Taking the Plunge

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I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but this month has been crazy as the holidays wrapped up and I headed off the the Far East. In fact, I’m in Singapore as I write this.

But that’s not the point of the post. We’ve taken the plunge and hired an architect to design changes to the drainage at Osage and complete plans for a roll-off roof observatory. We hired Tom Jungbluth. He has shared many good ideas and we are looking forward to seeing the plans.

We had some dirt/mud come down into the driveway in the last storms. I don’t know what this week has done and there is heavy rain forecast for this weekend. We are as prepared as we can be.

I’ve been very paranoid about freezing. Over the MLK Weekend, I turned off the water, drained some of the pipes and shut off the well. It hasn’t been very cold since then, but the tail end of this storm might get cold. Part of the plan for the observatory is to get the trapped air tanks and other well-related items inside, so less chance of freezing.

There, I’ve done it. Maintained the current almost-once-a-month pace of blogging.

The Year Comes to a Close

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It’s been a hectic November and December. It seems as if yesterday it was the beginning of November, but now Christmas is just a few days away. We’ve traveled to Upper Michigan, spent a week in a class in Berkeley, baptized the baby, completed the capital budget, and now are almost at the end of the year.

I haven’t had a chance to do much astronomy, I haven’t had the chance to get the observatory up or put the new drive motors on the C-8 out here in Lake Riverside. Sigh.

But today has been productive. I washed all the windows, finally getting the grime from the wind storm in October off. Washing windows can be very satisfying. I use an Ettore washer and squeegee with a strong ammonia and hot water solution. I believe the key is the scrubbing action of the washer to loosen the dirt, then the squeegee takes it all away. And nice clean windows look very good. The whole view outside looks much sharper.

I learned my technique at the Grand Carnot, on Avenue Carnot in Paris. John Stubbs and I would have breakfast their each day on our way out to EuroDisney. Once every couple of weeks the owner would have the glass in the cafe cleaned. The cleaners would SOAP up the window and squeegee it off in a continuous sweep. I’m not that good, but I try.

I also took the first attack at the gophers who have returned to the yard. They filled the sprinkler cut-off valve area again, and started a mound next to the house. The valve area is clear again, and full of gopher pellets. The area near the house has been gassed. I’ll make another attack tomorrow. We’ll also pick up some hay to put over the pipes near the pump. Hopefully prevent freezing. Although the thermometer didn’t show below freezing last night, standing water outside did freeze, and it will be colder tonight.

New PC Error — Solved

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After installing Autodesk Quick CAD on my new Lenovo R61 laptop, I started getting a weird error when booting up the machine. It reported:

br_funcs.exe -- Ordinal not found
The ordinal 39 could not be located in the dynamic link library zlb.dll

I Googled the message and the closest thing to a relevant link was something at Experts-Exchange. I signed up for the trial membership, and the solution offered (actually, the solution promised, since Experts-Exchange is a for-pay service) did not address the problem. This is my second bad experience with Experts-Exchange, it is a useless service, never go there.

The solution was fairly simple. Autodesk put an old version of zlib.dll (used for zipping and unzipping) into the /Windows/System directory. Shame on them. I searched the root disk for zlib, found a later version in a Lenovo directory, and replaced the file in /Windows/System. Problem solved.

Hopefully this solution documented here will prevent people from losing time (and money) going after the useless information at Experts-Exchange.

Dust and a Comet

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We arrived at Osage (this is, I think, the name of the place, to go with “Camp” as a unique identifier) this afternoon. My older daughter had a half day and I was able to get away from work early so it was a 3:45 or so arrival.

We noted that most of the leaves were gone from the trees. Three weeks ago, they were just beginning to turn yellow, now they are gone. The high winds that drove the destructive fires of the past weeks made a mark here too, although one hardly worth mentioning. We would soon see how windy it actually was.

When my wife went into the house, she commented on the condition of the kitchen. There is normally some dust on the counter when we make it out here, and I usually take part of the first evening to clean up the dust. This was an entirely different situation (altogether :-)). There was a visible layer of dust across the entire counter. My older daughter found the back bathroom covered in red dust. The Sun porch was inundated — every surface covered with dust. This is what 5 days of 35+ mile an hour wind can do when laden with dust.

