Solar Weather Browser

Despite working with rather lowly equipment I've found myself getting more and more fascinated with solar observing — just the simple act of doing a sunspot count as often as I can has me rather enthralled.

This evening I was looking around the net for a source of sunspot numbers held in a sensible format¹ with a view to writing a small tool that would auto-compare my counts with the "official" ones to see how well I was doing. During that search I stumbled on The Solar Weather Browser.

SWB is available for Windows, MacOS and various types of Unix (including GNU/Linux, of course) and it seems to be an amazing bit of software. Think of it as the solar equivalent of the Virtual Moon Atlas.

If anyone out there is interested in following what's going on on the Sun and they want a tool that lets them view it in all sorts of ways (with the ability to travel back in time too) then they they should give SWB a serious look.

File Under: Sun, Sunspots, Solar Observing, Astronomy Software, Solar Weather Browser.

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¹ I'm still looking. I've got one or two candidates but a source that publishes an RSS feed or some other form in XML would be really handy.

Luna goes LPOD

Luna, the magazine of the Lunar Section of the Society for Popular Astronomy is today's entry over on LPOD.

File Under: Luna, Moon, Society for Popular Astronomy.

Solar graphs

I've just uploaded a new addition to my astronomy site: a page of solar graphs. The graphs are updated each time I record a new solar count.

At the moment I'm not really sure that they're that useful or have a sensible purpose. I guess, if nothing else, over a long period of time, I'll be able to see for myself how solar minimum turns into solar maximum.

File Under: Sun, Solar Observing, Sunspots, Graphs.

A first and a century

I finally had my 100^th observing session last night, and it was quite a treat too.

Early in the evening the skies were looking pretty clear (just some thin cloud and haze around, the Moon had a bit of a halo) but still very bright. However, I noticed that Jupiter was placed such that I'd be able to see it from my back garden (it's mostly been out of view for me this apparition because it never rises about my house and it's very difficult to observe from the front of the house). Given that not a lot else was going to be visible at a reasonable hour I decided to get the 905 out and have a look at Jupiter.

At first the image was pretty awful but, as the 'scope cooled, things improved. I could see three Jovian moons, two some distance either side of the planet and one quite close. As I watched and waited for steadier moments I kept noticing a very clear, dark and well defined spot near the north pole of the planet. Given that I was unsure if I was seeing things I swapped eyes, rotated the eyepiece, shifted the 'scope around a bit — anything to eliminate some artifact from something. The image of a dark spot persisted.

I then came into the office and fired up Starry Night Enthusiast 4.5 and zoomed in on Jupiter and, sure enough, there it was: the dark spot I was seeing was the shadow of Ganymede! Not just my first ever sight of a shadow transit but a totally accidental find too.

I first noted it in my log at 21:58UT (I estimate it was just over ½ way through the transit — I've not checked the times anywhere yet) and last caught sight of it at around 22:15 (when I finished making a rough sketch of what I was seeing so I could check things later on). After that some cloud got in the way and by the time it had cleared (around 22:50UT) I couldn't make the shadow out any more.

It was a really enjoyable experience. Not only had I seen a transit, I'd "discovered" it by accident — that sort of made it all the more special.

Edit: I've now published the observing session notes.

File Under: Jupiter, Shadow Transit, Ganymede.

Turning 100

Last Friday evening I had a bit of a fiddle with the code behind my online log system and ended up adding a facility that generates some simple statistics about the logs.

As of today's solar observing session I've had 99 observing sessions. One more to go and I'll have made it to 100 sessions. Just like when I filled by first log book, I know that it's somewhat arbitrary as a measure of progress, but it still feels like some sort of milestone. It's also interesting to note that over ½ of those sessions have involved the Solarscope — that confirms that I've made more solar observing sessions than anything else. That's not really surprising given that it's much easier to find a clear moment during the day than it is during the night.

File Under: Astronomy, Observing Logs, Milestones.

Grumpy old man

I seem to be having another one of those annoying times in regard to astronomy. The weather has been pretty awful for the last few weeks (during the night anyway) but the last two nights have been nice and clear. The only problem with this is that I'm just starting to throw off some sort of illness (one of those nondescript "bug" things that come around from time to time) and I've also got a stinking cold that developed towards the end of the first illness.

