SpaceX T- Two Hours

sjastro said:

As an astrophotographer Elon Musk's satellites for their sheer numbers are a pestilence which frequently ruin wide angle images.
Professional astronomers share the same opinion.

Could increasing satellite 'noise' pose problems for the Square Kilometre Array?

By 2030, the world's largest radio telescope will be operational in remote Western Australia, but by then tens of thousands of satellites will be orbiting Earth, blanketing it with radio noise.

www.abc.net.au

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AlexB23 said:

Hey, can you share your astrophotography here on the forum, bro? I love space images, even though I do not take space photos myself. Did you get any of the nebulae and stuff, such as the Orion Nebula or Ring Nebula?

Also, what is your setup, such as telescope and camera brand?

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sjastro said:

I use to have a webpage containing perhaps a hundred odd images until one day the web host without any notification decided to pull out leaving me and many others high and dry.
I haven't had much motivation in setting up a new webpage but occasionally I post the odd image here to upset flat earthers.

Here is a small selection taken with a BRC-250 telescope https://www.adorama.com/tktbk2500.html and STXL-11002M CCD camera https://www.bintel.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/stxl_092712.pdf.

Lagoon Nebula.

View attachment 349467

Eta Carina Nebula

View attachment 349468

Centaurus A Galaxy

View attachment 349469

Omega Centauri Globular Cluster

View attachment 349470

Helix Nebula

View attachment 349471

Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy

View attachment 349472
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This image is my favourite of the lot as colour images of dwarf galaxies are fairly rare.
The Sculptor dwarf galaxy is one of our Milky Way's many satellite galaxies and is being destroyed by tidal disruption where the individual stars shown in the image are being integrated into the Milky Way.

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AlexB23 said:

Amen to this. The universe is a large Cathedral, billions of years old, decorated with icons of stars and nebula for all of humanity to witness and study God's creation.

Dang, this is like Hubble quality bro, these images could earn awards or something. Have you accidentally had the Starlink satellites photob*mb (not saying the word) your astrophotography a lot, as these satellites appear as bright streaks?

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sjastro said:

I've had my images published in various publications such as Sky and Telescope ! Home and astronomy textbooks The Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

I've only had problems with satellites ruining my images when I have used wide field lenses, with the set up from my previous post the problem is from commercial aircraft as I live under a flight path.

Occasionally I catch asteroids which are of interest to professional astronomers.
The first image tells you where to look for the moving asteroid in the animated gif of the second image.

View attachment 349591

​

View attachment 349592

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Sif said:

The video of the plasma burning through one of the control fins was amazing. Even more amazing was the fin stayed attached and continued to actuate and help control the vehicle. I did not see the engine graphic indicate the landing burn started, however, there was, apparently, a partial landing burn by the vehicle before splashdown.

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AlexB23 said:

Plasma is really hot, so I am surprised how nothing blew up into pieces.

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Sif said:

The structural strength of the entire Starship stack is incredible. I was amazed watching the entire stack tumbling and staying together in IFT 1 just prior to the activation of the Flight Termination System.

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AlexB23 said:

It is good that you got your images into astronomy periodicals. Ooh, what is the designation/name of the asteroid in the image? Also, what is the pink nebula in the lower center-right part of the image?

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sjastro said:

No idea what the asteroid is, it would make an interesting exercise to calculate its distance from the Sun using my images.
This is an exercise in celestial mechanics which I am vaguely familiar with from my days at Uni.

The pink circular nebula in the image is identified as:

Bubble Nebula (NGC 6822) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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AlexB23 said:

NGC 6822 is so far away, 1.6 million light years away. The Bubble Nebula inside NGC 6822 is also known as Hubble 1925 I.
For the asteroid, if you know the time of image capture, and calculate the distance, you could identify the asteroid's orbital period.

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sjastro said:

If only physics was that simple.
My image of NGC6822 is composed of 42 sub images that were combined to produce the final image.
The asteroid appears in 24 of these images.

In each of these images I need to find the plate scale and use software to identify the galaxy to superimpose the RA and Declination grid to find the position of the asteroid in each image.

This is the easy part as the software does it job in identifying the image and overlaying the grid.

View attachment 349664
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The hard part is I have to go through the 24 images and read off the RA and and Declination of the asteroid in each image.
While the final image is an animated gif file where the motion of the satellite is readily detected, the asteroid is still in the sub images and identifying it amongst the background stars will be difficult.

Knowing the time when the each sub image was taken and the RA and declination of the asteroid, allows the six orbital elements, length of the semi-major axis e, eccentricity i, inclination Ω, right ascension of the ascending node ω, argument of periapsis v, and the true anomaly / time of periapsis passage, to be calculated from which the properties of the orbit can be determined.

View attachment 349667
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There are software packages using applied mathematics such as the GEM (Gauss-Encke-Merton) method to calculate the orbital elements but as far as I know these are not available in the amateur astronomy community.

​

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AlexB23 said:

Wow, this stuff gets really deep. Maybe, you might be able to find free and open source GEM software to compute the orbital elements of the asteroid. Who knows, this asteroid could be an undiscovered one, however, that is not likely.

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sjastro said:

The details of the GEM program written in BASIC is found in my book on Celestial Mechanics.

