Tag: observing

With the weather finally warming up, last night¹ was was one of the nicest nights of observing one could really ask for. The daily high was in the low 70’s and the overnight lows were supposed to be in the mid-50’s. Humidity and winds were both low.

But with nicer weather happening and Easter today, everyone seemed to have plans already so I ended up heading out to Danville by myself. I’ve been wanting to capture some time lapse video of this so I took my GoPro out and tried the night lapse setting.

Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 4/3/21”

As usual, the weather in January and February of this year hasn’t cooperated. Nights were consistently cloudy during good moon phases or the temperatures well below freezing.

But as March has  rolled around, temperatures have begun to warm, and the forecast called for a clear night with a good moon phase so Yseult and I headed out to Danville Conservation Area to do some observing. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 3/6/2021”

Yesterday, the highs here in Three Rivers climbed into the 60’s. It’s December. This isn’t normal. But the weather was absolutely stunning and not even the sort that whips around to bone-chilling cold the next day as it was again in the 60’s today. This brief stability in the weather brought clear, calm skies, so despite it being a work night, I knew I needed to get out to observe.

Fortunately, with it getting dark so early, I could observe for several hours and still be home by a reasonable hour, even if I headed out to the further site I like observing at, Danville Conservation Area. And boy what a night it was! Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 12/9/2020”

Since the weather was continuing to look nice, I decided that I should take advantage and head back out to Danville Conservation Area to collect as many faint stars as possible. To assist, I asked Franco and Quiteria if they’d like to join me and they agreed. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well on several fronts…

Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 11/7/2020”

This is normally the part of the year where it gets difficult to go observing due to extremely cold temperatures at night. However, this week has seen daily highs in the mid 70’s and overnight lows in the mid 50’s. So with clear skies, I knew I needed to get out and observe.

Unfortunately, we’re at roughly a third quarter moon so it rose around 9:30 and was high enough to start being problematic by a little after 10:00. As such, I didn’t feel like making the long drive to Danville and just headed out to Broemmelsiek. The skies there continue to grow more and more light polluted so I was limited to pretty bright stars as it was. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 11/6/2020”

NOTE: This post is actually being posted in December since, as I was writing my year end summary, I realized I never posted these observations!

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One of the Big Goals of this project is eventually follow Kepler’s methods to be able to derive the orbit of the planets. While I’m still nowhere near being ready for that as I’m still working on the Almagest, I know enough that I know the key observations are those taken when the planets are at opposition. Thus, the quadrant was originally built in time for the 2018 Mars opposition. But Mars only comes to opposition a little over once every two years.

And it’s now time for another opposition. Since I’ve been having some issues with the recently added azimuth ring, I wanted to make sure they were resolved before the opposition. Thus, I went out a few nights before opposition to see if I’d successfully resolved the issues. That night (10/9), I observed $29$ stars plus the three visible planets (Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars). As usual, a few of these observations got tossed, but the overall data looked pretty good. The average right ascension averaged $0.20º$ low and the declination came out $0.16º$ low which is fairly average. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch any new stars as this portion of the sky is pretty well mapped.

Then came the $13^{th}$ which was the important date of opposition. While waiting for Mars to get to a decent altitude, I was able to take observations of $20$ stars that I kept as well as Jupiter and Saturn.

Coming to Mars, I ended up taking $10$ readings in hopes it would average out well. Ultimately, the average for Mars came out with the right ascension being low by $0.11º$ but $0.44º$ low on the declination.

The overall data for the night wasn’t much better, but actually went the other way: The average right ascension was $0.41º$ high and the declination averaged $0.14º$ low.

As usual, the data is available in the Google Sheet.

Last time I went out observing, I met a Will Day, an photographer with quite a bit of experience in astrophotography. He asked if he could photograph Yseult and I as we worked and it ended up with one of the coolest images to come out of this project. But as cool as it was, it didn’t feel quite right since we were using the red headlamps and wearing mundane clothes with the period instrument.

Fortunately, Will was game to try something more planned to really capture the period feel. So Yesult and I went out last month, putting on our best late period garb. The results were beyond what I expected.

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to do this observing, this is it.  Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 9/18/2020”

This week a thin crescent moon set early along with clear skies and pleasant evening temperatures set up another another promising night of observing. I was joined again by Their Excellency Yseult and we headed back out to the Danville Conservation Area. While a bit more of a drive, the impressively dark skies are certainly worth it as it opens up opportunities to add stars that we couldn’t see elsewhere to the catalog. Surprisingly, the nice night didn’t attract many other observers, but an astrophotographer named Will Day stopped by with his wife and child who had never been to the site before. He asked if we minded being included in pictures and we happily agreed. I think the results turned out well.

Overall, we took observations on 36 stars and the three visible planets that night, most of which we took turns observing as we could then use each of our results as a quick reality check against one another and hopefully produce better results. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 8/21/2020”