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I always hoped for their title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Xk2e3ApiA&ab_channel=JORGEC
What a beautiful sky, all black. Back then, the sky was filled with clusters of stars, which you could touch with your hands, even from the cities. Remember?
Unfortunately today our starless sky is all white. I see white, it’s over!
I have carefully viewed the articles posted by Mr Christopher. They are very interesting, well laid out and equally well developed topics. I am interested in their content, and for this I thank the author for making them available in this forum. For a few years now, I have been interested in sky transparency and observing sunrise and sunset light in order to detect the ‘optical depth’ parameter. I have a small archive of data from about 300 observations. I will try to identify the possible existence of a correlation between the theory Christopher applies and the one I use for my observations. I hope this will provide good guidance for further experiments and studies. Thank you Christopher.
The Astronomical Observatory at Campo Imperatore, today 30 minutes after sunset.
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I read these remarks of yours with great interest, and I am actually amazed that such educated and reasonable people exist. You speak of respect for animals even with enlightenment. How nice it would be if it came to that in my region too. Here, in Gran Sasso, wild animals of various kinds abound, but there is no consideration or respect for them. The fox is bad because it plunders hen houses, the wolf is the bad wolf from the Little Red Riding Hood tale. Not to mention the poor bear that even enters some villages in the national park and arouses keen interest among tourists. Two months ago, a bear with two cubs approached the fence of a house; the owner shot it twice in the back. The poor animal left the two cubs at the mercy of anyone, even wolves. Imagine if our administrators, our politicians, our technicians and how many others would dwell on blue light pollution and the effects on mammals (including humans) and insects. In my city, the old sodium-vapour street lamps have been replaced by LEDs. In an unused car park of 100X80 m2 there are 54 of them! Many point at 45°. Some lampposts also stand radiantly in the forecourt of the astronomical observatory at Campo Imperatore. Are we talking about a starry sky? For many it is something that does not exist. Faced with this marasmus, one should only do two things: be ashamed and correct oneself. But who does?
Unfortunately, when it comes to light pollution here things are getting worse by the day. Surely you are familiar with the cycling event called Giro d’Italia Giro d’Italia. You also know that the cyclist who wins a stage will wear the ‘maglia rosa’ (pink jersey). The finish of the stage on 11 May 2024 will be in Prati di Tivo, a ski resort at an altitude of 1600 m above sea level just below the slopes of Corno Grande. The picture is the Corno Grande seen from Prati di Tivo. Corno Grande belongs to the Gran Sasso d’Italia mountain chain, it is the highest peak (2912 m) on the peninsula, populated by foxes, chamois, bears, wolves, snakes, wild boars, mice even on the peak you can see, lynxes, a wide variety of birds (eagles, crows, buzzards etc.). Well, brilliant idea from the organisers, guess what it is? Illuminating the whole of Corno Grande in pink! If this is done, there is no doubt that it will only be the first timid step towards an even worse process of not only light pollution of the mountain. Are we stupid or reckless enough?
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Years ago, a proposal was made in Italy for a national law against light pollution. All kinds of discussions were immediately raised. Television programmes were flooded with chatter on the subject. Presenters improvised themselves as experts on the problem. Interviews were conducted with lawyers, with technicians who only then knew about the problem, with poets and painters who described the stars (perhaps without ever having looked up at the sky), with storytellers and people from the street. Olympic wrestling champions were asked if they would feel safe after ‘switching off’ the lights in the city, they answered no. In short, everything contributed to confusing people’s ideas. Epilogue? The bill was never considered by the Chamber of Deputies, it was rejected by the pre-chamber committee. Current situation? there are many regional laws and laws that no one is complying with. Just like the ‘Manzonian cries’. 1st chapter of ‘I Promessi Sposi’ by Alessandro Manzoni.
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I cannot remember if I have already posted this image. Certainly, my location is the worst for observing the sky. Such trouble I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
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Dear fellow amateur astronomers
I thank you all for the consideration you have given to this note of mine. My sky has been very bad, overcast with black clouds. For my study purposes I will use the sequence taken by Mr Ian, to whom I offer my compliments and ask for one more piece of information: What is the instant of the start of the shot (UT).
My compliments for the photograph taken by Nick. I would not have been able to make such a shot and photograph.
CiaoTranslated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Alex, thank you very much. I would need the images of the occultation, from there I would extract the nmeric data I would use. From my location the weather is bad, so I probably won’t be able to observe the event. Ciao.
Hi Nick, I will do a thorough processing and study of the images I extracted from your You Tube film. Thanks to you I was able to follow the whole phenomenon. You will hear from me soon. Thanks again. Regards.
Dear friends, I present to you my photographs of today’s solar eclipse. I have just one question for you: How much would you have bet that the cloud would not move for the duration of the phenomenon? Is this a statistically significant phenomenon? It went wrong for me, very wrong. Best regards to you all.
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Skies with high but thin clouds are also forecast for my locality, I hope well. However, for my study of the phenomenon it is only necessary to have the cusps of the solar sickle visible.
