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Science Technology

Serious Home Observatories 110

Posted by timothy from the not-just-for-tycho-brache dept.
peatbakke writes: "Here's an interesting article about the affordability of backyard observatories. Rich kids get all the fun at the moment, but it's getting better." Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.
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Serious Home Observatories More

Serious Home Observatories

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  • Ar alternatively (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21, 2002 @07:54AM (#3925683)
    you could use a program like Celestia [shatters.net] and look into the heavens from your own computer monitor.

    • Re:Ar alternatively (Score:2, Insightful)

      by richjoyce ( 582073 )
      top ten signs you spend too much time on the computer:

      10-you look at the stars on your monitor

      seriously though, where is the fun in looking at the stars on a computer than actually getting outside and looking up at the sky, possibly with the help of a backyard observatory
      • seriously though, where is the fun in looking at the stars on a computer than actually getting outside and looking up at the sky, possibly with the help of a backyard observatory

        You can't see the stars where I live. On a really clear night, you can maybe count 10 stars. TEN. Out of billions! And nine of them are probably just helicopters anyway.

    • Re:Ar alternatively (Score:2, Interesting)

      by H3XA ( 590662 )
      when I was young I lived in country QLD, Australia - no light pollution and brilliant views.

      then I moved to a city with more light pollution - okayish night views

      now I live in a large city in China..... haven't seem stars since I got here..... damn pollution, both light and air :(

      Think I will stick with software for my star gazing.

      - HeXa
    • Seeing a celestial body with your own eyes is so utterly far much more amazing than seeing pictures of it, no matter what the quality.

    • Many amateur astronomers dream of discovering a new comet-- something that is impossible with a computer astronomy simulator.
      • Not that I disagree that backyard astronomy is a great thing - or at least more romantic than awaiting a batch of results from a telescope a few thousand miles away - but nearly 500 comets have been discovered by folks processing SOHO [nasa.gov] images at home.

        Sebastian's Comet Hunt [sungrazer.org] is a great news site detailing SOHO comet discoveries, and there's links there that shows anyone (even tyros) how to pick these comets up.

    • This has some cool features. From the website:

      "Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit."

  • KStars (Score:2, Informative)

    by Klerck ( 213193 )
    If you want to see the stars without using a telescope, KStars [kde.org] is an excellent program. It's simply an amazing piece of work.

    You can do stuff like click on a star to get a real picture of it from various sources.

    It's, of course, free and open source.

    • Re:KStars (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rknop ( 240417 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @08:15AM (#3925720) Homepage

      Yeah... and for that matter, why ever go visit the Grand Canyon or Yosemite National Park when you can find photographs of them on the web? And why go to a concert when you can buy a CD or download a MP3 of the same music? Gee, with computer software and Google, we never need to leave our desks at all and view nature first hand!

      (Sarcasm off.) Don't get me wrong. I'm very fond of programs like XEphem and KStars, not to mention sites like the Astronomy Picutre of the Day. But most amateur astronomers aren't in it for seeing the absolute best possible HST picture, or for viewing the constellations as abstract patterns however those patterns are presented. They... er, we are like birdwatchers in many ways. You can find all the pictures of birds you want in various bird books, but there's something different about seeing it first hand.

      So while programs like Xephem and projects like the national virtual observatory are great, only those with a fundamental misunderstanding of amateur astronomers (such as the one described in the article here) would think it reasonable to suggest that they are a substitute for a good dark sky and seeing faint, fuzzy galaxies first hand.

      -Rob

      • Nobody said that programs like KStars, XEphem etc. can replace a real peek at the sky. They are however quite useful for gaining a little knowledge of what you will see, when you eventually aim your telescope at the sky.
      • KStars and similar packages are good tools to help orient yourself or plan ahead before you go out and look or guess at optimum viewing time for your location. It's especially useful if the sky is partly cloudy or visibility is obscured by light pollution [darksky.org].

        Dark skies are a prerequisite to any optics based astronomy. Why are we using so much money to shine light up into the sky? If half the light is going up instead of down, then we're losing half your lighting money for nothing and lowering the standard of living.

