Happy Holidays

Hi All,

I hope your are having a happy holiday season. I am sick as usual, but I did get a wonderful Christmas Gift of slippers from my Mother. I am now eating solid food again and it is glorious, as I am finally getting the hang of eating with this new digestive tract. I think I will try to make some pizza soon with pita bread as a crust.

In the interim I would like to discuss the notion of hobbies. I think that one of the reasons people are so miserable is that they do not have hobbies. Notice I didn't say a hobby, I said hobbies. Hence, since I am going to get a digital SLR anyway. I am going to go ahead and learn how to take pictures and edit them in Photoshop and Lightroom. This is on top of rebuilding my electronics making capacity.

Ultimately I want you guys to stay tuned for some interesting developments in January. I hope to have a line of EQMOD cables for purchase. Along with maybe some serial bulb cables to control Canon camera's via a Serial/USB port.

Old Astrophotography

Hi all,

Its a double update! I was able to find an old flicker account that had all of my "best" astrophotos. These are the result of a misguided attempt to get into the game. It actually starts when I am a little boy...

See, I have always loved astronomy and so when I was little my parents would get me toy telescopes that would immediately break, they would also get me Astronomy magazines. In the back of these magazines you would see full page color advertisements for telescopes, one in particular struck my fancy. It was the LX200 with Magellan II controller, the first fully computerized GOTO telescope.

Fast forward to 2005 when I have finally scraped together enough dough to buy one. I decide to get it and the new Meade DSI II Pro monochrome camera which promises that you can take images in Alt-Az mode. (This is a lie, and never ever believe anyone who claims you can take "excellent" images with a telescope in an Alt-Az configuration.) In my case I hat a brain dump and got the 10" model. The results of a few imaging sessions are now on the astrophotography page of the website. I have tried to give the particulars of each image to the best of my recollection but the last imaging session I had was in the spring of 2007. (I think...)

Beginnings

Hi all,

I am one month out (from surgery) as of today. The funny thing is that things have started to happen. First there was this blog, until now it was a way to keep all of you who were interested updated about my journey and plans and now it has grown to actually planning for expeditions. There are also pages for photography and astrophotography which will hopefully be coming soon.

This week I also spent some time on the weekend playing with some old equipment seeing what if anything still worked. It turns out quite a bit. The interesting thing is that I now have the beginnings of some gear, an old set of Pössil eyepieces (the entire Meade 4000 series) which seem to be in mint condition. On top of that my Meade DSI Pro II mono seems to work, in Windows 8! I was also able to find a working GPS receiver with a USB output.

So it looks like I am on my way with my next imaging setup, but I have learned that the main OTA that I want is going to go up in price as of next year, and so I am wondering if with these next couple of Paychecks I should purchase it. That would be the start of my imaging setup however the danger in that is that I would end up with something that I could not easily test until I have a mound to go look at (and take pictures of?) unfocused stars.

Things will be getting interesting over the next few weeks folks. If you know anyone with $85 an hour who needs computer help let me know. I am also tutoring for $35 if you know anyone who needs it.

P.S. Something that will definitely be happening with my next couple of paychecks will be me fabing a cable for EQMOD.

Problem Solving

Hi all,

You may have noticed a new Pinboard, labeled Perpetual Sleep. As you may or may not know I was diagnosed this summer with sleep apnea, as a result I now need a CPAP machine in order to get a restful night sleep, the two things that are needed to operate a CPAP are distilled water and electricity.

Distilled water is an easy enough problem, as a gallon last me for about a week so two gallons of distilled water will last the length of a typical expedition. (~10-11 days) At home power is not an issue, however out in the wild I need to have a solution that will allow me to sleep for 10-11 days without plugging the battery into the grid. Hence, I have designed a system where the CPAP can run for a day or two without recharging.

It starts with a battery package designed for telescopes. (Hey, when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.)  This gives me 2 nights of sleep for up-to 11 hours. Now in order to charge it you need a power source, something that outputs 12v at a reasonable amperage to charge a 17AH battery. So basically I want 12v at about 2 amps, which is 24W. Since you can get a 50W solar panel for less than $100 why not get more power than you need.

This gives me a system where I can sleep at night as long as there is not a couple of days without any sunlight. Now I can sleep the question is how are we going to carry along enough food and water to be in the back country for that long.

More generally, the abundance of cheap solar panels is an amazing boon for the end user, as it allows camp sights to be self sustaining, including powering electronics such as laptops and telephones. I hope to have about 400W of solar panels on hand for charging batteries and the like, along with this object which uses a Peltier to turn fire into electricity.

Additions to the Blog

The expedition preparation page now has some prose on there, along with links to some pin boards which might be of interest to people planning to go on expeditions.

Also I have added new recommendations for first scopes, some more reasonable than others. All in all I added reasonable quality GOTO and non-GOTO scopes for the most part 8" is too large for a non-Dobsonian telescope. I personally think that 6" is pushing it, as far as usability is concerned.

ACA and Me (Along with blog updates)

Hi all,

So here it is, part of the reason for my travails at the beginning of the semester was an attempt to keep my health insurance. Now that the Affordable Care Act exchanges are up I have decided to buy health insurance from Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Arizona.  The result being that I hope to no longer be afraid of loosing my job or my status as a student for fear that I will loose my health insurance.

This is a tremendous burden lifted off of me. Now its time to concentrate on moving forward. I have gone back to work which should allow me to begin saving money shortly, right now I am eating less than ten dollars worth of food a day. The next step is to increase my income so I can begin making purchases to go on expeditions. This has led to a couple of site redesigns, the tabs at the top will show my progress as I loose weight. I have even begun walking my dog further when my hands are not frostbitten.

The good news is that my weight is coming down nicely, also at the top you will find links to pinboards as well as expedition planing ideas and guides. Those will be under construction as time goes on. Right now its looking like I will be ready for the Grand Canyon Star Party next fall if I can just put together enough money for the scope and the camping gear.

