Tag: quadrant

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”

This week’s weather was supposed to be dismal. And for many of my friends, it was. The derecho that ripped across the midwest left many people in the kingdom without power for several days. However, for me, it pulled the clouds that were supposed to last through the weekend out early, leaving me with a cloudless friday night with a waning crescent moon. About as good as I can ask for for observing. However, the humidity did linger with humidity readings upwards of 70%. While it didn’t feel uncomfortable due to the reasonable temperatures (low 70’s), it did mean that my glasses fogged quite badly and all the paper I take notes on was soggy by the end of the night. Despite that, last night was easily the most productive night I’ve yet had. I totalled 71 stellar observations and 3 planets.

Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 8/14/2020”

Last night was a few days past a full moon, so without it rising until around 11:30, I figured that gave a good balance of observing while still making it home for some of the B3R Bardic. While the moon wasn’t out, seeing was still poor. Due to the this being the closest weekend to the peak of the Perseids (and next weekend’s weather not looking promising), there were a lot of people out at Broemmelsick. This resulted in lots of flashlights and headlights that prevent me from ever getting fully dark adapted. Similarly, there must have been more humidity than it felt like because the skyglow from St Louis and St Charles washed things out more than I anticipated.

Still, I was able to take about a dozen observations of stars and did a few of both Jupiter and Saturn, hoping the average would give good results for them. The data can be viewed by going to the Google Sheet I’ve set up. Overall, the night averaged out extremely well, with an average error in the RA of 0.18º (the equivalent of ~45 seconds late), and an average error in Dec of 0.02º which is really hard to beat. The standard deviations were a bit high this time so there was certainly some scatter, but overall quite pleased with the results.