The spot near the center of the Sun is spectacular. I estimated that it was about 1/8 solar diameter in its long dimension and guessed that it was probably about the size of Jupiter.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
10 May 2012
Today I came back from lunch and there was bright Sun shining on the wall across from my window. I grabbed my solar kit and headed down to Bryant Park. When I got there it was nearly overcast and looked like it was going to rain. Then it did, but only lightly. I decided to wait a while in case the Sun came out again. It was worth the wait.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
8 May 2012
At the weekly Bryant Park Birding Tour one of the participants keeps talking about a great deal B&H has on a particular Nikon binocular so I decided to check it out and ended up buying one although what they had left was higher magnification and less aperture than what I wanted.
My Celestron Outland 8x42 binocular is falling apart. It started with one of the oculars coming off the tube then the other one did the same. They screw into the tubes to the right and the eyecups twist so either twisting them up or back down, I don't remember which way, you are twisting opposite the direction of the ocular in the tube. I suspect that this has loosened them as I always twist them down when I put them away so the next time I use them without my glasses, which is as much as possible, I have to twist them again. Then one of the plastic loops for the neck strap broke. That is probably a result of my putting split rings in them which get twisted and put stress on the plastic when they are in the neoprene carry bag. I had a two shoulder suspender-type elastic strap attached to the split rings in place of the thin stock neck strap. The iPad was over top of the suspension system so there was a lot of stress on that little plastic bar and it failed. The binocular has a lifetime no fault warranty so I could have it repaired or replaced (probably with a refurbished binocular) for $25 but that would leave me without a suitable binocular for a month.
Nixon got in bed with She Safaris to market a binocular to women. The binocular is a standard Monarch ATB that has a brown rubber skin in place of the normal black and bears a gold She sticker on the hinge. It has a nice wide neck strap with the She logo embossed all over it. They include a trunk that is supposed to serve as a handbag that has a little pocket sewn in the bottom to store the binocular. The marketing gambit failed and B&H picked up the remaining stock, probably for a song, and are selling them for half the cost of the same binocular in black, $119.00.
I tried them out at home looking at printed text posted on my wall and my feeling was that they were brighter than the Celestron binocular even though they are higher magnification and a smaller aperture (10x36 vs 8x42). They also have a slightly smaller field of view although they both claim 6°.
Sunday turned out to be clearer than forecast so Peter and I met at Bryant Park. He was supposed to be studying and I was going to do my solar observations. I took both binoculars with me to compare them in the outdoors. Peter agreed that the Nikon was the brighter binocular. The focus is smooth and the image crisp. The tubes are shorter than the Celestron so feel cramped but that is something I will probably get used to. The objective covers have a terrible way of attaching to the neck strap and will quickly be lost so will have to remain at home or in a pocket until I come up with a better attachment scheme.
Yesterday I used them on the birding tour. I was oblivious to the change from the Celestron except for the fact that I can hang the Nikon around my neck. When I was looking at birds I was unconscious of it being a smaller binocular and I don't notice the increase in magnification. That is what I want in a binocular. I don't want to be conscious that it is there the way I was with my old West Marine binocular.
Last night Peter asked if I would pick up a binocular for him so I did that today. I also bought myself a small, but larger than I wanted, camera bag to transport the binocular in.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
30 April 2012
April observing 
Sunspots
Observing Hours for the Year 2012
| Day | Night | Total | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hours | Days | Avg | Hours | Days | Avg | Hours | Days | Avg | |
| Jan | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 1 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1 | 1.00 |
| Feb | 6.75 | 6 | 1.13 | 13.75 | 6 | 2.29 | 20.50 | 9 | 2.28 |
| Mar | 4.75 | 12 | 0.40 | 14.25 | 7 | 2.04 | 19.00 | 14 | 1.36 |
| Mar | 9.50 | 11 | 0.86 | 22.00 | 11 | 2.00 | 31.50 | 16 | 1.97 |
| TOTAL | 21 | 29 | 0.72 | 51.00 | 25 | 2.04 | 72.00 | 40 | 1.80 |
| Days With Observing | Time Spent Observing | |
|---|---|---|
| Jan12 | 3.23% | 0.13% |
| Feb12 | 31.03% | 2.95% |
| Mar12 | 45.16% | 2.55% |
| Apr12 | 53.33% | 4.38% |
| 2012 To Date | 33.06% | 2.48% |
Friday, April 27, 2012
27 April 2012
I went down to Pier 84, just south of the Intrepid Air Sea and Space Museum this morning to watch the NASA Shuttle Carrier Aircraft flying the Space Shuttle Enterprise from Washington, DC to NYC where it will eventually be placed on permanent display on the flight deck of the Intrepid. I had my ham radio with me and was listening to 1010 WINS news who were talking about how blue the skies were over the pier while I was standing there under overcast skies and being rained on. They were also talking about all the American flags flapping in the breeze - the only American flag in site was the one hanging limply from the stern of the Intrepid. Had I found the site NYC Aviation before going down I would have had the flight plan as well as the frequencies for the SCA, its escort jet and the control towers at the various airports.