    • Yes, and you can download pictures of beautiful naked women off of the internet and spank your monkey in the privacy of your home without ever having to pay money to escort services, worry about meeting up with a transsexual or dealing with humiliating, bone crushing rejection. OK, sorry, I just couldn't resist.

      I got my second telescope when I was 15 years old, it is a 3.2" refractor with a 1200mm focal length. I used to get up at O dark early and take it out behind our stable to look at the stars. I don't know how many mornings I went out and froze my ass off until I had to go back inside to get ready for school, but I have to tell you that nothing I have ever seen on a computer monitor matches the thrill of looking at the Pleiades or Jupiter on 3am on a cold winter morning in Kitsap County Washington.

  • I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while now; there really should be some way to take all those wal-mart USB Telescopes and do something meaningful with them.
    However, since I refuse to waste space on a NYT cookie, all I can say which is meaningful at all is:
    "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those!"
    Sigh.
  • Some colleagues of mine has a large radio telescope dish in their back garden, with a couple of racks of electronics in the kitchen. Most of this gear, I think, came out of the skip at a company they did some work for, so I don't think you have to be very rich to do this.

    When it detects some aliens a red light flashes and a siren goes off. So far they've all been false alarms.

    • Re:Searching for aliens (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @08:37AM (#3925755) Journal
      It's still reasonably expensive to get hold of all the equipment though (I know, I'm in the final stages of doing it - the antenna arrives next week :-)

      The dish (3m diameter minimum) will set you back ~150 quid, the radio receiver (1.4GHz typically) is ~300 quid for the WinRadio 1550e (PC-attachable high-frequency radio receiver), and the LNA (low-noise amplifier), feed-horn, cable and fittings came to another 300 quid. So a total of ~750 quid.

      All of this is in the UK, and apart from the dish, I bought new kit. I'm sure that (a) outside the UK it's easier to get large dishes, and (b) if you bought 2nd hand, you'd be able to get the price of the hardware down. You can even make your own components if you have the knowledge.

      A good source of info is the setileague website for the mini-manual [setileague.org] or the UK site [jsquared.co.uk] run by Jenny Bailey, although it was a bit out of date last time I looked.

      Anyway, this time next week, I should be searching for aliens from my back-yard too :-)

      Simon.

      • It sounds like you've got a really interesting project going!

        If the info you're aware of about similar projects is a bit dated ... any chance you're putting together a website covering your efforts? It'd be great to hear your whole story about how you started this, pictures of what you've bought, and a summary of the final result. Just a thought. :-)
        • I am, in fact :-) Probably on www.gornall.net when I get it all together. Nothing there yet, but the PS2 site is slowly coming together (ps2.gornall.net).

          I'm planning on using a PC to do the data analysis (and my background is in signal processing, so I'm quite looking forward to it), but another idea is to use a PS2 to do the work - my PC is worth ~1.5 GFlops (Athlon 1700), but the PS2 can do ~6 GFlops, and the vector units are native-floating point devices. At that rate I could look into doing chirp analysis (compensating for time-distortion due to the motion of source and the earth) as well as plain old fourier analysis.

          ATB,
          Simon.
      • participating in the university of Kentucky's volunteer SETI search project. Unlike the passive seti@home project, the ukentuckyasrgseti project requires an active participation.

        Here is how the process works:
        • You download .wav files [yahoo.com] that were collected on the large dish at the university of Kentucky.
        • You analyze the data on your PC with the signal analysis program of your choice.
        • You choose your own search strategy limited only by your creativity, determination, and talent.
        • Any potential interesting hits are to be posted and discussed on the project website. [yahoo.com]
        The project is very educational and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest beyond using a screen saver to search for SETI. Also for those considering building a SETI station in their own backyard, the knowledge learned working with the ukentucky project will be 100% transferable.
    • Hi Tim - how are things?
      It's a small world, isn't it?

      I met the Jenny's when they gave a presentation on amateur radio astronomy at LBW2000 [eu.org].

