OK, I realize it’s been a while since I posted. I started this blog with the good intentions of posting something once a week, and I have failed. Why? Because I’ve got so many projects going on, and first on that list is finding a full-time job.
I’m happy to share with you a list of the other things I’ve been working on, to let you know I’m not dead, and to serve as my to-do list for new articles on the blog. The list isn’t in any order so please keep coming back, or subscribe via RSS, and feel free to prod me with a comment or email if you think I need it.
Binary star discovery – In December Marek Kozubal (Clay Center Observatory) Glenn Meurer (ATMoB) and I were the only people on earth to view the occultation by Ekard. We’re pretty sure that the light curves show a double star where none has been reported before.
Self-Contained Occultation REcorder (SCORE) – This is my new rig to capture occultation data. It features a PC164CEX video camera, BlackBox GPS Video Overlay, Digital Video Recorder, Video Amplifier and 7″ LCD screen. It’s totally self-powered with a 9AH battery, and fits into a briefcase weighing about 12 pounds.
1929 South Bend 9×36 Lathe restoration – OK, not strictly astronomy, but a new and necessary addition to my shop for making astronomy accessories. This expands my capabilities immensly, and coupled with the Clausing mill, band saw, 6 grinders and sanders and 2 overflowing Craftsman tool boxes , gives me some great capabilities.
1996 Paramount GT1100 upgrade – Our club had a prototype telescope pointing mount made by those geniuses at <Software Bisque>. It’s the grandfather of the famous Paramount ME used throughout the world for precision telescope pointing and tracking. Well over the past 8 months I’ve been upgrading and testing the entire electro-mechanical system, replacing unreliable (it WAS a prototype) and underpowered components with the latest and greatest from the Bisque boys.
My headline might seem a little risqué, but since this is an astronomy website it’s not what you think. As you read in the post below, the ATMoB team captured data on the occultation of a 10.5 magnitude star in Aquarius by a 129km diameter (est.) asteroid named 694 Ekard. Just 12 hours later, a slightly dimmer star (10.8 mag) was eclipsed by an approximately 75km diameter asteroid – 79 Eurynome and the ATMoB team captured that one also. It’s not common for a stationary team to capture two events in one night, so we feel both lucky and honored to accomplish such a feat.
We reported the occultation time as 09:47:34.4 UT and it lasted 2.5 seconds. Unfortunately the asteroid was not visible during the event.
79 Eurynome (pronounced /ew-RIN-a-mee) is a quite large and bright main belt asteroid composed of silicate rock. Eurynome was discovered by James Craig Watson on September 14, 1863. It was his first asteroid discovery. It is named after one of the many Eurynomes in Greek mythology.
James C. Watson - U Michigan Archives
Here’s what Wikipedia says about it’s discoverer, James Craig Watson, …”Watson (January 28, 1838–November 22, 1880) was a Canadian-American astronomer born in the village of Fingal, Ontario Canada. His family relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1850. Watson was considered a child prodigy in mathematics, and spent only a day and a half in high school before quitting, because he felt he knew more about mathematics than the teacher. At age 15 he was matriculated at the University of Michigan, where he studied the classical languages. He later was lectured in astronomy by professor Franz Brünnow.
He was the second director of Detroit Observatory (from 1863 to 1879), succeeding Franz Brünnow. He wrote the textbook Theoretical Astronomy in 1868.
He discovered 22 asteroids, beginning with 79 Eurynome in 1863. One of his asteroid discoveries, 139 Juewa was made in Beijing when Watson was there to observe the 1874 transit of Venus. The name Juewa was chosen by Chinese officials (in modern pinyin, pronounced ruìhuá).
He was a strong believer in the existence of the planet Vulcan, a hypothetical planet closer to the Sun than Mercury, which is now known not to exist (however the existence of small Vulcanoid planetoids remains a possibility). He believed he had seen such two such planets during a July 1878 solar eclipse in Wyoming.
James Craig Watson Medal
He died of peritonitis at the age of only 42. He had amassed a considerable amount of money through non-astronomical business activities. By bequest he established the James Craig Watson Medal, awarded every three years by the National Academy of Sciences for contributions to astronomy.
