Fedora Core 6 Upgrade Complete (Mostly)

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After several weeks of preparation and work, the three Linux computers have been upgraded to Fedora Core 6, the current release of the freely-available version of Red Hat Linux.

I downloaded the CD and DVD images in November, and loaded the installation packages on the main server’s web server. I started with the P3 500. This upgrade (clean install actuall) went without a hitch. The machine booted cleanly off of the rescue disk, and the installation went fine. The main server and the laptop were not so smooth.

I backed up all the data and configuration from the server, a P3 850 2-processor machine. It has been running Fedora Core 3, and I needed to reconfigure the disks, so a clean install was in order. I loaded Fedora on the web server on the P3 500, and booted off of the rescue disk. (One note on installation methods. Keeping the P3 500 around has been very convenient for Linux installs. I have found burning CDs to be problematic at best, so having the full install on a web server both removes the need for burning CDs and having to swap disks during the install.)

When I went to choose HTTP as the install method, I received a message that no drivers were installed for that boot method — Fedora could not talk to the NIC. I tried many things. I bought a new NIC (gigabit ethernet for $20 at CompUSA), tried to create a driver disk. Nothing worked. I posted at Fedoraforum.org, usually very helpful, but no one there was able to help. Some advice on where to look from Fedora-List led me to boot off of a full install DVD, ctrl-alt over to another terminal, and run lspci -v. This showed me that not only was Fedora not seeing the NIC, it wasn’t seeing anything on the PCI bus. This allowed me to make a much more informative post to Fedora-List. The kind people there gave me a number of kernel parameters to try. The one that worked was pci=noacpi.

Once that was figured out, the installation went fine. I had the usual troubles installing the Perl modules for The Gimp, (send me an e-mail if you need to know how) but with my full /etc directory backed up from the old install was pretty clean.

The laptop had some trouble, but that was mostly user error. First, I had trouble getting the machine to boot off of the CD. Cleaning everything solved that one. Then I had a strange error when I went to upgrade. The install said it could not find the install package repodata file. I should have paid more attention the first time through as I would see this error again. I just figured that I should do a clean install instead of an upgrade and proceeded. Half way through the package load, the machine locked up. I cursed and started over. I then kept getting the same error about repodata. No on-line search showed this error. Finally it struck me. I was entering the IP address for the server instead of the P3 500 with the install data on it! Thankfully, once I had that figured out the install completed successfully.

Here are some of the things I have found with FC6:

  • Printer support is much improved. You don’t use the HP IP emulation, rather IPP: protocol which works very well with both Windows and OS 10.
  • Installing the Java runtime environment (JRE) for Firefox is a pain. You can use an RPM from Sun that puts Java in the correct place, but you need to use this command (as root) to get it to work: ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_09/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so
  • There is a new search program that comes with Fedora called Beagle. It is supposed to index everything in all your files so you can find a document with a quick search. I don’t use Google desktop and I don’t need Beagle. It hogs memory and CPU. I uninstalled it yum remove beagle
  • I tried running the laptop with SELinux (Red Hat’s Secure Enterprise Linux) enabled. It rebooted half way through the main yum update after install, and then complained about restarting. I disabled it entirely. It has always caused me nothing but problems. Hey, I’m not an enterprise so why do I need secure?
  • The NTP daemon on the server did not need any tweaking to get it to accept NTP calls from the other PCs on the net. On past installs it has taken a lot of changes to the ntp.conf file to get it to work.
  • I haven’t gotten flash to work yet.

f10 Imaging

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Several weeks ago, I finally set up my C-11 OTA, TCF focuser, Pyxis field rotator, AO-7 and ST-10 for imaging at f10. That’s 2880mm with only .5 arc seconds per pixel unbinned on the ST-10. Let’s just say that results were mixed. I’ll admit that seeing wasn’t great, but I don’t think I’ll try this again.

There are some good things about imaging at f10.