Speaking of the scope, I have decided to re-purpose my DSI II mono as a guide camera since I don't really feel like paying $300 for one. I have also purchased Photoshop since it was on sale for 50% off, which is a great deal that is still going on, hence if you want Photoshop CC I suggest you get on it right now.

Size doesn't matter

Hi all,

I had my two week post op appointment, and guess what? I am doing so well they advanced my diet, no more full liquids now I am on to mushy proteins!

Now I need to begin by discussing a sensitive subject.

Ladies and Gentlemen I need to talk to you about the sizes of your equatorial
mounts. Now I just went back and corrected some mistakes in my rant about aperture when I came across this monstrosity:

This is the Skywatcher EQ8, and there is some excitement about it, even talk that it will challenge the big boys, i.e. the Paramount ME and the Astrophysics AP1200. To this I say, so what? This thing ways about 110lbs, which means that you will take it out once a year if at all, the same thing goes for the Paramount and the AP1200. This is yet another symptom of the bigger is better mentality, and it is highly correlated with aperture fever. 

If you want a beefy equitorial mount you are sport for choice from the CGE Pro to the LX 850 to the Losmandy HGM Titan, but the question you have to ask is, is a 100lb mount really "portable." Just because it mounts to a tripod does not mean that you can lug it around as much as you want. The only way these mounts are truly useful is if you put them in a dome near your home. 

Its an insidious trend I have noticed, taking ridiculously massive mounts, putting them on tripods and calling them "portable." The EQ8 even has handles on the mount head. If you really want to do astrophotography get yourself a sturdy workhorse like them mount I am going to get:

And yes I changed my mind again, the Gemini II system scares the shit out of me, I think it might be too complex for its own good. 

No news is good news

Hi all,

As you know I went in for surgery on 11/18/2013, and since I am writing this I think you can all guess it went reasonably well. I woke up in the recovery area after surgery and man did it hurt, spent a day on the pain button then moved to liquid Vicodin, which I am almost done with today. The pain really goes down from day to day.

Right now I am struggling to get my daily intake of nutrients down, its not too much it is in fact two little, I am getting maybe 50g of protein a day and about 300-400 calories, the good news is that yesterday I was able to get all of my supplements down for the first time. If I may make a suggestion, never buy the chew able wild cherry Calcium Citrate "lozenges" it is either like sucking on chalk with a bit of flavoring or chewing on chalk with a bit of flavoring.

Now my weight loss has slowed down a bit owing to my lack of activity after surgery. Here is the ever growing chart:

Order of Operations

Hi all,

Now that I am a week into my liquid diet, I think its time to admit that this is happening. If you want tips for surviving a liquid diet I would be more than happy to help. However, its time to talk about The plan again. So the goal is to be able to go to the Grand Canyon Star Party as our first expedition this will happen next summer assuming all goes well. However I need a road map for my acquisitions. Things have been made more complicated by my insistence on a Losmadny G11 for my mount.

It suffices to say that the first purchases need to be the laptop and the telescope, these will be the biggest expenses next to the purchase of a new SUV at some point in the next year, probably next fall. But we can break it down even further, the main problem with building a telescope from scratch is that you will inevitably mess things up. You can have all the wishlists and planning that you want but your going to inevitably meet with the fact that Murphy's law goes double in Astronomy.

Your main enemy is the complexity of open loop tracking systems. Everyone solves this with a guide camera, however there is something much more insidious. I have often said I will never buy a used telescope mount and here is why,

This is as close to a precision mechanical instrument as you can get in our hobby, it requires knowledge of mechanical and electrical repair and it is very sensitive to the weight that you put on it. There is no way you can just flip a switch and let it do its work. It has to be coaxed and finessed into doing its job. You cannot loose patients with it, you cannot try to reason with it. You can only be patient and work with it. If you try to take it out of the box put weight on it and get it to track and point, you are probably going to destroy it. 

This is the problem with mounts, they are a lot like cars, and this leads people to treat them like cars. That is to say that for the most part people treat there cars like shit. They assume that its going to work and when it does not they get frustrated and/or irate, when a car is a mechanical object and hence it must be maintained and taken care of, it does not need near the coaxing as an astronomical mount but the point is that you should not just abuse it and then expect me to purchase it. 

So I am going to buy the mount first, take my time assembling it, powering it on learning to balances it, getting to know its nooks and crannies and when I am done I will buy a telescope and put it on the mount, but not before I have taken the time to understand this object. After the mount then I will probably by a Camera, then the telescope and guide scope package. The laptop will also go in there somewhere since it is just a very useful object to have around. And once that is all acquired there will be test runs in my back yard then maybe in Tucson. The reason not to just get into my truck with a new scope and take it to a dark site is simple, it won't work. The scope won't work, the trip will probably be a disaster. 

Netbeans on Windows

I am more than a little bit irritable since I have started my all liquid diet. We are two weeks out from surgery as of today. The major aggravation is MiKTeX, let me do a stack trace to the beginning, after extolling the virtues of Netbeans, I decided to run it on my windows machine.  This was a mistake as I am using Avast anti-virus software and it sees compilers and IDEs not made by Microsoft as malware. In order to install Netbeans I had to disable Avast. So the procedure for that is:

1. Download Netbeans for windows 
2. Disable Avast
3. Install Netbeans for windows. 

Next I installed MinGW, the minimalist gnu software distribution for windows. (Here is a link to the MinGW installer.) After all of this Avast decided that any attempt to scan the MinGW exes by Netbeans was an attack. So after adding the following file system exceptions:

Then adding the following exceptions to the "Deep Screen" feature:

I was finally able to compile C++ programs. Before I got this far I needed to do something even more annoying. It turns out that MiKTeX comes with its own version of libstdc++, and thus causes your programs to bail, so you have to statically link to libstdc++.a in the MinGW lib directory in order for the damn thing to work. So yeah fun times all around for my first day without food since I was a toddler. It should be noted that on Linux this ish just works. 

