I’m working on new toy: graphical twilight calendar. User chooses location, and graphical yearly calendar is drawn for it. See preview:
http://ivan.ivanych.net/twcal-demo/
There’s lot have to be done yet…
Graphical twilight calendar
September 8th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevFirst observation with Al Dob
September 6th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevI got focuser bush, so last night I made first observations with my dob. Moon was almost full, so the only available targets was Moon and Jupiter.
As dob has no finder yet, I watched Jupter only with rather small magnifications (max 120, with NPZ’s 10mm Plössl). I watched moon with magnification 200 (SW UWA 6mm), and given poor mount and turbulence, I enjoyed the view. Moon was so bright that moon filter didn’t help; perhaps, I should use sunglasses. 🙂
My next plan is building new mount, then (much later) building new truss tube. I will get 8×50 finder within two weeks.
TAL-300K tube’s weight will be about 22kg
August 29th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevIt seems they make telescopes of tank steel. Or, perhaps, they just put one-two bricks for weight?
30cm mirror is large, but I can’t believe it is have to be so heavy. “Klevtsovs” have rather short tubes.
Oh, I see! NPZ’s telescopes have to stand direct hit of nuclear bomb.
Recent observations
August 27th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevYou may think that I’m spending night after night observing with my dob. You are wrong, alas. Few days ago I decided to do some observations. But when I brought dob to my balcony, I found that focuser lacks bush with hold-down screw for eyepiece! So I brought dob back home and took my old bad SW 1309.
My main targets was M2, M15 (Peg), M31 (And) and M33 (Tri). However, I haven’t been able to find M2 and M15 with my binocular (!!!). Light pollution wasn’t that large (I saw Milky Way). M31 was inaccessible because it was too high, and balcony of above neighbors didn’t allow me to point telescope to this galaxy. But I could saw M33. I used 40mm eyepiece. It seemed to be only slightly brighter with SW 1309 than with 8×30 binocular.
At end of my observations I saw Pleiades, again with 40mm eyepiece. Very nice. That made my night. 🙂 Before I watched Pleiades with binocular only, but I had neither long-focus nor wide-angle eyepieces (I forgot to test my SWAN with Pleiades).
I also observed Jupiter with second-hand 6mm eyepieces, and I wasn’t satisfied: I saw cross-like glare; but this is probably because of poor quality of SW 1309.
But the worst news is that during summer months new lamps was installed on nearby building, very bright lamps. So I have to do something: find way to roof, or look for transportation, or something else… Of course, city observations are city observations, but it was much better yet last spring…
My new dob
August 15th, 2009 by Ivan Boldyrev
10″, F4.5. Homemade.
Map of Astronomers goes worldwide
August 14th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevSome kindly soul posted link to my map of astronomers on some English-speaking web-forum. Later link appeared on another two forums… So, I changed default extent to worldwide.
Now it’s time to add i18n, so Map of Astonomers will speek Russian and English (at least).
Sibastro-2009
August 13th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevI have paid registration fee for 2-day Sibastro-2009. So, in September I will visit Siberian astronomical forum and make report in this blog 🙂
Stange astronomical dream
August 12th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevLast night I saw strange dream: surrealistic moon eclipse.
The Moon was full, but strange enough, there was both Sun and Moon above horizon. When eclipse started, Sun became darker instead of Moon. It was different from solar eclipse: whole Sun gradually became darker, so I could see sunspots with naked eye. For some reason I thought in my dream that it is a Moon eclipse.
Suddenly Sun became bright as usually.
2 second-hand eyepieces
August 9th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevI have bought two second-hand eyepieces: SW UWA 6mm and SW Super Plossl 40mm.
Perhaps, I shouldn’t have bought 40mm, as it is too long for my dob, and for 130mm Newtonian it is useless, because Dob will outperform it anyway.
I also got to know yet another amauter astronom from Novosibirsk.
fgh-0.1 released
August 4th, 2009 by Ivan BoldyrevSo, I have packed sources and documentation of my fast GeoHash library named fgh.
Download fgh-0.1. Look at kinda project page. Enjoy.
Licensed under GPL-3. If you’d like another license, leave a comment or contact e-mail that you will find in sources.
