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Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope -- Background Video and Update Article


The Scientific American video (above) has some really interesting info on how they built the JWST and what its capabilities are.  For example, they tell us that it could detect the heat from a single bumble bee at the distance of the surface of the moon.  How the mirror was made, and how it is adjusted in space is really amazing. 

The Scientific American article provides a good, balanced view of how the initial results from JWST are calling into question the basic models of cosmology: 

Friday, August 5, 2022

SolderSmoke Podcast #239: Hex DX, VFO Temp Comp, DC RX, Polyakov!, DX-100, Wireless Set, Farhan's "Daylight Again" HDR rig, MAILBAG

N2CQR Hex Beam Aimed at Europe

SolderSmoke #239 is available for download: 

http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke239.mp3

TRAVELOGUE: 

James Webb Space Telescope.  Mars returning to opposition in early December.   

BILL'S BENCH

Hex Beam K4KIO - on roof – TV Rotor – 20-17-12  Lots of fun.  Working Japan regularly, Australia, South Africa on long path 17,000 miles.  52 countries SSB since July 11.

VFOs and Temp stabilization.  Dean KK4DAS found my ceramic resonator VFO for DC receiver drifty. He was right.  So I built a real LC Colpitts VFO.  Got me into temp stabilization.  A new hobby!  An obsession.  HT-37 and Ht-32 parts. Ovens?  WU2D’s second VFO video.  Understanding thermal drift and how to address it. Split stator caps.  Cut and try.  

Built a Polyakov DC Receiver. https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2010/03/polyakov-plus-dual-band-receiver-with.html  Lauser Plus.  Lauser = Imp or Young Rascal!  DK2RS.  He used a ceramic Resonator VXO at 3.58 MHz.   Mine works great on 40 with VFO running 3.5 -- 3.65 MHz. See schematic below. 

On 40 AM with DX-100 and MMMRX.  DX-100 died.  12BY7 VFO buffer went bad.  How common is failure in this tube type?  Nice QSO with Tim WA1HLR about the DX-100.

Got my Dominican license:  HI7/N2CQR!  SSSS on the way.   Thanks to Radio Club Dominicano and INDOTEL.

Getting more active in the Vienna Wireless Society.  

BOOK REVIEW:  

"The History of the Universe in 21 Stars” by Giles Sparrow.  Written during the pandemic.  Published by Welbeck, in London. https://www.amazon.com/History-Universe-21-Stars-imposters/dp/1787394654  Also:  From “Atoms to Amperes” by F.A. Wilson available for download.  See blog.

SHAMELESS COMMERCE DIVISION:   

Todd K7TFC getting ready to launch “Mostly DIY RF.”   I used his TIA boards in my 1712 rig.  He will have boards like this and much more.  Stay tuned.

I need more viewers on YouTube.  They want 4,000 hours IN A CALENDAR YEAR!  Please watch!

FARHAN’S NEW “DAYLIGHT AGAIN” RIG.  Analog.  VFO.   Comments, observations. We need to get him on the podcast.  Maybe two shows: SDR and HDR. 

PETE'S BENCH

Time very limited. But still sharing lots of tribal wisdom.

Wireless set with tubes!

Tool recommendation – Air compressor

 MAILBAG:

Farhan VU2ESE – Speaking of big antennas “Whenever I look at the huge construction cranes in Hyderabad, I always think how one could make 160m, 4 element yagi using it as a boom..

Todd K7TFC in Spain, spotting Log Periodics in Madrid.

Andreas DL1AJG:  Can Biologists fix Radios?

Janis AB2RA Wireless Girl.  Expert on Hammarlunds.  And was my first contact with the Tuna Tin 2. She too was HB!

Peter Parker VK3YE on Owen Duffy VK1OD

Lex PH2LB on homebrew radio

Would this really be homebrew?  Mail from H-A-D article on FM receiver

F4IET a DSB rig from France

Ciprian got his ticket YO6DXE    

Josh G3MOT sent us a good video about the Vanguard satellite and IGY.

Dave Wilcox K8WPE bought Chuck Penson’s Heathkit book.

Rogier -- So many great articles and links from PA1ZZ

Bill AH6FC  Aloha. Retiring.  Wants to build.  Mahalo!

Grayson KJ7UM  Working on an Si5351.  Gasp.

Mike KE0TPE viewing YouTube while monitoring 6 meters.   He will have a lot of time to watch!

Chris KD4PBJ spotted Don KM4UDX from VWS FB

Mark WB8YMV building a superhet.  Having trouble with 455 kc IF can filter.

Walter KA4KXX Great comment on the Daylight Again rig. 

Ramakrishnan Now VU2JXN was VU3RDD.  Found lost Kindle with SolderSmoke book on it. Building SDR rig from junk box.  Trouble with the LM386. 

Pete, Farhan and Tony:  Shelves of Shame

Daylight Again by Farhan

The Polyakov receiver I built yesterday (from SPRAT 110, 2002!)

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

James Webb Telescope's Deep Field -- What Would Be Behind A Grain of Sand Held at Arms Length. Click on the Picture


 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

Saturday, December 25, 2021

A Nice Christmas Gift Out of French Guiana -- The Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope

 
A nice Christmas present from NASA and ESA on the screen early on Christmas morning.  

Track Webb Telescope's progress here: 

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Homebrew Tiny Space Telescopes from the Netherlands


It is good every once in a while to step back from our electronic work benches and take a look at what other kinds of builders are making.   Hack-A-Day led me to this wonderful video from Holland.  There is great background information on telescopes, but the really great part is the interview with the Dutch fellow who is actually making -- in his home workshop -- these tiny telescopes.  Icing on the cake:  One of them will be used in a student Cube-Sat project in Oregon.  

Be sure to stay to the end for an intriguing presentation by Dr. Liam Fullersheit. 

Monday, December 21, 2020

Observations from the Mars 2020 Opposition

 

These are some of the drawings that I made during the Mars 2020 opposition. I would go out to my back porch with my 6 inch Dobsonian Newtonian telescope.  I would look closely at Mars, making mental note of what I was seeing. Then I would go to the shack and immediately draw what I'd seen. I would then look for relatively recent images of Mars made by people with more experience and better equipment, and I'd compare my drawings with their images -- this enabled me to understand what I was seeing.  Also useful was the Mars Profiler of Sky and Telescope magazine -- you just plug in the date and time and it displays the part of Mars that is facing us. 

I was especially pleased with the drawing and image above because I'd been reading a lot about the Hellas impact crater in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.   (SCP should be SPC = Southern Polar Cap.)  



I came to think of this as the "M of Mars."  I think it is just Mare Cimmerium, Mare Hesperia, and Mare Tyrrhenum. 


bcastropics.com made this illustration of how Mars's apparent size has changed

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

SolderSmoke Podcast #227: Solar System, SDR, Simple SSB, HA-600A, BITX17, Nesting Moxons? Mailbag

SolderSmoke Podcast #227 is available: 




Travelogue

Mars is moving away.  Jupiter and Saturn close in the sky.  And the Sun is back in action – Cycle 25 is underway.  Also, the earliest sunset is behind us.  Brighter days are ahead.


Book Review:  “Conquering the Electron”   With a quote from Nikola Tesla. 


No real travel for us:   Hunkered down.  Lots of COVID cases around us.  Friends, relatives, neighbors.  Be careful.  You don’t want to be make it through 10 months of pandemic only to get sick at the very end.  SITS: Stay In The Shack. 


Pete's Bench and Tech Adventures:  

 Backpack SDR  keithsdr@groups.io

 Hermes Lite 2

 Coaching SSB builders

 G-QRP talk  

 A new source for 9 MHz crystal filters


 Bill's Bench: 

Fixing the HA-600A Product Detector.  Sherwood article advice. Diode Ring wins the day.  Fixing a scratchy variable capacitor.  Studying simple two diode singly balanced detectors.  Polyakov.  Getting San Jian frequency counter for it.

 

Fixing up the 17 meter BITX.  Expanding the VXO coverage.  Using it with NA5B's KiwiSDR. 


Resurrecting the 17 meter Moxon.  But WHY can't I nest the 17 meter Moxon inside a 20 meter Moxon?  They do it with Hex beams.  Why so hard with Moxons? DK7ZB has a design, but I've often heard that this combo is problematic.  Any thoughts?   I could just buy a 20/17 Hex-beam but this seems kind of heretical for a HB station.


Suddenly getting RFI on 40 meters.  Every 50-60 Hz. Please tell me what you think this is (I played a recording).  


MAILBAG:  

Dean KK4DAS’s Furlough 40/20

Adam N0ZIB HB DC TCVR

Tony G4WIF  G-QRP Vids.  Video of George Dobbs. 

Grayson KJ7UM Collecting Radioactive OA2s. Why?

Pete found W6BLZ Articles

Rogier KJ6ETL PA1ZZ lost his dog.  And we lost ours. 

Steve Silverman KB3SII -- a nice old variable capacitor from Chelsea Radio Company. 

Dave K8WPE thinks we already have a cult following.

Dan W4ERF paralleling amps to improve SNR. 

Jim W8NSA -- An old friend. 

Pete Eaton   WB9FLW    The Arecibo collapse 

John WB4GTW old friend... friend of: 

Taylor N4TD HB2HB  


And finally, we got lots of mail about our editorial.   No surprise: Half supportive, half opposed.  Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion.  And we are free to express ours.  It’s a free country, and we want it to stay that way. That is why we spoke out.


Yesterday the Electoral College voted, finalizing the results.  All Americans should be proud that the U.S. was able to carry out a free and fair national election with record turn out under difficult circumstances. And all loyal Americans should accept the results. That’s just the way it works in a democracy.


We are glad we said what we said. It would have been easier and more pleasant to just bury our heads in the sand and say nothing.  But this was a critically important election and we felt obligated as Americans to speak out.  We'd do it again. And in fact we reserve the right to speak out again if a similarly important issue arises.  

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Mars is BACK! 2020 Opposition! Don't Miss it!

2004 
Sometimes waking up a bit earlier when the sunrise is coming later leads you to some interesting things.  

It was quite humid in Northern Virginia on the morning of 25 August 2020, but the skies were surprisingly clear.  I stepped outside at about 0500 local time, coffee cup in hand.  Venus was blazing in the east.  Then I saw this big very bright red thing high in the southern sky.   It seemed almost too bright and too high in the sky to be Mars.  But a quick check with Stellarium showed that it was in fact the Red Planet.  I pulled out my six inch Dobsonian reflector telescope and soon had Mars in the eyepiece.  

For the first time in many years I could see surface features:  It is springtime in the southern hemisphere of Mars, but the Southern Polar Cap (which recedes in the summer) was still very prominent (in my eyepiece it was near the top, as in the GIF above) .  I could also see an albedo (dark on light) feature below the icecap.

I went out again on the morning of 26 August 2020.  Again the Southern Polar Cap was very visible.  Below it, near the center of the disc,  I could make out a large albedo feature.  I am pretty sure that is Mare Erythraeum.  


Above is what Stellarium presented as Mars as viewed from Earth this morning. The Southern Polar Cap is much more prominent in my telescope (you can see it in the upper right in the image above).  The large dark thing near the center of the disc is Erythraeum.  In the Stellarium image you can see the enormous Vallis Marinaris canyon shooting off to the lower right (sadly I could not see this in my telescope). 

The GIF at the top of this post gives a much better view than I get with my little six inch telescope.  The GIF gives a good idea of what the albedo features and the ice cap look like.  

This was a great time for me to see these things.  I'm almost done with the second book in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy -- much of the story takes place in sanctuaries carved under the Southern ice cap, and in Hellas (which Robinson's colonists are filling with water).  During the 2018 Earth-Mars opposition a big dust storm made it impossible for me  to see anything on Mars; a similar storm takes place during book one of Robinson's Trilogy. And right now the Perseverance rover is on its way to Mars.  

This 2020 opposition will be the best one until 2033.  So don't miss it. 



Here is a good article on observing Mars during the current opposition: 
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/how-to-observe-mars/

Here are technical details on the 2020 opposition: 
http://www.alpo-astronomy.org/jbeish/2020_MARS.htm

To see what side of Mars is facing us at any time, use Sky and Telescope's Mars Profiler: 
https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/interactive-sky-watching-tools/mars-which-side-is-visible/#

Here is a very informative video about the 2020 opposition: 



And remember:  The Elser-Mathes Cup has still not been won.  

Monday, February 10, 2020

Volcano Light in Chile


This popped up on Twitter today.  It is from 2018 -- the Villarrica volcano in Chile.   Interesting shot. The label said it was taken during a snowstorm, but I don't think that is right -- the "snow" is actually stars and that big white thing in the cone of red light is the Large Magellanic cloud.  


Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Aeronautical Mobile Contact from the Dominican Republic

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On the morning of January 9, 2020, I was up early, sitting alone out in my open-air tropical hamshack on Bahia Rincon on the Samana peninsula of the Dominican Republic.   I had been looking at the stars. As the sky brightened I was listening to band noise from a still-dead 20 meter band on my uBITX.  

Skies were partly cloudy.  The Big Dipper hung upside down in front of me.  I had also seen Corvus, Scorpio, Andromeda, and Leo.  There were a few meteors and one bright satellite.  

But 20 was quiet... until, suddenly,  BOOM! A very loud and clear SSB signal came through.  It was KX4WE/Aeronautical Mobile.  Mike was in a 767.  I called him and he came back right away, giving me a 57 report. He gave his position as 170 miles Northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  He was heading to Port-o-Spain, Trinidad from Miami.  We had a quick QSO -- it reminded me a lot of my contacts with the MIR space station from Santo Domingo in the mid-1990s.  Suddenly Mike's signal dropped very significantly.  I figured that he had moved further south and was no longer line-of-site with me. I had some hills to my south and they were now attenuating Mike's signal.  I could hear him working M0NKL.  We were Mike's only two contacts on 20. 

I realized later that had I looked up, I might have seen the lights of the plane.  Below is the track of the aircraft.  He was at 35,000 feet when he passed over the DR. 



This contact was a lot of fun. Thanks Mike! 

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Transit of Mercury, 11 November 2019, and a Transit of Venus and Some Sunspots from 2012


Above:  Transit of Mercury, November 11, 2019 as I saw it from Northern Virginia using a 4.5 inch reflector with image projected onto a white paper.  Elisa took the picture with her I-phone.  Arrow shows Mercury.  I almost missed it -- Billy texted from college to remind me of the big event. 


Above:  Transit of Venus June 6, 2012 as seen from Northern Virginia.  Billy (age 13) took the picture with his I-phone 4.  Venus is much bigger, much closer and much easier to see.  Near the bottom edge of the solar disc. 
  

Above;  Billy on November 12, 2011 with the 4.5 inch Tasco Reflector that was used on BOTH the Venus and Mercury transits (we projected the image on paper). On this day we were using our newfound solar photography expertise to take a picture of sunspots (our picture below). 


Ah, those were the days!  Many spots back then.  None now. 


Friday, April 26, 2019

Nobel Prize winner Joe Taylor, K1JT, Talks to a Radio Club



Really great to see this session with Nobel Prize winner Joe Taylor, K1JT.
I liked his comments on his use of his retirement office at Princeton, University. 
I also liked his slide on how far below the noise level you can go with various modes. 
And then there was his reminder to 1) RTFM and 2) be sure to check the EME delay box so that your software will get the timing right when working earth-moon-earth. 

"Pulsars keep good time." 

Friday, June 29, 2018

Two Videos from Other Kinds of Workshops -- Dobson Makes a Telescope, Peter Builds an Airplane


Above you can watch a video showing the legendary John Dobson making a big telescope. Born in Beijing, Dobson is the former Hindu monk who left the monastery to show people how to make big telescopes out of shipping tubes and port-hole glass.  Think of it as the BITX of amateur astronomy.  Dobson is the founder of the "sidewalk astronomy" movement -- that's when you set up your 'scope on an urban sidewalk and show the wonders of the universe (or at least the solar system) to passers-by.  We did this in London with Saturn.  (Some of the cynical Londoners couldn't believe it was real -- they thought I had a transparency in the scope tube.) Dobson developed a very simple and popular method of mounting telescope tubes -- the "Dobsonian" method.   

More on Dobson here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dobson_(amateur_astronomer)

Below you can see a short update on Peter's homebrew airplane. 

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

ANOTHER Nobel Prize Winner with THE KNACK


When I heard that the guys who ran the LIGO gravitation wave experiment won this year's Nobel Prize for physics, something told me that at least one of those involved in this historic detection of weak distant signals would have THE KNACK.  It did not take me long to confirm this.  Rainer Weiss (above) definitely has had the THE KNACK all his life. And what an interesting life it is.  Check it out:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/meet-college-dropout-who-invented-gravitational-wave-detector

Knackish excerpts: 

The family soon had to flee again, when U.K. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed an accord ceding parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany. They heard the news on the night of 30 September 1938, while on vacation in the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia. As Chamberlain’s address blared from the hotel’s massive radio, 6-year-old Rainer stared in fascination at the glowing array of vacuum tubes inside the cabinet. The hotel emptied overnight as people fled to Prague.

As a teenager, Weiss developed two passions: classical music and electronics. Snapping up army surplus parts, he repaired radios out of his bedroom. He even made a deal with the local toughs: If they left him alone as he lugged radios to and from the subway, he’d fix theirs for free. “They would steal things and I would have to fix them,” he says. “It wasn’t a good deal.”

Weiss was drawn to tinkering partly as a reaction to his family’s cerebral atmosphere. “This is a German-refugee kid with very self-consciously cultured parents, and he’s rebelling against them by doing things with his hands,” Benjamin says. “But he’s surely not rejecting doing things with his head.”

He applied to MIT to study electrical engineering so that he could solve a problem in hi-fi—how to suppress the hiss made by the shellac records of the day. But electrical engineering courses disappointed him, as they focused more on power plants than on hi-fi. So Weiss switched to physics—the major that had, he says, the fewest requirements.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Pre-eclipse Solar Observation


I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a look at the eclipse tomorrow -- I'll be at work,  and in any case Washington DC will be far from the zone of totality.  But all the eclipse talk made me want to get my old 4 inch reflector telescope out today for at least one solar observation.  And yes, I know not to look through the 'scope. I projected the image onto a piece of white paper.   Notice the three large sunspots at the center of the solar disk.  Pretty cool.  

BTW, it is easy to aim the scope at the sun without endangering your eyesight.  Don't ever put your eye to an eyepiece (even on the spotting or aiming 'scope) when ole' sol is in the sky!  Instead, just look at the shadow that the scope tube is casting on the ground.  Make it circular and you will be very close to having the main tube aimed at the sun. See below.   



 I like to have the eyepiece aimed down at the ground or well above horizontal to avoid the danger of someone accidentally walking through  the powerful sunbeam coming out of the eyepiece.  You do have to be careful, especially if there are kids around. 

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Gravitational Waves, A GREAT VIDEO, Phasing, and Joe Taylor K1JT



Wow, you really have to spend 20 minutes and watch the video (above).  It is really well done.  I loved it.  I give it FIVE SOLDERING IRONS!

And big news today!  They did it!  Gravitational waves finally detected.  Here is a good New York Times article that includes a recording of the signal, a nice NYT video that has a good explanation (with phasing!) of how lasers are used in the massive detectors, and mention of Joe Taylor, K1JT, whose Nobel Prize winning work contributed to this great discovery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
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