Also, to top it off, the swollen eyelid I developed back in March came back in the last few days. I went to see the doctor today and it seems like it's a Cyst on my eyelid (although nowhere near as bad as the one illustrating that article) and that it'll probably be a permanent thing. It seems the options are that I just put up with it swelling up from time to time (and treat it with a hot compress in the hope that it might make it go away) or I have some minor surgery to remove it. To just make it more fun it's in my main observing eye.

Okay, that's all the really Grumpy Old Man stuff out of the way. I feel much better for that. ;)

On a more positive note last month was my best month so far for solar observing (spotting breaks in the cloud during the day is so much easier isn't it?) and I've been really enjoying it. At some point I think I'll need to get into it a bit more, improve my methods of counting and cataloguing active areas and spots and try and write more descriptive reports.

I'm also quite taken by the idea of this solar observing binocular that Scopes'n'Skies have added to their site. On the surface they seem quite good for the price.

File Under: Moaning, Grumpy, Solar Observing.

Happy Towel Day

To my eternal shame I wouldn't have realised this if it wasn't for the Bad Astronomer writing about it: not only is it the end of the world today, and not only is it Thursday, it turns out that it's Towel Day too!

Happy Towel Day everyone!

File Under: Towel Day, H2G2.

So long and thanks for all the fish...

This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
— Arthur Dent

So, given that it's the end of the world tomorrow (UK time anyway), I thought I'd just take a moment to say thanks to all the other astronomy bloggers out there who read this little blog and who have provided me with amusement, inspiration and encouragement over the last year.

Annoyingly the forecast looks reasonable for the weekend so I probably had some observing coming – and it's a bank holiday weekend too.

Oh, and, if you don't mind: in the event that Eric Julien is wrong (what, really, you think he might be, or he might be having the biggest laugh possible? naaa, get out of here!) please pretend that you never read this blog entry.

File Under: Thursday, End of the World, H2G2.

Astro-comical

It's the AGM of Newton's Astronomical Society and a little earlier this evening my son (who is 4) asked: "Are you going to your astrocomical meeting tonight?".

Sometimes, it does feel pretty comical doesn't it?

So, I headed off to Google and found that it's quite a common word. The best site I've found in that search so far is this one.

File Under: Astronomy, Comical, Astrocomical.

Wiki Wiki

Last night I added a new section to my astronomy website: a Wiki. It lives at wiki.astronomer.me.uk.

There's not much there at the moment (just a couple of reviews) but the idea is that it'll be the place where I put longer articles that don't really fit well into the structure of the main site. I also plan to use it as a place to keep some of my longer blog entries (reviews, experiences, rants, etc...) that would otherwise be lost in the depths of the Blogger archive system.

Unlike most wikis I don't allow free-for-all editing (for obvious reasons) but, if you're a registered user, you can write comments in the discussion pages associated with each article.

For the geeks and nerds amongst us (what, some of us aren't geeky or nerdy?) the answer to the question you're thinking right now is DokuWiki.

File Under: Astronomy, Wiki, DokuWiki.

The hunt for 37P fragment B

Further to yesterday's entry about comet 73P, I managed to get out last night and try and spot fragment B. While I did manage to spot it in the end I had a lot of trouble finding it and even when I found it the view was very unimpressive — from my location there was no way it was a "naked eye object even in moonlight".

You can read more about the hunt and what I saw in last night's log.

File Under: Comet, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.

37P fragment B now naked eye?

Kaustav just alerted me to this:

May 10: Component B has reportedly become brighter than component C! It is a naked eye object even in moonlight. There are also reports of arcs and jets. Bill Weir reported that, "When it slid into the FOV I was blown away. Although smaller, it looked as good if not better than C had ever looked. I couldn't believe how bright it looked even with all the Moonlight." There are signs that the outburst may already be in the decline so get this one tonight if you can!

From here.

File Under: Comet, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.

The Astronomy and Nature Centre

While having a look on the Scopes'n'Skies website this morning (yes, I have been having a look around to see if there might be a handy way of mounting a mobile phone — sad isn't it?) I noticed a new link on the opening page for something called The Astronomy and Nature Centre.

Our Pre-owned Zones feature the largest second-user display in the UK with over 3000 used items available!

Oh no, and it's a reasonably short drive from where I live too. This is bad news.