  • The AO-7 guides very well. Round stars, no wandering, very nice even at this long focal length.
  • Objects are large with good magnifications (if only they were clear — see below)
  • I could use the Pyxis field rotator with my C-11

But the negatives outweighed the positives.

  • Finding objects was hard. Where a sub-second focus exposre 3x binned would find an object at f6, 1 or more seconds was required for each finding and framing exposure.
  • It was murder trying to get to focus. FocusMax struggled because seeing changed overwhelmed focus changes.
  • It was impossible to find a guide star. With the AstroDon Clear filter, it was a struggle to find a star bright enough to guide at 1-2hz with the AO-7, minimum (in my mind) for decent results at f10.
  • So that was guide stars with the clear filter. Forget color. No object I tried had a guide star in blue that was usable. (Sidebar — NGC 891 – great guide star, available only at f6.)
  • No data. I felt as if I was imaging with an Ha filter. After 5 minutes, the object was hardly brighter than the backgound (100 ADU out of 3500)
  • Fuzzy results. The seeing errors overwhelmed the ability to resolve. All I got were high magnification, blurry results. It reminded me of when I try to use a high magnification eyepiece or a barlow, and, while the result is more magnified, it is not a better image to see or record.
  • It sure makes me wish I had a 20″ Richey Chretien. 🙂

It only took a couple of years, but now I have learned that all of the advice about long focal length imaging is correct. It is really hard and, without great equipment (no, good won’t suffice), it will not produce adequate results.

Here is the result:

NGC 7331 @ f10

So f5.95 with an C-11 is OK, but f10 is not.

A Good Night Viewing in Aguanga

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On the day after Thanksgiving, my wife’s sister and brother-in-law came over to Aguanga for dinner. We had a nice afternoon and grilled hambugers (I am sitll getting used to the new three-burner grill).

After dinner, my brother-in-law and I took out my old 8″ Celestron SCT on a CG-5 mount to look at the stars. It was not a very transparent night. Contrary to local averages, the dew point was above 50 degrees F, and the when we went out, the temperature was 53 and falling quickly. We had taken the scope out before dinner, so when we went out, it was already covered with dew. Using a hair drier, we dried off the Telrad, and heated up both the corrector (with the cap on) and the objective. That was just the beginning of the dew but in the end the dew did not prevent a successful night of observing.

Our first target was M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. It is dark enough in Anguanga so that with either binoculars or a telescope, you can see the elongated shape and spiral nature of the galaxy. It is visible naked eye as well.

For visual observing, Celestron’s Sky Maps is actually very useful. It charts the constellations by season, and lists findable double stars and deep sky objects for each constellation. That book guided our observing for the evening, along with my rusty object finding skills.

Our second target was M15, the globular cluster in Pegasus. It was both easy to find and wonderful to see. That was followed by M2, another beautiful globular. Though they were low in the sky, we observed Albireo and M57, the Ring Nebula.

After the look at the southern sky, we moved north and west to the faboulous Double Cluster in Perseus. It is larger than the field of view of the C-8 with a 35mm plossl, but still beautiful. Then came, for me, the highlight of the night. I found M33, the Triangulum galaxy, on the chart. I didn’t think I could find it. I did find it. We could see the circular flow of the galaxy — it filled the FOV at 35mm.

Emboldended by finding M33, I saw M77 on the chart and decided to try and find it. This is where I failed at reading a chart and looking at the sky. I thought I found Cetus, and the circle where M77 lies. I searched for probably 15 minutes (at this point, the temperature had fallen into the 40s). I never found it. My problem was that I mistook the western portion of the constellation for the eastern portion. The picture below shows my mistake. I didn’t figure this out until after all the guests had left and I looked at a wider view star chart. That wider angle helped me see my mistake in location.

Click for full size

At that point, we were getting cold. So we looked at M42, the Nebula in Orion. It was clearly visible even though it was only 15 to 20 degrees above the horizon. Yielding to ego, I tried to find M1, the Crab Nebula. I am fairly confident I was looking in the right place, but I could not find it.