The Final Countdown (and thoughts on Cross Platform IDEs *finally*)

Hi all,

As I write this I prepare for my last weekend of eating "normally." On Monday I go in for preoperative testing, that also happens to be the day I start a two week diet of specially formulated protein shakes from Bariatric Advantage.  This is both good and bad, good in the sense that I have my meals planned for the next two weeks, bad in the sense that my stomach is full sized and so these shakes will not in any way satisfy me.

Now, I have been promising a blog post on cross platform IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) for awhile so here it is. To start, there are no good cross platform IDEs, because there are no "good" IDEs. All IDEs are about trade-offs, all of them are idiosyncratic and we must accept this because an IDE is the most general programming tool available. With that out of the way the next problem has to do with language. Oddly the most useful IDEs around are for JAVA.

Eclipse leads the pack of course, and it fits the bill for a cross platform IDE, the problem is that production JAVA code is pretty much an in-house affair, most of the code that escapes into the wild, for better or worse is, C/C++ or Python. This is where Eclipse falls down, it is the ultimate in shitshowing when it comes to C/C++ because CDT is terrible, terrible to set up, terrible to use on a daily basis. The next cross platform IDE isn't cross platform but maybe if your clever, the code it produces is, I am talking about Visual Studio, which is the standard coding platform for any professional outfit. Hopefully your code is ANSI C++ avoiding any of the proprietary stuff you could get some cross platform code, I have done this and it is a monumental bitch.

Finally I have found a solution I think, Netbeans is the best IDE I can find so far. It is truly cross platform it does pretty much every language imaginable and it has a feature for selecting available libraries installed on your system, which is much better than Visual Studio where you have to go through a metric tonne of windows just to add a single DLL to your project. However this a compromise choice, it is not as good for JAVA as Eclipse, it is not a fully featured as Visual Studio but I think it may be the sweet spot.

Consuming

Hi All,

Its been awhile, as most of you know by now I have been cleared for surgery! So my gastric bypass will happen, baring me smoking or drinking a bunch of water the night before on November 18, 2013. After that it will be 6 months to a year of recovery. The good news is if all goes well I will be working again by week 2.

The Plan is back on, delayed by a month, and this delay has wreaked havoc on my finances. But enough about that, this post is about my proclivities as a consumer.

While I don't particularly want to argue about the nature of consumerism, I do want to expound on my distaste for used items.

The problem is the illusion of a good deal.

For certain items, purchase of a used item is a completely decidable problem, does the item work or not? This goes for things like various media, books, etc. However after the items whose operational modes are working or not working things get a little tricky.

I don't like used text books because inevitably they come marked up resulting in information being highlighted that I don't necessarily need, the result is a book that is less useful to me than a new one. For personal items, like clothing or dishes, I cannot get beyond the question of who wore this item before me, maybe that is a little OCD but the result is that used clothes, pots and pans, and mattresses are a no go for me.

Then we come to my personal favorites, complex items, cars, computers, telescopes, mounts. These items can be purchased used, but only after careful inspection, typically this only applies to cars. The issue is not just who used it before but how well did they maintain the item. Refurbished electronic items are a no go for me since they have a higher probability of failure maybe even a lower Mean Time Between Failures. Unless I can inspect the item, I am not going to purchase it, simple as that.

For telescopes they problem is that there are mechanical mechanisms that need to be properly used an maintained otherwise they must be replaced. As far as I can tell almost no one in our society is mechanically inclined anymore hence I do not trust used mechanisms. If I buy a scope on the cheap and have to immediately replace the focuser what is the point, I probably am not coming out ahead. Now if I know the person I am buying from that is another matter entirely but buying something off ebay or astromart, fuggetaboutit.

Mounts are a no go period. The issue is that the guts of the mount are usually garbage at the time of sale. This is because there are many more people who don't know how to maintain there mounts than do know how to maintain there mounts. The result is usually stripped worm gears, bad firmwares and all around terrible tracking from used mounts.

Some may say that I am too picky about what I am willing to buy, but hey to each his own, I am just never going to put anything on my skin that I don't know has come from a factory or further purchase something where the previous owner/manufacturer messed it up.

Denials and Delays

Hi all,

I know I promised a post on cross platform IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) but unfortunately life has intervened. A couple of weeks ago I got word that my insurance company was denying my pre-approval for the surgery on the basis that the surgery was not a covered benefit.

The irony of course is that there are still documents available on the website or my insurer referring to bariatric procedures as a covered benefit. This, along with the fact that the weight-loss center was told that the procedure was covered are the basis of my appeal. I mailed it about a week ago. This is my next immediate move.

As for the move after that its unclear. I need to get insurance that will cover the procedure, thus I may end up attempting to cancel my current coverage and go to an insurance policy which is on the newly set up exchange in Arizona. However, I think this will be costly as I have several pre-existing conditions. Another option is to sue my insurance company, which I really do not want to do since it will be costly. The other options available are to appeal to the insurance regulator in Arizona or go on Access.

All of this has delayed my plans, including The Plan. My goal was to have the surgery in mid to late October so that I would be recovering over the course of the end of fall beginning of winter. Then I would hit the ground running, putting the plan into motion. Now it appears that I am not going to have the surgery until mid to late November at the earliest. This delays my plan, and to be honest, I it has put me in a sort of purgatory, as my body continues to betray me.

Successful Failure

Hi all,

Writing this post has been on my todo list all week. On Monday I tried to go on an all liquid diet, the result was a disaster. Mostly it was due to the amount of insulin I injected the night before. I went from a diet with plenty of glucose to one with not much glucose at all and the result was the worst sugar crash I have ever experienced.