The asteroid 729 Watsonia is named in his honour, as is the lunar crater Watson.”
Well, we saw it – or rather we saw it, then it winked out, and then it was there again. Magnitude 10.5 TYCO 0528-00946-1 star in Aquarius winked out for about 2 seconds while Gary Jacobson, Ken Cantrell, Marion Hochuli, Tom Calderwood and I watched.
Joel Hastings Metcalf
This was an occultation by 694 Ekard, a 12.6 Mag asteroid discovered by Joel Hasting Metcalf on November 7, 1909 from Taunton, Massachusetts. Metcalf went to Harvard Divinity Schoolwhere he studied to become a Unitarian minister, serving in Vermont, Taunton and Winchester, Massachusetts and finally in Portland Maine. He died in 1925 just after his 59th birthday, but not before discovering several comets, including 23P/Brorsen-Metcalf and 97P/Metcalf-Brewington. He also discovered 41 asteroids, several of them bearing names obviously linked to his alma-mater and areas where he served as minister.
To capture this event we used a borrowed Sony Camcorder (thanks Glenn Meurer!) and recorded the event on both VHS tape and MiniDV tape. Audio timing signals from WWV were broadcast onto the tapes.
Gary Jacobson
Also successfully witnessing the event were ATMoB members Mike Mattei from his observatory in Littleton, and Mike Hill from his home in Marlborough.
In just a few hours another asteroid shadow will pass our way – this one named Eurynome. Glenn and I are setting our alarms for 3am in order to record this early morning event.
My apologies if you tried to visit here from about 3pm EST Friday to 11am Saturday and found a blank page. I was doing a WordPress upgrade and well, it failed. Thanks to great support from Jennifer at Bizland, my web host of many years, everything’s back up now except for some links and a widget or two.
I have a good friend – we’ve been buddies for about 5 years now, and his name is Fred. Some of you who are at least my age might remember him from television as Doctor Fred the Weatherman on WNAC-TV Channel 7 in Boston.
Today Dr. Fred is a forensic meteorologist, which his late friend Norm MacDonald described like this, ”… forensic meteorologists determine if fog was thick enough to severely limit visibility at the time of an accident, if a sidewalk was icy, or if glare could have blinded a driver, causing an accident”.
So what’s this all have to do with astronomy? For years, Fred has been an avid amateur astronomer, always investing in the latest equipment. He and his wife Ruth bought some property in New Hampshire several years back in part because of the clear skies that are nearly free of light pollution. Fred chuckles when he tells the story about getting the building permit for his 50′ high observing ’shed’. “The application asked for the footprint, so I put down 12′x12′. There was no place to write down the building height.” Fred and some family members built the 43′ high, 4′x4′ pier out of concrete block, with a sturdy wooden structure covered in vinyl siding wrapped around it, and capped off with an AstroHaven clamshell dome.
This is a cloudy day view of the observatory from the patio at the rear of the house. Fred & Ruth are very in touch with their environment, so rather than cut down trees, they chose to place the observatory at one of the highest points on their property, and elevate the observing platform above the treetops.
Back about the time I met Fred at a meeting of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, he was contemplating an upgrade to a ride-on telescope. Fred wanted to buy or build a mount with an integrated observing chair. The idea was that as the telescope panned across the sky, the observer’s chair would move with it, allowing views of any part of the sky while eliminating the necessity of ladders and stools. Now I’m a gadget guy, so this seemed like a dream project and I started to help Fred with his research. The concept was not new, certainly other telescope domes had this feature, but the ones I knew of started at about a 1.5m aperture and grew from there. His idea was brilliant, but after looking into it further it proved too expensive to be implemented in this home observatory.
So after giving that up as impractical, Fred purchased a 0.36m (14″) ?Meade RCX-400 telescope and a Pier-Tech adjustable height pier. Fred called upon a few fellow club members to help with installation.
Another problem Fred was trying to solve was the wind effect on the telescope (and the observers, brr!) when the clamshell dome was opened to the sky. So Fred started doing research, and located a slitted dome manufactured by Sirius Observatories in Australia. He ordered the 3.5m dome and it arrived several months later.
