Geminid Explosions On Moon Visible To Amateurs

saskboy writes "The ET scanning project SETI@Home was wildly popular, and the mock project Yeti@Home much less so, but soon there will be a chance for the enthusiastic amateur astronomer to combine those two scanning techniques and spot explosions on the moon with simple telescope and camera equipment at home." From the article: "'On Dec. 14, 2006, we observed at least five Geminid meteors hitting the Moon,' reports Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. Each impact caused an explosion ranging in power from 50 to 125 lbs of TNT and a flash of light as bright as a 7th-to-9th magnitude star... 'The amazing thing is,' says Cooke, 'we've [caught explosions] using a pair of ordinary backyard telescopes, 14-inch, and off-the-shelf CCD cameras. Amateur astronomers could be recording these explosions, too.'... [NASA will] soon release data reduction software developed specifically for amateur and professional astronomers wishing to do this type of work. The software runs on an ordinary PC equipped with a digital video card. 'If you have caught a lunar meteor on tape, this program can find it.'"

cool beans

[jrwr00]

Seems like a cool project, i wonder how it would realy work, would the cameras follow the moon?

Re:

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Most likely this software will just scan and compare frames of the video capture for sudden changes (that's how asteroids, comets and supernova are tracked now). Probably requires the end user to have a fairly stable mount with low error tracking.

Wow, I wish I had...

[posterlogo]

...a "backyard" 14 inch telescope. These things aren't exactly amateur telescopes even though they are certainly available commercially. Take a look at the pic of that thing in the article. It's a professional grade Schmidt-Cassegrain housed in its own observatory. I know there are a lot of enthusiasts out there, but not too many of them have these 14" suckers, let alone a pair of them. So... not really amateur, but I'm glad they're publicizing these cool observations.

Re:Wow, I wish I had...

[Smitty825]

Heh...I was thinking the same thing. A local camera/telescope dealer sells [optcorp.com] a slightly newer version of the scope shown in the article for $6,500. That is out of the price range of many "backyard" astronomers.

Re:

[Da3vid]

I think this might be useful and feasible for maybe a regional astronomy club? or maybe a nice school or to be suitable for a community college. A little step above amateur... I'd rate it as "entry level"

Re:

[eno2001]

Build one? Hehe... let's see how many opinions come out on this one. Actually when I first read it I was thinking 14" refractive telecope. Not reflective (where the 14" is the mirror).

Re:

[posterlogo]

Expense wise, I don't think you'll have much controversy here -- a nice reflector-only "light bucket" (dobsonian) could be home made with ~14-20 inch mirror for a very reasonable cost. Refractors or composite (folded optics) designs, fuggedaboutit.

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[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

I've heard them called "cloud magnets".

$6.5K really isn't much for your favorite hobby...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

IANAAA (I am not an amateur astronomer), but $6.5K really isn't that much to spend on your favorite hobby. Just think how much you've sunk into antique cars, shop tools you really don't need (or a shed/garage for your shop), high-end stereo or video gizmos, or even just video games and your "rigs" over the years. The fact that you can pick one of these up at the local camera store suggests that this isn't even "high end" backyard astronomy equipment.

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[Abcd1234]

Well sure, if you buy a 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain or similar design. But a simple 14" reflector on a Dobsonian mount can be had for around $1000. And you could probably build one for a fair bit less.

7th to 9th Magnitude? Good luck

[Walking The Walk]

You don't even need to RTFA to know it's beyond most of our equipment. The /. summary says "7th to 9th magnitude", so you know you probably can't see them. The stellar magnitude scale goes brighter the lower the number, and it's logarithmic. The sun is about -26, the moon -12, and Saturn is about a 1. Theoretically, in a very dark rural area, you should be able to see 7th magnitude items with a modest aperture (say 4 - 6 inches.) But it becomes logarithmically more difficult at higher magnitudes like 8

Magnitude 7-9 visible with low power scopes

[iamlucky13]

Actually, magnitude 6 is generally the faintest stars visible to the naked eye (under good viewing conditions, of course). Magnitude 6 is where the scale actually comes from. M1 is the brightest stars in the sky. M6 is the dimmest. The modern scale is defined by extrapolating these definitions logarithmically in both directions.

In fact, I can say conclusively that a magnitude 9 flash could be detected in a 14" telescope. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto (max magnitude 13) with a 13" telescope.

However, it is inappropriate for the submitter to compare this project too closely with SETI@home or even Stardust@home. It sounds like the researchers developed this software for their project, and decided to release it as a bonus for enthusiasts. If people pick up on it and find things, great. If not, no major loss. The other @home projects I mentioned depend much more on outsiders.

Whether or not a suburban setup could hope to find anything, I couldn't say.

Re:7th to 9th Magnitude? Good luck

[pease1]

You don't even need to RTFA to know it's beyond most of our equipment.