This was a good thing, mainly because now I know that for my liquid diet, especially the night before I start, I need to adjust my insulin intake. I am going to see my doctor next week and talk to him about how I should proceed.  While it was not fun I needed to try it once before I started just to get all of the kinks out of it. I found the liquid part of it to be miserable, mainly due to the fact that I wanted food so badly, but I think I would have made it were it not for the insulin issue.

I guess the main thing is that this is why we do experiments, even with ourselves as guinea pigs, it is to gain experience we can use later when the time comes.

As an update my paperwork was submitted to insurance last Friday, so I should know in the next week or so if I am approved for surgery, after that is a surgery date. I know this is two posts in a row about my health, but well that's just how it turned out. Next post will be about me trying to change my oil for the first time or my unending quest for a decent cross platform IDE. (Integrated Development Environment)

When is a clearance not a clearance?

Hi all,

As my last update on the surgery stated I have obtained all of the clearances to go into surgery, my paperwork will be submitted to the insurance company on Monday. (hopefully) Between my announcement that I was cleared for surgery and my current post, is that while I had been told I had the clearance, there was not a formal written clearance from my psychologist. The result being me waiting around for nearly a week while we tried to get it.

This has happened before, and its the reason I could not be a doctor. The problem I would have with being a doctor is that I have a general understanding that what I do affects other people. This makes me a better person in the long run because it means I try to be deferential to them. However, the issue with a doctor is that you have a lot of work to do, and if you were to consider other peoples point of view it would make your job impossible.  Why? because from your patients perspective everything you do is massively important.

The problem I have had is waiting on doctors, the worst of which was my CPAP. I had an acute illness and there was a common treatment for it. However, I could not be treated immediately due to the vagaries of our health care system. First the doctor needed to complete his notes so that the order could be placed to the durable medical equipment company, so that my insurance would pay for some of the cost of the machine. The problem came when the Doctor did not finish his notes until 3 work days after he gave me my diagnosis.

To him this was a small thing, to me it was everything. One of the worst feelings in the world is knowing your ill and not being able to do anything about it. It was no sweat of his back, and he probably had a ton of work. But there was a bit of torture that resulted. This was to a lesser degree with my Psych clearance. Its still painful though, to be trying very hard to remake yourself only to be held up by a few key strokes and the stroke of a pin by someone else.

FFTW for fun (and maybe profit)

Hi all,

As many of you may know, for many years I have wanted to create an open source image processing suite. The core of which is a modular image processing engine. The problem with this is of course that I usually start work on it a week before the semester then all development time is swallowed whole. The first kernel of any image processing engine is the ability to identify a star on the image plane, a process known as centroiding. In order to centroid you need something like a Fourier Transform of the image (in order to compute the point spread function of the star), I say something like because there is too much noise associated with the Fourier Transform to help with very faint objects. So my first baby step was to be able to take an image from disk and get its Fourier Transform.

To do this I needed FFTW, and cfitsio. Oddly cfitsio does not compile well for 64-bit windows so a year or so ago I spent a whole night fucking around getting it to compile in VS 2010. (If you are interested in that source code it is in my git hub.) Once that was done it was a matter of figuring out how to do a real to real 2D Fourier transform using FFTW. So here we are, the image is a few seconds of noise buildup taken from my Meade DSI II:

And now its Fourier Transform:

Most students usually do this in Matlab before trying it in C++, I guess I just like to learn things the hard way. 

CLEARED!

Hello all,

This is a quick update, I have received all the clearances I need for surgery, psychological, cardiac, pulmonary. Now we submit to insurance and I may be able to get a surgery date in the next couple of weeks!

The Software Problem.

A few posts ago I stated my intention to purchase a MacBook air. The good news is that the first facets of "The Plan" are months away from being implemented hence the plan is still in flux. The MacBook is probably the nicest single piece of hardware currently available, however MacOS X is  not suitable for amateur astronomy in my opinion. Several Apple fanboi's heads just exploded, but hear me out. When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.

The problem is that the primary purpose of my next laptop will be the control of the telescope and focuser for acquisition of images. While there are plenty of applications that work with OSX which will do data acquisition there are serious gaps in the hardware support. The drivers for these objects simply do not exist for OSX.

Now the gap between OSX and Windows is nothing compared to the gap between OSX and Linux. People simply do not make decent acquisition programs for Linux. Now the thing about the hammer and nail is that since OSX is a UNIX  you might just say, "Aaron your a competent programmer, why don't you just write the drivers." To which my answer would be "F$#@ YOU!" because writing drivers for hardware you don't manufacture yourself is about the most arduous task one can set oneself.

The root of the problem is the fact that this hobby is small and populated mainly by a generation of people for whom modern digital technology didn't exist. The result is that most of them are windows users as a result of some anti-competitive shenanigans in the 90's.  Hence everyone who makes hardware to interface instruments to computers makes drivers for windows. I would argue that any off the shelf components are best plugged into a windows computer, since Murphy's Law goes double for Astronomy.

The solution of course is to make interfaces to mobile devices, tablets and the like for controlling instruments at the observing site, Bluetooth is more than capable of wirelessly controlling a telescope. However unless wireless USB matures and becomes a standard we would be stuck with Wi-Fi for carying image data. This is a problem I am interested in working on since wires and darkness tend to be a witches brew for ruining expensive equipment. Any thoughts readers?

More on First Scopes

Hi all I have been thinking about first scopes for the past couple of days. I have put together this pin-board to refer people too in the future. The problem with first scopes is complicated so I think it would be best to put all of my thoughts down on paper. (so to speak)

It is a cliche at this point to point out that there are a bunch of really bad options for your first scope, but these generally fall into the category of a small refractor (50-90mm in aperture), it could be on an equatorial mount or not, it could also have a clock drive. None of the bells and whistles matter, whatever you do do not buy an instrument for visual use that is in this aperture range. The problem has to do with the fact that while they are light and portable you cannot see anything with them. Usually they have terrible quality optics but mostly the problem is that the sky will swamp out anything other than the brightest of objects in the city.

