Gordon Sarty's Astronomy Stuff
Surfing potential graduate students: Please go to my research page.
Stuff on this page:
Bibliographic/Atlas/Survey Information
- Digital Palomar Sky Survey
- CDAC interface to DSS
- The NASA Astrophysics Data System
Astronomy literature search resource.
- SIMBAD
- Coordinate Precession Applet
- VizieR
- Aladin
- CDS tutorials
- NED
- NED
overview
- NED Level 5
- NASA Astronomical Data Center
(ADC)
- Amphibian Species of the World:
An Online Reference
- ASAS database
- ASAS home page
- Western Canada asteriod
occultation predictions
- CALEB Catalog and Atlas of Eclipsing Binaries
- Raguzova's Be/X-ray binaries and candidates
Magazines and Societies and stuff
- CASCA
- The Multicoloured Landscape of
Compact Objects and their Explosive Origins: Theory vs. Observations
June 11 - 24, 2006, Cefalu', Sicily (Italy).
- AstroCirta, Algeria Astronomy Workshop 2010.
- Astronomy Conferences
- Astronomical Society of the
Pacific
- Astronomy Magazine
- Astronomy Now
- Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
- Canadian
Meteorological Centre site that provides cloud forecasts for astronomers
- Canadian Space Agency
- Clipping service related to space
news
- CODATA recommended
constants
- David Dunlap Observatory
- Dominion Radio Astrophysical
Observatory
- Eclipse photography and safety
- Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics
- Hubble Heritage Site
- International
Astronomical Union Central Bureau
- IAU minor planet center
- International Dark-Sky Association
- International Meteor
Organization
- NASA JPL
- Kennedy Space Center
- Leonid info
- MIAC
- NASA eclipse bulletins
- NASA eclipse site
- Space Shuttle and ISS
information
- North American Meteor Network
- Mont Megantic Observatory
- Planetary Society
- Starlab
- Royal Astronomical Society of
New Zealand occultations section
- Saguaro Astronomy Club with
observing list database
- Satellite tracking information
(Heavens Above)
- Sky and Telescope
- SkyNews
- Space Telescope Science
Institute
- SEDS
- AAS
- Extrasolar planets
- Terrestrial Planet Finder
- AstroWeb
- Info on Philips ToUcam Pro
for imaging the planets through a telescope. Modifying
a web cam. Example Mars images.
Some software.
- UAI minor planets.
- Filip and Chantal Feys Obsevatory and Art (Crete)
- CITA seminars (videos)
- U of S Aurora Cam
- Swimmers' Guide
Commercial Space Companies
- Bigelow Aerospace
Western Canada Vendors
- BC Telescopes and Nature, 526 Warren Street,
Ladysmith, BC. 1-866-245-9356. E-mail: bctelescopes@telus.net
- Waddington's Vacuum Coating,
E-mail: srwaddington@shaw.ca
- Vancouver Telescope Centre,
2565 Yew St., Vancouver, BC. (604)-738-5717. E-mail: john_hartley@telus.net
- Island Eypiece and Telescope Ltd,
647 Hunter Pl, Mill Bay, BC. (250)-743-6633. E-mail: sales@islandeyepiece.com
- Heavens and Earth Science and Nature Ltd,
311 - 5th St. S., Lethbridge, AB. 1-866-537-6532. E-mail: sales@heavensandearth.com
- Western Canadian Sky Trails
- Sirius Science and Nature, 227
Main St., Penticton, BC. (250)-770-1477.
- SkyNews vendor listing.
Millennium Star Atlas Errors:
Richard Huziak has provided some information about errors in the
Millennium Star Atlas: A text
introduction, a table and the table
in excel format. Please direct any comments
and questions to Rick.
SS Cygni
I like to watch variable stars with an 8 inch Newtonian reflector
I made in my basement. One of my favorite stars is the dwarf nova SS
Cygni. I made a light curve of
SS Cygni during the summer of 1993 based on my visual observations (the
diamonds) and visual observations I received by e-mail from Japan (the
plus signs). The curve shows two normal explosions separated by 3
anomalous explosions.