      Also check out my posting "The Astronomy Centre" about our project to build our own 42" reflector - we're just starting on building the machine to grind the mirror

      Alan (Wylie)

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @08:19AM (#3925722)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Low-cost alternatives (Score:2, Informative)

    by mike449 ( 238450 )
    You don't need $150,000 investment to enjoy the night skies. Begin with naked-eye or binoculars (10x50 allow seeing many deep-sky objects). Next step is a simple telescope - 8" Dobsonian reflector costs under $400. Even computerized "go-to" telescopes are mostly under $2000, except high-end models.

    Light pollution is a big problem in cities. You may have to drive quite a bit to see the Milky Way.
    Join your local amateur astronomy group (even if you don't have an instrument), these guys are generally very helpful and usually have access to some dark and safe observing sites.

    A topic that many /.ers like - hacking cheap CCD webcams to get long exposure times. This allows to take really great astro pictures even within light-polluted cities. Good place to start is QCUIAG Yahoo group.

    • Re:Low-cost alternatives (Score:2, Informative)

      by drg55 ( 409730 )
      Although I wouldn't mind a computer controlled setup with ccd, I think many people who buy the 8" computer driven models would not use them as 1) it is not really good enough aperture, you want 10" or more
      2) you need to do the hardyards and learn the night sky. For me finding an object takes around 20-30 minutes. I then get the satisfaction and knowledge that I found it. Once you do have a grounding in the sky then it has uses obviously for advanced amertures who are basically doing professional standard work.
      And yes light pollution is a problem as any one who has been looking at the sky will tell you.

      This is a result of poorly designed public lighting which shines a large percentage into the sky making it glow brighter than many faint objects. Also the lighting is usually unshielded so that the light source causes the pupil to contract. Answer, even brighter lights. The only real reason for this is utility companies want to keep their generators going at night - and the public pays. It is a serious cultural issue and a greenhouse gas source.
      David.

  • light pollution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shd99004 ( 317968 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @08:38AM (#3925756) Homepage
    Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.

    Light pollutions is a huge problem. I realized this myself when I started using a telescope, many nights was I standing just outside our house. Streetlights and light from our neighbours were very disturbing. So one time, I went to a nearby airfield (a very small one) and it was so dark i couldn't see my own hand. Then we looked up and saw the milky way. Not just like a faint barely visible ribbon, but it was really really bright. It was like a wide bright flood of stars across the sky, and it was basically impossible to see any constellations. Haven't seen anything quite like it before or after. Ofcourse, the lack of any artificial light source was only one good thing; the sky was probably more clear than ever. Too bad I left my telescope when I went to college...

    • Re:light pollution (Score:3, Informative)

      by randmairs ( 587360 )
      Whenever I go outside to observe in my suburban light polluted neighborhood, there is a pesky street light. With my neighbor's permission, I shine a laser pointer ($16 - from my local mega office supply store) at the photo diode switch located as a knob on top of the lamp. I use a tripod, cloths pin, and some tape/rubber bands to hold the pointer in place. The photodiode holes are ususally oriented toward the west.

      There are people working to try to limit obnoxious outdoor lighting. They are the folks and associates of the International Dark Sky Association at http://www.darksky.org
      • Hm, that sounds like a good idea. It's hard to find a good spot to observe. Well even with some light sources around you, one can still observe the moon or comets. I like the Pleiades too. But what probably made the greatest impression on me (except observing sunspots i guess) was to watch Jupiter and Saturn through my telescope. Sure, I've seen countless of great close up images of both planets, but to see Jupiter by myself was something else. I could see different colors of the clouds and also the red spot. Saturn was quite a sight too with its rings.

      • Re:light pollution (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Nighttime lighting in general sucks. Waste of energy, has been shown to increase (yes, that's increases) crime rates. In suburban areas, it's ridiculous. Being interested in hill top real estate, I sometimes check out properties in late evening after work. It's amazing how bright towns and houses appear; I've picked out other remote houses in forested areas that probably few folks know of simply because they have a habit of turning on their driveway post light or porch light.

        It seems like common sense to hook up motion detectors that flick on the lights when they are needed or to detract someone from snooping around looking for houses or stores to steal from.

