saac

Personally,I think the best thing to do is avoid any or as much light as practicably possible.  Even if using red light have it as dim as possible and only on for the minimum of time needed. 

Jim 

27 minutes ago, Elp said:

And here's me looking for the chance to image it just for an hour or so before it disappears for another year. Do you think it'll look anything like this?

A wee bit of post deconvolution an who knows, never say never

Jim

10 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Hmm not sure I like the old Tak colour scheme - I’ll give it a miss 🤣

Who are you and what have you done with Jeremy? 😆

Jim

4 hours ago, Macavity said:

A bit of a "cop out"? But today's student is far better served re. Textbooks. Less well served, re. "Opinions"? 😅

Totally agree Chris. When you consider the sheer volume and variety of resources that are available it really is a golden age to be be a student. Can you remember how we had to do it - a trip to the uni library and most likely a good few hours desperately searching through dusty old books only to leave less educated than when you started lol    And even now things are changing apace with the arrival of the AI search engines - I'm finding ChatGPT seriously addictive - a common reply from me, "could you break that down a little more" .  Seriously, I'm finding it a  really effective way of learning. 

Jim  

To be honest every time I get on my skateboard I feel like time symmetry is restored, it's 1976 and that long hot summer again! It  invariably doesn't last long, an interaction with a pot-hole has me exchanging something verbal with some unseen particle and I'm travelling backward like a positron through my personal Feynman diagram. I've landed on my ar@e, symmetry broken,  but never my enthusiasm. Back on the board again and 1976 here we come  

Jim  

11 minutes ago, George Jones said:

Our (cosmological) universe does not have time symmetry, but it does have 6 spatial symmetries. At any instant of cosmological time, there is a 3-dimensional space that, roughly, is symmetrical for all spatial rotations and all spatial translations. This is true even when the 3-dimensional spaces are curved.

time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana 

ok hat and coat  

1 hour ago, andrew s said:

Our Universe is not symmetrical!  Due to it expansion the Universe is not time symmetric and so energy is not conserved. So no we don't need symmetry for the Universe to work.

There are also symmetry breaking mechanisms at the microscopic level as well. 

However,  in everyday life it is locally symmetric so maybe some comfort remains. 😊

Regards Andrew 

Just when you think you are close to understanding you discover there is still some way to go . Ah well, I only exist locally, I think, so I will keep hold of some comfort.  

Jim

It's been cool reading through this thread.  I've stood and confidently stated the law of conservation of energy or momentum too many times to remember.  But I've never really stopped to ask why, easy escape  I guess to just accept that this is the way things are in our universe - these are universal laws after all !  Emmy Noether's theorem and the linkage between symmetry and conservation  is completely new to me. Reading fuerther  I noted  a recurring idea that "the laws of physics do not change with time"  and hence this implies a symmetry and hence conservation is giving me some kind of foothold  but I'm a long way from getting my head around  it - more reading ahead.  But here is a thing, why do I feel comforted that there appears to be symmetry writ through the universe like the writing on a stick of Blackpool rock.  Could a non symmetry  universe work, does symmetry need to happen ? 

Jim 

If you are using the observatory for visual then the vibration concerns should not really be as much a concern as when imaging.  I think sometimes we can over analyse these issues and certainly over engineer solutions to perceived problems. One of the easiest ways to minimise transmitted vibrations is to avoid moving around excessively during the image run - can you set up with a remote operation?  At the end of the day, your structure will ultimately communicate to the bedrock so I wouldn't worry overly about it. I think your proposal to float your sub floor on isolation pads is reasonable, I would imagine a sheet rubber (matt) material would suffice, and perhaps similar between the pier and the bedrock should you wish.  I just moved my own pier to accommodate a larger telescope in my obsy and this time i didn't bother with isolation, I tend to run the imaging remotely c=vacating the obsy once the run starts. 

Jim 

I went to bed last night must have been just coming up on 1 am (school holidays). Went out into the garden, the sky was clear alright not a cloud to be seen, same with the stars, it was still too bright!   

I don't want to wish away the summer but oh for an hour or two of darkness. 

Jim 

Measure distance from Earth to Moon using a broomstick and 2 pence. Similar triangles and ratios. 

Jim 

13 hours ago, pipnina said:

I went to a Saturn when I was in Dusseldorf (big tech chain like Currys in the UK) and they had NEW polaroids in their camera section!

Local London Camera Exchange near me stocks polaroid film too.

Normal negative and slides are also having a resurgence, but maybe not quite to the same level.

 

I also agree that digital sensors do allow for much more contortion of a scene, they're more scientific, easier to get results from, you get instant results etc etc.

But big budget films to this day get shot on celluloid, and there has to be a reason for that! medium-format (60mm) Kodak cine film costs thousands of US dollars per 5 minute roll, the hollywood DPs wouldn't push to buy that equipment if they didn't see value in it!

 

Photography is making a comeback in the school curriculum as well which is good to see. Last term I noticed one of my S3 pupils was using a Polaroid camera, he wasn't studying photography, just doing it for fun.  I had an old film Canon SLR that was gathering dust, I had been close to binning it a few times, so I past it onto him to see if he was interested. He was over the moon  with it and was soon getting on top of mastering exposure and aperture controls. I don't think wet film photography is something that I could go back to for the limited photography I do,  but I can see that it offers something that digital does not. In so much as any medium offers a different outcome in presentation then there will always be a place for its creative exploitation.  I think it is great that wet film not only survives but that it is being taken up by a new generation brought up in a digital world. 