RZ Cas
Another star that caught my eye was the eclipsing binary RZ Cas. On
one cold (-30 C) night I photographed the star with a 35mm SLR camera
with a 50mm lens. From the photographs I was able to estimate the
star's magnitude as the big dim red star passed in front of the bright
small blue star. The light curve
I plotted shows what happened.
Data from vsnet
Star
Charts are available from vsnet. Vsnet
e-mail addresses are also posted.
AAVSO report software
For those who make less that 50 variable star observations per month and
who use the AAVSO report program, I have posted software that converts
the output of the AAVSO program into a LaTeX file.
Variable Star Home Pages
-
AAVSO homepage Yeay for AAVSO!
- AAVSO Charts
- aavso-discussion group
- aavso-discussion group archives
-
VSNET homepage
-
Eclipsing Binary Ephemeris Generator
-
Jochen Pietz,
Universitat Bonn, Germany
-
McMaster
Cepheid Homepage
-
Steve B. Howell,
Planetary Science Institute, Astrophysics Group
-
AAVSO FTP
-
NovaWeb
-
INTERNATIONAL TOAD WATCH (ITW)
-
Hungarian Astronomical Association - Variable Star Section
-
Hungarian Astronomical Association - Variable Star Section - FTP
- Outburst Activity Data
on Selected Cataclysmic Variables
- Cataclysmic Variables Home Page
- Random
Variable
- BAV
- Stig Linander
- ALEXIS Project
- US Naval Observatory
Time
- ADS
- HS1804+6753
eclipse
- University of Iowa
Automated Telescope Facility (UIATF) cataclysmic variable
monitoring program.
- Variable
near the galaxy NGC 3556
- IBVS Information
Bulletin on Variable Stars.
- GAMA, Nicholas
Copernicus Observatory, Czech Republic.
- CENTER FOR BACKYARD
ASTROPHYSICS
- British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section
- (SAC) Rocznik Astronomiczny Obserwatorium Krakowskiego -
some great information on EB's.
- Programs for light curves
- Fitsview v. 1.3
- IOTA
- IOTA (old site) (ok it's not
really about variable stars, but kinda).
- Houston Astronomical Society
- Hipparcos
- Jerry Gunn's EZPHOT for
CCD photometry.
- More photometry software
from The University of Iowa (for unix).
- ALPO
- Software
- SZ Her
-
Astrometrica CCD software
- Tom
Droege, of The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS)
- Free CBAT astroid
position checker for SN hunters
- Variable
Star URL's
- V1147
Cyg - eclipsing binary - 12th mag. min - observing campaign
- AAVSO
Mira bulletin program
- Commercial robotic telesope mounts
- Asteroid
occultation charts
- Varfind software
- High-Energy-Density
Physics and Astrophysics Division at LLNL
- CVs at LLNL
- CVs from Chandra
- Miloslav Druckmuller author of image
processing software that makes solar eclipse images comparable to naked eye views (S&T, August 2005).
- Gravity Simulator multibody orbit simulation software.
- US/Russia collaboration in astrophysics Useful
explanations of accretion in magnetic fields.
- STARE project looking for extra-solar planets.
Astrotomography
- Brussels Astrotomography
Workshop page.
- Software from
Tom Marsh, including doppler, for doppler imaging of accretion
discs, molly for 1D spectrum analysis, and pamela, for
reduction from 2D to 1D astronomical spectra.
- Henk Spruit
preliminary web page, containing his fast Doppler mapping program.
- The minimalist web page
of Keith Horne. A page with a paper
and source code for Doppler tomography
- KOREL is a code
for spectra disentangling using Fourier transforms, available from P. Hadrava.
- Up to date list of
publications using Doppler tomography, maintained by Tom Marsh.
- Stellar
activity working group at the University of Vienna. Includes an
impressive collection of Doppler images of stars.
- Vik Dhillon's
online presentations including the Brussels presentation.
- The web
page of Mercedes T. Richards with information about Doppler tomography of
Algols and hydrodynamic simulations of mass transfer.
- Mapping
starspots of A. Collier Cameron with the slides of his presentation in
Brussels and some eclipsing binary star mapping movies.
- The animated
homepage of J.-F. Donati.