The major side bar to the night was the dew. We had to dry off the objective every 5-10 minutes. That is what goes with working below the dew point, I guess. I imagine that the objective needs cleaning. And I found both the 99% isopropyl alchohol and the distilled water to make lens cleaner. Altogether a great night of observing. Let us all never forget that even with our wonderful detectors.

Astronomy Podcasts

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The great astronomy podcast Slacker Astronomy has moved on to Slackerpedia Galactica and AstronomyCast. I can’t say much yet about Slackerpedia, but AstronomyCast is excellent.

On a long drive last Friday, I listened to several episodes of AstronomyCast, and it is excellent. Dr. Pamela Gay, one of the main protagonists at Slacker Astronomy, provides excellent explanations of astronomical topics with good counterpoint and hosting of Fraser Cain of Universe Today. Well worth a listen on iTunes or direct.

On a related note, the old/new Slacker Astronomy site linked to a great video of the cleaning of the 200″ mirror at Mt. Palomar. Take a peek, it is a great three minutes.

Scientific American — Human Caused Global Warming Echo Chamber

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After reading this deeply biased article in Scientific American, I was compelled to write a letter to the editors.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Fiddling While the Planet Burns — [ SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS ] — Will the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers accept a challenge to learn the truth about the science of global climate change?

Editors,

Mr. Jeffrey Sachs does himself a great disservice in his column inviting the Wall Street Journal editors to have a broad and open discussion on concept of human caused global warming. His tendentious presentation shows him to be in the same “echo chamber” to which the editors of the Wall Street Journal refer.

He completely missed the point that the criticism of the “hockey stick” was done on strictly methodological grounds. Mr. Mann’s statistical methodology was criticized by leading statisticians. That deep statistical analysis is core to Mr. Mann’s hypothesis. This is hardly, as Mr. Sachs says, “flimsy and misleading.” Others have found that they can produce Mr. Mann’s “hockey stick” by feeding his data selection algorithm random data. Hardly good science.

The tone of the article reflects how this has become a religious debate. Mr. Sachs feels compelled to respond to emotion and with meaningless comments such as “global scientific consensus has nearly reached 100%.” When has consensus been an indicator of truth? The Wall Street Journal editorial page has “railed against” climate change findings because they are not treated critically and any competing viewpoint is drowned out in a roar from the true believers.

Nonetheless, Mr. Sachs suggestion is an excellent one. A respected and skeptical organization such as the Wall Street Journal should sponsor an open debate on the causes of global warming. It would certainly add more the debate.

Sincerely,

Mr. Sachs is employed as the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. No doubt the center of the echo chamber.

I get totally fried by the “believe us or die” approach from the human-caused global warming crowd. Having de-funded all opposing research during the Clinton administration (thanks Al), they relentless push a scientifically weak agenda for political gain. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Make the point on scientific evidence. Omit the hyperbole and the angry presentation. Leave out the “right-wing” comments. Or references to the “dwindling ‘climate skeptic’ community.” Yes, they put scare quotes on “climate skeptic.”

What a moron. And it degrades what is generally a good magazine on science.

Big Weather in Aguanga

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We had some very interesting weather over the Labor Day weekend. I’d have blogged this sooner, but I was out of the country for a business trip.

We were out in Aguanga for the holiday weekend. The excitment started on Saturday. Quite a bit of moisture had been flowing into the area, and was being backed up by an additional flow from hurricane John. The cumulus clouds started forming by mid-day, and by mid-afternoon, you could see several large thunderstorms in the distance. There was a particularly large storm over the Palm Desert to Pinyon Pines area. The National Weather Service had severe storm and flash flood warnings up. We went into Anza for Mass at 5pm. It was very hot and humid, and it was fairly windy. When we came out of Mass at 5:45, the wind had changed direction and the temperature had fallen by 10-15 degrees.