        Then again, I also hate noise pollution too-- damn inadequately muffled angines and booming basses--so maybe I'm just oversensitive to what I consider obnoxious behavior.
        • Since it takes High-Presure Sodium (the orange lamps, that start red) about 3minutes to fire properly, this will rule out motion sensors on them. I don't know how efficent these are, but they should be alot better than the 5% (incandesiant) or 15% (normal fluresant) lamps. But I'd agree, the amount of light that spils upwards from streetlights is ridiculous. I don't know why they don't design the reflector better so that the light is directed at about 120 degrees, which should stop direct spill, but there isn't much you can do about that, except paint the pavment black.
          BTW for the grandparent, there is normally a fuse or circuit breaker in the lamppost with the sensor, if you have the triangular 'key' to open it, this might be a bit easier

  • Observatory on the web (Score:4, Informative)

    by mikewas ( 119762 ) <wascher.gmail@com> on Sunday July 21, 2002 @08:40AM (#3925760) Homepage
    The Bradford Robotic Telescope [brad.ac.uk] is a web enabled telescope in West Yorkshire, England. It's open to anyone (registration required). You submit a request for an observation, the request is queued, and the telescope automatically makes the observation when conditions are favorable. You get an email informing you that your image is available.

    If you're into immediate gratification, the most recent 500 observations are also available. The Yorkshire weather isn't always cooperative, so it might be a while before you get your image.

    It's not the same as putting your eye to the lens, but I don't have room for a 46cm telescope, and viewing conditions are far from ideal anywhere in New Jersey!

  • City Lights... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @08:57AM (#3925782) Homepage
    Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.

    Getting away from city lights is easy.

    Leave the city. The lights won't follow you, I promise.
    • Leave the city. The lights won't follow you, I promise.

      Ever tried that in the New York metro area? The lights do follow you! You can go from New York to Philadelphia without encountering a single dark spot...

      William Gibson wasn't imagining things when he wrote about BAMA, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis.

    • Re:City Lights... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by An dochasac ( 591582 )
      Ah but they do. The problem is that people now feel the need to illuminate every house, garage, barn, bilboard and tree regardless of how far away from "the city" you are. A brilliant display of northern lights appeared over a lake in the northern Wisconsin woods 1987. Recent auroras are no longer visible here because neighbors across the lake illuminate the underside of trees with spot lights. While searching for a dark sky to view Comet Hale Bopp from, I drove through miles of farm land with no village larger than 5000 people and did not find a dark sky. The milky way was not even easily visible from the middle of Lake Michigan because the lights of Chicago 100 miles to the southwest illuminated the sky. The international dark sky association estimates show that up to 2 Billion dollars is spent every year illuminate the night sky.

      Really folks, is this necessary?
  • One day,.. when I've repaid the ten thousand pounds of debt I owe the bank, my landlord, my brother and various other people that I;ve run up over the last year of (mostly) unemployment;... once I've upgraded this PoS to a reasonable spec machine, and moved up to proper broadband... once I've digitised all my media onto a nice fat RAID file server... in other words, once I find someone prepared to pay me for my ten years' commerical IT experience, five years of Perl and Linux, BSD, security, networking, and system admin skills... even though I've only ever /officially/ worked as a Perl programmer... in other words, when hell freezes over... I'm gonna get me a nice Meade LX200, interface it with my Linux box, get the Astronomical Software distribution, and do some quiet little research into something unsexy like variable stars, something where professional astronomers haven't yet made all progress impossible to the amateur. I've heard it said that astronomy is one of the only remaining areas of science where a dedicated amateur can still produce useful original research. In a parallel universe, where I don't get sacked for advocating Free software (and pointing out that the employer is stealing GPL'd code and selling it without including the source, license, or acknowledgment.)

    But I digress.

    In the back of Astronomy magazine you can see many ads for home domes [google.com] like these. That, I think, would give you absolute maximum geek points...

    Sigh. Life is hard.

  • If you are tooling around the inland waterway area of Stone Harbor, NJ, in one of the multi-million dollar beach houses, there's a large (10-20ft dia) silvered dome on one of the waterfront places.
    No idea who owns it or anything, but it's definitely a nice cap to a beautiful house. Retracting door, rotating dome, etc...
    When we were there, it was covered with a tarp, possibly for repairs or something, but you could still tell it was an observatory.