- ULTRACAM is
an ultra-fast, triple-beam CCD camera which has been designed to study one
of the few remaining unexplored regions of observational parameter space -
high temporal resolution. The camera, which has recently been funded in full
(292 k) by PPARC, will see first light during 2001 and will be used on 2-m,
4-m and 8-m class telescopes in Australia, the Canary Islands, Chile,
Greece, South Africa and Spain to study astrophysics on the fastest
timescales. ULTRACAM is a project of V. Dhillon and T. Marsh.
- S-Cam
is
the prototype of a cryogenic camera for ground-based astronomy, based around
a 6x6 array of Ta-Al superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) devices,
photon-counting array detectors with intrinsic energy resolution. The
detector presently provides individual photon arrival time accuracy to about
5 us, and a wavelength resolution of about 60 nm at 500 nm, with each array
element capable of counting up to ~5000 photons/sec.
- Rob Hynes's
binary star visualization.
AAVSO (and other VSO) Observer's Home Pages
- Bill Dillon
(DIL)
- Walter MacDonald (MDW); also
check out the nyaa page.
- Jerry Gunn (author of a
new automated photometry program called EzPhot).
- Fraser Farrell
- Jean-Francois Donati
- Pascal PETIT
- Tim Crawford and the clear sky clock for his observatory.
Fireballs
I was the co-author (with Rick Huziak) of a JRASC paper on the October 30, 1993
Western Canada Fireball (see the list of my papers or download a preprint). The
MTRACK software
mentioned in that paper for computing fireball trajectory and orbits is
available.
, please report the fireball by filling out the
MIAC fireball
report file. Hopefully the fireball will have been picked up
on the North American Fireball Camera Network.
Other meteor organizations include the IMO who maintain the FIDAC
newsletter.
A very nice map maker, useful
for plotting fireball observations on, is resident on the web.
A photo of a "corkscrew meteor"
was posted in January 1995.
There is also a nice meteorites
home page on the web.
A multi-station Fireball Tracking & Triangulating Network with
graphics has been established by Professor Dave Kenyon of Sierra College,
Rocklin, California, USA.
Fireball report summaries:
Active meteor observer's web pages:
Others:
Canadian meteorites:
Randomly selected Fireball News
Jan 9, 1996: E-Mail message from Andre Knoefel of FIDAC:
Today's newspapers and TV news reported that a fireball appeared over
Saitama and Ibaraki prefectures about 16:20 (UTC+9h) on January 7.
The fireball travelled in an approximately easterly direction.
An explosive sound was reported.
The event was captured on photo/video recording by the residents.
A probable fragment (5cm, 60g) of the meteorite also was found.
Yoshiro Yamada,
Astronomy Section,
Yokohama Science Center,
yamada@ysc.go.jp
* The attached map was scanned by Ms Akiko Izumo, YSC.
Mar 21, 2004:
Possible impact hole pictures.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
There's lots of stuff about this comet on the web.
-
Space Telescope
Science Institute SL9 home page
-
National Space
Science Data Center (at GSFC) SL9 home page
-
University of
Arizona's SEDS SL9 home page
-
University of
Arizona's Comet Impact Image Browser
Comet Hyakutake C/1996 B2
Here's a picture taken by myself at 6:11 Mar 24 UT with a 50mm lens
at f1.7, 45 sec exposure on Kodak Royal Gold 1000 ASA, stationary tripod:
Some other Comet Hyakutake shots on the web:
- Scott
Marrin's Picture (RASC Winnipeg)
- Damien Lemay's pictures (use "etoiles" when asked for a password)
Comet Hale-Bopp
Views Of Comet Hale-Bopp As Seen In My Homemade 8 Inch Newtonian
Reflector:
Comet Hale-Bopp on January 19, 1997, 12:45 U.T.
Comet Hale-Bopp on March 11, 1997, 10:20 U.T.
Comet Hale-Bopp Links
Comet 17P/Holmes
Comet 17P/Holmes As Seen In My Homemade 18 Inch Newtonian
Reflector:
Comet 17P/Holmes on October 26, 2007, 04:15 U.T. at 273x, right. Its position (2nd magnitude) in Perseus is shown, left. No apparent tail, diameter roughly twice the apparent diameter of Jupiter.
