Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Friday, July 31, 2009
Online Astronomy
I'm sure most of you have heard about SETI@home a downloadable screen saver that using your computer to decode radio signals for a search for extraterrestrial live... more at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php
Today, I found something more hands on and in the realm of actual astronomy! You might have heard of it..Galaxy Zoo. At Galaxy Zoo you can register and get training on classifying galaxies for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I found it a load of fun and something I will do on cloudy nights. I was classifying galaxies about 10 minutes after registering. So far I have done over 700!
Check it out.
http://galaxyzoo.org/
According to their website:
Galaxy Zoo was launched in 2007. Twenty-four hours after it's launch the site was receiving 70,000 classifications per hour. This rate mystified the Galaxy Zoo team. Thanks to amateur efforts many papers have be published and they have been successful at getting time on research telescopes to follow up on data collected through the site.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Garner State Park Star Party - June 27
This weekend, my wife and I went to Garner State Park for a star party. We met with fellow members of the San Antonio Astronomical Association at Cracker Barrel at 151 and 410 around 9 AM in San Antonio. Then, we caravaned out HWY90 to Garner State Park. We arrived just before noon and set up camp. Once we got hot, we decided it would be nice to hop in the bed of a truck and go take a dip in the frio.
We enjoyed swimming, watching college kids get ticketed for drinking in the river, and watching two of the SAAA members on the rope swing. Once we were good and pruny we got out of the river, changed and drove into Leakey, Texas for some great Italian food.
After dinner, we drove back to the park and we set up our 16" Meade Lightbridge dobsonian telescope. I was able to use my gigapan to snap some wide angle views: (More Blog after Pictures)
Zoom in on these:
After dark, the public showed up for viewing. We kept the scope on the Ring Nebula for that. Then. around 11:30PM I was able to do some serious starhopping. With the help of my lovely wife, we starhopped to many objects. We saw M51, the Sunflower Galaxy, Owl Nebula, and more. I eventually turned in around 2:30am. Viewing was great. I got to bag about 13 objects off my Messier list I'm working on as part of the astronomy League's observing list.
