• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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When I nipped out to the shop this afternoon I noticed an exceptionally bright sundog to the right of the sun. It was so bright it actually hurt to look at it and there was even a hint of the rainbow colours in it. There was no sign of anything on the other side of the sun.

Tagged with: observation log • atmospheric optics

Just saw an even more spectacular Rainbow today than the one I observed last weekend. This time I could clearly see the complete secondary bow and Alexander’s dark region between the primary and secondary bows. The secondary bow was also far brighter than last time so the reversal of the colours was even more obvious. I also noticed a number of supernumerary bows which I’d never noticed before.

Tagged with: observation log • atmospheric optics

I saw an absolutely stunning rainbow on the way from Cavan to Maynooth today. It was complete and vividly bright at both legs. For a while there was also a secondary bow around it and you could clearly see that the colours on the outer bow are in the reverse of the colours of the inner one. If you’re curious as to why that is checkout the section on rainbows at my favorite Atmospheric Optics site. I also saw some amazing Crepuscular rays about half an hour later.

Tagged with: observation log • atmospheric optics

AOL have released the soundtrack to the new Harry Potter film (The Goblet of Fire) on their website. You can only listen to it online because it doesn’t go one sale till the 15th of November but if you have broad band this is well worth a listen now.

The URL is: http://music.aol.com/artist/main.adp?tab=album&albumid=802181

I’m listening to it as I type this and my first impressions are very good. The music is very different because it is by Patrick Doyle this time where as the previous three were by John Williams but it seems to work well and there are haunting echoes of the old themes like Hedwig’s Theme in the new music so we do have some consistency.

I’ll make another post when I’ve had time to properly digest it!

I’ve just missed two days of work and I may miss more because of an illness that has been around probably since the dawn of time, you’d think we’d have figured something out by now! We can go to the moon and wipe out entire continents with a single bomb but we still can’t cure the common cold.

Mind you if this birdflue thing turns out quite as bad as people are suggesting it might then maybe the common cold won’t seem quite so bad anymore.

At the moment Mars is making it’s closest approach to Earth for the next 18 years so Astro2 thought this was too good a chance to miss! The only slight drawback was that Mars wasn’t well placed for observation from the Physics Observatory until after midnight. However, I offered to run a Mars watch at 1am and to my great surprise I wasn’t alone! There were in fact over 20 other people braving the cold with me!

This was the first opportunity Astro2 had to use the physics department’s LX200 10" telescope. The conditions were not really ideal but we did nonetheless get a good look. We started off with a 15mm eyepiece giving a magnification of about 170X which allowed people to see some surface details while keeping the magnification low enough to keep the image nice and sharp. Once everyone had a look at the low magnification I changed to a 12mm eyepiece to increase the magnification to about 120X. At this stage the sky was getting very hazy and there was a good coating of dew on the corrector plate of the telescope but we could still easily see the black regions on the surface even though the image was quite fuzzy. I did try to up the magnification to about 280X with a 9mm eyepiece but that just wasn’t gonna happen in those conditions!

All in all I think people had a good time and I’m really encouraged by such a high turnout for an Astro2 event at 1am!

Tagged with: astronomy • observation log • planet • Mars

I was doing some NASTY SQL coding this evening (or squealing as Smiler would say) and I got bogged down quite a while trying to get DISTINCT and ORDER BY working in the same query. The PostgreSQL error message was not entirely clear and I must have misinterpreted it about 5 times before I finally figured out what it was so desperately trying to tell me!

Turns out that even if you don’t actually want to select the field you are sorting on in a query that uses the DISTINCT keyword you still HAVE to include it in your SELECT list or PSQL will have kittens!

BTW, I am aware that it is considered a ‘bad smell’ by some hard-core SQL programmers to use to DISTINCT key word and I generally agree with their logic (why go to the effort of selecting a load of extra rows that you are just gonna prune off in the end?). However, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get rid of the DISTINCT in the query below, any insights you may have would be appreciated (looks at Bon)!

SELECT DISTINCT a.id AS assignmentId, a.name AS assignmentName, a.team_id AS teamId, 
  t.name AS teamName, a.completed AS assignmentComp, a.last_updated_at AS lastUpdated
FROM ((student_team st INNER JOIN teams t ON st.team_id = t.id) 
  INNER JOIN assignments a ON t.id = a.team_id) 
  INNER JOIN projects p ON t.project_id=p.id
WHERE a.completed='true'
ORDER BY a.last_updated_at DESC LIMIT 5;

Tagged with: PostgreSQL • databases

Got a look at a fairly nice aurora from Maynooth this evening. This was by no means a massively spectacular aurora like the ones you see in books but it was still very nice. There was a red glow on the north west horizon and white auroral bands over head and in the northern sky. It was also a fairly stable aurora which is less awe-inspiring to watch than more dynamic aurorae.