View attachment 349670​

I'm not up to writing 170 lines of code. ​

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rockytopva said:

I was an unbeliever in high school and graduated at the bottom of my class. I had no confidence in myself and remained at the bottom of my labor grade until Virginia Tech won the Peach Bowl. We got some of their football players until they moved onto something else. These football players were all Christian Word of Faith types and would challenge me daily with great authority.... McCwowt (not my name)... What are you believing God for McCwowt? And I would have to come up with something that would bring joy to their hearts.

I used that encouragement to move up into the Lab and then got a couple of IT AAS degrees Magna Cum Laude with the Who's Who Award. I also won a couple of programming contests. I would have tried for the BS degree but had elderly family to tend to. Those were wonderful years and it was a pleasure to know that I could put my faith to work and have God honor such faith.

Programming... I do the Microsoft Office programming, especially Microsoft Access and Excel. It is fun to....

Dim R As Recordset, SQLText As String
SQLText = "SELECT Business.* FROM Business WHERE (((Business.Bill)=True));"
Set R = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset(SQLText)
R.MoveFirst

And to do something like...

Do Until R.EOF = True
DoCmd.RunSQL "Insert into BusinessLine (BusinessID) Values ('" & R![BusinessID] & "')"
R.MoveNext
Loop

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Black Body (heating program in Texas Instruments TI-BASIC, January 2022):

GridOff
PlotsOff
FnOff
AxesOff
LabelOff
Thick
Full
Func
Sci
Fix 3
299792458→C:6.626075534→H:1.38065823→K
ClrHome
Output(1,1,"PHYSICS ON TI-8X")
Output(2,4,"CALCULATORS")
Output(3,1,"----------------")
Output(4,5,"BLACKBODY")
Output(6,5,"RADIATION")
Output(8,1,"PRESS [ENTER]")
Pause
ClrHome
ClrDraw
Text(1,1,"THIS SIMULATION WILL")
Text(15,1,"PLOT THE BLACKBODY")
Text(29,1,"RADIATION CURVE FOR A")
Text(43,1,"SINGLE HOT OBJECT OR"
Text(57,1,"TWO HOT OBJECTS.")
Pause
ClrDraw

Lbl 0
Menu("ENTER CHOICE:","ONE HOT OBJECT",1,"TWO OBJECTS",2,"QUIT",Q)

Lbl 1
PlotsOff
FnOff
AxesOff
ClrHome
Disp "TEMPERATURE OF"
Disp "OBJECT IN (K)"
Input T
If T≤0:Goto 4
"(((2πHC²)X^5)/(^(HC/(XKT))-1))"→Y₁
fMax(Y₁,X,0,1,115)→L
(((2πHC²)L^5)/(^(HC/(LKT))-1))→M
0→Xmin:7L→Xmax:L→Xscl
M/9→Ymin:1.1*M→Ymax:M/10→Yscl
AxesOn
DispGraph
If T≥1000 and T≤35000:Shade(0,Y₁,47,7.57,1,1)
Text(1,18,"TEMP. (K)=",T)
Text(8,30,"PEAK WAVELENGTH")
Text(15,30,"(M)=",L)
Text(22,30,"PEAK FREQUENCY")
Text(29,30,"(HZ)=",C/L)
Text(57,30,"WAVELENGTH")
Pause
Goto 0

Lbl 4
ClrHome
Disp "TEMPERATURE MUST"
Disp "BE MORE THAN 0 K"
Pause
Goto 1

Lbl 2
PlotsOff
FnOff
AxesOff
ClrHome
Disp "TEMPERATURE OF"
Disp "OBJECT ONE (K)"
Input T
If T≤0:Goto 5
Disp "TEMPERATURE OF"
Disp "OBJECT TWO (K)"
Input U
If U≤0:Goto 5
max(T,U)→P:min(T,U)→Q
If 1.5Q<P or 1.05Q>P:Goto 6
"(((2πHC²)X^5)/(^(HC/(XKT))-1))"→Y₁
"(((2πHC²)X^5)/(^(HC/(XKU))-1))"→Y₂
fMax(Y₁,X,0,1,115)→L
fMax(Y₂,X,0,1,115)→G
(((2πHC²)L^5)/(^(HC/(LKT))-1))→M
(((2πHC²)G^5)/(^(HC/(GKU))-1))→N
min(L,G)→L:max(M,N)→M
0→Xmin:5L→Xmax:L→Xscl
0→Ymin:M→Ymax:M/10→Yscl
AxesOn
DispGraph
Vertical L
Text(1,28,"TEMP. (K)=",P)
Text(45,55,Q)
Pause
Goto 0

Lbl 5
ClrHome
Disp "TEMPERATURE MUST"
Disp "BE MORE THAN 0 K"
Pause
Goto 2

Lbl 6
ClrHome
Text(1,1,"TEMPERATURES MUST BE NO")
Text(15,1,"FURTHER THAN 50 PERCENT")
Text(29,1,"FROM EACH OTHER, OR")
Text(43,1,"NO CLOSER THAN 5")
Text(57,1,"PERCENT FROM EACH OTHER.")
Pause
Goto 2

Lbl Q
""→Y₁
""→Y₂
ClrDraw
ClrHome
Stop

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