There are other problems. The sprinkler valves in the yard have been leaking for a long time. So long you squish as you walk across the yard. The tree in the northeast corner fell down because the ground was so soggy. I used the truck to right it and a board to hold it up. The cover for the lawn mower, a gift from my father-in-law, is currently AWOL, taken away by the wind. The cover on the spa was pulled open (no water in the spa, so no drowning risk) and the lattice around the spa is broken.

I feel lucky. When we were here last I washed the kitchen floor, so the dust did not have grease to bind with. We just bought a new vacuum cleaner (a Dyson, we are very happy) and it has done a great job capturing the dust. We were able to knock out the worst of the problem on Friday night, leaving the weekend open. The tree is upright. No one has been hurt.

We are very lucky here.

The recovery activities did prevent me from getting the CG-5 set up. I have a new motor controller, and a new DMK firewire camera. I go to OPT tomorrow to get the final parts.

Finally the comet. Comet Holmes is easily visible to the naked eye. In Perseus, just below Casseopoiea, it is almost a star, but slightly fuzzy. With binoculars, it is a nice, slightly green, ball. As I always tell people when I am trying to get them to find a comet, it looks like nothing else in the sky.

AIC Day 3 — Live Blog

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It’s 8:30 AM here in San Jose and the session is getting started. Last night was very good. We saw New Mexico Sky’s set-up in Western Australia, and actually did see an image taken by the 24″ RCOS in New Mexico. Good conversations, much information shared, a good time had by all.

8:30 AM — Ken Crawford Depth of Field Processing. Recommends a Wacom tablet. Tools in Photoshop: Smart Sharpen, high pass, and shadow / highlight. Overdo the processing a bit, then back off when you blend the processed layer. Soft light / screen process looks interesting. Jay GaBany showed its use last year, but this presentation makes it more understandable. He is really demonstrating magic with Photoshop.

…Break…

Bought a CFW-10, an OIII filter, and an SII filter over the break. Look for a CFW-8 on Astromart soon.

10:30 AM — Jay GaBany Color Filtering. Does not bin his color exposures, and uses the color exposures combined to make a synthetic luminance. Many techniques, very interesting image enhancement. Details in the image really come out. Jay concluded with an amazing shot of NGC 891.

11:00 AM — Door prize time! Very nice prizes, many worth hundreds of dollars. Art won a filter!

And we are done. Great conference!

AIC Day 2 — Live Blog

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8:30 AM — We’ve been called away from the exhibit area and the introductory video is playing. Day 2 of AIC 2007 is under way. I can’t vouch for the success of yesterday’s live blog, but since I have a seat with power and internet, I’m going to give it a try again today. There are about 10 people who are attending the conference from outside North America.

8:40 AM — What I thought they looked like. A recurring and amusing feature from Steve Mandel.

8:50 AM — Rob Gendler, recipient of the 2007 AIC Hubble Award. Gendler has had 53 APOD postings, including one today. The Mega-image, multi frame mosaic of great scale and high resolution. This was a really outstanding talk, with great advice on how to plan and execute a major imaging project, along with great images to inspire one to try.

9:30 AM — Don Goldman on narrow band filters. Very good, detailed presentation.

…Break…

10:50 AM — Neil Fleming on narrow band imaging. Neil images from Boston, with very bad light pollution, just like at Observatorio de la Ballona. Interesting comment: do only one registration of image data. So, don’t align each channel’s subs, then the channels to each other. Instead, complete one channel, and use the final result from that channel to align the other channel subs. Really great Photoshop discussion. Recommends using “local contrast enhancement” from Noel Carboni’s Astronomy actions.

11:20 AM — Steve Cannistra — Bi-color imaging. Did you know that a dog is a dichromat (able to only see two colors)? Very good tutorial on doing color combination with layers, non-destructively.

…Lunch…

1:00 PM — Took the plunge and bought a new planetary imaging camera, a DMK firewire camera. I opted for the color imager and the smaller chip. OPT was offering 10% off, and since I was going to buy it at some point anyway, that discount was enough to make the purchase worth it.

Now, founding sponsors speak at AIC.

