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Re: PA20240811 campaign - under the TX skies
Excellent work Roxanne!
Quite the adventure - took several reads before I felt I could take it all in and reply. Interesting to read these adventures.
Was in contact with Norm Carlson who apparently also captured this binary event - and who also tried for Toutalis earlier the same night (from a site hundreds of miles from his Patroclus hit - sadly, a lone cloud did him in on Toutalis). But he mentioned - "...got a nice 15.8 second event on Patroclus".
Seems like Marc got a great dataset.
Rock on,
?? George
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Impact review
Greetings group:
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Thanks Kevin for your reply with the woes of impact capture. While I did make a series of video's the day before maximum of the Perseids, they were the worse
yet I've done using the VTI. As you say glare can be bad, or just fine.
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While I described myself as long-time watcher, I thought to keep things simple and try to hook someone, not having the slightest idea if the equipment the group has
had any chance for success. I have been watching occultations since the late 1970's. While using an article from Sky and Telescope, actually reporting
to David Dunham my "results" thinking I was successful in what is recorded as the first even predicted occultation ever observed. While I talked to David Dunham I am
sure he does not remember me being hundreds of miles off the path do not appear in any text. But the teenager was there never the less. As a visual observer I've observed
1286 asteroids, and published a few mail bulletins, and ran a program for the ALPO for publishing suggested revised H values for 15 years, which even included professional observatories looking?
for research targets. My work with my 12.5" telescope reached as faint as Mv 15.7, but that was in the 90's, long gone skies around here. We had a hard time
getting observers as our cut off magnitude was Pluto's, any brighter, too bright!
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I decided to contact the group because of the lone wolf impact observer.? The reason I was successful with my H values project, was realizing modern e-mail could update
the minor planet bulletin format of annual publishing of H values in error. Some of these were not H values errors, but magnitude errors by rotations seen, but not followed up on.
Magnitude alert bulletins allowed many observers to add their observations and refine these figures, greatly expanding value. And more work allowed rotational studies too.
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While I kept at it with occultations, Brad Timerson told me the area I was reporting from was considered "observer-less" by IOTA, but I thought lone wolf.? Did think. Your group has
turned that around.
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The impact project is in much the state that the minor planet bulletin publishing was years ago, no working as a team when needed. These impact windows might come along
once or twice a year, with rotten weather we have and other observational challenges. They may get observations from many international observers, but no local groups
who know and talk to each other. I recorded this shower with my 1979 Celestron 8 while watching visually with a 6" f/8 reflector. Another Vermont astronomical society club member
watched visually at the same time, and recorded a suspect that of course fell in a gap that I was re-positioning the C-8. I spotted a suspected cosmic ray, which indeed did not record
in my video of that time. Just pulling two people together "occulted" the work of the impact section.?
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Despite all the problems, this program is part of my "stealing moon rocks" projects, observing that time and lack of good weather allows this century.?
Stealing clear skies for whatever a view might be present at the time. My 6" reflector was given to me free, rescued from a dump trip by a friend who was cleaning
his new house. An ORION XT6 that required a 20 cent piece to restore. Oh, the stool I sit on viewing, a cobble together of two broken ones tossed out at work taken apart
to make one. A plop down telescope ready to steal any night, and addition to ones work at a level one might not suspect.?
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I would never suggest big money to go after impacts, but visually stealing moons rocks, I very much do suggest telescopes one might think of as little
use. When I called around to try to find my XT6 part, I did indeed find the place that sold them, just to have the person go into a tirade about original owners
only could buy parts, and he as sitting on 100's of parts he could not sell. He told me to toss the telescope, good thing I did not.?
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Really, I do not know how much visual work people do these days, but a side project like this will go along much better as a group rather than
just another lone wolf campaign. On a?T CrB NOVA watch?? I get a kick out of this "once in a lifetime" promoted. I was an independent spotter
of NOVA 1975 Cygnus, no charts, just a look in the sky. Just a few months before being asked to help out teaching basic astronomy under the stars?
with my own telescope at a local college observatory. Just two people, with a 16 year old high school junior having to "hide" in the dark as just someone
"Just here to help out", when asked (many times) if I was a college student. Those two people hosted star parties led to a lot under the stars.?
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Clear Skies
Lawrence Garrett
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catch this smokey moon two days ago?? 90mm ETX telescope.
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Re: Occult Issues
George,
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I'm already doing that for 300 km from my location.? Also filtering for mag drops <0.1 and stars fainter than 14.5.? Thanks.
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Steve
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Re: Occult Issues
Steve:
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Another thought... See the attached - I'd strongly suggest you use this "pre-filtering" box in Occult4 - especially check the setting of "passing within". I have 600km but 300km is another option. When Occult4 first finds an event it immediately looks at this value and if the path isn't within the set distance, then it drops that event and moves on. Thus, this selection has the potential to greatly speed up Occult4. If it's unchecked, Occult4 may very well add events that fall anywhere over the entire surface of the Earth to it's internal list (which later gets filtered). Thus, having this box unchecked is a serious way of causing an overload in Occult4.
