Jonathan

The Hidden Galaxy, IC 342

March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 by JonathanNo Comments

You need a strong tolerance for chaos to survive serious astrophotography. I lost nearly two years while troubleshooting an issue, which I thought was with my telescope, but turned out to be a power supply. Suddenly, there was a six-month period where things seemed relatively stable. And then, Windows decided to explode on my laptop, requiring a complete reinstall -- none of the backups worked! I had to reinstall and reconfigure all of my apps and get them talking to the finicky hardware again. Four hours under the sky one night verified that everything was more or less functional again. Then I had to wait for the next clear, moonless night for my chosen target -- the Hidden Galaxy, IC 342. Located in the constellation Camelopardalis, IC 342 lies right along the Milky Way's equator. That means we are looking out through the disk of the Milky Way at this galaxy -- our galaxy would appear edge-on to them. Lying along the...

A Salute to Hemphill, Texas

February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by JonathanNo Comments

Texas Highways magazine was the first periodical to feature "Bringing Columbia Home." There's a very poignant article about Hemphill and Sabine County, Texas in the January 2023 issue, which also mentions the book. https://texashighways.com/culture/history/hemphill-remembers-the-columbia-disaster-20-years-later/ Mike Leinbach and I will forever be grateful that we were able to help honor the heroic deeds of the people who assisted in the recovery of Columbia and her crew. If you're ever in East Texas, please consider making a pilgrimage to Hemphill to see the incredible Remembering Columbia Museum and meet some of the people who answered the call in the darkest hours following the accident in 2003....

The “Seagull Nebula”

February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 by JonathanNo Comments

IC 2177, popularly known as the "Seagull Nebula," is a region of dust clouds, emission nebulas, reflection nebulas, and star clusters that lies along the border between the constellations Canis Major and Monoceros. It appears to have formed as the result of at least three separate supernova explosions over the past six million years. The shock waves from the explosions are pushing interstellar gas and dust together, triggering star formation. An interesting feature is bow shock wave around the star at far right. Data from the GAIA space mission shows that this is a runaway star, traveling at high speed. It was likely ejected from an open cluster by a nearby supernova explosion one million years ago. The shock wave results from it slamming into the nebulous region at high speed. Imaged on the evening of 13 February 2023 from Summerfield, NC (Bortle 4/5), using Explore Scientific 127mm FCD-100 APO refractor with field flattener/reducer, EQ6-R Pro mount, cooled ZWO ASI1600MM camera and...

SpaceX Launch Team is “Go!”

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

Mike Leinbach, the final Launch Director of the Space Shuttle Program, and the last man to give the "go for launch" for a crewed US mission from Kennedy Space Center, returned to his old stamping grounds on May 25. He was invited by SpaceX management to meet with the SpaceX launch team and answer any questions they might have about what it's like to launch humans into orbit. The testing and launch countdowns for the final decade of Space Shuttle launches were run from Firing Room 4 in the Launch Control Center (LCC). Back in the Shuttle era, four stair-stepped tiers of consoles were staffed by test conductors, security officers, public affairs officers, and other managers. On the main floor, eight semi-circular arcs of consoles, staffed by engineers specializing in the systems of the Space Shuttle and the ground support equipment, faced toward the manager rows and the large windows. Off to either side of the management rows were triangular, glassed-in...

Chasing the Northern Lights

April 20, 2020April 24, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

Our February/March 2020 cruise on the Viking Star was a fantastic trip. In addition to meeting some great people and enjoying the stunning scenery, we also achieved our primary goal, which was to experience the Northern Lights. Of course, we returned to a world changed by the COVID-19 lockdown, but I didn't let that prevent me from sharing our experiences with the Greensboro Astronomy Club via Zoom on Friday, April 20. I recorded the presentation and am happy to provide the link to the video below. My talk opens with a brief discussion of the Northern Lights in history and our attempts to understand what causes them. The primary purpose, though, was to answer the question that I took with me to Norway: What does it really look like to be under the Northern Lights? Hopefully, this presentation will answer that question, as it includes more than 100 images that I captured with my iPhone in Night Mode over several night's worth...

