Dirty Skies

Archive for January, 2006

The weather cooperated nicely this evening as did my Autostar controller (for a nice change) and I was able to get this image of Saturn 4 hours and 30 minutes past opposition.

click for larger

This image is a stack of about 500 frames, pixel doubled and then light level correct in Photoshop CS2 (mainly to make space “black”).

This was the first time since I performed the “Train Drives” procedure on the Autostar that I carefully set up and aligned the scope. I had honestly never been super impressed with the GOTO abilities of the scope but tonight that all fell away. After my imaging runs of Saturn I decided to GOTO some obvious objects in order to see if my drive training had any effect. First I punched in the Orion Nebula… slewing… oh my god, there it is in the (Meade 26mm Plössl) eyepiece with no help from me! A little off-center but I could definitely trust it to an object that was not visible to the naked eye. Then I entered Mars and again, spot on. Pleiades… how pretty. So needless to say, I have a renewed faith in the Autostar and I found that as with most mechanical problems, my inability to use it correctly had indeed been my inability to use it correctly, and not a limitation of my equipment.

On a side note, as I was moving through these objects it occurred to me that since I got back into astronomy last year, I’d spent so much time and energy concerned with imaging that I’d never really just LOOKED. This struck me the most when viewing the Orion Nebula. I stayed there for about 10 minutes taking it in and occurred to me that this might have been the first time in 20 years that I actually saw it’s light with my own eyes as opposed to an image in a book or on a computer screen.

Oh what I’d been missing…

These are shots I took of the New Horizons launch from my front yard on the other side of Florida — about 140 miles away from the launch site.

The filenames indicate date and time as YYMMDD_HHMMSS Eastern Standard Time.

Notice shot 060119_140207 also has a highly processed version as well. This was the moment when the vehicle disappeared from my view (OK, the speck I knew to be the vehicle), however image processing brings it out of nowhere! I should have kept shooting a few more seconds in this spot.

Live and learn.

Good luck and Godspeed!

Greetings and welcome back to the “Big Rocket Show.”

12:54 PM: So far so good.

- Announcing green for all weather constraints.
- Built in 10 minute hold coming up at T-4 minutes.
- Clouds need to thin a little or the launch will be delayed while they switch to a different weather configuration.

1:04 PM: No go due to cloud ceiling limits. Looking for launch at 1:13 PM EST

1:12 PM: Looking for launch at 1:30 PM EST

- Double checking launch path area cleared of all vessels
- Waiting on weather team to make the call

1:23 PM: Looking for launch at 1:40 PM EST

1:35 PM: Set indefinite hold.

I’m seeing even more low level clouds on the webcast here of NASA TV. You guys need a pack of matches or something?!?! You’re killing me! (I jest)

1:39 PM: Load design set 29 from balloon LR6 (updated weather profile).

1:46 PM: Looking for launch at 2:00 PM EST pending resolution of low clouds.

1:50 PM: Go for launch at 2:00 PM EST. Range observers have cleared the weather issues but will continue to monitor the cloud situation in real-time.

1:53 PM: All aspects of the support team have been polled and are go to resume the count T-4.

1:56 PM: The count has resumed. 4 minutes until launch and counting.

2:00 PM: LIFT OFF!

If you missed it Watch the Launch (7.5 MB) recorded from NASA TV as it happened.

You’ll need Apple – QuickTime to view this movie file.
Images and video in this post are screen grabs from NASA TV.

NASA has scrubbed Wednesday’s launch attempt of the New Horizons spacecraft due to an unresolved power outage.

A major power outage in Maryland — including the Applied Physics Laboratory where the critcal Mission Operations Center is located — has postponed today’s launch.

The next attempt is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 19 during the window extending from 1:08 PM EST to 3:07 PM EST.

I’ll be up until about 4 AM again tomorrow morning so at least I get to take my nap today!