Photographing the event was difficult because my camera doesn't have an optical viewfinder and it was bright enough out that I was having trouble seeing my LCD display but I guessed a lot and got the following 19 pictures that are representative of the event. The first group of pictures were made as the SCA and Enterprise came upriver, passed by and continued upriver to Nyack where it turned around to come back downriver.
We noticed a lot of seagulls flying around beneath the SCA as it approached.
That is a NYPD helicopter that flew over the river several times prior to the approach of the SCA and then took up stationkeeping down around the west side heliport which keyed us in to the imminent arrival.
After the SCA flew past and was out of view upriver I made a couple of pictures of the spectators on the pier.
Then the SCA appeared on its downriver run. This set of pictures won't be as clear because I was having even more trouble seeing my LCD so ended up zooming all the way out to be sure I captured the SCA in the image. Then I had to zoom in more before cropping the pictures posted here.
It wasn't until the SCA had almost passed us on the downriver run that we finally say the little escort jet.
As the SCA was shrinking from view downriver Peter made a comment about it being anticlimactic and at the time I took it to mean about the event but now that I think about it it is how I feel about the event in relation to our manned space program.
Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum graphic
Google Maps graphic
Photographing the event was difficult because my camera doesn't have an optical viewfinder and it was bright enough out that I was having trouble seeing my LCD display but I guessed a lot and got the following 19 pictures that are representative of the event. The first group of pictures were made as the SCA and Enterprise came upriver, passed by and continued upriver to Nyack where it turned around to come back downriver.
We noticed a lot of seagulls flying around beneath the SCA as it approached.
That is a NYPD helicopter that flew over the river several times prior to the approach of the SCA and then took up stationkeeping down around the west side heliport which keyed us in to the imminent arrival.
It wasn't until the SCA had almost passed us on the downriver run that we finally say the little escort jet.
Here are the dates for events concerned with getting Enterprise on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.
Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum graphic
It does not seem to me that it should take a tug and barge two days to get from JFK airport, the purple pin near the center of this map, out to sea, around through the Verrazano Narrows, and up the North River to 44 St. I suspect they will only be moving during daylight hours and will moor overnight in Gravesend Bay or tie up at Stapleton.
Google Maps graphic
Blogger has been making changes to their back end which have had an adverse impact on the formatting of the sidebar and footer of my blog. Unfortunately I don't know enough of the new HTML5 and CSS to know what to change to make things look the way they used to.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
19 April 2012
 | |
|---|---|
| Date | 19 April 2012 |
| Time | 2200 EDT |
| Location | Bergen St between 3 Ave and 4 Ave, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, NY 40.68378429863372°N 73.98082695949915°W |
| Location Comments | Urban |
| Constellation | Leo |
| NELM | Mag. 4 |
| Cloud Cover | Observed: 0% Reported: 0% |
| Sky Comments | |
17 April 2012
| |
|---|---|
| Date | 17 April 2012 |
| Time | 2030 EDT |
| Location | Guild For Exceptional Children, 268 68 St, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,NY 40.63671206281773°N 73.02657201045577°W |
| Location Comments | Urban with overhead area lighting and adjacent street lights |
| Constellation | Leo |
| NELM | Mag. 4 |
| Cloud Cover | Observed: 0% Reported: 0% |
| Sky Comments | |
15 April 2012
| |
|---|---|
| Date | 15 April2012 |
| Time | 2211 EDT |
| Location | Bryant Park, 6 Ave @ 41 St, New York, NY 40.75393414876581°N 73.98404912178006°W |
| Location Comments | This is a terribly light polluted urban park. There are floodlights on top of the building across 6 Ave to the west that are making it look like it is just past sunset right now. |
| Constellation | Leo |
| NELM | Mag. 3 |
| Cloud Cover | Observed: 0% Reported: 0% |
| Sky Comments | I saw more than Mag 3 but not as much as Mag 4. It is clear out but it looks like it is hazy looking to the east. |