The manufacturer recommended that the dome be assembled on the ground and then lifted to mate with a pre-installed track, but there was no crane that could maneuver up Fred’s driveway and lift the dome over his house and trees to the top of the observatory. Being a well-trained and experienced engineer, Fred had done many calculations on installing the dome, and decided we’d do a dry run in his garage to demonstrate that we could do it completely from the inside, since there was no place to stand outside if we had to assemble it 50′ off the ground.
Here’s a time-lapse movie of the trial in Fred’s garage.
So we assembled a crew from ATMoB, and in the early fall of 2008 we recreated what we did in the garage, this time 50′ higher. We had about 8 guys show up, and we carefully removed the clamshell and installed the slit dome. I’ve got to say that things went very smoothly throughout the day, and we were buttoned up tight to the weather by dinnertime. I wish I could find the time-lapse video I shot that day, but I think it’s been reduced to random bits on an old hard drive.
The next task was to synchronize the dome and telescope movement, so as the scope panned across the sky the 2′ wide slit would always follow. The dome came with MaxDome hardware and was ASCOM compliant, and after a bit of experimenting we found the LX200 ASCOM driver to be the most reliable. We’re using Software Bisque’s The Sky 6 planetarium software, so now when we point to a star on the computer monitor, the telescope and the dome move to that target.
Did I mention that Fred would rather not trudge up the 48 steps to the observatory to open the dome for cooling a couple of hours before observing? Well who would if there was a choice?. Next step, remote control. I installed RealVNC client and server in Fred’s observatory and home office, so now when he wants to open the dome, he can do that from inside the house. Maybe you can see where this is leading…
Fred pointing out the MallinCam EX Color Video Camera on the end of his .36m (14") Advanced Richey-Cretien telescope.
Fred recently bought himself a MallinCam. This is a color video camera that can go down as low as 0.00002 lux! With the MallinCam connected to a video capture device through the observatory computer and remotely controlled from inside the warm house, it’s conceivable that Fred will be able to take advantage of the dark, crisp New Hampshire skies from the warmth of his living room.
Once the last pieces of the project are in place and tested, Fred should be able to open the dome, align the telescope and observe everything from deep-sky objects to the moon without ever leaving his easy chair.
But then there’s the elevator he’s thinking about…
UPDATE 10.29.09: Although my intentions were pure, I’ve taken down the link because of security concerns. The KML overlay of world-wide observatories on Google Earth is no longer publicly available. If you wish your observatory to be listed in the IAU Minor Planet Center database, or if you wish to correct or obscure the exact location of your observatory already listed, please contact the?IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams or the IAU Minor Planet Center through this link.
So what was I doing today, you ask? My friends at MIT Planetary Astronomy Lab are thinking about ?another occultation expedition. Like last time, ?finding observatories on or close to the path is a challenging?exercise?- usually one would have to rely on memory, directories of all sorts, web searches, email and phone calls. Since the occultation path data is already plotted on Google Earth, why not make an overlay of known observatories engaged in minor planet or asteroid research and use both sets of data to narrow the search? But where to get a list?
Our?friends?at?the?International Astronomical Union (IAU) (you know, the people that demoted Pluto to a Minor Planet?) have put together such a list. It contains 1218 world-wide observatories with the latitude/longitude and altitude of each. Of course I added to it the world-famous Edward Knight Observatory at the ATMoB site in Westford.
It took only a short time to learn about Google Earth overlays. KML is a file format used to display geographic data in an Earth browser such as Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile. KML uses a tag-based structure with nested elements and attributes and is based on the XML standard. Basically it’s XML with some custom tags that the Google apps understand.
It took a little time to format IAU data into a spreadsheet and then generate the KML file, but it’s done and you can have it too! If you have Google Earth installed just click here and depending on your browser security settings you may be prompted to save the file or it will open in Google Earth. If you save it, then find the file on your hard drive and double-click to open it. I hope you find it useful next time you plan a trip, or an occultation expedition.
