open on this, the Opposition of Jupiter around 22:42 EDT Saturday night.

There were some pointing and tracking issues, then two alignments and then we had some good imaging. Seeing and transparency were both poor. The almost full moon was close by as well.

In the end about 32 imaging runs were completed. I noticed that after the roof is opened, focusing done and image runs start, the focus tends to change. I suspect the telescope is cooling to outside ambient, even if only -5 or -10C relative. At the end of the runs, I refocused for the final image and it turned out to be pretty good, relatively speaking.

And there are still spots on the optics, even more than before the last cleaning! Luckily seeing was so bad that the image bounced around a lot, and did not allow the optical spots to stay in one place for long.

Packed it in around 00:33 as mine eyes would not stay open anymore. Still trying to catch up on rest since then.

No GRS.. it would not transit until 4 hours later. Which means it was just about to appear when I packed it in!

None of the 4 moons were close enough to appear in the frame.

Jupiter was 39 deg high approx 44.3 arc seconds large and close enough to transit that staying up for another 30 minutes would not have made that much difference (at least thats what I keep telling myself!).

Azimuth was 167 degrees and it would have transited (180 degree) at 01:04 . If I am doing my math correctly (and correct me if I am wrong), 180-167=13 deg. cosine of 13 deg= 0.974

So I figure there would be about 3% less atmosphere to look though if I had waited until transit.

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Allsky2 Fireball Mon 20170403 03:24:24 UT

Apr03
by catz on April 3, 2017 at 10:37 and modified on April 3, 2017. at 10:47
Posted In: astronomy


Another large, bright slow moving fireball event overnight…. beginning to wonder if something is attracting them to us (just watched Ice Age Collision Course)…

UT Mon 20170403 03:24:24
Local Time Sun 20170402 23:24:24 EDT
This was a 7 second event starting in the southeast travelling to the northeast, east of us.
The near first quarter moon is on the right, Jupiter in the lower left.

Already added to the special events folder so they will not move around from the /tonight folder later on.

/allsky2/
Reported to the AMS but no other reports have been filed yet.
The allsky2 camera system
Looking west overtop the allsky2 camera system.

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Allsky2 Fireball 20170322 10:23:31 UT

Mar22
by catz on March 22, 2017 at 09:33 and modified on March 29, 2017. at 09:34
Posted In: astronomy

Reviewing the allsky cameras this morning to find this fantastic overhead fireball from Allsky2!

Travelling southwest to northeast

That was at 06:23:31 EDT this morning, just minutes before we left the house

That is the moon in the lower left, Jupiter in the lower right. The ISS made a low level pass near Jupiter just a few minutes later, at 06:33 EDT, which we did see.

starlightcascade.ca/allsky2/specialevents/ev_20170322_102331A_10A.png

Updated 20170323: Many reports now from the
http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/event/2017/1071
site. One photo from Toronto. 34 reports so far.

Now listed in the special events section of the webpage:
/allsky2/

Updated: 20170328 – added this still image to the AMS event 1071 report. Now more than 56 reports.

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Allsky1 back up and running

Mar22
by catz on March 22, 2017 at 08:32
Posted In: astronomy

The allsky1 camera system went back into operation on Monday 2017 March 20th, after almost a month of down time.
We had been running the camera system bare, naked to the world, for a year or so and finally, water had gotten into the lens. The last month has been a time of drying out and getting a new, small 4″ dome to protect it against the weather.
The black poly around is a local light shield, from neighbours lighting.
The dome does smear the image a little more than without, but will still show a fireball if it sees one.

On the bad news side, there is frost forming inside and we will have to add a small heater (probably a small resistor).
In the past this system had a 12″? dome with a lot more cubic volume of air to heat and a much larger dome surface area to radiate that heat, so this small one should require a lot less power to keep clear.

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Starting Seeds

Mar22
by catz on March 22, 2017 at 08:27
Posted In: gardening

It is time to start seeds.. even with frozen ground and a foot of snow.
This is our repurposed incubator seed chamber… an old box built to hold lead acid batteries. It is heated with a 7watt bulb, and is inside the house near a south facing window. This is the first time we have tried this and are finding the temperature for the seeds is high and much more stable than any of our other methods.
For instance, in the greenhouse, it might soar to 34C in the daytime and near 0C at night.
There is a thermometer and humidity meter inside as well, and the transparent lid allows us to easily check when walking by.

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