Jim 

It is great to have the choice though. Even polaroid instant film is having a bit of a revival. 

Jim 

On 27/06/2023 at 18:04, PEMS said:

0 was/is a concept or theory or something. Not 100% sure that is can exist. Likely a mathematical idea to make at least some of the maths easier.

A 24 hour clock is not 24 hours. At 23hrs, 59 min, 59 secs the next "time" is 0:00. There is no 24.

We have a habit of starting a count at 1, not 0.

 

Superposition 24:00 and 00:00 are the same state.  

Jim 

On 28/06/2023 at 10:56, Peter Drew said:

I was a "low achiever" at school, 5 scraped "O" levels, including maths!.  Anything that I have been eventually successful at has been self taught.    🙂

Nothing like self motivation to fuel learning

Jim

I wonder if we are like stem cells, starting off with equal potential for either of the related disciplines. Given that maths is so central I wonder what factors  are determinant in our choices.  I guess it's how we see the world that largely influences our motivations. I do find it hard to understand though why pure maths would be followed rather than applied maths or the physical sciences/engineering. Thinking about it now, that is probably due to the bias in my own motivation,  but when and where does it start.?

Jim 

What about Woolsthrope Manor, I'd love to visit it. There is more than enough association with astronomy I think to justify it for consideration.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/nottinghamshire-lincolnshire/woolsthorpe-manor

Jim 

12 hours ago, andrew s said:

Half in jest we used to say Physics is just maths with boundary conditions.

If you just give the "variables" fancy names e.g. mass, position, field strength, then it is Physics! 

Regards Andrew 

There is actually more than a grain of truth in what you say there Andrew, same with Engineering, you could describe both as applied maths really. Yet I don't think applied maths fully describes either (Physics or Engineering) , after all each discipline has something essentially different that appeals to different students/practitioners.   And this is curious because at the end of the day maths has to be the core of each.  I always find it strange when I get a student who is really excelling in maths but just does not see anything in Physics. 

Jim  

20 minutes ago, SwiMatt said:

I've seen 2-3 on Astroshop.eu, e.g. https://www.astroshop.eu/astronomy-torches/astromedia-astronomy-torch-schwarzlicht-zoomlampe/p,77540 or https://www.astroshop.eu/astronomy-torches/omegon-astronomy-torch-black-light-combination-lamp/p,1314

Thanks, I'd never seen UV lights marketed specifically for astro use. I guess the idea being these would be used with stars charts which react to uv light ( fluoresce ), that part makes sense I guess. How it affects dark adaptation though I'm not sure. I think I'd stick to red light, if anything just for eye safety. 

Jim 

19 minutes ago, SwiMatt said:

So, related to this: I've seen many UV lights targeted to amateur astronomers, are these worth it at all? Are they better than red light?  (although, of course, no light is always best)

Have you got any links?

Jim 

13 hours ago, billhinge said:

The upshot was that there are many models about quark composition , each research team having their favourite based on personal bias. However the machine has no human bias so it compares the observation data with those predicted  by models over the sum of all models. Thus seemingly ruling out what was previously most favoured and suggesting alternative models to 3 sigma so far.

Not really sure personal bias is such a heavy an influence; models are either supported by data or not; the truth will out!. The advantage of using an AI algorithm is of course the ability to incrementally improve on the efficiency of data processing/analysis.  It is just another tool, very powerful one at that.  Anyway, to circle back to the OP, unless I am mistaken, I think the AI here is not advancing a new theory as more  being used to analyse data -  not that this detracts in anyway from its nature (AI).  Quite clever really.  

Jim  

14 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Unless I missed it I don’t think he says what the tentative AI model of the proton is. Can we assume that the model still contends that the proton consists of three quarks for example? Or are we talking some completely different model?

As for what is AI and what isn’t AI …. Would it be correct the assume that the AI used to reanalyse the collission data is a bit like the so-called AI used to, for example, look at X-ray images to find tumours?  In the medical example the AI has to first be told and learn what tumours look like so it can then examine data it hasn’t seen before. Are we talking about that sort of approach for the proton modelling? 

I gave up on the video half way through, found it a bit annoying as he took too many detours - get to the point for crying out loud. Anyway, I suspect that what the AI would have been used for here would be (as you say) analysing the collision data but specifically looking for patterns. The notion itself that the quark composition of the proton is not static  but fluctuates is an established theory,  not new and not something advanced by an AI programme.  I may well be wrong but I would imagine the use of the AI here is to help to process the massive amount of data to find evidence to support the theory. 

Jim 

14 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Kids are taught at school, which is the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge and intelligence aren't the same thing 

Acquisition of knowledge is only part of the education process in a school Michael and it is by no means the focus.  Amongst other things, pupils "learn" skills such as "problem solving"  skills and are then given opportunity to apply those skills to new applications.  All AIs start with an initial programme a mixture of received knowledge and skills; in that respect they are very similar to pupils in a school. 

Jim 

Why fall in love  - you can just read about it 🙃

Jim 

16 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

I get what you are saying. I however am on the opposite run of things.

I seem to get so few opportunities due to weather, life, work and all the rest that wasting a precious minute of observing trying to setup an imaging session seems madness right now.

Now if I had a permanent setup that would be different.

Marv

Yeah a permeant setup is a game changer; almost getting to the stage weatherwise where a permeant setup is almost an essential. 

Jim