  • The Astronomy Centre (UK) (Score:3, Informative)

    by alanw ( 1822 ) <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Sunday July 21, 2002 @10:04AM (#3925929) Homepage
    We are a bunch of dedicated amateurs, building our own 42" (1.07 metre) telescope.

    We already have a 30 foot dome, a 30" Dobsonian, 12" reflecting binoculars, and more.

    http://www.astronomycentre.org.uk/ [astronomycentre.org.uk]

  • MAJOR Geek Project! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JoeMirando ( 594743 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @10:08AM (#3925935)
    I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned this, but you can build your own telescope for less money than you can buy one!!

    This includes grinding the mirror yourself, by the way. With a bit of care and patience, you can grind and polish a mirror that is accurate to within 1/10th of a wavelength of light.... that's quite a bit better than what you usually end up with when buying one from a store. I'm in the process of polishing a 16" mirror at the moment.... my first! The 16" blank, along with an 8" blank for a smaller scope and all the grinding/polishing materials cost me around $300. That doesn't include the optical tube assembly or aluminizing the mirror, but the mirror itself is usually the most expensive part anyway.

    There are also those who add their own "go to" drives and such, but that seems like a bit much for me... at least with THIS scope.

    My guess is that you can find an astronomy club near by with several members who can help.

    More info for those interested can be found at The ATM Site [atmsite.org] (not my site).


    Clear Skies,
    Joe Mirando

    • I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned this, but you can build your own telescope for less money than you can buy one!!

      It probably hasn't been mentioned because it's not really true anymore. Used to be, but now you can pick up a 10 inch dob with good optics for 450 bucks.

      But you're right, grinding your own mirrors is a great geek project.
      • It probably hasn't been mentioned because it's not
        really true anymore. Used to be, but now you can pick
        up a 10 inch dob with good optics for 450 bucks.

        True, but a 10" dob isn't quite the epitome of amateur telescope making anymore.

        A 10" mirror is still a good piece of equipment, but hardly deserving of the type of observatory we're talking about here.

        While it's true that many of the discoveries that we consider important (Galileo, Cassini, etc.) were made with telescopes with smaller mirrors smaller than what's available today, they didn't have to contend with sodium street lamps and huge cities that throw stray photons about like they were free.

        Add to that the fact that what manufacturers call "good" optics are merely marginal by most standards, and it becomes worthwhile for someone interested in the process to make their own.

        AND I'll bet you that I could build a 10" dob for less than half that cost.

        Clear skies,
        Joe Mirando
        http://scope.joemirando.net

        • Re:MAJOR Geek Project! (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Well, let's see. 10" mirror kit can be had for $100. Throw in $30 for a diagonal and $30 for a focuser, $40 for wood and hardware, and $10 for the tube. Oh yeah, you'll want an eyepiece of comparable quality to that $450 scope, say $20 for the eyepiece. That's $230 for a 10" dob, and once you built it you'd actually know how to maintain and care for it, which is something the $450 scope instructions always seem to neglect.

          But the real reason for building a scope is the reason for building a computer - it's fun and you learn stuff - not to save money.
          • > But the real reason for building a scope is the reason for building a
            > computer - it's fun and you learn stuff - not to save money.

            This is true, but let's face it... money IS a concern for most of us.

            Since I've started this project, I've learned a lot of stuff that I never thought about before. That is truly a great thing, but being able to say "This sucker only cost me [fill in the blank] bucks" comes second only to saying "I built this sucker myself".

            Let's see...

            Mirror kit: $100.00
            Diagonal: $ 30.00
            Focuser: $ 30.00
            Building mat'l: $ 40.00
            Sono-Tube: $ 10.00
            Eyepiece: $ 40.00

            The joy of knowing you beat a big company
            out of a getting your hard-earned money by doing it yourself: PRICELESS

            For some things, it doesn't matter much whether you're right or wrong.

            For everything else, there's SlashDot
            chuckle chuckle

            Joe Mirando

    • Home telescopes can be quite well made, and grinding isn't that hard at all - but 1/10 lambda is a bit much! May I ask what wavelength and interferometer was used for measurement?