Now your going to ask me why I don't have any Catadioptric Telescopes on this list, the reason is that there focal lengths are so long, but mostly it has to do with the way they are mounted. No initiate amateur should ever deal with an equatorial mount, the set up is too complicated resulting in whole nights wasted trying to make things work. The only other option is a fork mount and there we have a whole other set of problems. Since forks grow with the aperture of the telescope you are restricted to single arm fork mounted telescopes 8" in size if you are going to use it more than once or twice. This is a hard truth to understand but the fork is both heavy and weirdly shaped resulting in it being uncomfortable to carry. This means that you won't use your telescope. Don't believe me? Go to ebay (or Astromart) and search for the phrase "only used once" or "only used once or twice" when looking for a telescope.

While we are on the subject, you may think that you will get a deal buying second hand telescope. This is a terrible idea for the following reason, you don't know who owned it. Telescopes are sensitive instruments meaning that if they are misused or mishandled in any way they may require costly repairs or be utterly unusable. For the most part GOTO scopes will have issues with there motors and gears, Newtonian telescopes will require collimation. These are issues you do not want to have to deal with without a stout warranty and some guidance.

The truth is that the only way your going to get into the hobby and staying in it is to have a telescope that performs well visually while at the same time being portable enough to take into your back yard at night. This leads us to the Dobsonian telescope. Basically you take a Newtonian telescope put some castors on the sides of it and put it on a rotating platform and you have an altitude-azimuth telescope. Add optical encoders to each axis and a computer and you have something that can be used to tour the sky with relative ease.

For the impatient this is the best option in less than an hour you will have your telescope setup and be exploring the sky with 6" or 8" of clear aperture. You won't track objects but you will be able to find them. If your a patient person then I would suggest something without the computer, since it will enable you to learn the sky the hard way, finding objects by star hopping.

I would not recommend GOTO telescopes for your first scope. Why? Because they are pieces of technology, slightly anachronistic since they have a digital computer, only in the most rudimentary sense. Usually GOTO telescopes end up being unusable, leading to a great deal of frustration with no objects being viewed through the scope.

Now the last and most important tip is this, Amateur Astronomy is a frustrating hobby no matter how you do it. There are very few shortcuts that don't end up being headaches at some point. The point I am trying to make is that perseverance is a necessary and sufficient condition no matter which road you chose to make astronomy your hobby.

Signal and noise

Hi all, I owe you a blog post but I have actually been busy. The surgery stuff is progressing I still don't have a surgery date and I am still massively frustrated with the disaster we call an insurance industry in this country. However I am not going to complain about that I am instead going to complain about something else.

When you don't have a telescope for astrophotography you spend most of your time researching which telescope to buy. Such things occur naturally with hobbies, since the goal is to chase the dragon for the most part. Its strange the first money out the door is going to be spent on a car, an old Subaru Legacy 5 speed (hopefully) then comes the telescope, then comes the software for the telescope then comes the computer upgrades.

My point is that planning is the only thing I can do and part of planing is research. The problem with research is that because the community is small there is a lot of superstition being perpetrated as fact. The best example of this I have come across is focusing.  Astrophotography is part art part science. The art is in the photographs, the science is in the planning on how to get to the photographs. When it comes to actually taking picture I anticipate trouble in two actions, the first is in polar aligning the mount, this must be done any time you move the telescope to a new location or break it down and set it up. The problem with polar alignment is that it is complicated and you want to do it well, this may mean taking a couple of hours to polar align your mount. The methods for polar alignment are not all that controversial.

However the second place I think I will have issues (and by I, I mean all astrophotographers) is focusing the telescope and keeping it focused. There is a great deal of information about focusing some of it might not be all that useful. The problem comes in that for the most part telescopes bend light so it comes to a focus, how they do this is very much dependent on the length that the light has to travel. The problem is that focusing needs to be exact, the goal is to get stars as small as possible on the imaging medium. You can do this crudely by hand, but most go to some sort of mechanical help for this, then there is the problem on thermal expansion. See most objects length changes with temperature, the result is that your focus (the place where your stars are smallest) moves as the temperature changes. This also means that the spacing of your lenses changes as temperature of the cell holding them does.

This could result in a lot of painful problems, not the least of which is people telling you that you should not get a carbon fiber telescope tube for a refractor since the lens cell is designed to compensate for changes due to thermal expansion. This is however a third order affect, the expense of getting a carbon fiber optical tube is a first order effect on your wallet. The interesting thing is that you should probably refocus periodically anyway because your never going to be sure where the best focus is.

Let me explain, when I was talking with my friend and mentor about this issue he asked me this question, "Where are these people going to get 0.5" seeing?" In order to see the effect of having a carbon fiber tube you would have to have really nice skies, since the is not a uniform object, its temperature and speed vary we get tiny lenses forming in the atmosphere as the local air changes, this is called seeing. Seeing acts like little lenses dancing in front of your objective, resulting in stars twinkling. More than that it is something you can measure with your camera, since even when focused the seeing smears out stars on your image plane.

Seeing effects your images much more than any choice of optical tube material. So don't worry about what your optical tube is made of unless your going to launch it into space. This has also made me leery of talk of a critical focus zone on a telescope, maybe a reader can explain why between actual thermal expansion and seeing I should worry about my focuser moving a few microns?

Frustrations

This post is an update. I am inching closer to a surgery date I think. The problem is that I need approval from my insurance company and they in turn need for me to complete my multidisciplinary pre-surgery regimen. The strange thing about this is, they think that in 90 days I will somehow learn some trick (and it would have to be a trick)  to shedding weight that has eluded me for 20 years. I don't know what the pre-surgery regimen is about to be quite honest.

