LOG Friday May 6 2022
Largest Telescope
I was asked about the location of the very large telescope which is amped up to a diameter of 140-inches. It's true, the telescope is a behemoth that takes up an enormous amount of space with its massive counterweight and equatorial mount. The OTA alone is too heavy to lift so random assembly and take down is out of the question. It's also incapable of being lifted or moved by a single person after its assembled. The current idea is to maximize the deck door opening and do observing the same as we did here:
https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory_20.html
Nexstar Observatory
Solar Observatory Upgrade
I was asked about the location of the very large telescope which is amped up to a diameter of 140-inches. It's true, the telescope is a behemoth that takes up an enormous amount of space with its massive counterweight and equatorial mount. The OTA alone is too heavy to lift so random assembly and take down is out of the question. It's also incapable of being lifted or moved by a single person after its assembled. The current idea is to maximize the deck door opening and do observing the same as we did here:
https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2019/03/space1-singularity-observatory_20.html
This requires freeing up an entire room and verifying the deck doors are wide enough. The alternative is to relocate the telescope to the top of the skyscraper inside one of the buildings made into an observatory. We'll need to observe precautions with potential wind at that level - thousands of feet in the air.
This observatory is still under construction. A total of twenty seven empty water bottles are now collected, however at least 40 will be needed to construct the platform backing (tentatively four rows of ten per row). The rate of collection continues at one per day on the average. It's noted the platform will work both indoors or outdoors, bringing the telescopes at both locations above the outside metal guard rail level for non obstructed views. The Nexstar Observatory is now intended to use a battery of telescopes that take advantage of various efficient reconfigurations for multiple applications.
The solar observatory is getting an upgrade with an additional sun telescope. The second telescope will serve to rapidly test various filter combinations, quick check the solar disk sunspot status, and perform various testsand experiments in varying spectroscopic ranges. Other upgrades to the newly founded solar observatory will include a variety of image processing software designed for solar enhancements.
Weather Station Monitoring
We continue to observe the weather conditions at our weather station, noting the seasonal changes and short term variations. We are currently in a random varying stretch of overcast skies but this is breaking up and is beginning to have openings for observing. The locals specify clear skies being more prevalent during the summer.
Left: 101 by Mike Otis using iPhone to analyze weather conditions
Laser Status
Even safe low power pointing lasers used in businesses and schools are getting a bad rap these days. The police are calling these weapons and making arrests for possession. The attorney said the police cannot show intent to use as a weapon or all kitchen butter knives will become weapons of intent. Hence the controversy. Are cars also weapons of intent to kill? Pilots of aircraft are very paranoid as a few bad war players with high powered lasers are in the picture and causing a mess. There's an airport located not too far away from the observatory and as noted there are some dwellings on the mountains. Being in a high populous region, there's bound to be at least a few misunderstanding individuals who see the star pointer laser light and form a misinterpretation. Therefore we have canceled orders for all future lasers, removed the telescope low power star pointing laser, and now the laser to the Moon project is on hold or cancelled as are all other outdoor laser experiments. The laser usage will not be resumed until the laws become more clear in favor of low power pointing lasers used for telescope astronomy.
One Shot Camera
The ZWO ASI224MC is a one shot color camera. With one exposure, it captures color, made up of three constituent colors added together. There's no need to use a collection of four filters, red, green, blue and IR subtract, and take four images just to create one color photo.
INDEX
* Largest Telescope
* Nexstar Observatory
* Solar Observatory Upgrade
* Weather Station Monitoring
* Laser Status
* One Shot Camera