  • RC Optical with high performance optics and machines. Automated satellite tracking. Carbon-fiber based mirrors.
  • SBIG Astronomical Instruments — new STX series of cameras, stand-alone autoguider, new AO with substantial travel and less back focus than the AO-7. STX: better cooling, many new chips, simultaneous guiding (fast corrections with remote head, slow corrections through main scope, addresses differential deflection), differential guiding (artificial guide star vs. real star), bigger guide chip, USB & ethernet, software controlled fan, available Q2 2008.
  • Software Bisque — Focused on rewriting all applications for multi-platform use.

1:30 PM — Mike Bolte on Imaging with the Big Guys. Lick Observatory history, adaptive optics, and the Keck telescopes. Amazing images with adaptive optics on the Keck. Plans for a 30 meter telescope to be built by 2016. To be located in Chile, Mauna Kea, or Baja California.

…Break…

2:50 PM — Daniel Vershatse — Imaging and observing in the Southern Hemisphere.

3:30 PM — Chris Schur Enhanced Hydroigen Galaxy Imaging. The key concept is to subtract the red from the Ha to reveal just the Ha portion. Add back to R/G/B at 100%/10%/5% to get correct color. Really a great technique.

4:00 PM — Building a remote observatory. Key things: Altitude, elevated platform, round, separated, massive pier, thermal control, and lightening protection. Central pier weighs 70,000 pounds. Pier is manhole pipes, 4′ outside, much less expensive, about $2,500 in material costs for a 20′ pier. Metal construction for the enclosure because of low humidity. Ash domes used for the top.

Done for the day.

AIC Day 1 — Live Blog

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10:00 AM — The program begins. Many more sponsors this year. And the crowd is quite large. We are on the first day, which is an extra feed, but the room is mostly full. 254 people expected for Saturday. Adam Block will announce a new public observatory tonight — perhaps the Caelum project has been successful!

10:10 AM — Introducing Adam Block, late of the Advanced Observing Program at Kitt Peak, imager extraordinaire and now operator of Caelum Observatory. Kicking off “Must Know Processing” presentation. By show of hands at least half (if not more) of the audience are first-time AIC Attendees. Topic 1: Calibration in Maxim DL and CCDStack.

We’ll see if it makes sense to keep up the live blog or not…

10:20 AM — Demonstrating the automated calibration features in Maxim DL — which is what I really like about the program. On to CCDStack. Fixed the microphone :-). He is starting, in both cases, from master flats/darks/biases. Skipping the hard lifting of combining the subframes to create the master. Cool image of asteroids in the — even some new ones.

10:30 AM — CCDStack reports the actual bit mapped value depending on the screen stretch. Lower right hand corner. I wish they would really show de-blooming in CCDStack, because I have never had it work accurately on the large blooms I get on my ST-10.

10:40 AM — Cool feature in Maxim DL, the Command Sequencer. Define a set of actions and go. Now on to Data Reject in CCDStack. It sure looks like it rejected many more pixels than Maxim DL. Over rejected if you ask me. Showing the percentage, it is over 1%, probably really too high, by the standard described by Adam.

11:00 AM — Alignment in CCDStack. Not sure why he isn’t using star snap to begin with. It works quite well. The sample does not have dithering, and I always dither. Now he is on to start snap.

11:15 AM — Getting into the statistics of pixel values. Good background knowledge to have when applying techniques. Median, mode, mean, etc. And on to Data Rejection. Normalization means we will compare pixels on a comparable basis — subtracting sky brightness, then scale to the same brightness. CCDStack uses mode to determine sky brightness as it is insensitive to inclusion of stars. Weight in CCDStack is the inverse of the scaling factor.

11:30 AM — Excel data analysis — need to look into that. Reminder to Adam Block: Don’t do Excel live…

11:40 AM — Choose data rejection based on standard deviations. So the factor in CCDStack is the sigma value. Adam recommends 2.0 as a good number to work with. Speaks about sigma reject as contrast enhancement, rather than noise reduction. I wonder why he isn’t using the top image % option, which would select a sigma factor to reject a fixed percentage of the image. Good question on how CCDStack would handle summing with rejected pixels. Adam recommends using the mean rather than the sum. In fact, the question on rejected pixels also applies to mean combine — does CCDStack count the rejected pixels when calculating the mean? Adam targets 2% to 3% rejection.