      Carl
  • The guy who wrote the article is named bukkake and he posts about "backyard observatories." I think this is a troll article.
  • In 1995, my wife and I rebuilt a 1977 VW bus and left the West Coast for a three month tour of the Southwest. One of the best decisions we made was to bring along an amatuer astronomy book and a pair of binoculars. We spent many nights wrapped up in mummy bags on lawn chairs alternatively finding new (to us) features, listening to the coyotes howl, and drinking freshly made cups of Peet's coffee.
    We were content with our equipment until we spotted a man in Jaoshua tree with a brand new camper EuroVan and a beautiful telescope. Looking back, however, the van, book, and binoculars were the best choices for our budget, skill levels, and do it ourself attitudes.
  • Why are so many slashdot stories linked to nytimes registration pages that ask my sex, code, position, function, range and a million other spam collector trivia?
    Is slashdot getting percentages for people referred for registration or something? I don't feel like answering this interview for nytimes and I don't understand why slashdot expects me to have to do so in so many of the stories...
    Is there a way to avoid the registration like the old 'partners' in the url or something similar?

  • Late this year, a few of my net acquaintances will be meeting in two spots (S. Africa & S. Australia) for the pending doom and end of the world... oh wait... its just a total eclipse.

    There have been some examples where pendulums swing funny durring elipses. [nasa.gov] I want to see if I can recreate this and I'm looking for help to do it on the cheap. The current expirments show that a swinging uniform sphere will have some side forces on it. My problem is measuring things in the field. I can get temps to about .01C. I can get non-moving distances to about .1mm, I can get weight to about .1g but I can get time to a few nanoseconds so I need to devise and expierment that uses just time. I've been thinking that I can get a disk spinning, I should use a simple optical coupler (like whats in your mouse) and a good timing circut to get some very precise timings. Now if I can build a disk that is well balanced but non-uniform density, that means its angular speed should be effected by the same force thats pushing a pendulum slighty to its side. The problem is the pendulum will contine to rotate as the force is applied but my spinning device will only see the force when the force is applied to one side of the disk. The smaller the disk, the shorter this time is since the shadow of the moon is travling at a rate of about 500m/s. The phenomenon I'm looking for will happen twice for about .0002 seconds. If I miss it this time there will be another 7 chances [earthview.com] over the next decade.

  • Dark Sky (Score:4, Informative)

    by Paul the Bold ( 264588 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @10:54AM (#3926058)
    City light pollution is far worse than it needs to be. Visit the International Dark Sky Association [darksky.org] homepage for more information.

    The point the society is trying to make is that 50%-70% of the light from outdoor lighting is wasted (points to the sky, not the ground). This causes light pollution and doubles electricity bills. Their solution has been to design alternate lighting fixtures that fit ordinary light poles.

    • Re:Dark Sky (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Kymermosst ( 33885 )
      The point the society is trying to make is that 50%-70% of the light from outdoor lighting is wasted (points to the sky, not the ground). This causes light pollution and doubles electricity bills. Their solution has been to design alternate lighting fixtures that fit ordinary light poles.

      And rather than using education to accomplish their goals, they prefer to buy off local city and county council members to enact stupid light-ordinances, so that now, in my area, not only can lights not shine into the sky, they also can't have direct rays on your neighbor's property, nor can you get waivers for security lighting. Of course, none of the ordinances apply to streetlights... funny that.

      Thanks Dark Sky Association. Congratulations on your lobbying successes.

      • Hmm ... which is more likely:

        A) A tiny organization that squeaks by with donations from a fringe element of society is lobbying city and council officials throughout America to make sure that people "...can't have direct rays on [their] neighbor's property, nor can [they] get waivers for security lighting."

        or

        B) NORMAL Americans are standing up for their rights to NOT have some selfish, slack-jawed moron of a neighbor install a 1500 watt "security" light in their driveway that shines 50% of the goddamn light in through other people's windows.

