Starship Asterisk*

Thank you Dr. Brosch, In order to follow the instructions, we first need a set of "photometric" nights. I will soon post a list of all photometric pairs of nights in the northern Hemisphere. One problem that we have here is that it is not easy to find good photometric nights in more than o...

Variablity of Polaris measured at KP gave the following results: http://nightskylive.net/temp/alpumi_alpcas_kp.xls The whole period is shown here by using 8 consequent "photometric" nights. More data from MK and HL that also shows the period are available here: http://nightskylive.net/temp...

Dr. Nemiroff, Your idea souds good, but there are several issues that should be taken into consideration: First, the 300GB disk needs to be supported by the old laptop that is going to be used. Second, when the system is off-line, there is no way to know whether it is working or not. According to my...

Dr. Nemiroff,

With only 10 pixels difference, we accept an inherent average error of 10% and maximum error of 20%. Isn't it too much?

The altitude of most meteors is 80-100km, so a good distance would be something around that number. The 120km between MK and HL provided pretty accurate 3D data, even for object much higher than 100km.

Thank you Dr. Brosch, I didn't realize that there is something with true scientific value here, and the main idea here was only to check the performance of CONCAM. Examining the Excel files, it is clear that Polaris changes its magnitude over 4 days while Alp Cas doesn't. The changes in the brightne...

These files show that Polaris changes its brightness over four days. After two days the brightness of Polaris is reduced by about about 2 percents, and two days after it is increased back by the approximately the same percentage. http://nightskylive.net/temp/alpumi.xls http://nightskylive.net/temp/a...

Clifford, We have here another idea that you might like. If you provide the information, we can add the exact location pointed by the telescope(s). If a user clicks on it, they are directed to the abstract or purposal of the research that is currently using the telescope. In order to implement this,...

yeah, this would be great, but it can't stand stretched images. I have my background set to black already, and if I like an APOD image, use that as my wallpaper, but Tethys looks like a beach ball that a 300 pound person sat on, and that's just undignified! Seriously, though, it's really annoying a...

That object is the moon. You can see it in many NSL sites. In the archive, there is a small picture of the moon status near the link of any of the nights, so you can easily tell whether the moon was up at that night. It is also interesting to use a virtual observatory (such as SkyGlobe). If you set ...

Vic Muzzin wrote:How fast of a transfer rate would we need? Alltel quotes their internet at 14.4 Kb/s.

That's not fast enough. Even a small archive of files which is 500 KB will take about 10 minutes to upload.

The easiest way to do that (to my opinion) is to use web snake (http://www.websnake.com/) to download all the pictures to a single directory and then to use ifranviewer(http://www.soft32.com/download_347.html) to see the pictures one by one.

Tilvi, the software already gives the estimted location of the meteor on the ground (had it made it that far). The longitude and latitude of the estimated hit are listed above. I assume that the accuracy is around 1 km, close to the 1 mile accuracy mentioned by Dr. Brosch. As Dr. Brosch also mention...

Thanks fick,

This cosmic ray hit by itself is not really special, but it is the first time we see something like this in CONCAM.

Since we do some meteor resarch with CONCAM, it is also important not to confuse cosmic ray hits with meteors trail which look very much alike.

These papers require some registration. I'll try to find them in the library.

Thank you Dr. Brosch, I could open the first link, while the second one gave me a blank page for some reason. I noticed the puplications of the European fireball network at ADS. The data that they provide is very similar, except from the luminance. We currently do not have the ability to measure the...

PeterTheBike wrote:Any news about keeping the ratio when enlarging the image?

Titan must have been experiencing some unusual forces today

It is still a great bit of software though!

Unfortunately not yet.

It seems that this could only apply to locations where there is signal.

Heavens above mentions HST at south south east of Mauna Kea. The altitude of HST fits the estimation.

http://nightskylive.net/mk/mk041016/mk041016ut143516p.jpg . I initially assumed that this object was the international space station. However, trying to calculate the altitude of this object, I believe that it is around 590 km above earth. The international space station should be around 360 km. Al...

The computer is up, but the CCD doesn't respond.

Tilvi, Checking HL for the same frame taken at the same time is a good idea, but unfortunately there is nothing special in the dark frame at HL. Just to make things clear, the shutter of the CCD was closed when this frame was taken, so this is not an optical object. The thing that caused it is somet...

Tilvi, Indeed this is a dark frame. That is why I think it is not a meteor. Dark frames do not have jpgs on the server, but you can examine the FITS file itself at: http://nightskylive.net/mk/mk041016/mk041016ut093141D.fits The FITS image is even more impressive than the JPG. Examining the FITS file...

Take a look at this very special cosmic ray hit:



Taken form the image mk041016ut093141D.fits

I have never seen such a cosmic ray hit.
Tilvi, look out. It looks exactly like a meteor, but isn't.