SilverAstro

I'm failing to connect to n2yo

but on the seesat-l  mailing list DrMarco Langbroek has posted this estimated ground track

https://twitter.com/Marco_Langbroek/status/961013732238331904

much better longer report on Sky news just now -  and they didnt end it with a false impression

thanks for the update

and the BBC news channel has just shown a clip of 'it' < in the story line, landing back on ship  

Found some :

"Mission continues on an experimental long coast and third stage two burn to target a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun "

from http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/falconheavypresskit_v1.pdf

hope they plan a Mars orbit insertion ( or Mars landing ) otherwise for a few million years ISS progeny will have to keep making avoiding maneuvers 

So has this car got an electric ion thruster for max speed transfer to Mars,

or will it be ballistic, hohmann transfer, or  other ? we need to know these details

all I see so far is plans for two apogee boosts (one executed already, I think ? )

Nope, new advertising slogan "All the way to Mars on one charge " 

I'll be saddened if they know the centre core is lost and are not yet telling us, that would be too much like memories of the Soviet era

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

Not seen what happened to the middle booster yet? Did it crash or miss?

It has gone awful quiet on that front

Almost the most exciting time since following  all the way from Sputnik 1 via Mercury-Redstone, , ,  Apollo

Landing the two boosters simultaneously tho'  that was something special to watch, ballet, pas de deux  !

Some twitter reports saying center core lost

Gosh ! I didnt realize they were going to land the boosters as well, speechless I am  ,   , 

On 9/18/2016 at 20:52, Stu said:

Hi Jon,

I do have one of these, but wouldn't say I have had extensive experience with it. It functions as describes, I had no problem downloading the app, setting it up and connecting via wifi from my iPhone.

The unit itself is nicely built and feels solid, the only tacky part is the 1.25" extension tube which is very lightweight plastic; does the job but very cheap.

I have only used it for solar imaging so far, attached is a grab from a single frame for what it's worth. I think it will be most useful for lunar imaging, and may allow some very basic planetary images but don't expect too much.

If connecting cables and using a laptop are a pain or you don't have a laptop then perhaps this is a good way of starting, otherwise a good webcam may be a better option? I bought it for the simplicity of being able to get images on my phone, and it does that job.

Stu

Hi, excuse digging up old topic but while I was googling astrophoto and WiFi this thread popped up !

> " I have only used it for solar imaging so far "

I wonder if you ever, meanwhile, tried it on the moon ?

I am thinking not to get state of the art images, just an aide memoir of where I have been and what to look at next time round, iyswim.

16 minutes ago, JOC said:

 Castor and Pollux I'm usually OK with.  

Excellent ! Cast around them a bit and get Gemini marked out, it is well placed at the mo. (high up) to enable judging of your NELM with plenty of faint stars to be identified.

1 hour ago, Charic said:

.........Select a constellation that you recognize........

I'm not sure it really matters which constellation,

You are right, any constellation can be used (pref one that is near the zenith, but that is getting a bit ahead of us in present discussion !)

but my point was "that you recognize", because JOC needs to be familiar with it to be able to pick out a star in the night sky and then be able to identify it in Stellarium, or other star chart, to find its magnitude.

You are also right about Ursa Minor, I use it myself, but I was focused on Orion because that it what JOC has 'got' (aka groked) and is familiar with, at the mo. ! It was not long ago that JOC was unsure which was Polaris, let alone U Min (trouble with an unfortunate tree if I recollect) 

Let us not get whizzing too far over heads, let us focus on birds in the hand, or camera, as the case may be.

The best way of determining the (NELM) quality of one's site/sky is not to rely on websites (nor gizmos) but to get out there and look up ! :-

Select a constellation that you recognize, see what dim star is in there that you can just see (unaided eye) (just about see or see averted)

Go to Stellarium (others are avai,, oh shut up ! )

and look up its magnitude.

If it is about 3 - sad

If it is about 4 - hope and/or go back to bed

If it is about 5 - brill !

If it is better than 5.5, brag,,,,  yea ! mine outside my front door is >5.5,.,  sometimes, depending upon atmospheric condx !