…Lunch…

1:00 PM — MaximDL normalization is done within the sigma clip function — use linear normalization. Didn’t really get the threshold rejection.

1:20 PM — Photoshop essentials. Move a layer with darken blending mode to fix star elongation. Color mask to select stars, minimum filter to de-emphasize stars.

1:55 PM — DDP, while fiddling with PixInsight at my seat.

…Cookie break…

2:45 PM — Very cool use of multiply blend mode to brighten dim areas. And Adam does not use layers to avoid destructive edits. Copy base layer, brighten base layer a lot, change top layer to blend mode multiply, reduce opacity to bring underlying brightness out. On to High-pass filter process. Select stars by color range highlight, expand by 9, feather by 5, cut from high-pass layer.

3:00 PM — LAB color. Convert to LAB color space, stretch (Adam increased contrast) a channel to enhance red, b channel to enhance blue.

3:20 pm — To bring out fractional values in floating point images, use pixel math to bump up total values before saving as 16 bit integer.

End of presentations for the day.

AIC Day 0

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Terrible start to the trip. First off-LAX parking lot was full, but not posted full, so I had to drive in and out. This may have cost me the opportunity to stand by on the 3pm flight. I was booked on the 4:05pm flight that eventually left at 6:05pm. Then my bag slipped and hit me in the face, splitting my lip as I left the airplane. The SAP event and Peter Ueberroth’s speech was good, and I got dinner and some good wine thanks to SAP. Finally, of to San Jose and AIC.

I went to the bar after checking in and had drinks with Doug George of Cyanogen (Maxim DL) and Steve Bisque of Software Bisque (Paramount ME). I actually went into the bar and got into the conversation, so interpret “had drinks” in that context. Steve’s brother was there too as were several other people.

So here is what I learned:

  • Meade is toast. Going private, moving out of Orange County, probably entirely to China
  • The RCX mount is the going to go off the market and is “the most costly mistake they ever made”
  • No one with a going business would write for Linux because all Linux users expect software for free, and that’s not the way to run a business
  • Maxim DL 5.0 is coming
  • Meade has been a bully with lawsuits against many business partners (or even almost partners)

That’s all for a late Thursday night.

Fires!

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This has been two days of terrible fires in Southern California. We have personally been very lucky, with no loss of property or life in the immediate family. So far, the closest scrape has been the Roca fire in Aguanga. But the extended family was not so lucky.

There has been major damage to Lindemann house in Malibu. I was watching TV as the fire was burning, and was quite worried when I saw houses burst into flames at the ocean’s edge. The main fire was burning inland, but embers were blowing out over the Malibu Colony. The LA Times story on the fire has the following quote:

Among the other structures gutted was a home along Malibu Road. Its owner, Barbara T. Lindemann, said the house, built in 1927, was once inhabited by workers who built the railroad down the California coast. She said she has owned the home for 45 years.

Andy Lyon, a Realtor who helps rent the home for Lindemann, said it was worth $12 million to $13 million, and had burned once before, when singer John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas lived there.

“I believe that it was the last standing one of the original Malibu cottages,” said Lindemann, an attorney and expert in employment discrimination law. “It’s a piece of Malibu history.”

I remember the fire when John Phillips lived there. He left many of his belongings, including a large, psychedelic statue of a man with his arms raised.

Here are some pictures of the fire burning. We had hoped that it was OK because the roof was intact, but there was damage in the house from the heat of the fire next door. In the first picture, the Lindemann house is on the right.

Taken from the ocean side

In this second shot, the house is in the foreground.

Taken from the inland side

Prayers to all who have suffered loss in these wildfires.

UPDATE: I found another photo. This is looking in from the beach to the house.

Back yard

Observatory Computer Dead

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Just when I had a clear evening without the Moon and on a weekend, the computer in the observatory died forever. It has been having memory issues, but now it is really dead. It boots, starts loading Windows, then reboots during Windows start up. May it rest in peace, it is now just parts.

I have a replacement, but it was slated to go to Lake Riverside. Back to the drawing board.