Month: December 2004
Cloudy Nights
The past few nights here have been completely overcast with not even a break in the clouds. The other night I went down to Company 7 and picked up two things – a upgraded finder scope that is of the Read More …
More on Saturn and the Moon
I dragged my scope up to UMBC tonight to get another view of Saturn. Despite the light pollution from Baltimore, I got a pretty good view and studied it for a while. Although my eyes were tearing from the cold, Read More …
Orion Inteliscope Cable and Adaptor
Alright, so now I figured out the RS-232 pinouts on the telescope control computer interface. On its 4 wire RJ-11 plug, I found that Pin-1 was xmit, Pin-2 was recv, and Pin-3 was ground. Pin-4 is apparently unused. Bare basic Read More …
The Celestial Poles
Rob Carlson responded to my post last night about Precession and asked about the Northern Celestial Pole (NCP) I mentioned. Explaining this deserves its own entry, so here we go. We all know that Earth rotates on its polar axis. Read More …
Hey baby, what's your sign?
I'm having a tough time trying to fall asleep tonight, so I figured I would write something here. Recently, as I educate myself on all things astronomical, I came across an interesting bit of info on the Zodiac. As you Read More …
First Light
In the very early hours of December 25, 2004 at approx. 1:30am at 39.39875º N, 77.10772º W, I made first light with my new Orion XT10i Inteliscope dobsonian telescope. The sky was very good with little surface winds with a Read More …