If you can spot these, unaided, would enable us more to help assess     there are many more charts, online, in similar fashion per constellation)

PS Nice pic !

On 10/20/2017 at 10:52, Kezzba said:

Hi, im Kez 

If a small black hole were stationary relative to the sun close to our solar system 

Hi Kez,

Lets not get into the size of black holes yet, it is not necessary to your hypothesis ! Any object, regardless of its size, density and/or mass  cannot be stationary relative to the sun. They will orbit each other* round a (common) barycenter. Leaving aside the no small matter of how you define your reference point for all other objects to be measured as being stationary from.

[*except in the special case of when they start out at infinite separation from each other with no impulse (aka deltaV) at either, in this case they will, in due course, collide   ]

Kepler, Newton and latterly Minkowski and Einstein had a lot to say about this !

Introduce a third body, such as your Earth, and all hell breaks with the Maths.

I am liking PDF-Xchange Viewer, it seems to handle the hyperlinks ok so far.  There is a freeware portable version available so it can be run from a USB stick/drive (even from the same place as your DSA masterpiece folder) without need for installation.

Also, I have discovered it has a very nice "loupe" zoom tool which can selectively magnify a resizable small region from the chart. (it would be magic if two monitors could be used !)

Ah yes ok thanks, no prob., just that not having Acrobat I was unsure if it was a foible with these other readers (and/or me )

Yes I will report back on any good other PDF viewer when I am more practiced in driving your masterpiece

Pro-tem :-

Sumatra is one of my usual suspects, but it is giving me some annoying foibles, like opening lots of new tabs or new windows instead of reusing current window, but only putting the "where you are" hint on the navigation pane,  in the first tab or window

PDF-Xchange is another of my regulars if anyone wants to check it out, looking good so far but it reverts to 'fit page' at each re-navigation instead of maintaining 'fit width'.

Am I supposed to be able to zoom in on a chart but leave the navigation sidebar/pane  un-zoomed, cant do that in either Sumatra or Xchange

Might have to install Acrobat at this rate.

4 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

but do let me know if there are any others that you don't have and I'll attach them to this thread.

Thanks, no not so far  (but it is a gargantuan effort on your part, and I am yet just a humble neophyte looking at compatibility of small portable freeware windows PDF viewers instead of Acrothingy )

In fact I would not have noticed the earlier problem if I had not accidentally double-clicked on it, thus invoked 'dozexplorer, which balked and declared it invalid, instead of my usual drag'n'drop into 7z - which merrily opened and extracted it all (both times) including the 0byte placeholder ! but no error message! !

and thanks @Bill S for confirmation that it was not just me going 'round the bend' ! Amazing, with all this file checking, parity, CRC, md5,  (in some semblance of priority!)  et. al., we can still, all these years after FTP etc. still not download un-corrupted files from the likes of Dropbox !

7 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

 so if anyone wants the charts it is best to download in the next 7 days!

Thanks for your magnum opus,

not sure if I have a problem downloading index.zip (tried it twice now) or if Dropbox is playing silly-billy ?
VSVtypeD.pdf is showing as size 0 in (windows)index.zip and VSVtypeI.pdf is missing

I had to get VS.zip to retrieve them.

35 minutes ago, DRT said:

Because if we were on a flat disk the shadow would only appear to be round when directly overhead  

Good try I like it

But would he have had the acuity of vision or perspicacity to judge if it were (pedant-on) elliptical or just simply curved (pedant-off)

29 minutes ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

 (I find it odd that he's remembered as the first person to travel around the world despite dying at the halfway mark.  /  I'd have thought that would be grounds for disqualification.)

That makes two of us

Why not, what else to do when it is raining ?

They are not trolling us, they only persist to annoy the astrologers, not us because - (The Two) we can look down on them (/Ronnies)

I'm going to regret asking this := I dont get that Magellan quote, why not a round flat disk casting a round shadow ? he seems cock-sure of himself !!   >  and runs for cover. >

@Erla Dont forget, it didnt end well for Magellan, I think he fell over the edge before he made it round ?

Who planted the Spaghetti Tree that Dimbleby harvested? (c.1957) indeed there is a great philosophical question yet unanswered :- "Where did the Spaghetti Seed come from ?"