White House Star Party

There will be a star party this Wednesday, October 7th at the White House.  This is the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people working for the International Year of Astronomy.  About 20 telescopes will be set up at the White House and students from around DC will attend as well doing hands-on activities and observing.

I am in DC right now doing sidewalk astronomy at night (and maybe a little solar during the day) in support of the WHSP.  Look for me around the Mall or at Meridian Hill Park the next couple of days if you are in DC!  I will be the guy with a telescope.

Any local DC astronomers who want to coordinate something can send me a direct message on twitter (rsparkles).

A Night @Kitt Peak

I just got back from out Project Astro workshop night at Kitt Peak.  Spend most of the evening showing teachers objects through the Galileoscope including Jupiter, Mizar, M4, M7, M8, M13 and M31.  Not a bad collection for a little scope.

I did manage a couple of night shots.  Couldn’t resist getting the Milky Way over one of the domes on Kitt Peak.I also took a shot toward Tucson of the lights.  Remember Tucson has good lighting ordinances so note the lack of upward directed lighting,  You still get some light…hey, there are a lot of people down there!

Good night…another day of the workshop tomorrow!

Galileoscope Segment on KUAT

Our local pubic television station had a five minute segment on Arizona Illustrated this week.  I am not on camera, but I was the “set designer” for the segments that took place at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.   If you look close, you can see my Saturn pic I took through the Galileoscope on one of the computer screens in the background.  You also get a glimpse of Photon Engineering, the firm that did most of the optical design.

Unfortunately, KUAT’s embedding code doesn’t work on WordPress, so you can watch it by clicking here.

Enjoy.

More on the Galileoscope

It has been a while since I have written about the Galileoscope.  I got mine a few weeks ago and know many people have received them and another shipment is just arriving at the warehouse so if you are still waiting, the wait is about over. If you haven’t ordered any, this is a great time since your wait time for the scopes should be shorter.

First, there have been some problems with people finding the small lenses for the eyepieces.  There is a piece of packing foam on top of the objective lens.  The eyepiece lenses are in this piece of foam which is easily mistaken for packing material.  The directions that come with the Galileoscope are not the best.  Fortunately, you can download an updated set at the Gaileoscope website.  There is also a pictorial version for those who may not be able to read English.

So now you got your Galileoscope assembled and are starting to play with it.  You might want to check out how to Pimp My Galileoscope on the Cloudy Nights Forum. You can also check out photos of and taken through the Galileoscope on Flickr. I think it is safe to say that people are seeing more with the Galileoscope than Galileo saw through his!

Although Saturn is too low in the sky to observe right now, the image to the right was taken by me through the Galileoscope using a cheap (less than $100) HP digital camera.  You can clearly see the nearly edge on rings, even at 25x.  I hope to get a good image of Jupiter soon and will post it if I do.

Hawaiian Starlight

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) produced a video called Hawaiian Starlight for the International Year of Astronomy.  We just had a lunchtime screening of the movie today for observatory employees.

Hawaiian Starlight consists of time lapse photography of the mountain interspersed with images from the heavens. There is no narration at all so this is intended more as a visual treat than a serious educational video.  But is sure is a sweet visual treat!  You can see clouds rolling around the mountain, telescopes tracking stars through the night, sunrises and sunsets, the movement of the stars (sometimes they show you star trails, sometimes not) from many different vantage points around the mountain.  Look closely at some of the time lapse sequences and you can see planes taking off and other planes passing over on trans-Pacific flights.

The video is about 40 minutes long and you can buy it online.  Minor complaint is that they have only done a standard DVD…I think this would look sweet on Bluray.  I applaud them for making the DVD region free (although be sure you get the NTSC or PAL version depending on where you live!)

They don’t have the movie online, but the trailer gives you a nice sample.

Another 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast

I will be on the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast tomorrow, May 16th, with my colleague Connie Walker.  Our topic is “Back to the Dark Ages: Responsible Nightime Lighting”.

Connie is our dark skies guru and the chair of the US and International Dark Skies working group for the International Year of Astronomy.  She wrote most of it and wanted a second person, so I stepped in.  I added a few bad jokes that you will probably be able to pick out fairly quickly.

Dark Skies Awareness is a big cornerstone project of the IYA.  Activities are going on throughout the year at locations around the country.  On your summer vacation,  you might catch a dark skies program at one of our national parks or see a planetarium show on light pollution.  Many local astronomy clubs are involved with dark skies programs as well and have lots of great information.

If you haven’t subscribed to this podcast yet, get on board now!  There are a lot of peope out there producing interesting work on an incredibly diverse range of topics in astronomy.

400 Years of the Telescope

A new special premieres this weekend on PBS called 400 years of the Telescope (check your local listings for times).  As you might suspect, this show is part of the International Year of Astronomy celebration.

400 Years of the Telescope is pretty ambitious.  Cramming 400 years of history into an hour is no easy task to say the least, but they give it a pretty good shot, hitting some of the major highlights along the way with frequently stunning visuals and engaging interviews with astronomers.  Neil deGrasse Tyson provides the narration.

I have seen this already as they debuted it at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach.  I give it an overall thumbs up, but there were some curious choices on what they included and omitted.  I think everyone felt that way as all astronomers have their favorite telescope which they are convinces should have been in there and wasn’t.  It’s kind of like debating who was left out of the NCAA tournament.  You know they got most of it right, but there are always a couple of bubble teams you can debate.

Set those DVRs this weekend for a high def astronomy treat.

100 Hours of Astronomy (and the 100th Post!)

What do you know…a little poetry going on here.  This is my 100th post on the Half-Astrophysicist Blog and it happens to be about 100 Hours of Astronomy!  100 Hours of Astronomy is just that…100 Hours of continous astronomy activities in person and online.

The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia is opening a special exhibit on Galileo which they will kick off with a live webcast on April 2nd. You can check out webcasts from a variety of science centers.  Catch up on the latest happenings at observatories around the world (including Kitt Peak) with a series of webcasts called Around the World in 80 Telescopes.

Saturday is the 24 Hour Global Star Party which will take place at thousands of sites around the world (check your local listings for a site near you).  Wrap up the weekend with Sunday, dedicated to the Sun.

Another Galileoscope Video

I just got back in from a short session with the Galileoscope.  I put a webcam on the back and took a couple of videos of the Moon.  here is my favorite.

The Moon is near full again as it was for my previous session (purely coincidental…I want to try this near first quarter!)  which means you don’t get lots of nice shadows from mountains and craters.  I wish Youtube would do a better job of processing the video as some neat features are more prominent in the original.  I want to point out the three craters at the top of the Moon near the end of the video.  Look closely on the bottom one and you can see its central peak!

Remember to order your Galileoscope!