Tracing the history of medieval astronomy
Oof. I haven’t been posting much. This year has been busy. With the SCA starting up again, a lot of time and emotional energy has been spent on prepping for wars, new classes, competitions, and planning an event I’m running next month. Not much time for astronomy.
However, there has been some recent observing. Details below the fold. Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – Lilies War (6/19-21/2022) & Saturn Opposition (8/22/2022)”
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 year1
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”
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”
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”
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”