Also, as a service to my readers (all 5 of them!) I’m happy to list your observatory on the map also. Just send me your Observatory Name, latitude/longitude, altitude (optional), Sine & Cosine (for determining occultation intersections – optional) and web or email address (optional). I’ll be doing periodic updates and when I think it’s complete I’ll post it to Google for approval as a public KML file.
Hey, if you’re traveling somewhere check this data, find a close observatory, call ahead and get a tour, or maybe a night of comet chasing! That’s what I’d do…
Jupiter conjunction with the moon on 10/26/09, 7pm, shot from the ATMoB observatory, Nikon P5100, 26mm, f/5.3, 1/60 second, ISO 800.
Conjunction: (n) \k?n-j??(k)-sh?n\ – an apparent meeting or passing of two or more celestial bodies in the same degree of the zodiac.
In astronomy conjunctions happen all the time, from our point of view here on Earth. Of course the Moon really isn’t much closer to Jupiter than it was last night, or even last month, relatively speaking. In fact, at the time this picture was taken, the Moon was 403,071km from Earth while Jupiter, a whopping 800,000,000km give or take a hundred million.
For scale, the moon is about 1/2 degree in apparent diameter (that would be top to bottom in this picture) and Jupiter lies about 3 degrees to its East.
Sunspot 1029, the largest so far in 2009, captured at my home in Massachusetts on 10-25-09, 3:45pm. Canon XSi, Stellarvue 80mm, f/6, Baader 'white' solar film, 1/4000sec. Click image for 1024x1024 version.
SPACEWEATHER.COM: GROWING SUNSPOT: The sun is showing signs of life. Sunspot 1029 emerged this weekend, and it is crackling with?B- and C-class solar flares. This movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) chronicles the sunspot’s rapid development from Oct. 23rd through 25th.
Image- Spaceweather.com - click for larger version
The sunspot’s magnetic polarity identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24. If its growth continues apace, sunspot 1029 could soon become the biggest sunspot of 2009.
Last week I traveled to Mexico, specifically to Mexico’s Observatorio Astronomica Nacional’s San Pedro Mountain Observatory in North Baja California state, located 9,100′ (2790 m) high in the San Pedro Martir National Park. Some folks at the MIT Planetary?Astronomy?Lab had enlisted me and four fellow members the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, to carry specially designed CCD cameras to remote sites across both hemispheres to capture data on the occultation of an approximately 500km diameter Kuiper Belt Object, also called a Trans-Neptunian Object. The professional-amateur collaboration ?has worked well in the past for organizations like the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the American Association of Variable Star Observers, and it proved to work well for MIT in this investigation.
The ride from San Diego to Ensenada and then on to the observatory is about 350 miles, the last 150 or so on twisting roads that hugged the mountainsides. Fortunatly we were under the care of professional drivers in the observatory's huge 4-wheel drive utility vehicles. This is not a drive I'd want to do in my Prius!
My host for the two day investigation was Dr. Raul Michel, a long-time member of the staff at the Institute of Astronomy at the Autonomous National Observatory of Mexico. Dr. Michel specializes in cataclysmic variables. He has conducted many of his investigations using the same 60" (1.5M) Richey-Cretien telescope that we we'd be using.
After we arrived I was assigned room 110 in the Visiting Astronomers quarters. The room was quite comfortable, with a warm bed covered with several of those colorful wool blankets the Mexicans are famous for, private lavatory and shower, a desk and Wi-Fi internet. Actually Wi-Fi was available throughout the facility, in the observatories, lounge and cocina (kitchen, or rather dining hall). On the lower level was an exercise room, a laundry and billiard and pingpong tables. The middle level, where my room was, also contained a TV room and lockers for the permanent staff. The upper level held the main office, staff astronomer's quarters and a computer room.
Raul and I were assigned VW #5 in order to get around the steep hills of the observatory. The ride from our dormitory to the 1.5M telescope was about 1.5km. After the first day Raul let me drive this 1998 Mexican-built classic. It brought back memories of the old VW from my college years.
We got right to work installing the camera on the telescope and testing it out in the daylight. We had a little trouble with the GPS unit but were able to get it stable enough for the night’s work.