        I've got news for you: nobody gives a shit about "amateur astronomers" or this IDA crap, despite what the guys who sell the tin-foil hats have told you. There is no fucking "dark sky conspiracy".

        The reality is that the JACKASSES out there, who feel like they own the fucking neighborhood and can crank their goddamn stereo at all hours of the night, while simultaneously turning their neighbors yards into part of their wannabe international-airport-runway-lighting system, CAN KISS MY STUDLY, SWEATY ASS.
        • I agree...when protesting a new local gas station at a board of corrupt commissioners meeting, I brought up the point of light pollution, and they mentioned how all new construction is required to have downcast lighting.

          Still doesn't explain why on a cloudy night, parts of the sky glows brighter than a 100W bulb though
        • Actually, what I said was the truth... the Dark Sky people weren't the only ones lobbying, but they certainly put in their two cents. I also didn't say that they were lobbying city council officials throughout American, I said they were doing it here. I can't speak for the rest of America.

          This is the final paragraph in a local newspaper, an article specifically about the IDA's efforts here:

          The International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson, Ariz. (http://www.darksky.org/ ) has played a key role in lobbying for outdoor lighting regulations locally, and around the world. The group recently put a detailed "Lighting Code Handbook" on its Web site. According to the introduction, "Careful and considered use of lighting at night, using light only when it is really needed, where it is needed, and as much as is needed and no more, would unblanket the stars in all but the largest cities."

          I figure I don't need to type the entire article. It appeared on Monday, July 27th in the Bend Bugle.

          At any rate, the stupid ordinance says that if a neigbor can see the actual light bulb/direct emission source/whatever, than the light is illegal. Furthermore, no lights were grandfathered in. Everyone in the county has to change.

          It is complete and utter bullshit to the point that you can't even have a porch light light your porch, really, unless it is via recessed lighting.

          And, yes, the Dark Sky Association was certainly involved in working up the ordinance. They were there. The local newspaper ran the article, and I am pretty sure they weren't lying.

          It STILL doeesn't matter. The county streetlights are exempt from the direct light rule, so you have plenty of those shining all over the place. In addition, it seems that big industry (mills, factories, etc.) seem to be exempt, too.

          Instead, normal Americans are the ones paying.

    • The Czech Republic recently became the first country in the world to pass a dark-sky law. From what I've heard, it works. The idea is simple enough: shine the light on the things you're trying to light up, and quit shining so much of it into the sky. Details are here [space.com] (as well as lots of other places).

      For those who think this doesn't matter, wouldn't it be swell if light polution became so pervasive that we couldn't see that next mass-extinction event meteor heading our way? The headlines read: Doomsday Meteor Arrives Unannounced. Subtitle reads: At least the few survivors had a well-lit view of the damage. :o)
  • Mel Bartels has a great web site for making computer controlled scopes here [bbastrodesigns.com].

    I know people who use this sytem in backyard observatories. The current implementation can correct for all sorts of problems in the mount, and compares favorably with the software used by professional observatories.

  • Hello all,

    The amateur astronomy club that I am president of is building a robotic telescope. We just put up a new building to house the telescope. We also have a 16" like the one pictured in the article. There is nothing like tasking a telescope to go out and take pictures of the things you want to see. The problem with Hubble and other large telescopes is that amateurs can't gain access. These 16" scopes are great becasue they can see almost as well as some of the larger professional scopes with much less cost.

    Our new building cost us 20K so we didn't spend any where near what that guy in the article did. You can actually build a very nice observatory for about 1000 dollars.

    I would put up a url but our webserver can't handle the traffic from slashdot.

  • Now this would be a great geek project. GEODSS [fas.org], the Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance, is a worldwide network of computer-controlled telescopes operated by the USAF. Telescopes at each site automatically scan the sky, log each known star, detect satellites both known and unknown, and watch for unidentified orbital objects, including ICBMs. Anything bigger than a basketball in near-earth orbit should be found within a few days. Even opaque objects can be found in time, because they occult stars. The results are reported constantly to NORAD.

    GEODSS is rumored to have the ability to illuminate its targets with a laser. (A USAF site in Maui [af.mil] is known to have such capabilities.)