I also have learned that I suffer from very severe sleep apnea. For those of you who know me you understand that I drink quite a lot of caffeine and I am still tired during the day. This is the result of not really being able to get a good nights sleep. Apparently this has been going on for years, so now when I wake up tired I know why. However, I cannot stand going to sleep knowing that its near useless for me, I want to get on with my treatment, figuring out what works so I can go on with my life! The thing is that I need a CPAP machine and the only way to get one is to wait by my phone until they call. It is a special kind of torture to tell someone they have a major sleep condition, and not help them get treatment for 4 days because its a weekend.

Some of the Nitty Gritty of Expeditions (With first scope advice!)

Hi all, Its been awhile. Sorry I  haven't posted, but its hard to think of pithy things to say when your on your back in a CT scanner. Anyway I have had substantial interest in the Astrophotography Expeditions so I think its a good time to talk about some details. (Subject to change since the first expedition is over a year away.)

 The idea is that as long as your willing to bring your own food and gear for you and yours you are welcome. We should have multiple vehicles since I can only carry one person other than myself. The idea is that there will be multiple tents, mine will be for gear and maybe 2-3 people other than myself. We will get together before hand to make sure there is tent space for everyone. Individuals will be responsible for there own sleeping bags and pillows. Now since there will be astrophotography it is going to be natural to ask the question of what other are supposed to do at night.

 I would encourage people who are bringing there own vehicle to bring a scope. This leads me to a question I get asked a lot, which is basically what kind of telescope should I buy. Since we will be under dark skies it will be an opportune time to explore the night sky. The scope I think everyone should start of with is a Dobsonian. My personal recommendation is to go to Orion Telescopes and Binoculars for your first dob. I started out on a 6" and had a blast under suburban skies, so it I would say a 6" Dob would be the low end. Now if your willing to save a bit of money I would actually recommend the XX12i Truss tube, as it will be easy to transport and give you better views at the eyepiece. The computer will give you instant gratification, by pointing you at objects and giving you tours of the night sky, but to push yourself  and get better at astronomy you need to try star hopping to your target. Finally if push comes to shove a good pair of 7x50 binoculars can give you great views without the hassle or the expense of a scope.

If you have some experience with using a telescope and your poison is taking photos of the stars and planets, well I don't really know what to tell you since I cannot recommend my setup to anyone yet. I mean stay tuned for test reports but until I actually have the scope and camera and try it in my backyard or in a field, I cannot say for certain its the right way to go. If your a novice just starting off I would go with the Orion Sirius 80 which is sort of the standard telescope to start out with for astrophotography. As for a camera, I would start of with an unmodified Canon EOS. (t3 or t3i) This will give you a taste for astrophotography.

Now you may be saying, Aaron none of these scopes are what you would buy, and that is correct. However I am not a novice, I am a journeyman. (or at least I tell myself that) I am configuring a modular system for specific targets. When the time comes you may want to do the same, these suggestions are for people beginning there journey.

I would like to reiterate that I do not recommend people jump right into astrophotography, its hard enough when you have a vague notion of what to do, its is impossible if you do not know if you have the target you are interested in in the Field of View of your scope.

The elusive block 3

Hi all,

In case you were wondering what on earth was going on with my previous blog post. There was a section about a Block 3 version of my astrophotography setup. This was an insanely expensive TEC refractor paired to a super expensive Paramount MX. ( I am fighting not to use the adjective astronomical anywhere on this blog.) Instead of a redo of my mount and telescope in Block 3 I have decided to just buy an APO in Block 1. Block 3 initially disappeared  but now I have added a new upgrade, to a 35mm Starlight Express camera with narrowband and  LRBG filters. This may be years down the road so stay tuned.

Going Modular

I owe you all an astrophotography post. This Friday while I was waiting to be hooked up to a bunch of sensors so strangers could watch my bodily functions as I slept, I was reading a book called The New CCD Astronomy. I must admit I was terribly disappointed. The main problem with the book had to do with the fact that it was written in 2002 thus it was for an outmoded world.  Since this book has come along, we now have inexpensive mounts which can carry 40 lbs, and digital SLRs capable of astro imaging. The result is that the book was mostly useless about buying equipment.

My last post on astrophotography was a rant against what is colloquially called Aperture Fever. (Not having to do with inhaling moon dust) Many might be wondering if I am only going to tell people how not to do it. Well, here is my plan for astrophotopgraphy,

Equipment (Block 1) - The idea here is to go with a modular setup that requires a little extra planing before expeditions, so initially we will go with a 5" Apo Refractor, 80mm Guide scope, mount and Digital SLR. This setup will be both portable and sturdy, the mount being weighted about 2x what it is carrying. The goal with this setup will be to capture the nebula in and around M45.

Tech Upgrades (Block 1) - This is just enough gear to be able to take photos and reduce them once we get them back. A Macbook Air with Nebulousity for image capture in the field, then a 4k+ screen for reduction and photoshop finishing.

Equipment (Block 2) - A 180mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope for long focal length work, planets along with other objects. This setup will be excellent for my second favor ate deep sky object, M51.

Tech Upgrades (Block 2) - The idea here is to build a bad ass gaming/number crunching/image processing machine.

In case you didn't notice I am a huge fan of the Apollo program, Once all Block 1 purchases have been made I will move onto the Block 2 purchases.

No pain & humiliation, No gain.

There is a popular perception that the type of surgery (gastric bypass) I have elected to undergo is somehow an easy way out. A method for lazy people to become thin. That perception does not align with reality in anyway. I have completed a sleep study, I am both invigorated and exhausted.

This issue with the surgery is that its not in and of itself the end of the process. A gastric bypass will affect you for the rest of your life, however it will not in and of itself keep your weight off. Even to get to that point though, unless you are very wealthy, you have to undergo 3, 6, or 12 months of supervised dieting, this is where some are caught out because if you loose enough on the diet you will be denied the surgery. Then you need three clearances, a cardiac clearance, a pulmonary clearance, and in many cases a psychiatric clearance or nutritionist clearance.