Also, make sure the "site" that goes along with this is really your observing site - correct Lat/Long.
The other parameters above this also serve to "quickly" limit how long Occult4 takes to run and especially, the size of the INTERNAL database (before later filtering) it creates.
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George |
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Re: Occult Issues
Your first idea makes sense with the symptoms.? Maybe with the somewhat longer nights now I am just breaking the limits that I was just short of before.
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Hopefully the limited run I am doing now will run clean.? Next time I will try only for a week without limiting asteroid numbers.
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Thanks.
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Steve
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Re: Occult Issues
Steve:
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I think when doing a search for a 2 week period (which you said takes about a DAY!).... the electrons are just simply getting tired from running around the circuit boards inside the computer.? ;-)
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If not that, then there are two brick wall limits that are built into Occult4 that you may be running up against.
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1) On the Start Page, go to Maintenance, then User Settings. Go down to #11. There you will see a box saying, "Maximum number of events allowed..." By default this is 20,000. (I have mine set to 40,000). Remember -- Occult4 can actually initially generate? considerably MORE than the number of events you eventually see in a search. The internal list Occult4 actually generates is before the filtering that gets applied upon showing the results. With a 2-week long search I wouldn't be surprised at all that you could hit a 20,000 limit.
2) When you do get your MPC-based User list, and you then ask for events to be generated based on Horizon elements,.. When you tell Occult4 to get the Horizon elements, Occult4 tells you there is a limit to the number of asteroid elements you can retrieve from JPL - no more than 3,600.
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My thought... Your issues will go away if you cut down the length of time in your search. I'd personally go for no longer than a 5 day search. [My searches are 1 day searches at a time - done when I see a potential clear night coming up. No use of doing searches on nights that will be cloudy].
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George |
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Occult Issues
I'm learning more about the Occult problem I posted about a couple of weeks ago.? Here's the more...
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This seems to be an intermittent problem with my Occult prediction runs.? I generally let it run through the entire list of asteroids, for 2 week periods (takes my laptop about a day typically).? Until recently--maybe the last month or so--it usually made it through without issue, then I was able to run that list through Horizons to get a good set of predicts.? Now most, but not all of the time, it will get stuck on a high numbered asteroid--last night it locked up on one around #450000.? Just sits on that number and never moves to the next.? Cancel doesn't do anything--the only way to stop it is to kill the program.? That leaves the generated file, which I'm able to list with no issue.? There were just under 10,000 events listed in last night's run when it crashed.? Maybe there some upper limit for number of events I've missed?
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When I try to run that file through the Horizons stage, it doesn't work--just sits there saying can't make an SSL connection for each one on the list.? This is the error I previously asked about.? I've also tried to severely limit that file before running it through by filtering out faint and short events--thinking maybe just the last entry is corrupt and that didn't seem to help.? In the end I'm forced to start again from scratch with fingers crossed that it makes it cleanly through the first run.? My wife (retired programmer) thinks the SSL error isn't really the issue, just the end result of having a partially corrupted input file.
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I'm going to try limiting it to the first 300,000 this time, since I rarely get meaningful events on higher numbered ones.? Any thoughts on what I may be doing wrong?? It could well be something like I'm forgetting to do something, or doing something out of order--I'll have to pull out my notes again and see if I'm just having a brain cramp.? I'm assuming I'm the only one with this problem.
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Steve C
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Re: OT-Lunar meteor impact imaging?
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Greetings Kevin:
Without a doubt, the problems of successfully recording lunar impacts are equaled
only by how rare these events?are. It is so hard to get all the boxes checked with a moon
In good position (not after midnight) it's a wonder anyone try's. Its the same others
think about our asteroid work, but you guys bang out the best month after month.
I know when I first tried, thinking it could be years before a suspect, I recorded a strike
with a rating of 80% due to light curve matching confirmed subjects, in just 47 seconds!
I have been amazed at just how small telescopes you get your work done with my conditions?
hard in my C-8, and I just might use? 2000mm at first try, small field or not.
But the best low tech is just two people looking visually as a team. Just take 1 hour to watch
and see if hand placed plots match up with a quick look at a clock after a suspected strike.
Text on phone too.
I can supply charts for the dates you might try. I suggested this to my club in December
to a great big goose egg. Trying again with them too.
While success will not equal your asteroid work, you will have seen a geologic process
on another world,? and that bumper sticker for your car, "I brake for Lunar meteoric impacts"
will make a good special order online.?
The August 12 Oh chart is below, don't forsake the moon if possible.
Lawrence Garrett
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Re: OT-Lunar meteor impact imaging?