File Under: Astronomy and Nature Centre, Scopes'n'Skies, Astronomy Equipment.

M13 with the BRT

Last Friday I submitted a small number of jobs to the Bradford Robotic Telescope. So far I've had one back, it's an image of M13 in Hercules (which recently had a "close encounter" with comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3).

© Bradford University
As with previous shots, the above is simply a JPEG export from the FITS file via AVIS.

As I look at the image it's kind of interesting to think that the photons that went into making it will, at some point, have crossed paths with the Arecibo message.

File Under: Bradford Robotic Telescope, M13, Arecibo message.

Why have a 'scope when you can Skype?

On Friday night (actually Saturday morning by the time it happened), not long after posting my silly Moon images, I got an instant message via Skype from Kaustav to say that he'd got his 'scope set up, with webcam, and that it was pointing at Jupiter and did I want to try a little experiment? The experiment was to see how it would look if we started a video chat. So, we connected a voice call, fired up the video connection and this was the result:

Okay, not the best view of Jupiter — pretty terrible really, but I was impressed that it worked at all. Also, given that Jupiter is so low in the sky from here meaning that I can't see it from my observing location in my garden, that's the best view of the planet I've had so far this apparition.

File Under: Skype, VoIP, Webcam, Jupiter.

Being silly with the 905 and a mobile phone

Had another enjoyable observing session tonight until cloud stopped play. The Moon was pretty much washing out the sky so I failed to observe the comet but I did spend quite a lot of time observing the Moon (the log will probably go online early next week). At one point earlier on in the session and while the sky was still quite light, I grabbed my mobile phone and took a couple of images through the eyepiece. The first, with (if I recall correctly) the 15mm eyepiece in place, was of the whole moon:

Given that it was hand-held at the eyepiece and given that the camera in the phone (a Nokia 6280) isn't that good the image turned out better than expected (and better than the handful that I deleted at the time).

Also, just for fun, I dropped the 6mm eyepiece into the 'scope and tried a closeup on the region around Ptolemaeus:


This one's not so good but the craters are recognisable when compared to a map.

I'm going to have to crack at some point in the near future and start to play with a webcam or something.

Another enjoyable observing session

I managed to have another good night out with the 'scopes last night (the online copy of the log should be up later). The main targets were the Moon, Saturn and, of course, Comet 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.

I started out having a look at Saturn for a while and then moved on to having a good look around the terminator of the Moon. I got quite taken in by the view of Mare Serenitatis, especially the area around Dorsa Smirnov as it stood out very well. I did consider the idea of doing a sketch of the area, or at least a feature in the area, but decided against it as I wanted to move on to finding the comet. After seeing what Jeff got up to last night I'm sort of wishing I had made the effort now.

The view of the comet wasn't quite as good as the one I had a couple of nights back — moonlight seemed to be a bit of a problem. That said, I did manage to find fragment B this time around, I even had it in the same field of view as M13. Pete Lawrence managed to catch that sight really well in this image and this image (both from this page — I've pointed to them directly because Pete's updating the page after each session).

Update: The log of the session is now online.

File Under: Comet, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, Moon, Saturn.

Finally got to see the comet

Last night was the first clear night that coincided with free time that I've had for a while so I ventured out with both 'scopes and a binocular and managed a good couple of hours observing before the weather got in the way.

The best part was that I finally got a look at Comet 73/P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3!

File Under: Comet, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.

How to spoil a good song

Further to my last post about Billy Bragg's song The Space Race Is Over, I just noticed something about it that I'd never picked up on before:

And I watched the Eagle landing
On a night when the Moon was full

I take it he didn't watch it live then?

File Under: Bad Astronomy, Billy Bragg, Lunar Phases, Apollo 11, Pedantry.

The Space Race is Over

My son and I stand beneath the great night sky
And gaze up in wonder
I tell him the tale of Apollo and he says
"Why did they ever go?"
It may look like some empty gesture
To go all that way just to come back
But don't offer me a place out in cyberspace
Cos where in the hell's that at?

From The Space Race Is Over by Billy Bragg.

Sometimes, just sometimes, when I've not been out for a good observing session for a while (thanks to weather and other things), I start feeling a little like that about maintaining an astronomy weblog.

File Under: Astronomy, Armchair Astronomy, Blogging, Billy Bragg.