The sleep study was for my pulmonary clearance, the would like to know if you have sleep apnea before you go under the knife. The main problem with a sleep study is that you are expected to go to sleep wearing sensors all over your body, then they put a Bane like mask that forces air into airway half way into the night. If you do anything like get a normal amount of sleep the day before your study, you won't sleep very much. The result is somewhat paradoxical, how do you get data about a persons sleep if they aren't really sleeping?

Anyway I do have sleep apnea, more than likely, but it will not keep me from having the surgery. The interesting thing about this process is that you are poked and prodded to within an inch of your life, before they let you go under the knife. You then endure a review of your psychology from someone who give you a battery of tests then spends an hour judging you. My clearances will be done by the middle of august, from there its the last month or two of a supervised diet, then I will get a surgery date.

My friends, do not worry that I am going to go around evangelizing weight loss surgery after I have had it done. The truth is that its a hard choice and its not for everyone, if you are willing to endure the humiliation and pain, the prods and the frustration, then maybe it is the right option for you. But if I have learned anything in my years on this planet its that there is no one size fits all solution, everyone must use the understanding of themselves and their situation to make the best decision that they can.

A Rant About Aperture

There is a scourge in amateur astronomy and it is the notion that you need a big telescope. The argument goes something like this, the larger the light collecting area of your the more you can see visually, and the shorter your exposure times will need to be. This is the type of conventional wisdom that gets people into a lot of trouble.

In order to image you must compensate for the movement of the earth, the result being that you need a mount or platform to track the area of the sky that you are trying to look at or image. This leads to a problem since equatorial mounts have weight limits. The result is ridiculously large mounts and telescopes, or telescopes with equatorial platforms.

This leads to a razor I have come upon in my time as an amateur astronomer, the number of times per year you use your telescope is proportional to its moment of inertia. As evidence I present the preponderance of used telescopes on astromart that say "used a few times" or "only used once." My personal experience had to do with the purchase of an 10" LX-200 ACF  which really should not be handled by one person. While sturdy in Alt-Az mode, the telescope weighted so much that I could not bring myself to use it that often.

Indeed a large swath of telescopes I would simply not recommend for this reason. Any telescope on a fork mount is cumbersome over 9.25" it is quite nearly impossible for one person to set one up safely. 8" telescopes have been used for time and memorial but we now come to the elephant in the room, what are you using this thing for exactly?

If you are using it for visual astronomy, you will be constantly let down since almost all deep sky objects that you see on APOD or in text books have been taken with some sort of digital camera. The result is that at the eyepiece you see almost nothing or something lacking contrast and color. The end result of any attempt at satisfying visual astronomy leads to a truss tube Dobsonian over 30" in diameter. We then come to the other elephant in the room which is the fact that you cannot use such an object anywhere near your home, unless you live in the middle of nowhere.

Hence, Visual astronomy is a hard nut to crack so that you end up with a very large telescope which is as complicated to set up as an equatorial telescope and that you can only  use once or twice a year at a dark site. The other option is to go to imaging, which you can do with a modest setup, which you cannot under any circumstances use for visual astronomy save for the occasional dark sky expedition. The reason that aperture does not matter for imaging is that your interested in collecting enough photons. The way you collect the photons is usually with sub frames and a digital camera far more sensitive than your iris. So you must pick your poison, either you have a light imaging setup or a big dob you lug to dark skies, anything in between is just a waist, for anything except viewing planets of course.

The reason I am posting at 4:42am on a Friday is that I have a sleep study tomorrow, so I have decided to stay up until its time to finish that.

Purpose

I spent some time with an old friend this evening, I had lost track of what was important in these past few months in my slavish devotion to the path I have chosen academically. Its funny, I know who my groomsmen would be if I were to be wed, who my best man is. This blog is about my hopes, my activities, I want to share them with those people who care about me.

My life is somehow gotten harder over the past few months since I made the choice to alter my life drastically. Days blend together, I cannot keep track of which doctor I have seen and why, its all a wall of memories of lab coats offices and paperwork, the same paperwork over and over and over. The same exams, weight and height, blood pressure, then the questions about medications. My normal is now sitting inside the health care bureaucracy begging to be seen maybe even heard. I could not spend as much time as I wanted to with my friend, because I need to be at yet another teal office at 8:00am tomorrow.

The day to day is bleak, inhospitable but I do it with the knowledge that there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. Its a strange thing to choose to remake yourself. You begin to reflect on those things you would like to change, what you want to do with yourself, with your free time. I want to expand my existence.  I want to earn a bunch of money, to buy things, not for the sake of having them, but for the sake of pursuits I enjoy. My life should not be about the existential crisis of my professional choices, I should be able to enjoy it.

This surgery is a tool to reach a healthy equilibrium, so I do not spend any more money on prescriptions or unhealthy food. So I can save, be self sufficient, I can prove to myself that I can set a goal, attain it and drink the rich nectar of its reward. Evenings under the sky with a few friends, a telescope whirring from one object on the dark canvas of the sky to another.

My dear reader I hope that you take away from this, not the despair of my daily struggles but a reflection about what it is you truly want. What can you do to nurture your soul when not at work?

Seeking the Darkness

Part of The Plan is finding suitable sights for astrophotography. Unfortunately you cannot know everything until you get out there, but some things are important, we are looking for a relatively flat dark sight. Flat can be roughly determined via looking at images on Google Maps. Dark however is interesting, I have been evaluating several sites for there suitability when I came across this:

This is a map of the light pollution in the lower 48 states. On its own its not that interesting but if you pair it with Google Earth you now have the ultimate tool for finding dark skies. The KMZ file for Google Earth can be found here. (Thanks to the Santa Cruz Astronomy club.)  The interesting result is that I have looked at a few sights for our second expedition, after the all up test at Alamo Lake state park. The options are as follows:

Painted Rock Petroglyph Site - No GOOD (LP)

33° 01’ 23.26” N

113° 02’ 58.65” W

Elev: 584ft

Hot Well Dunes - (Good LP)

32° 31’ 26” N

109° 25’ 36” W

Elev: 3452ft

Alamo Lake Camp Area E -(Good LP)

34° 15’ 22.82” N

113° 33’ 41.08” W

Elev: 1245ft

Navajo National Monument Campground - (Good LP)

36° 41’ 9.77” N

110° 32’ 27.13”W

Elev: 7533ft

Where LP stands for Light Pollution. Please if you are interested in joining one of these expeditions let me know. 