I can step on to my back porch, well inside the glow of the Washington DC mega-plex and less then a mile from a overly-lit Honda dealer and record the brightness of 7th magnitude stars with a 20 year old pair of 10x50 binoculars. I hit 13.3 regularly with a 12-inch reflector about 30 foot from a (shielded) street light.

The hardware described isn't all that uncommon. All you geeks need to get out from in front your Wii's and visit a star party put on by a local astronomy club. You'll see SCT's from 8 to 14-incher's quite often. People sink this kind of money into hobbies all the time. The guy across the street picked up a pair of Jet-ski's for $15k. Another guy on the street has $20k into a camper.

Re:

[Walking The Walk]

record the brightness of 7th magnitude stars

Yes, that's the point. It's not stars you're looking at, where you're eyes have time to filter out noise from ambient light. You're "looking for split-second flashes" (from TFA, second-last paragraph.) This is why they're promoting their software, which can do the watching for you.

The hardware is quite uncommon, actually. I'm in Auckland, NZ right now, pop 1.1 million, and the number of telescopes beyond a 12-inch aperture in the city is probably betw

Re:

[Viadd]

I did it with a 5" telescope and a moderate-sensitivity surveillance camera from an apartment porch overlooking an flood-lit courtyard in the Washington D.C. suburbs.
http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/leonids/1999/h ittable.html [spaceweather.com]

You only get the brightest ones (mag. 6) with a set-up like that. 8-12" is quite common, and better video cameras than I used are cheap nowadays. A 14" Schmidt-Cass is within the 'serious-amateur' class. The 'insane-amateur' class is 30 inches and up.

But you would only need...

[largejunglecat]

If these explosions are as bright as a 7th magnitude star (6th magnitude can be seen with the naked eye with good vision), you wouldn't need a 14in telescope to view them. Probably something like a 6 inch scope would do for the brighter incidences (although not the 9th magnitude).

Just for the record...

[__aaclcg7560]

I was target shooting with my satellite game [userfriendly.org]. Nothing to worry about.

Buzzword baiting

[Duncan3]

While I love the required buzzword baiting, distributed data collection that's used in this project really has nothing to do with distributed data processing projects like SETI@home. At least this project is looking for something real.

And a large home telescope and related equipment isn't exactly a free download either ;)

So why compare them?

Re:

[saskboy]

As the author, I may be best qualified to give your answer :-)

This project may not rely on the vast computing horsepower that SETI@Home provided, but it does act just like the fabled Yeti@Home project, where the [laughable {yet astronomically sound}] theory was that many distributed backyard cameras could be processed digitally locally, and the results uploaded to a central repository if anything interesting was spotted. Since everyone can see the moon from where they are on earth, the chances of finding an

The advancement of science

[nizo]

The ET scanning project SETI@Home was wildly popular, and the mock project Yeti@Home much less so, but soon there will be a chance for the enthusiastic amateur astronomer to combine those two scanning techniques and spot explosions on the moon with simple telescope and camera equipment at home.

So they will be looking for exploding Yeti on the moon? I would pay good money to see that, but I dunno about the scientific value.

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[Lord Bitman]

It would prove once and for all that a Yeti did exist at one point, may he rest in peace.

More detail on NASA's Lunar Impact Monitoring

[Scott7477]

Go to this link. [nasa.gov]
    The header blurb is as follows:

LUNAR IMPACTS

Mission statement: Use Earth-based observations of the dark portion of the moon to establish the rates and sizes of large meteoroids (greater than 500 grams or 1 pound in mass) striking the lunar surface.

Why it is important: The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) eventually calls for extended astronaut stays on the lunar surface. Spacecraft, vehicles, habitats, and EVA suits must all be designed to withstand the stresses posed by the harsh lunar environment over this period of time. Meteoroids, and the ejecta produced when they create impact craters, are part of this environment. "

Essentially NASA has an Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory that continuously is watching the Moon.

Then they: "attach an ASTROVID StellaCam EX camera to each of our telescopes, and route the camera output into a Sony tape deck, which converts the video signal into a digital format that is stored on a hard disk. After an observing session, we look for flashes in the data. Our first impact was found by someone simply looking through a couple of hours of video. This can be quite tedious, however, and tired humans can easily miss a short impact flash, so custom computer software was developed to look for the flashes. If one is found, additional software is then used to extract detailed information on the flash -- its brightness as a function of time (light curve), where it was seen on the moon, if it was due to a meteor shower, and so forth. Using this information, we can estimate the mass or size of the meteoroid."

This seems to indicate that they've already got the system working.

14 inch is not typical

[syousef]

14" telescopes aren't typical. 8-10" is a good piece of kit. Most backyard scopes are smaller (though that's a mistake if your primary interest is astronomy). I've got 2 8" scopes and a 10". Only one of the 8" scopes are suitable for photography. I wouldn't consider a 14" scope right at the moment. Apart from the cost they're bulky and harder to move. Realistically this is for hard core amateurs and astro clubs to do, not anyone with a telescope and a camera. Setting up such false expectations typically p