BTW, if you want to keep up with the most recent cool aurora pics keep an eye on the gallery at www.spaceweather.com. The gallery for this month has some very impressive images, my favorite being the one below:

Tagged with: aurora • observation log • astronomy

Well, Astro2 had it’s first observing session of the year and despite the weather being far from ideal we did actually manage to see some stuff and we also had a good turnout of about 20 people who braved the cold on the physics roof!

When we first went onto the roof observing conditions were far far from ideal, about 30% – 40% cloud cover and the areas that were ‘clear’ were still quite hazy. Thankfully the longer we stayed up there the clearer it got.

We only had use of our own ETX90 and our binoculars because the college’s LX200 was out of order. This made things a little more difficult because it meant we had no automatic tracking and no finder scope (don’t ask) so I stuck to a 32mm eye piece to keep the magnification low and only went for objects that were big, bright and easy to find.

We got a good look at the globular cluster M13, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the double cluster in Perseus. I was hoping to track down the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) and the Ring Nebula (M57) but without a finder scope tracking down something in the midst of the Milkyway is just not gonna work so when my fingers got numb I gave up!

We also spotted some satellites and an Iridium Flare and we did some introductory stuff with our new members pointing out some of the constellations. Although it was far from an ideal night I still think a good time was had by those who showed up.

One thing that did infuriate me a bit was that Mars didn’t come up high enough to be seen from the roof till I was on my way home and spotted it in all it’s red glory taunting me from low in the sky next to the Hume building!

Tagged with: satellite • Astro 2 • deep sky • observation log • astronomy

Being in Cavan for a weeks well earned holidays I got my first look at a clear dark sky for a very very long time so out I went armed with no more than a simple pair of Binoculars (10×50) for some hands on practical astronomy. It was great to see the Milkyway blazing across the sky, you just don’t see that in Maynooth. You’ll be amazed at just how much you can see with just a pair of Binoculars that I got for 20 Euro in Lidle!

Probably one of the hardest types of object to see without a telescope are galaxies but you’d still be amazed how many you can see with Binoculars, some practice and a clear dark sky. Tonight I managed to observe four:

• The Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Mind you that is not really saying much since you can see it with the un-aided eye under Cavan’s dark skes!
• The Triangulum Galaxy (M33). This is one of my favourites because it is one of that rare class of objects that I can see relatively easily with my Binoculars but which is pretty much completely invisible in even the college’s 10" telescope because it is so big and spread out!
• M81 & M82 in the plough. These are two galaxies that are stunning in a telescope but for some bizarre reason always seem to get over-looked by amateur astronomers.

I also had a look at the nicest of the Planetary Nebulae (dying stars), the Dumbbell Nebula (or M27 to Astronomers). Since most planetary nebulae are tiny you generally need a telescope to see them but M27 appears big on the sky because it is close to us so it’s within the range of my 20 Euro binoculars.

I also did the rounds of the Globular clusters getting good views of the two easiest (M13 and M3) and also managed to glimpse the smaller, more compact and hence harder to see M15 in Perseus.

I did of course also observe a few of the easiest objects to observe, Open Clusters:

• As normal I kicked off proceedings by observing probably the easiest and most spectacular binocular object of them all, the Double Cluster in Perseus (NG869 & NGC884). No matter how often you see this object it still looks stunning!
• I also got a look at another easy but beautiful cluster, M39, which sits in the heart of the Milkyway in at the top of Cygnus.
• I also had a look at one of the cuter ‘clusters’, the Coat Hanger Cluster which is, as it’s name suggests, a cluster of stars arranged in the shape of a coat hanger. It’s not strictly speaking a cluster but it is too cute not to checkout when you get the chance IMO.
• I also checked out one of my old favourites, IC4665 in Ophiuchus which is another realy easy to see cluster that almost no one knows about just because it didn’t make Charlie’s (Charles Messier’s) list.
• Finally, I also got my first ever look at M11 in Scutum. TBH I only came across it by accident because I was randomly scanning the Milkyway, I had no idea it was so bright and easy to see!

Tagged with: deep sky • observation log • astronomy

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