Why I am so stressed out right now

Sometimes we stress about things for no reason other than we are conditioned by our upbringing to be constant worriers. I know this condition well, but it is not why I am stressed right now. I am stressed because I fear that, thought I am attempting to make a positive, massive change in my life I will be stopped by some sort of bureaucratic snafu.

I have found the people in my department have been extraordinarily helpful, giving me the opportunity to maintain my enrollment and health insurance.  Though there was a snafu early on.

I hate my insurance more than anything, but I need it. I need it to pay for an operation with an 80% chance to make me a healthy individual. But before they will pay, I need to go through a 3 month supervised diet, where I will not loose any weight. Its not enough that I am willing to subject myself to one humiliating test after another, and go through health scares when doctors try to cover there ass. It is not enough that I am willing to fill out the same form at one doctor or another, endlessly.

This is all so I can undergo a procedure which will cause me to absorb food differently.  Gastric bypass surgery is not for the feint of heart, you will be required to chew vitamin supplements for the rest of your life. I must forgo tobacco and NSAID pain relievers for ever. There are times when I worry about what I am giving up, and have to remind myself that I am only giving up things that are bad for me. I am willing to risk life and limb for the chance to reshape my future.

But to demonstrate that willingness to risk life and limb, I must continually return to student health services and prostrate myself for yet another referral. I must complete a 3 month supervised diet, while at the same time undergoing the pricks, and the prods. I must do battle with the university trying desperately to make room for my surgery which may or may not happen. I must call, prod, and be frustrated with people who are "just doing there jobs." It would seem that Franz Kafka was right, I am enduring this suffering for a goal in the not too distant future, which is still very nebulous, all I want is a surgery date, all I want is to suffer through a 2 week liquid diet and painful surgery and 3 more weeks of  all liquid diet. All so that I may have hope that I will not drop dead at 45, weighing 500lbs.

The Plan

So as you all know big changes will be coming over the next year. I will be undergoing weight loss surgery, the result of which will be an unusual diet for the foreseeable future. Another side effect will be increased energy and the ability to save money to do new and exciting things. The one thing that I want to do is have a vacation.

What is a vacation, is it traveling to some place that you have never seen taking a bunch of pictures and posting them on Facebook. Is that what we do to recharge our batteries? I think that when we go someplace we should disconnect from our lives in a meaningful way. The result is that my vacation plans have now become slightly elaborate.

First, I need a new telescope for deep sky astrophotography, hence the posts I have been making. If you want to see the current setup I have created a pin board for it here.  This setup is optimized for wide field deep sky objects. It utilizes a digital rebel modified to allow the full visual spectrum to be recorded by the chip. It can still be used as a photographic camera, thus multiple batteries may be needed.

Second some upgrades to my computer for processing large raw images, a bigger monitor and some more ram. Also a Macbook air, for capturing images at a remote site. With these things acquired we move on to the question of where to go.

Third, we need camping supplies. I have compiled another board on Pinterest here.

Once all three components are acquired there will be a local shakedown, learning how to assemble components in a useful way. Not everyone will be required to attend the shakedown events, just be willing to be told what to do when we arrive at our expedition end points.

Initially I thought the north rim of the grand canyon would be a good place to go, but unfortunately there are few clearings. The optimal place would be someplace dry and flat. Hence, the ultimate goal would be a winter trip to Death Valley, but before that we need a few expeditions to fine tune our approach. Our initial expedition would be to the Grand Canyon Star Party on the South Rim in early to mid June for 5-6 days. With a trip to the north rim to see which sight is better. Eventually however we will move to Alamo State Park for our first solo astrophotography expedition (AE1). The date for this expedition is to be determined, probably in the spring of 2014. Finally in the fall of 2014 we will try for another location, possibly in the Coronado National Forest (AE2).

Finally some time in the winter of 2014 we will attempt our expedition to Death Valley. (AE3) The solo expeditions will allow us more freedom to shoot the shit while engaging in behaviors that are frowned upon at some star parties. I would like 3-4 guests to join me for these expeditions, hopefully they will be enjoyable.

My motivation for this type of vacationing is simple. I sometimes wish to disconnect from the modern world and do something purely for enjoyment (or frustration) and this type of vacation seems to do the trick for me in my head.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Using Acromats for astrophotography

So I am hoping to work and save a little money for a new telescope and some camping gear, more on that later. Right now I am looking into equipment for a new telescope rig. The interesting thing is that I have fallen in love with the Orion 120mm f/5 Achromatic refractor. Now this is for an astrophotography setup so you should be screaming that I need an APO. This is about 10x less than an APO because it has only two optical elements in the lens. The result being chromatic aberration. Now in the old days this would be a huge problem as you had no ability to process photos after they had been taken. You basically took the image on film and developed it and if there was the slightest error, you were screwed.

Digital cameras make the world a bit nicer. Here is an image taken by the telescope I am interested in: 

The original can be found here. (scroll to the bottom) The image has several issues, the focus seems off the tracking might be bad, but the thing we are going to deal with is the fact that its too purple. This purpleness the result of chromatic aberration, so I opened up the image in GIMP and used a filter I found called Darla's Purple fringe fix. Applying the default settings we get this:

Still not great but less purple. Interestingly Photoshop has this built in. If anyone from the gimp team is reading this, please implement that feature! Anyway I am hoping to post about my plans for astrophotography tomorrow.