Chris Howard's Blog, page 73
February 13, 2018
February 11, 2018
It’s been a cloudy week, and the seven days ahead...
It’s been a cloudy week, and the seven days ahead don’t look much better. So I’m digging through some wide-field frames from last summer–to stack and process, and I particularly love this small section of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We are about 26,000 lightyears from the center of our galaxy, all of us on our little blue planet orbiting a G-type main-sequence star. And if you’re looking inward, toward the galactic center from our world, you’ll see something like the image here (this is a crop of a much wider field of view, so you’ll actually see much more, that well-known and aptly-named long pale band across the sky). We are right in the thick of things with our galaxy, which is well over a 100,000 lightyears across and contains as many as 400 billion stars. To put the size of our galaxy in perspective (and keep in mind that 100,000 lightyears is the low side of the approximate diameter, calculated to be between 100,000 and 180,000 lightyears across), we are talking about 587,863,000,000,000,000 miles. So, we’ll round up a bit and say our galaxy is at least 588 quadrillion miles across. And to put the size our galaxy in perspective, one of our neighboring galaxies, M31, Andromeda, is twice the size of the Milky Way, with as many as a trillion stars. And if that doesn’t make you think about our place in the universe, take a look at this Hubble image and understand that almost everything in the frame, every point and spiral and smear of light is itself an entire galaxy: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/hubble-spies-big-bang-frontiers. How’s that for something to contemplate on a nice Sunday afternoon? You’re welcome.
February 10, 2018
Weekend astro project: Astrophotography automation with a DSLR...
Weekend astro project: Astrophotography automation with a DSLR lens - This setup uses a 28BYJ-48 stepper motor and ULN2003 driver board connected to an Arduino Uno, and the code uses the Moonlite Focuser protocol. I’ve tested it with Ekos/INDI and also tried the Moonlite stand-alone app under Windows. I couldn’t get the Moonlite ASCOM driver to work, but didn’t spend much time on that.
Check out my astro imaging site for details on this project: http://saltwaterwitch.com/astronomy (It’s under the Astro Controller page).
February 8, 2018
February 4, 2018
January 28, 2018
violentwavesofemotion:
I don’t speak with anyone for a week. I just sit on a stone by the...
I don’t speak with anyone for a week. I just sit on a stone by the sea.
Anna Akhmatova, from Plantain
… and there is something about the achingly bright expanse of blue that makes me feel infinitely placid, infinitely calm, infinitely spacious. Something there is about the ceaseless, unperturbed ebb and flow … about the vast masses of green-blue water … that heals all my uneasy questionings and self-searchings.
Sylvia Plath, from a letter
You would rather have gone on feeling nothing, emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace of the deepest sea, which is easier than the noise and flesh of the surface.
Margaret Atwood, from Eurydice
The sea has many voices, Many Gods and many voices.
T.S. Eliot, from The Dry Salvages
Look there: how she approaches impatiently over the sea. Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love? She would suck at the sea and drink its depth into her heights; and the sea’s desire rises toward her with a thousand breasts. It wants to be kissed and sucked by the thirst of the sun; it wants to become air and height and a footpath of light, and itself light.
Friedrich Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The sea is working, working in my silence.
Pablo Neruda, from Nothing More
She knows what she wants: she wants to remain standing still in the sea. And so she remains. The woman neither receives nor transmits. She does not need to communicate. She knows that she is gleaming from the water, the salt and the sun. In some obscure way her dripping hair is like that of a shipwrecked person.
Clarice Lispector, from An Apprenticeship, or the Book of Delights
I wish you a kinder sea.
Emily Dickinson, from a letter
