Grant Privett

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Viewing 20 posts - 341 through 360 (of 516 total)
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  • in reply to: E&T News Issue 1 is out #581335
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Many thanks. A good read.

    Especially liked the NTP server article. Very tempting.

    in reply to: Scanning 35mm slides #581327
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Was it cellulose acetate or cellulose nitrate (nitrocellulose) that was the problem? Nitrocellulose was quite widely used in the early years of the 1900s.

    I imagine cellulose acetate can burn but, nitrocellulose is also known as gun cotton and burns with vigour!  

    Without the addition of carbamite or another stabiliser, the decomposition products of nitrocellulose accumulate quite quickly making film go brownish – so colour film would really suffer.

    Didnt some types of billiard ball made from nitrocellulose during the 20’s have a similar issue? I have a vague memory nitrocellulose was used as a coating for playing cards as well at some point.

    in reply to: Rays at sunset #581315
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Commonly termed, crepuscular rays…..

    in reply to: AWR Drive #581292
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Many thanks for your reply. Will speak soon.

    in reply to: The comet is coming!!!!!! #581285
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Clearly the definition has changed in recent years….

    in reply to: The comet is coming!!!!!! #581277
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    We’re all doomed! 🙂

    in reply to: Lagrange Points: Where on the sky are they? #581245
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Brilliant. Really hadnt realised you just had to look 60 degrees in front or following the sun. That makes it pretty easy, get the sun’s position on ecliptic in RA/Dec, convert to ecliptic cooords, add 60 degrees and convert back to RA/Dec again. Sure I can find something in AstroPy to do most of that. I imagine that drops it nicely into the edge of the Zodiacal light.  

    Thanks again.

    in reply to: Lagrange Points: Where on the sky are they? #581243
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Is that 60 degrees as viewed from the sun or the earth?

    in reply to: NAM / Pro-Am collaboration #581239
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    It was a nice, friendly and well organised conference. Some very interesting talks.

    Shame its a bit expensive for amateurs to attend – but its not really aimed at us.

    in reply to: Identification of artificial satellites / junk? #581209
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    If you have time to a few seconds plus RA and Dec I can have a look for you.

    in reply to: Identification of artificial satellites / junk? #581207
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    TheSkyX can certainly do it… but I am sure there are less expensive options.

    in reply to: Observatory computer setup #581158
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Could you use USB/serial emulators?

    in reply to: Noctilucent Cloud observation #581141
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Lovely picture.

    In Salisbury we watched the rain fall – a lot. 🙂

    in reply to: Campaign to observe HR Lyrae #581112
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    In this context, how long is a “long time series”?

    in reply to: Starlink Satellites #581098
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Watched for the 00:08 pass from here in Salisbury. A single 3rd mag satellite went through at about 0:08 but certainly nothing else brighter than 5th mag was seen for 3-4 mins either side.

    Perhaps their shape means there will be passes when they are bright and other faint – a bit like iridium flares.

    in reply to: Starlink Satellites #581093
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Had a look at the last two papers. It all looks pretty straightforward – though the devil will be in the detail as they themselves admit, care is needed to ensure the implementation is robust against residual defects, cosmic rays and artefacts. Would be fairly easy (though fiddly) to implement in something like Python – shame some of the commercial packages go for the simple solutions only – its not as if CPU and memory is expensive anymore.

    It was surprisingly familiar as I saw similar methods presented at an SPIE conference in 2003 or 2005 (cannot check as work went “smart working” a year or two back and lots of conference proceedings got thrown out when we lost book shelves) where there was a session on dim source tracking techniques. 

    Will have a look at the other paper on Tuesday and report back.

    in reply to: Starlink Satellites #581092
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Hells teeth!

    in reply to: Starlink Satellites #581088
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    I’m curious as to how you make a weight map. Are they looking at the darks, flats and defect maps or doing something more sophisticated? Drizzle normally works best though with large numbers of oversampled images doesnt it? 

    What does that do to the photometry? Doesnt drizzle interpolate values with a bicubic spline or something?

    in reply to: Starlink Satellites #581085
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Thanks for that. I shall have a look at it. The appendices sound the interesting bit.

    I have always felt people are careless with median stacking. Transparency changes can have a huge impact on the results – simply normalising the backgrounds isnt enough, normalisation of the signal received is necessary too if you want to do things thoroughly (so some sort of gain correction is necessary). I tend to avoid really long exposures and median stack images in sets of ~10 and then coadd all the resulting frames. 

    in reply to: Starlink Satellites #581081
    Grant Privett
    Participant

    Thats interesting. Is there a paper you could refer me to on that?

Viewing 20 posts - 341 through 360 (of 516 total)