New Tool for Astronomy and other purposes.

Today as I write this, you're not actually reading my writing but a transcript of my speaking. I recently purchased a Sony digital recorder it is ICD-SX700D from Sony and I got this recorder for the purpose of working on my Messier certificate from the Astronomy League.I plan to use it tomorrow night when I will be viewing the meteor shower at our dark sky location near Fredericksburg, Texas.

I'm speaking this blog into the recorder and I'm using some software I'm called "Dragon voice recognition", or something like that, to convert my speech into text so this is kind of trial and error.

I decided to get a recorder that can do this because it would be valuable when I'm submitting information to the Astronomy League and also as as an educator I plan to use this in the classroom for students and also just for him collecting data on my special needs population in my class. So it's really has two purposes.

I can do note taking out at the telescope and not have to worry about pens and pencils, which often freezes up cold-weather/hot weather. I don't have to juggle a flashlight and clipboard at same time so it can be really helpful. I'm testing out the speech to text recognition now and hopefully it goes well.

(It was about 80% correct... not bad for the first time.)

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.