Bergen and Osterfjord: March 9-11

March 11, 2020March 11, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

Our final port of call for this trip was Bergen, one of Norway’s oldest cities. On our first day in town, we took a tour which started in Bryggen, a trading post established by the Hanseatic League in 1350. The colorful storefronts of Bryggen The two storefronts at left, and the brown triangular roofs behind them, are actually the Radisson Blu hotel, where we stayed during our final two nights in Bergen. Bryggen’s primary export was dried cod. In its dried form, it could be preserved for years (decades) and reconstituted later on, retaining most of its nutritional value. I’ll take their word for it. Why don’t I have this sculpture of a royal cod in my front yard? One of the alleyways between the shops We visited the Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene, in which rooms and artifacts from the original buildings have been preserved. The “talking stick” in the central trading hall. A man could speak during a meeting only if he...

Sidebar: Edvard Grieg’s Home, Troldhaugen

March 10, 2020March 11, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

We said goodbye to the Viking Star this morning and checked into our hotel in Bergen. We have two days on our own before we leave for home. Now it was time for us to venture out, independent of tour buses and groups. We hopped onto Bergen’s light rail train for the town of Hop (pronounced hoop) and a one-mile walk to the home of Norway’s greatest composer, Edvard Grieg. The back door at Troldhaugen Grieg and his wife Nina selected a site on Nordås Lake, south of Bergen, to build their home in 1885. Troldhaugen, meaning ‘valley of trolls,’ was the name Grieg chose based on local children’s legends about the countryside near the home site. The view from Grieg’s front yard Jane and I had the place practically to ourselves today. The museum office said that only five tourists had visited the museum the whole day. We had a private tour of the residence and had a wonderful opportunity to talk...

Narvik and Polar Park, March 7

March 8, 2020March 8, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

The port of Narvik was our last stop north of the Arctic Circle. Although it’s a very small town, Narvik’s ice-free harbor at the terminus of a railway bringing iron ore from Sweden made it a key strategic objective of both Britain and the Germans at the outset of WWII. After a fierce naval battle that sent numerous ships to the bottom of the fjord, the British held Narvik for more than a month, surrendering it only when they had to send their resources south to evacuate their troops from France. Freighters lying in the fjord at Narvik The town was hosting an alpine ski event during our visit. The ski slopes are just off the center of town. Lights illuminate a ski run at dusk As if having a ski event in town wasn’t enough, NATO forces were conducting wintertime exercises in the area. We passed columns of troop carriers and also saw tanks in the field along the highway north of town....

Alta – March 5/6, 2020

March 6, 2020March 6, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

Our northernmost port of call for this voyage was Alta, a city of about 20,000 inhabitants. Alta was the German navy’s largest base of operations outside of Germany in WWII. The Germans burned the city to the ground when they retreated in 1944; only one church remained standing, and the population was forcibly relocated. Today, Alta is a center for salmon farming, Arctic research, and mining. Alta’s museum is built on the site of an amazing set of petroglyphs that date back more than 6,000 years. Ancient artists decorated the rocks by pecking at them with a pointed tool and adding red iron oxide to the excised area. The “Pippi” rock, named for its resemblance to Pippi Longstocking The museum also houses historical artifacts from the first scientific studies of the northern lights. In the city center is the unique Northern Lights Cathedral, built in 2013. It’s made of wood and concrete and clad in titanium sheets. Reindeer sledding In the afternoon of...

Tromsø – March 3/4, 2020

March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 by JonathanNo Comments

We docked at Tromsø on Tuesday morning. The main part of the city sits on a small island, one that is relatively densely populated for this part of the world. The city and its environs have about 130,000 inhabitants and is the world’s third largest city north of the Arctic Circle. They call it “The Paris of the North” because it is relatively cosmopolitan. Foreigners make up 10% of the population, and it’s a major hub of Arctic scientific research. It was from here that Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen set off on their polar expeditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We learned about their voyages in a visit to the Polar Museum. It’s almost impossible to imagine the hardships suffered by these explorers and others who tried to make their living in the Arctic back in those days. Marking a quite different era in Tromsø’s cultural history is the Arctic Cathedral, which opened in 1965. It’s a soaring aluminum...