Tracing the history of medieval astronomy
It’s getting to that time of year where the weather becomes extremely unpredictable. Warm enough to have the windows open one day and an ice storm the next.
Despite it being cold this past Friday night, the sky was at least clear with no wind so Yseult and I went out to do some observing. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 2/17/2023”
Weather here in St. Louis has been outstanding this week. Highs in the 70’s and lows in the 50’s. Perfect autumn weather. And with it, crystal clear skies that made for some very nice observing during Jupiter’s opposition last night. Since Jupiter is a nice bright target, I headed out to Broemmelsiek Park to observe1.
Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 9/26/2022 (Jupiter Opposition)”
Back in May of this year, I’d had a really good night observing. One of the things I always like is getting new stars added to the catalog. I still have the map I entered into Kingdom A&S in 2019 floating around my house and it’s fun to look back and see how much has gotten added since then. That night of observation added quite a few stars to be pile and inspired me to go back and animate the progress after each observing run which I placed on YouTube and then evidently forgot to share. So here it is!
Gryphon’s Fest was this past weekend and since I was in charge of the event I wasn’t really focused on observing. However, Jupiter was nearing opposition Friday night, so I wanted to make sure I got some observations there. While that went well, there’s still something much bigger that happened there. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 9/16/2022 (Gryphon’s Fest)”
The weather this year has been frustrating. Winter held on far longer than normal. While temperatures weren’t freezing in March and April, they stubbornly refused to get into a temperature range that would allow me to open the windows. Then, after a few nice days, it immediately jumped into the early summer. Needless to say, such turbulent weather is not good for observing and I’ve only been out twice this year2
However, temperatures have cooled back off and, should a clear night occur, it would be a quite pleasant night to observe. This past Friday, despite solid cloud cover all day, the weather reports said it should clear by around $8$pm, so I headed out to Danville with the quadrant to do some observing. Although there was some high humidity, an adjustment in how I select what objects to observe made this likely one of the most productive observing sessions I’ve yet had. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 5/27/2022”
While last night wasn’t a particularly good night for observing, with high humidity and a nearly first quarter moon, but as my girlfriend is in town and has wanted to try observing with me, we headed out to Broemmelsiek park last night and did a bit of observing. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 5/7/2022”
With the moon phase nearly third quarter and clear skies, I finally got a chance to do some observing this year.
Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 4/22/22”
The weather so far the past few weeks has been unseasonably warm. While there have certainly been days where the temperature has barely gotten above $40º$, we’ve also had quite a few where it’s gotten back into the $70$’s prompting me to have my windows open… in December.
One of these nice weather nights ended up happening on a Friday with a near new moon so I headed out to Danville Conservation Area to do some observing. This time I brought Mielikkä Koiviston along who is new to observing. As a result, a lot of our time was spent discussing the night sky and how things work and we only got in $30$ measurements in the time we were out.
The night started off pretty well, doing some observing in Aquarius and Pegasus, picking up five stars for which I previously didn’t have any observations. But as the evening wore on, I wanted to jump over to Orion because it’s a fun constellation to go through as there’s so much to do. Unfortunately, something happened around that time (likely the azimuth ring got bumped and out of alignment) because every measurement was suddenly well over a degree off. I ended up tossing a good chunk of the data as a result, but kept $19$ observations.
As usual, the data can be found in the Google Sheet.
It has been seven months since I have done any observing. Between unfortunate weather during good moon phases this summer, being exhausted from mundane life things, running an event… it just didn’t happen.
But now that a lot of that is behind me, we had a crisp fall night with daytime temps in the 60’s and lows in the 40’s. Chilly, but entirely manageable. Especially since I purchased a heated vest last winter. I’ve been looking for a pair of heated pants to go with it, but haven’t found any with sufficiently good reviews at a decent price just yet.
Yseult joined me again, and we got through 60 observations. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 11/6/21”
This past week, I started a new job which allows me to sleep in a few hours later. This has meant that doing a bit of observing on work nights suddenly became a possibility. So when Yseult messaged me noting that the weather would be ideal for observing and it was a new moon, I was happy to observe on a Sunday night. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 4/11/21”