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My son had the opportunity to build and launch a bottle rocket today at school.
However, we've been a little bit overtaken by events the past few days for a variety of reasons so we hastily built and assembled a rocket in literally about 15 mins this morning before school.
She might not look pretty and she's definitely been engineered from the duct tape school of engineering, but with very little effort he scored a respectable second overall for distance at the great launch this afternoon.
He even scored extra marks for the multicoloured spray of colour that came out of the back, which was mainly to do with filling the bottle with paint and not letting it dry before they launched.
A design feature I'm sure, although I'm sure his crazy professor bed head probably was the deciding factor.
NGC 281 is a nebula that lies ten thousand light years away. It is sometimes called "pacman nebula", but it doesn't look like pacman at all when framed as I did above.
It features large lanes and dense knots of dust and gas in which stars may still be forming. The open cluster of stars IC 1590 visible around the center has formed only in the last few million years. The lanes of dust visible left of center are likely homes of future star formation.
The localized "dark spots" visible against the bright nebula. are known as Bok globules.
Exposures:
- 7 x 30m subs in Ha (5nm)
Total exposure time: 3.5 hours
Acquired from my backyard on Dec 20, 2013
I don't usually stack such a small number of subs, but I wanted to test a new reducer and motorized focuser before storing the telescope away for the holidays.
Equipment:
Main Camera: QSI 583 WSG
Guide Camera: SXV Lodestar (on OAG)
Mount: Astro-Physics Mach 1
Scope: Celestron Edge HD 8" with 0.7x reducer (FL: ~1480mm)
Acquired, Registed, Calibrated and Stacked in MaximDL v5
Post Processed with PixInsight 1.8
Oh to be able to wear mismatched tights like a five year old can, without getting odd looks. Charlotte has quite an impressive tights collection and these are her favourite. Now it's gone colder again she's been begging to wear them.
We've had a good day; a lie in for me, then out for lunch and on to Farnham to visit Phil's brother and his family. We took Charlotte's bike and we went for a walk to the park, where the children played and the adults talked. We got home late on and bundled the children into bed (after an unmentionable bath incident from Sophie and some drawers almost falling on Charlotte - very scary moment) and now it's wine time.
I'm not usually one to jump on bandwagons. I go to concerts for the opening acts. I choose books by their covers. I like art that isn't immediately accessible, that hits me in the groin—stuff made of tar and feathers, rather than gold. I like my arts just a little off the beaten path.
But Harry Potter is irresistible. Even if I didn't have a kid, I think I'd have succumbed (succame) to his lure.
Rowling's no good as a writer; it's her storytelling that wins accolades. How many times can one endure, "Harry said dully"? (Apparently, about 2,000.) She's pretty much a dialogue writer (like Stephen King); she'll let the characters tell most of the story. And that's just fine with me. It's the fastest reading on the planet.
I'm only on page 144. The good news is that I haven't encountered a single "Harry said dully." In fact, she's been resisting the adverbs. I wonder if she heard my complaints.
I'm feeling just a tad guilty that I didn't buy my book at the local bookstore in our neighborhood. My reason is personal but good. I have certainly spent my share of dollars in that store. But I was in Costco this morning, a gigantic display of uncracked Potters for just $18.19. Who could resist?
(For 365 Days. This is Day 281. )
T. came over to spend the night with me on Friday, and proved sleepovers just never go out of style. We made tacos (they were delicious!). I concocted mojitos that were way too limey, but on the second round Tina muddled the mint to death and that helped. We ate chocolate. We drank wine. We watched a movie (Beetlejuice) until we were falling asleep on the futon.
I really wish T. lived next door.
NGC 281 HaRGB in Menlo Park, CA Sept 2013
The RGB data came from sessions over 3 nights in variable conditions. I had to be aggressive in trimming the bad subexposures. I was also adjusting the flattener position during these sessions, leading to strange star images on the edge.
The Ha data came from Sept 15 with a past-first quarter moon blazing in the sky. The filter used is a 35nm wide filter, letting a fair amount of light through. The dark part of the sky in this set was pretty noisy.
Standard setup: Stellarvue SV4 scope with the modified and cooled Pentax K10D camera. Standard sub length of 1200 seconds at 100 ISO.
RGB: 18 total frames at 1200 seconds for 6 horus of integration.
Ha: 6 frames at 1200 seconds for 2 hours of integration.
Calibrated in Maxim (one set of RGB data had bad flats with moving dust motes)
Stacked in DSS (RGB and Ha stacked separately)
RGB and Ha registered in PixInsight via StarAlign.
Dead pixels in Ha were cleaned up.
Ha was run through TGVDenoise to improve the background a bit before merging via NBRGB script.
DBE on merged output. Masked stretch, Histogram stretch, MT, and TGVDenoise again to fix noisy background. Masked curves to drive background lower and boost midrange. Final step was to fix the dust motes from bad flats.
Here is the platesolve from PI:
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
-1.20093e-005 +0.000530235 -0.619397
-0.000530057 -1.20479e-005 +0.993858
+0 +0 +1
Projection origin.. [1847.500040 1209.999936]pix -> [RA:+00 52 00.19 Dec:+56 43 04.19]
Resolution ........ 1.909 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -88.710 deg
Focal ............. 648.29 mm
Pixel size ........ 6.00 um
Field of view ..... 1d 57' 33.8" x 1d 16' 59.8"
Image center ...... RA: 00 52 00.186 Dec: +56 43 04.19
Image bounds:
top-left ....... RA: 00 47 21.980 Dec: +57 42 22.66
top-right ...... RA: 00 47 17.187 Dec: +55 44 51.27
bottom-left .... RA: 00 56 58.081 Dec: +57 40 34.92
bottom-right ... RA: 00 56 24.072 Dec: +55 43 08.99