Frequently, when working on my astronomical research, I come up with interesting ideas for projects that I would love to tackle, but simply don’t have the time or may not have particular skillset to dive into. This post is intended to be a list of those ideas. Continue reading “Spinoff Project Ideas”
2021 in Review
Another year behind us. Sadly, this year was not everything I’d hoped for in terms of this astronomy project. Continue reading “2021 in Review”
Apologies for Recent Absence
Yikes. It’s been nearly two months since I made any sort of post here! Here’s a quick update on what’s been going on and there’s a little bit of astronomy in there. Continue reading “Apologies for Recent Absence”
Welcome to Sky & Telescope Readers
Greetings to any of you who have found me as a result of the Astronomer’s Workbench article in Sky & Telescope. As the article in question was limited in length, I wanted to take this opportunity to expound more on my project as the quadrant is only a small portion of a much larger project as well as answer some questions I expect you may have. Continue reading “Welcome to Sky & Telescope Readers”
Update – 2/5/21: New Classes Are Coming
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything but it’s not because I haven’t been busy on astronomy. My recent activity just hasn’t been in the Almagest or observing. Rather, I’ve been working on some classes.
2020 in Review
Welcome to the dumpster fire of a year in review!
Gulf Wars: CANCELLED! Lilies War: CANCELLED! Pennsic: CANCELLED!
Plague for everyone!
Well, I guess I didn’t need to spend any time working on new garb, fixing my armor, or many other things. So while this year has been dismal in many respects, it was a pretty good year for my project. Continue reading “2020 in Review”
2019 in Review
What a year it’s been.
2019 has seen a great deal of progress in this project and many other aspects of my SCA life, so I wanted to take a bit of time to recap as there’s some things I don’t think have yet made it into the blog. Continue reading “2019 in Review”
Almagest: A One Year Review
A year ago today, I made my first post1 regarding the Almagest. And just a few days ago, I made the last post regarding Book II. It’s been a huge challenge so far, so I wanted to take a moment to review. Continue reading “Almagest: A One Year Review”
Queen’s Prize Winter 2019 – Computing Astronomical Rising Signs for Any Latitude & Excel Calculator
Although I only briefly mentioned it in this post, this past summer I’d taken the quadrant to Queen’s Prize which is Calontir’s novice level A&S competition held once during each reign. One of the challenges I faced was that the quadrant didn’t entirely fit in any of the categories. While it was designed to function like a period instrument, it was built using decidedly modern methods, and the goal of the quadrant wasn’t the instrument itself, but the measurements it could take. So the overall reaction from the judges was “super cool, but it’s hard to judge on its own merits.”
Thus, it was suggested that a more appropriate format for me might be a research paper. As the measurements from the quadrant2 is still a project in process, I knew I would need to do a paper on something else. While I was sorely tempted to simply print out all of my Almagest posts as one massive paper, I was inspired when writing this post on applications of the rising time tables. In particular, a member of my Barony, Padraigin, is interested in medieval astrology which makes use of rising signs; something that Ptolemy describes how to calculate. However, based on the work done thus far, it was only simple to do for latitudes given in the rising time tables. My goal was to try to condense the methodology for computing a rising time table at any latitude into a relatively short paper.
2018 in Review
For Christmas this year, I have received a few items for use with this project. This has prompted me to think back to Christmas last year and how far I’ve come overall.