Dear Nick
I saw the solar disk on the youtu.be page. I download images every 2-4 minutes. I have a few things to ask you:
1) Does the image come in real time? What is the phase shift?
2) The disc image would be fully suitable for my study of the phenomenon. The only small problem is that the disc is too big, it is not entirely included in the picture.
3) If the disc remains stationary within the frame, it is not easy to establish the North-South direction. To do this, it would be necessary to bring (for example every 15-20 minutes) the disc close to the east side of the frame and NOT chase it until it reaches the west side. In this way, the alignment of the various images will make it easy to establish the North-South line on the painting itself. Can you make these breaks?This is the procedure I will follow with the camera (nikon) on my telescope:
– Entire disc in the frame;
– Periodically interrupt the tracking and take 3 or 4 images until the solar disc starts to leave the frame.
Here (L’Aquila near Rome the weather should be permissive)Thank you and good observation
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Greetings everyone, I am looking for a few amateur colleagues who can collaborate in observing the phenomenon. More precisely, to establish the timing of the contacts and the maximum phase, together with the contact angle (clockwise from the north). For arrangements cross19@libero.it.
Thank you and greetings to all.
Giovanni (Italy)Andra, hello, I am also Italian, I live in L’Aquila. That must be a mid-19th century telescope. Nothing exceptional: lactescence (spherical aberration), chromaticism, coma. If you want to show it off in your living room (after you’ve cleaned it up a bit, of course) it might do. However, if you plan to observe the sky with it, then I recommend using that money to spend a nice evening in a restaurant with a pretty girl. Maybe I’m wrong, but I remember my mother always telling me: dear son, old stuff dies in the house of fools.
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I too am passionate about planetary observation. I first saw Jupiter with its 4 satellites through a self-made telescope (the one in the attached photograph. I was totally penniless, not even money for the cinema). It was a cardboard tube with two lenses. As objective an old biconvex spectacle lens (+ 2 diopters) d30 mm, the eyepiece made with a small lens from a wire counter produced about 25X. The finder had been given to me a few days earlier. Red and blue colours were abundant, but I saw the planet as Galileo had seen it in 1610: orange luminosia star in the centre and four small stars almost aligned. I enjoyed telling everything to some classmates at school and to the Italian and literature teacher. We were studying the meaning of Don Ferrante in the novel I Promessi Sposi by A. Manzoni. It was a cold, clear winter evening. I had no gloves and at a certain point I could no longer feel my fingers. A wonderful memory that still excites me after so many years.
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I live in L’Aquila, a city 100 km from Rome, at the foot of the highest mountains on the Italian peninsula The peaks of Gran Sasso d’Italia are between 2400 and 2912 m (Corno Grande) above sea level. Snow abounds and 6 months of the year you can ski. An old saying is: on our snow, the sun never sets. And indeed here is the city at night. Take a look at the photograph.
In the evening, three floodlights were turned on, shooting light straight up into the sky. Who is to be told? Here, no one seems to understand.Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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Yes, Daryl, I live in Abruzzo in L’Aquila, a small mountain town at the foot of the Gran Sasso d’Italia at an altitude of 700 m. Tivoli is not far away. The 2009 earthquake destroyed L’Aquila, the (very slow) reconstruction is turning the town into a beam of lights shot everywhere and at random. Especially since LEDs consume less electricity. Even in the countryside, you need at least binoculars to spot the Pleiades clusters and Perseus, M42 and M31 can barely be discerned through a telescope, while the Lyre ring nebula has disappeared completely. Only the Sun, Moon and the shining planets remain.
In this hateful and hellish environment, I almost had to give up the telescope. For the past three years, I have been devoting myself to the study of twilight phenomena. At sunset, when the sky is clear, I take a photograph of the anti-solar sky. Then, from these photographs I determine the level of transparency of the local atmosphere.
At first I thought it was a sad fallback. Now, I have an archive indicative of air pollution and the level of ozone in the local stratosphere.
The photograph shows the beautiful view from my home, which shows the respect we have for the natural environment.Ciao
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You are lucky, here in Italy the stars have practically disappeared from the sky. Today was a very clear day, this evening (21 UTC+2H) the sky is still without the Moon but very few stars can be seen (5 in all including Jupiter in the east). The sky in Italy is a real disaster. From the high plateau of Campo Imperatore (2100 m) there used to be clusters of stars with the Milky Way marvellous, so that the constellations could be spotted with great difficulty. Now, clear skies, glimpses of cities near and far, mists. The eyepiece field is white! Pollution would not exist if the air was not laden with aerosols from industrial waste and cars. Light is backscattered by molecules (Rayleigh scattering) and aerosols (Mie scattering) + various optical effects (reflection from particles much larger than the wavelength of light).
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Throughout the night the sky was overcast with heavy rain, lightning and thunder. I hope for the occultation of Mars on 8 December. Again, thank you for your availability.
P.S. the image above is this one.Attachments:
