Mike's Astro Photos

Today marks the end of the International Year of Astronomy a ‘global effort initiated to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day – and night-time sky’. It is coincidental that I purchased my first telescope at celestron.com on December 27th, 2008 without knowing anything about the IYA project or the 400 year anniversary of Galileo’s discovery. Looking back at that time compared to now, I feel I was naive, ignorant and lost in regard to my place in the Universe and while I am still naive, ignorant and lost in the face of the Universe I am light years away from where I was then.

At this time last year I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my first telescope. I didn’t know anything. I had never seen the craters of the moon up close, was never amazed by the rings of Saturn, and had never gazed upon Orion’s nebula. I knew what tracking was, but I didn’t understand how it worked, the concept of polar alignment was completely foreign and I thought GOTO would do exactly that all the time with no effort. I had never owned a DSLR camera and did not know what an auto-guider was. I knew I could hook up my telescope and camera to my computer but I didn’t know why I would want to. At that time I could only identify one or two constellations and that’s about it. Until July 6th, 2009 I had never even thought about meteor observing and I didn’t even understand the difference between meteors and meteorites. Sometimes people ask me why I got into astronomy. There are a lot of reasons, but the catalyst for buying my first telescope and wanting to start astrophotography was an emoticon in the sky created by Jupiter, Venus and the crescent moon — a sad face on December 1st, 2008.

I remember setting up the telescope in the solarium and gazing out the window at Orion’s nebula for the first time. I was totally amazed by the way it looked and so proud of myself that I had located it manually with no tracking or GOTO navigation. I started taking pictures about a month later and things got a lot more complicated, difficult and rewarding. When you are visually observing and not photographing you really can’t see very much when it comes to deep space objects like galaxies and faint nebula. The human eye can only process light for a millisecond while the camera gathers light for minutes or hours. As a result you can see a lot more stuff in an astrophoto than you can in the eye piece of a telescope. I was so excited by the first pictures of galaxies I was able to take. To image light millions of years old from objects that are light years wide and millions of light years away is simply mind blowing.

By March I had the rest of my year planned out. I was going to build an observatory and focus the rest of the years efforts on imaging galaxies and nebula. That was the plan until July when I accidentally took a picture of a bolide meteor while imaging the Andromeda Galaxy. That meteor changed a lot for me and set me on a new course. Instead of looking up at the sky for enormous objects light years away I was going to start looking down for tiny little objects 50 miles from my house. I spent the rest of the year tracking the meteor and searching for its remains. I really felt that the Universe was telling me to look for these meteorites for a reason and I thought that reason was to find some space rocks. At the end of the year looking back and having found no meteorites I am still very happy I had the experience. I have learned and grown in ways I would have never expected and I have a new respect for the Universe and my place in it. Who would have thought a sad face in the sky would have brought so much happiness and a year of astronomy like this.

Here’s a picture of the winning field goal kick from last nights Ravens vs Steelers game in Baltimore. Man it is nice to start the week out with a victory over Pittsburgh. HURA!

Ravens vs Steelers - November 29th, 2009

There was big news in the meteorite community last week when a huge bolide was seen exploding over Utah. Multiple cameras caught the meteor as it burst in the skies. Below is a compilation video from youtube that shows the sight from four different security videos.

After a week of gathering information and plotting the trajectory, senior scientist and meteor trajectory expert Rob Matson has estimated the meteorites from this fall have landed inside a secret US military base the size of Rhode Island called Dugway Proving Grounds. The US Army claims to use this gigantic base to test chemical, biological and radioactive weapons and says they have blown up thousands of bombs in the area (and continue to do so). The base is considered so dangerous large parts of it are off limits even to Army personnel. UFO theorists call the base Area 52, in large part because of the UFO sightings that have been reported over or around it. Rumor has it the Roswell UFO wreckage and government alien research program was transferred from Area 51 to the Dugway Proving Ground after its cover was blown in the 1950s.

Here’s what the US General Accounting Office has to say about Dugway Proving Grounds:

“Dugway Proving Ground is a military testing facility located approximately 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. For several decades, Dugway has been the site of testing for various chemical and biological agents. From 1951 through 1969, hundreds, perhaps thousands of open-air tests using bacteria and viruses that cause disease in human, animals, and plants were conducted at Dugway… It is unknown how many people in the surrounding vicinity were also exposed to potentially harmful agents used in open-air tests at Dugway.”

Dave Rosenfeld, president of Utah UFO Hunters, has this to say about Dugway:

“Numerous UFOs have been seen and reported in the area in and around Dugway…[military aircraft can’t account for] all the unknowns seen in the area. It might be that our star visitors are keeping an eye on Dugway too…[Dugway is] the new area 51. And probably the new military spaceport.”

The new military spaceport? So maybe that wasn’t a meteor after all…

Mike with some Jawas

My in-laws gave me tickets to Starwars In Concert as an early Christmas present. The show was amazing and like nothing I have ever seen before. Anothony Daniels (C3p0) was the host and it was a thrill to see him in person. We had great seats so close to the stage I could easily have pegged Daniels with a thermal detonator.

The music was performed by a live symphony orchestra while a cleverly edited remix of the movies played on screen behind the stage. Each song was centered around a specific character, event or theme and Daniels introduced each song by telling a story about the character or event. The video footage playing during the song was a cut and mix of conceptual art and footage from all 6 of the films. It was a very stimulating and interesting way to see Star Wars and by the end of the show it felt like you had watched the entire saga in a little under two hours. I was reminded by Daniels that the ‘odds of successfully navigating an asteroid belt are approximately 3720 to 1′. I think finding a piece of an asteroid in Lancaster are slightly worse than that.

Props from the original movies apparently taken from George Lucas’s private collection at the Skywalker Ranch were setup throughout the concorse. It was a great display with all of the usual suspects and well over 20 exhibits. Live characters from a Star Wars fan club walked around the halls in full costumes. The costumes were great and the club was well prepared. There were no-duplicate characters present (except for storm troopers) and all characters were well represented.

Visit the Star Wars in Concert website to check show times and watch some videos. The tour is about 1/2 over but there are still available dates. If its in your area, I highly recommend it. Even the non-star-wars-fan would be impressed.

Thanks to my in-law’s connections at Lucas Film, I got VIP tickets and was able to access the show a couple of hours early. This let us look at the exhibits before the crowds arrived and we even got to watch the orchestra warm up a little. Here are some pictures from the show.

Jedi Master Yoda

Tusken Raider

Storm Troopers

X-Wing Pilot

Jedi Couple

Darth Vader Fighting Youngling

Mike With Chewbaca

C3P0 - Human Cyborg Relations

Anthony Daniels on Stage

Wife Getting Force Choked

Original Score - Written In Pencil!

Here’s are a few quick video clips I took before and during the show:

Who says aliens and UFOs don’t exist?

Mike with Alien & UFO

Here is a pretty cool space video a friend sent me:

We Are All Connected – Watch more Funny Videos

Fake Meteor Crater In Latvia

A report about a 20 meter meteor crater and burning meteorite came out Sunday night. Minutes after the report surfaced meteorite experts called foul.

Today scientists have reported that the crater was man made and concluded this was not caused by a meteor and must be some sort of hoax.

Possible non meteor explanations include:

1) Publicity stunt to increase tourism perpetrated by Borat and the Latvian Government
2) Russian weapons test gone bad
3) Underground natural gas explosion
4) Latest experiment from balloon boy’s dad

At this point most news organizations outside are reporting this as a hoax. The people who created / reported the incident made a pretty cool video though.

The Mars Rover has found another big meteorite on Mars. Interesting article with some great pictures:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0910/11meteorite/

I have to do a lot of shadow analysis with all of these new videos so I went googling and found this program written by someone at MIT.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/g8rghr/297509

It has been pretty useful conceputally interpreting the shadows. We will need percise measurements of the shadows in order to get anything tangible out of the shadow videos.

NASA is set to crash a rocket into the moon at 7:30 AM EST tomorrow morning.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/08/probe.moon.crash/index.html

hmm… this could be interesting.

here’s NASA’s official site for this event:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html

Meteor Impact Reveals Ice Under Surface of Mars

Ice On The Moon

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Google is the best

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A friend sent me this video. It is the coolest space video I have ever seen.

I get this organic ice tea for lunch everyday that has fortunes on the bottle caps. I got a good one today that really validates a personal belief I have always held:

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic. — unknown

A friend of mine sent me this video and it was too funny not to post.

MC Hammer Vader Busts a Move – Watch more Funny Videos