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Qualia's Blog

NGC 7510 - A View from a City

NGC 7510 - Open Cluster NGC 7510 is a young, open cluster in Cepheus just a couple of degrees below M 52. It is estimated to contain anything between 30 to 60 member stars, scattered across 10 to 15 light years of space and ranging from a magnitude of about 8 to 15. It is about 107 years old and although relatively unknown, its distance from Earth has been valued from anything between 7,000 to just under 17,000 light years. Putting this into some perspective, as the cluster's light reaches you,
Qualia

Qualia

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Qualia's Blog

Lyra's Doubles Doubles - A View from a City

Epsilon (ε) Lyrae & Struve (Σ) 2470 & 2474 Epsilon (ε) Lyrae, HIP 91919 - The Double Double Along with Albireo in Cynus, the Double Double in Lyra is probably one of the most viewed multiple star systems in amateur astronomy; it is relatively easy to find, makes a good test for one's optics and scope and is rather beautiful to behold. It is estimated that the star system is some 162 light years away from Earth, separated by billions of miles and orbiting each other over a period of hund
Qualia

Qualia

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gliderpilot's Blog

Sketching

I thoroughly enjoy sketching at the eyepiece when observing. Not only does taking the time to make a sketch encourage the observation of finer details, it serves as an excellent record of one's observations and is of greater use than a textual description. As the recent poor weather continues, I have been going through some recent observations and picked out some highlights below. I well remember recently working my way through the Herschel 400 open clusters in Cassiopeia. As I moved towards
gliderpilot

gliderpilot

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Qualia's Blog

M 39 - A View from the City

M 39 M 39 is a rather unassuming open cluster about 101 thousand lights years away and estimated to be about 9 light years across. The vast majority of brighter stars are Type A, Dwarf stars, something similar to Sirius, in their main sequence stage (burning hydrogen at their cores), whilst the brightest star is a Type B with a magnitude of about 6. This understanding has lead to an age estimate for M 39 of about 240 to 280 million years; a long time, but as things go in the universe, M 39 is a
Qualia

Qualia

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gliderpilot's Blog

Observing in Comfort - New Parallelogram

As the poor weather and short nights are limiting my observing projects, I have been busy finishing a heavy duty aluminium and stainless steel parallelogram mount for my large 100mm APM binoculars. Here is a summary description of its build: http://refreshingvie...rammount.htm�.� It has been derived from a wooden version that I built last summer. I plan to give away the wooden model to a fellow SPOG astronomer who wants to do some bino observing while his camera is capturing photons on the sco
gliderpilot

gliderpilot

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Blog 19648

Lowestoft and Yarmouth Regional Astronomers

I thought I might attend a talk 'Mars Revisited and Revealed So Far' at the Waveney Gymnastics Centre, Notley Road, Lowestoft, this evening at 7.00pm. This will be a big step for me as I am not a clubs and society man. More of a Lone Space Ranger! My wife is encouraging me to be less of a recluse. She is accompanying me this evening, just in case I back out at the last minute! If any SGL members are going tonight please say hello. I shall not be carrying a copy of the times, but I'm readily r
Hawksmoor

Hawksmoor

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Qualia's Blog

Part III - Space

Here I will conclude this little three part series. You can find the other two parts here: Part I: http://stargazerslou...3-part-i-space/ Part II: http://stargazerslou...-part-ii-space/ Up to this point, every wave known to science travelled relative to some medium, so where was the substance for light? Experiments were failing to find the Aether and Maxwell’s own equations did not conjure up such a substance, so what was going on? It was simple, argued a young Einstein, light, unlike any other
Qualia

Qualia

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Nick's blog, including AOSX (Astronomy on OSX)

16GB of ram in the MBP..

I looked at 16GB originally when I first bought this MBP after the demise of my long serving previous MBP.. but decided that the update from 4GB to 8GB was better at that time than the ridiculous prices they charged for 16GB.. now with time 16GB is reasonable and so I took the plunge. Firstly everything is naturally quicker.. now HD limited on initial loading but after that everything is in memory making the machine pretty much instantaneous in normal use.. however this also means that compiling
NickK

NickK

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Qualia's Blog

Part II : Space

Following on from Part I: http://stargazerslou...8-qualias-blog/ Part II – Space Introduction Before we reach Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity it is necessary to allow Maxwell a voice on our stage, for his own discoveries would play a significant role in Einstein’s own radical insights. Maxwell – Setting the Stage Building on Faraday’s concept of Field (that which exerts a force beyond its physical presence), Maxwell found that electric and magnetic fields were in fact a single entity a
Qualia