MY FIRST OCCULTATION EVENT
We were fortunate that timing was perfect for a practice run on the first night. The target was (762) Pulcova, a main-belt asteroid discovered in 1913 by Grigory Neujmin and named after the Pulcova Observatory near Saint Petersburg Russia. Pulcova is 137 km in diameter and dark colored. It’s especially significant because in 2000?astronomers?at?the?Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii discovered a small, 15km moon orbiting Pulcova?about?800km away. This was one of the first asteroid moons to be identified. Pulcova was to occult TYCO?2314-01655-1, a 12.2 magnitude star in Triangulum.
Bruce bathed in red light at the base of the 1.5M, f/13.5 Richey-Cretein telescope. The scope was installed at the SPM Observatory in 1970 in collaboration with the University of Arizona and the patronage of Harold Johnson. The original aluminum primary is on display at the UNAM Ensenada campus, where the new Cer-Vit mirror was ground and polished. At the lower left, an arrow points to the specially-designed CCD camera.
The telescope slewed and found our target star without trouble. I’d never operated at such a large scope so this was a special treat. As Dr. Michel calibrated the finder and guide scope, I switched on the camera and GPS timer. And there they were, both the target star and Pulcova.
Dr. Michel reduced the data contained in the 1257 images to this plot, clearly showing the expected magnitude drop from 12.2 to 14.4.
ON TO THE KBO
Now on to our ‘real’ target, for the next night, or rather early morning, ‘our’ KBO would?occult?a magnitude 13.2 star, and this is what we were really here for.
We checked late occultation path predictions and weren’t sure whether we were going to see what we came here?for. The path had been revised to be about 1300km south of us but the certainty of the prediction was the reason we were here, because when combined with other observation reports, a negative sighting can help to define one dimension of the KBO. Dr. Michel and I met at 1:30am (08:30 UT) and drove to the?observatory.
This ~3x3 arcminute finder chart showing the predicted location of our target KBO both 10.5 hours before (C) and 13.5 hours after (D) the expected occultation. The red arrow points to target star 2UCAC 41650964.
Our first goal was to attempt a long exposure to capture the KBO before the occultation started. Dr. Michel adjusted the telescope and focus, then engaged the auto-guiding system. ?We took one, five minute exposure?but it was not visible.?I set the automated system to take one, 0.5 second exposure every 1.5 seconds starting at 10:07UT.
Right on time, our system started taking pictures. Our first shots came in and they looked good.
I COULDN’T HELP BUT LOOK UP
We took some focusing images and then waited for 10:00UT to start our integrations. While we waited I set up a tripod and a Canon XSi DLSR inside the observatory and took some wide angle sky pictures. The Moon peeks in at top-center and the Pleides (M45) are clearly visible through the upper ring.
I again set up my camera on a tripod while the shots were being triggered by the GPS?receiver. While Dr. Michel monitored the telescope tracking from inside the warm control room, I set a pocket timer to 5 minutes and during each interval I would go outside the observatory and take in the beautiful night sky.
Orion is clearly visible in this 15 second exposure shot at 21mm, f/4.0. The glow inside the observatory is from the laptop.
In all, we took over 2,000 images of the target star grouping between 10:07 and 10:56UT, and then 100 bias shots, then 30 flats. We submitted our data and are excitedly awaiting reports from the researchers at MIT.
BACK TO ENSENADA
Our ride back to Ensenada was uneventful, and I’m pretty sure I slept for part of the way.
Once we arrived on campus Dr. Michel showed me around the almost-new facility of the Observatorio Astron?mico Nacional. They have a beautiful facility that I look forward to visiting again.
One of the several antique telescopes on display at the Ensenada offices of the 125 year old Mexican National Astronomical Observatory (OAN)
My very sincere thanks go to Dr. Raul Michel and the staff at San Pedro Martir Observatory as well as the supporting staff at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Ensenada.
Muchas gracias por la hospitalidad brindada durante mi visita al Observatorio Astron?mico Nacional. Tuve una estancia muy buena y la comida y los telescopios se apenas a la derecha. Espero volver a SPM en otro momento.
