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 quadrant1 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.
Thoughts on an Observing Team
When I first started thinking about how an observing team would work, I originally envisioned two people being necessary, with three being ideal. The thought was that one person would use the sight to locate the star as it crossed the meridian, a second would read the observation off the scale aloud, and a third would record it in a log book. If necessary the second person could do the writing.
This division of duties well matches an engraving Tycho had of his mural quadrant:
If we ignore the giant Tycho in the background as this is a heavily stylized image, we see the observer at far right sighting the star, one reading off the time, and a third recording the observation.
However, the past few days I’ve been working on a list of stars to observe and think it may be necessary for my purposes to have even more. Continue reading “Thoughts on an Observing Team”
My Library
As this project has progressed, I’ve picked up a number of books related to it. So others can know what I’ve read (and have available should they be interested in reading them themselves), I’ve compiled a list of the books in my medieval astronomy library, as well as some other excellent books on historical astronomy. Continue reading “My Library”
Introduction
I first joined the SCA sometime in late 1998 or 1999. At the time, my main interest was just doing the armored combat. While I was active for a few years, college ended up taking me away. GPA before SCA as they say. After trying to do Physics education as a major, then straight Physics, I realized what I most enjoyed were my Astronomy electives and my focus began to shift towards Astrophysics.
Eventually that’s what I majored in but my skills were not sufficient for me to continue past my BS, so after graduating in 2008, I headed into the real world, still with a strong love for the field, but it turns out you can’t do too much with just a BS. So my career took a very different turn. Continue reading “Introduction”