This evening a thin crescent Moon will join Mercury in the sunset. The pair will be separated by just under 6°, at about the same elevation and 15° above the horizon at sunset. The Moon will be extremely thin, only 1.7% illuminated, while Mercury is shining at -1.2 magnitude.
The completed pier with a telescope atop
A pier is also the first step in a real backyard observatory, build the pier first, then a building around it. The process shown here works for any pier and can be scaled as needed for larger scopes. The pier shown in the photos is intended to hold an eight inch SCT.
The plans and photos shown here have been used for several piers here in the Tucson area and have been refined with the experience. Feel free to improve on what is here, and if your idea works well send photos!
By all accounts it was bad.
I was scheduled to go up, but ended up not joining the summit crews today. Just as well, they did not make the summit. The crew made it partway up, to about 12,000ft., into snow and freezing rain. Not a lot of snow, but a lot of slick ice, altogether much worse.
I talked to a few guys and the descriptions ranged from nasty to miserable. Pete remarked that his hair and pants were slowly icing up in the freezing rain. Kirk recalls parking the pickup to put on the chains, when getting out Michaela noted the vehicle was still moving, sliding sideways on the ice.
The road is closed to all vehicles! This is quite unusual, normally it is closed to the public when bad weather dictates, but remains open to observatory vehicles. Our trucks are some of the few vehicles on the island equipped with bad weather kits that include chains and other useful gear for dealing with ice and snow. Watching island boys with no winter weather experience trying to drive on ice can be rather entertaining.
I am scheduled for tomorrow as well. I will read the early morning reports from the rangers and decide if it worth my time. No point in going up just to spend the day sitting at Hale Pohaku. I may as well get something productive done at headquarters. Thus I pass along a photo from fellow Keck engineer Ian James…
The Keck crew chaining up on the summit road, image credit: Ian James
A hand made GPS clock for the observing table
Accuracy was also a question, accurate time is always important when observing. Asteroid occultations, lunar and solar eclipses, iridium flares, twilight, jovian moon transits, the list of things where accurate time is useful is long in astronomy.
The Specs
Of course being a electrical engineer makes designing and building a clock a fairly trivial exercise. But why stop there? Why not build in a few extra features…
- Use red 7-segment LED’s and build in some type of selectable dimming mechanism.
- Why bother setting the clock each time you set it up? Make the clock self setting and very accurate.
- Since the clock is accurate add a serial port to allow the clock to supply accurate time to a laptop when taking astrophotos.
A very young moon over Waikoloa, this is only 26 hours after new, visible to the unaided eye as a sliver in the fading glow of sunset
How do I fold all of the legacy parts of Darker View into the new format?
Not easily.
Slowly, I hope to move all of the legacy information in the old darker view site onto the WordPress platform. The first goal is to deal with the old static HTML pages that existed beside the blog. These pages have an ancient heritage, at least by web standards. They are fragments of the website I began almost twenty years ago, the old WhitethornHouse.com. Much of this was ported into the blog when the website was converted in 2007. At one point the whole thing was seamless, the blog integrated with static HTML pages, integrated with a batch of PHP scripts to dynamically create the observing database.
Right now the thing is just a mess.
The goal is to achieve the same seamless appearance. First to import all of the old static pages into WordPress as either posts or pages within the WordPress database. This requires some method of redirecting the old pages to the new locations when a 404 error occurs. To this end I have borrowed and modified a custom PHP script to automate the 404 page. With this I can map any deleted pages to the new location.
I hope.
Actually, it seems to work reasonably well. With this I can begin the process of deleting the old material as it is imported into the new format, without abandoning all of the old links to my site that exist across the net.
Expect problems. Expect dead links that will eventually get corrected as the material posts to the new site. Expect to see old articles posted as new on the new site, that material I deem worth preserving. This will be a long process as I slowly, page by page, move the material across and get the links re-mapped.
Bear with me. Thanks!
A small design detail in a dobsonian telescope is a method to restrain the mirror box in the center of the rocker box, to keep it from sliding side-to-side in the elevation bearings.
A standard carpet pad embedded into the wall of the rocker box
I have had trouble with these pads in Deep Violet. They do not stay put! Sometimes when inserting the heavy mirror box into the rocker I would catch a pad and simply shear it away from the wood. I ended up using a larger pad and using small wood screws to secure it instead of the adhesive.
Today will see Neptune pass through superior conjunction with the Sun at 09:53HST. The planet will reappear in the dawn during the first weeks of March.
A nice lineup of three bright planets will be forming in the sunset over the next couple weeks. There will be three bright planets, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter, and a faint planet in the lineup, Uranus. Together they will nicely outline the ecliptic in the evening sky.
Tonight you can see this lineup taking shape, looking low, just above the glare of the setting Sun you might pick out Mercury. It is only 10° from the sun this evening, but getting higher each day. High above, Venus and Jupiter can not be missed, Venus at about 40° elevation at sunset, with Jupiter even higher at 60° elevation. Venus shines much brighter than Jupiter at about -4.2 magnitude while Jupter is only -2.3 magnitude. Uranus is hiding about halfway between Mercury and Venus at a mere 5.9 magnitude.
Over the next two weeks Mercury will climb higher, reaching maximum elongation on March 5th. At the same time Jupiter and Venus will draw closer, having a separation of about 9° on the 5th. The pair will be closest on March 13th, at about 3° separation. As March slips by, Mercury will drop back into the Sun’s glare and Jupiter and Venus will separate once again. Still, the bright pair dominating the evening sky through much of the month.
While the lineup is still prominent, the Moon will swing through the alignment from February 22nd to the 27th. On February 22nd a 1.8% illuminated Moon will pair up with Mercury, just 6° away. On the 24th and 25th the Moon will sidle up to Venus, under 5° away on the 25th. On the 26th the Moon will be near Jupiter, with under 4° away and 25% illuminated.
One last dance of the alignment will occur on March 25th when a crescent Moon will join Jupiter and Venus. The planets will be about 10° apart with a 11% illuminated Moon in between them. A very nice trio indeed.
Late February and much of March will be a nice show for sky watchers. Make a point to get out and look!
Mercury is beginning an evening apparition this week. Look directly above the sunset for a starlike object shining at -1.2 magnitude. The planet will be over 10° from the Sun today, rising a little further each day until maximum elongation on March 5th.