I did some experimenting last year to try this, and would definitely recommend doing the same before the night of the meteor shower. With the .5 focal reducer of the RunCam in place, it's a tricky business to position the moon and find a gain/brightness combo sufficient to see Earthshine without also finding a large internal reflection from any small piece of the bright limb of the moon in, or near the edge of the field of view. Of course, you can/should try various scopes and imaging trains with and without the focal reducer to see if you can solve this problem. In the end, my mediocre success in getting a decent view and a poor forecast, kept me from actually staying up through the hours before dawn on the day of the shower peak to actually take data.? ...Kevin? ? On Sat, Aug 3, 2024 at 11:06?AM Lawrence Garrett via <LSGasteroid=[email protected]> wrote:
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Re: OT-Lunar meteor impact imaging?
Lawrence & All:
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So my question was... Is the Moon oriented in such a way that the Perseids will indeed impact on a portion of the Moon that is; 1) facing Earth, and 2), on a portion that is not illuminated? [As opposed to if the Perseids approached us from a direction where they would impact the opposite side of the Moon that the Earth sees].
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In doing a 'quick' search on the Net I could not find the answer to this. But, I did find this animation...
? ? ? https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Perseids ...which seems to show that the Perseids intersect the Earth's orbit at almost a 90 degree angle to the Earth's orbital plane - and from "above" the plane of the Earth's orbit (ie., roughly from the "North" direction). ?
Thus, visualizing this, it seems the most likely situation is that any Perseid meteors will have the tendency to impact on the Moon's "northern half". Thus, the "dark" upper left corner of the 1st qtr Moon (oriented as seen just looking up at it) will have the most "chance" of "impacts". Note: This is a bit more than guesswork on my part.
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Moon - 45% illuminated - in Libra (roughly S of alpha Libra). Sets for me at 2:55UT on the 12th. Position on the 12th roughly 14h 35' -19.3 degrees. Will be low in the S to SW after sunset. Any observation needs a rather unobstructed view to the south and west.
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For me... NO chance to try to capture video from Home (due to TALL trees to the SW). I'd have to "go mobile" (maybe???)
Still, an interesting project. Thanks Lawrence.
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?? -G
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Simplifying My Remote Systems
Raining here in northcentral PA today, so I'm working on filling your inboxes!
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My first Astrid system consists of a C-5 on a manual Astrotech Voyager mount, with 0.33x focal reducer.? I really like the simplicity, quick set-up, low weight, and only needing power for the Astrid and the dew heater.? The Voyager has slow motion knobs that are 3 degrees per turn, so I can quickly dial it in using the Astrid's arrows and distances.?
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My second Astrid system currently consists of another C-5 on a single arm Nexstar mount, with 0.5x focal reducer.? While I don't align the mount to the sky and let it track, I do use the mount motors to move the scope in alt/az.? It has more parts, is heavier, takes longer to set-up, requires additional power, etc.?
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I dislike it enough to replace the mount.? I couldn't find another Voyager, but I was able to find a used Vixen Porta II that should arrive this coming week.? It is roughly the same size/weight as the Voyager--and most critically has the same 3 degree per turn for the slow motion knobs.? I think the azimuth knob has the same directionality, but the altitude knob may be reversed.? I may be able to match them by changing the Voyager to match the Porta--we'll see.
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As much as I hate the Nexstar single arm mounts for these portable stations, I regularly use (and like) them for public outreach events--often I have two set-up tracking.
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Steve C
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Re: Occult Horizons Errors
It apparently was something to do with my user file of events.? It was working fine a few minute prior to the issue starting, and would have the same issue after several reboots and software restarts.? But as soon as I ran a new user file, it was happy again.? Not sure how the input file could cause this problem, but that seems to be the cause.
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Steve
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Re: Sometimes a MISS can be a good thing...
All:
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.....And yet again!!
This time it skimmed past the Target Star 20 seconds after the (positive) occultation. Tho it doesn't look like it in the stacked image (of 10 frames), the Target Star and Satellite were both of about equal brightness. As above, this is a full frame view from my Astrid.
It's the "Wild West" up there folks.
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Re: OT-Lunar meteor impact imaging?
Lawrence,
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No reason to take the discussion off-line in my opinion, a fair number of IOTA folks have support lunar impact work over the years.? I'd be interested in participating, but my observatory is severely tree-line impacted to the west, unfortunately.
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There was a related talk on this at last weekend's ALPO conference, day 2--last talk prior to the keynote.? You can watch it on YouTube here, go about 4 hours, 10 minutes in: ?
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Steve C
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Re: Occult Horizons Errors
Steve:
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In an earlier post you also mentioned this error. I've also seen similar Horizon connection issues, but I've never seen in my error messages the part that said "Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel." Is perhaps your virus scanner preventing a connection?
I just (8/3 at 12:30pm) acquired Horizon data for a list with 378 events and it ran without error. I'm using Occult4 v2024.7.15.
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George Viscome
rickbria22
Steve C
Kevin Hartnett
