Astronomy

Montana 3

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 00:47:00 GMT

So the days in Montana were mostly cloudy. The image of the dome shows what it looked like. The temperatures rarely got out of the 60s in the daytime and dropped as low as the 30s at night. Usually we're trying to stay cool in 80 degree days.

As a result we fished a lot. Here are some fish we caught in the front pond. Most we threw back, but we decided to keep a couple of the big ones for dinner. They were good tasting.

The last night was good for stargazing through the telescope so Dan and I stayed up until about midnight and saw about a dozen Messier objects (The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects cataloged by Charles Messier in his catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters first published in 1774. The original motivation behind the catalog was that Messier was a comet hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets. He therefore compiled a list of these objects).

On the last day, our departure day, Dan had an 8am flight so we got up at 5am and drove to Bozeman. Dan got to his flight in good time and I had time to kill while I waited for my 1pm flight. I decided to check out the Museum of the Rockies at the University in Bozemen (Home of the Bobcats). It is an excellent museum. I recommend it if anyone gets up there.

Triceratops as big as an elephant.

Montana 2

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:39:00 GMT

Today we woke up to heavily overcast skies. It started raining about mid-day and let up around 8. Dan and I decided to drive down to Yellowstone.

We headed South to Mammoth Hot Springs and then headed east to Tower Falls, and then up to the highest place we could drive which was the Mount Washburn trail head. We hiked up the trail a bit and decided that being on top of an exposed mountain top was probably not the best idea in a rain storm. So we hiked back down and stopped at Tower Falls and the Calcite Springs overlook and headed back to Dennis'. The cloud cover was too heavy so there was no opportunity for stargazing or even watching foe Perseid meteors so we called it an early evening. Hopefully this weather will blow through and tomorrow will be a better day for fishing and stargazing.

Tower Falls

Calcite Springs

Montana

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 01:18:00 GMT

Dan Fishing in 6 Mile Creek behind the main house.

Yesterday I flew to Montana to stay at Dennis'. I woke up late at 5am (after a 3 hour nap) and raced through the house gathering all the items I thought I had together and tried to make the 6am flight. Aurora and I finally made it to the airport at 5:45, but the lady at the ticket counter said, "Too Late". So she fixed me up with a 7:15 flight that made my connection in Seattle and all was well so I went and got in line at the security check and got over my heart attack.

Arrived in Bozeman and met up with Dan and we drove to Livingston and shopped for liquor, groceries, and fishing flies. Drove on out to Dennis' and by then it was cocktail hour. After a couple of stout Martinis we prepped up some seafood (crab legs) and brocoli and as we were finishing dinner the "day" caught up with me and I went to lay down for a rest.

At midnight I woke up in total darkness wondering where the hell I was. After a few moments I realized that I was in bed in Montana with all my clothes on. So I stumbled downstairs and made my way outside to see a few early Persied meteors then went back to bed.

This morning, after breakfast, Dan and I went fishing in the creek behind the cabin and I had a few stikes and had not caught anything. Dan and I were leapfrogging each other up the creek and as I moved up about 30 yards beyong the main house, I saw a bear in the brush across the creek. It was black and had the biggest square head I've ever seen on a bear. Based on its color I suppose it was a black bear, but because this is Grizzly country, I decided not to take any chances and backed down the creek.

This bear sighting shook me up, so I want over to the front lake and fished there, in the open, where I could see any approaching bear. Caught 2 nice cutthroat trout.

This eveing Dan and I looked out for Persieds, but didn't see very many. The sky is fairly hazy and seeing isn't very good. It is about 2am Friday morning and sky looks like it is closing in...

Ah well, we'll try again tomorrow.

One of the Cutthroat trout I caught today.

Peckinpah Observatory

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:21:00 GMT

I put up a new web site on the Jumano server this weekend for the Peckinpah Observatory. Let me know what you think.

http://www.jumano.com/astro/

Sky Camp

Chris Jefferies — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:22:00 GMT

The Ring Nebula

The Whirlpool Galaxy

Jimmy Bruno organized a group camp at a state park called Sugarloaf State Park. Aurora had to work on Saturday so I drove up to Sonoma valley by myself. Jimmy calls it Sky Camp because it's right next to the Furgeson Observatory (here are my notes on the wiki). Jimmy reserved it for a private viewing and it was a great time (until the fog rolled in about 11:30pm).

The evening started out by having the kids help with rolling the roof off of the big telescope. Then we gathered outside to watch an Iridium Flare. An Iridium Flare is the reflection of sunlight from a satellite of the Iridium communications project. Read more here. Later in the evening we watch the International Space Station as it moved from west to east and faded into the shade of the Earth's shadow.

Next we went into a meeting room and saw a slideshow about the moon which was presented by an observatory docent who had a refractor telescope and later gave a tour of the moon.

I went to another observatory in the facility and talked with 2 docents (David Cranford and Estelle?) who were using a Celestron 14 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain to take digital images into a computer using a CCD which was hooked up where an eyepiece would normally be. They were very enthusiastic about astronomy and answered all my questions. I would love to have a setup like that. The images above were taken while we were there and David was gracious enough to send them in an email.

Finally the fog rolled in, but the camp tents were really close to our campfire, so we had a low keyed sing along arounfd the fire. In the morning after coffee and breakfast we had a chance to play some mnore and that was fun.

On the way home, I stopped off at a garden museum called the “Corner Stone“.

Jumano Forums

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:30:00 GMT

I've set up a web forum for discussion threads at: http://www.jumano.com/Forums

Please visit the forums and start up or join a discussion.

National Weather Service - San Francisco Bay Area Weather Forecast

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 16:22:00 GMT

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Monterey/

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/forecasts/graphical/sectors/northcalifornia.php

Spring Begins on March 20th...or Is It the 19th?

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 15:10:00 GMT

...from Sky & Telescope, March 15, 2004

The coming of spring in 2004 will pose a bit of a quandary for weather announcers and others in the news media. Does it happen on March 19th or 20th?

It depends on what time zone you're in. In the eastern half of the US, the March equinox happens at 1:49 a.m. Eastern Standard Time or 12:49 a.m. Central Time on Saturday morning, March 20th. But in the western half of the country, spring begins at 11:49 p.m. Mountain Time or 10:49 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday evening, March 19th.

Why the confusion? Why does spring start at such an odd time? And what is the equinox anyway?

SETI@Home

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 17:52:00 GMT

SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. The program dials up a computer at UC Berkeley and collects a single packet of data at a time for analysis. The data comes from radio signals collected at the Arecibo Radio Observatory. The program runs while your computer is idle (usually whenever your screensaver kicks in). The project has over 4 million participants all dedicating their unused/idle computer time to the analysis of radio signals from outer space that might indicate a source of extraterrestrial intelligence.

I have been a member of SETI@home since September of 1999 and although I barely participated in the first year and a half, I have racked up over 50,000 hours of cumputing time to the project. As of today, I have processed almost 4200 packets of data at an average of 12.5 hrs per packet. I have completed more work units than 98.887% of the others in the project but that still leaves me with 15 others who have a rank of 54,518th place.

My current stats:

My results as XML:

I encourage you to participate also at: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

Diamond star thrills astronomers

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 18:09:00 GMT

By Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News Online science editor

Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.

The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 1,500 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk. Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy," after the Beatles song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/3492919.stm