Comet 17P/Holmes on November 3, 2007, 01:35 U.T. at 91x, right. Its position (3nd magnitude) in Perseus is shown, left. Surface brightness much lower than on October 26. Appearance now fuzzy in 50mm finder; it was starlike on October 26. Not a perfect sphere anymore - fills 80% of the FOV at 91x.
Comet 17P/Holmes on November 15, 2007, 03:45 U.T. at 91x, top.
More comet information can be found on the Comet Observation page or at
the icq site.
Links to pages of my photos:
Partial Lunar Eclipse, July 28, 1999, as seen from
Saskatoon
Total Lunar Eclipse, January 21, 2000, as seen
from Saskatoon (With a small movie!)
Total Lunar Eclipse, August 28, 2008 as
seen by my meteor camera fireball3.
- ATM Resource
List
- UK ATM Resources
- Amateur Telescope Making
Journal
- The ATM Page
- Telescope
Design
- Tallahassee
Astronomical Society
- Build an 8 inch
Dobsonian
- Vendors -
- Observa-Dome
- Deep Space (software)
Info from the rasc listserver (Fri, 15 Nov 96) and Larry Manuel (via
e-mail): If you're buying telescopes from the U.S.A., the Revenue
Canada Customs Clearance number for telescopes is 9005801000. The the
Revenue Canada Customs Clearance number for Telescopes, parts and
accessories is 9013903010. Telescopes and related accessories are
subject to the GST. As for duty, any telescope with a primary
objective, whether it be the mirror or lens which has a diameter under
18" or 456mm ( 45.6cm ) is free of any duty. If the objective is larger
than 18" they refer to it as a research grade and has a duty somewhere
around 3.5%. Eyepieces, for example, are exempt from duties when we
import them, but sometimes things go wrong, and they charge a duties,
which are difficult to have refunded. If you ship in a telescope by
mail, you will not have any problems. If you ship in a telescope by
carrier or courier, they will charge you a "brokerage fee", or, IMHO, a
rip-off fee.
Although there, as yet, no physical solution for the equations of
general relativity to allow faster than speed of light travel, there is
a mathematical solution. This solution is published in the May 1994
issue of Classical
and Quantum Gravity by M. Alcubierre. (Your institution needs to
have a paid subscription to that journal before you can download the
paper but Alcubierre has made a preprint
available.) I plotted his warp fields using Mathematica. The view of
the field as presented in Alcubierre's paper is shown above and
contoured slices through the field are shown below:
The contours represent space around the starship that is compressed
(left) or dilated (right) with respect to time.
Not warp drive, but an alternate means of propulsion:Advanced Electric Propulsion
100 Year Starship Initiative
Gravistars, not Black Holes
Check out the reprint on the
physics abstract server about replacing the event horizon in a black hole
with a Bose-Einstein condensate to banish the singularity. In other news, an
M-theory cyclic universe is possible that explains dark matter, the present
acceleration of the expansion of space and the non-zero cosmological
constant, see
Science296:1436-1439 (2002).
Contact Predictions:
Rotation of Earth-Crossing Asteriod 2006 VV2
Rick Huziak
The lightcurve below was produced in a 3-hour run between Mar. 29 06:00 UT and Mar. 29 09:00 using SBIG STL-1301E and ST-9XE cameras on 12" f/6.3 telescopes and a V-band filter from the University of Saskatchewan. In this period, approximately 260 images were taken to produce this curve.
The curve is chaotic, showing the many faces of this asteroid, and indicating that the asteroid rotates in multiple axies, and the entire repeating cycle is longer than 3 hours. What is surprising is that sharpness of the minimae which may indicate an angular or facetted shape to the asteroid.
The curve is from raw data, and some work will be required to remove spurious affects. Points above or below, and away from, the general line are due to appulses with field stars or, in some cases, cosmic ray hits on the image or comparision star. The light curve will be cleaned up at a later date.
The magnitude range is relative to an 8.3 magnitude field star defined as 8.300V for the run. Since the camera had to be moved 6 times to follow the fast motion of this asteroid, all photometry had to be done by transferring standard stars from frame to frame. However, the result of this process does not, in this case, introduce an error in excess of 0.05 magnitudes across the run.
Back to my home page.