    GEODSS was the first major computerized telescope system. It's an old system from the late 1970s, modernized in the 1990s. Back then, it took a huge military project to build something like this. Now, it wouldn't be that big a deal. With computer-controlled CCD telescopes widespread, this could be a good amateur project.

    Most of the work is in the back-end data processing. The goal is to take all the images coming in, compare them with star maps and satellite ephemeris data, and see what new stuff turns up. Track satellites. Find space junk.

    Doing this standalone could be fun, but the real payoff would be a network of amateur sites that cooperated over a peer to peer network. As soon as one finds something interesting, it should immediately communicate that to other sites so they can point at the same target if in view.

  • Tom Droege, an engineer at Fermilab, liked to build electronic projects as a hobby. In the mid-nineties, he became interested in astronomy, and decided to build electronic cameras and attach them to small telescopes in his backyard. He started simple, with a 1-D FAX chip, but has worked his way up to 2048x2048 CCDs. You can read a bit about the evolution of his cameras, [rit.edu] or see some pictures of the construction of a Mark IV [rit.edu].

    He started a group known as The Amateur Sky Survey [rit.edu], which has been working on software for analyzing the images from his cameras. After three years of scanning the celestial equator, we published a paper containing over 10 million measurements of stars in several passbands. You can read a preprint [lanl.gov] or the paper itself [uchicago.edu] if you subscribe to PASP.

    Based on our experience, I'd say that one of the hardest things about turning a backyard observatory into a serious scientific instrument is the bookkeeping: carefully recording all the necessary information and calibrating your results against the standard catalogs is a real pain, and doesn't have the same sex appeal as building the hardware or the software. But it's just as necessary.

  • As the blurb points out the main problem is with city light pollution. This is actually a problem that could be greatly reduced with very little costs. For the most part it's a matter of using a different kind of light that costs about the same.

    Most municipalities have ZERO awareness of this issue, and all it takes is a quick post (don't bother with email) to get the ball rolling.

    For more info, check out the Dark Skies homepage:
    http://www.darksky.org/ida/index.html

    For those of you who were wondering, yes, there is an activist group for every conceivable topic ;).

  • International Dark Skies (Score:3, Informative)

    by discogravy ( 455376 ) on Sunday July 21, 2002 @01:41PM (#3926611) Homepage
    There's an organisation dedicated to cutting down on light pollution. International Dark Skies [darksky.org]

    Check them out.

    It's a serious problem for anyone that wants to see stars without leaving all of civilisation. Check out the difference:

    The night sky from a Dark site [darksky.org]

    The night sky from a city. [darksky.org]

  • If I were going to spend this much I'd have gone with a good refractor, like an Astro-Physics [astro-physics.com], Takahashi [lsstnr.com], or maybe something radical like an APO Max [cloudynights.com]. Any of these would be worth a wait. If I absolutely had to have big aperture, I might choose one of the big Dobsonians like a Starsplitter [starsplitter.com] or an Obsession [globaldialog.com].

    With this guy's telescope budget alone, one could have a great Dobsonian plus a phenomenally performing APO refractor plus have enough left over to throw in a pair of good astro binoculars with a nice parallelogram mount. That's a whole lotta astronomy, much of it portable.

    The Meade 16" is an impressive looking piece of equipment, and it does a job. But being impressive looking doesn't equate to impressive performance. I suppose some people are seduced by fancy advertising claims and the look of a beefy fork mount and pier. But the status of a fixed observatory is outweighed by the fact that astronomy is the most fun as a movable hobby/profession. Plus there's still the problem that a SCT has technical issues that limit its use. One could still spend $150,000 for an observatory for the binoculars + APO refractor + Dobsonian, but one doesn't need to. I'd spend much less on the observatory and use the savings to go to places of optimum seeing, taking my observatory with me.

    To some people everything is form over function. This guy now has a minimally useful east coast observatory that cost him nearly $200,000. What a waste. I'll bet his friends are impressed, though. So maybe it serves it's true purpose.

  • Have them come over and look through your telescope. Explain why the view is limited due to the streetlights and that 300w halogen bulb so the dog can see when it's barking at night.

    Works pretty good.

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