Qualia

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Qualia's Blog

Part I: Space

I don't assume that I'm an expert on any of this, so if there are pertinent mistakes in what is written, please correct me. The idea of these posts is simply to give a very rough and very shoddy idea of non-existential Space and Time (for existential notions we've really got to deal with Heidegger, Foucault et al). Hopefully these entries will be short enough to deal with in one sitting but give a general idea of the discourse conducted over the last few centuries. If it isn't working, or you th
Qualia

Qualia

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Qualia's Blog

M 27 - A View from a City

M 27 - The Dumbbell Nebula General Observations Messier discovered M 27 in 1764. Some twenty years later, William Herschel recognised its peculiar shape. His son, John, called it the Dumbell and the moniker stuck. In the 19th century, Huggins observed that it wasn't composed of unresolved stars as was originally believed, but through the new science of spectroscopy, realised M 27 was in fact a gigantic cloud composed of luminous gas. Along with M 57, the Ring Nebula, M 27 is one of the most obse
Qualia

Qualia

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ksmera's Blog

Ralph Lauren pas cher Microsoft will make 'radical' progress from styling, merchandising have Covering medications

Microsoft invented the liechtenstein pills lines concerning Sunday, called "Surface, inches breakage accompanied by a 37-year norm from do not ever rival precisely aided by the component wifes which happen to have made it easier get Replacement windows the foremost powerful operating system ever previously. The corporate don't designate deals for ones only two medications it again policies towards introduce maybe a most revered timeline, while it believed the pioneer would definitely debut to t
ksmera

ksmera

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Blog 19648

Noctilucent Clouds

Well I never got to photograph the Transit of Venus because of the awful weather which has continued almost unabated. However, after a day when we experienced a power outage because of a lightning strike, and torrential rain and hailstones, the clouds parted and by the time we went to bed and the street lights went out, the stars shone in astronomical twilight. Looking out our bedroom window, which faces north, Noctilucent Clouds were evident. Using my compact camera and leaning out the window,
Hawksmoor

Hawksmoor

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tibbs1972's Blog

Summer (The clouds have cleared, but the nights too short).

Amazing, the clouds have cleared tonight. For the first time in months, an opportunity arose. Unfotunately, it's Summer and June as well. I managed to spot a couple of stars, but the viewing time is so limited at this time of the year. I'm not even going to bother dusting of the Telescope. I'l just stick to my handy DSLR. I managed to spot Altair in Aquila, but thats the most I can image at the moment.
tibbs1972

tibbs1972

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eriksampson24's Blog

Naming The Stars

About 4000 stars are visible on a really dark, clear night. If you know that stars, you can mention them by name. "There's Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky." Or, "Over there is Polaris, it's only the fiftieth brightest star, but it always shows which way is north." (If you want to drive your friends mad, suggest they count out the first 49 bright stars to find Polaris.) Sirius as a name come from ancient Greek, and means bright in that language. The star is located in the constellatio
eriksampson24

eriksampson24

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skywatcher250's 1st light

My 1st light blog - skyliner 250px

here is how it all began earlier tonight it has been a real juggling mission ensuring the wife sleeps as its her turn, the baby feeds, changes etc and also sleeps and i get outside, still at the time not knowing if i could get this "broken" mount to work - turns out i was broken Attempt 1 - in sheer excitement (i had a great feeling it would work) i carted it all outside, got everything set up (or so i thought) set the scope to north and to zero digs and then fired it up - i chose vega as 1st st
skywatcher250

skywatcher250

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Nick's blog, including AOSX (Astronomy on OSX)

mice, mouse and damned meeces

So the app has nice scrolly shifts to the windows but it has occurred to me that those that don't use a trackpad/laptop will be limited in the gestures which means buttons to navigate.. A restructure later.. and the app code is looking nicer. When i have the chance to get the camera and laptop in the same room we may see a video of it's first image capture..
NickK

NickK

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James4's Blog

Venus Transit - Pics From Canada's RASC

The RASC here in Canada put together a web page showing highlights of everyone's efforts - all across the country - to see the 2012 Transit of Venus. My own blog is included there (with the transit cake). http://rasc.ca/transit-2012-results It's the first event I can remember where it seems everyone was observing the same thing at the same time from coast to coast. I have to mention that it seems like the whole country got to see the transit except BC which is normally the shangrila of good we
James4

James4

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