The real excitment started when we were driving back. As we were driving southwest out of Anza on California Route 79, I looked out the window to the southeast. There was a huge cloud of dust. It looked like the pictures I’ve seen of big dust storms in China and Australia. This one was about 1,500 feet high and extended from Anza off into the distance. I lost no time driving back to the house in Lake Riverside Estates, about 10 miles from Anza. As we were driving, the cloud kept getting closer to us. It must have been moving 30-40 miles per hour, and since we were driving obliquely to its direction, it was catching up to us.

It finally swirled around us when we got back to the house. It was a mass of gritty air and high wind. No damage, but a bit of excitement for sure. But very little excitment compared to what came on Sunday.

We left early Sunday for Julian. Just a quick siteseeing trip to the old mining town in northern San Diego County. A pretty drive down highway 79, through Warner Springs, past Lake Henshaw. My daughter pointed out the many domes on top of Mount Palomar. Julian was fine. A tourist town. We had a nice lunch and bought our apple pie (apple pie is a local specialty). As they had the day before, the cumulus were forming by mid-day. We started back to Aguanga at about 1 pm. We had a little rain on the way back, particularly just after passing Sunshine Summit and Oak Grove. My daughter was quite excited about the rain (I was too). She said she wanted to be right in the middle of a big thunderstorm. Her mother told her to be careful what she asked for. Prophetic words indeed.

We ran into solid rain, desert thunderstorm style as we drove up California Highway 371 to Lake Riverside Estates (LRE). The truck (Did I mention the truck? Probably need to put the truck story in another post.) was bufetted by the wind and large drops hit us with loud smacks. We slowed way down. The rain started about 2 miles from the south gate to LRE. When we got to the gate, someone ahead of us had just swiped the card key but the gate was only partially opened and not moving. We got past. It was a bit tense at this point as the rain was coming down very hard and we still had two miles to go before we got to the house.

Some background information is important here. When we purchased the house, one item revealed in the disclosures was that several years ago a big storm had sent a stream of mud down the hill and into the house. The previous owners had done some extensive grading to prevent a recurrence. But we were worried.

We got back to the house. The major flow of water on the street was going away from the property, exactly as desired. There was a good flow down the hill, but at first glance it looked OK. We parked the truck and went in the house. Flash, bang, crash. Lightning closer than half a mile away. That cool ripping sound that comes when the flash is really close. Rain pounding down on the Sun porch and car port roofs. Water streaming out of the waterspouts. And a steady flow of water down the driveway, creating a growing mud-filled puddle in the car port.

I stomped around, trying to get it to drain until one too many flashes of lightning came close and I decided it wasn’t a good idea to get fried. My wife noticed that the water was not draining away from the Sun porch very well. The major drainage was working fine. The only problem was the drive, which was now filled with muddy water 6 inches deep.

The rain continued for at least 45 minutes. After one too many crashes of thunder, my daughter hid in the closet with her rats. Yes, I think she changed her mind about wanting to be in the middle of a storm!

After the rain stopped, I was able to find the drain and clear the pine needles away from it so it would drain. We were soon left with a lot of Anza mud, the wet version of the ever-present Anza dust. We got out the wheelbarrow and started shovelling. Progress was slow, but we were able to use the sand and mud to block the place where the water was sluicing down the drive. We cut a couple of channels that we hoped would divert much of the mud the next time. Several hours later, we (well my wife primarly as I went into Anza with a load of green stuff for the dump) finished the clean up. The drains had all worked. We now know what needs to be done to the driveway to permanently fix the problem.

And I hope we have seen the worst of the storms for a while.

SMART-1 Impact

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I could be totally wrong here but I believe I saw the flash of impact from SMART-1 on the Moon the other night.

I was observing from the Anza Valley in Southern California at about 3,400′ altitude. The flash was well into the dark area of the Moon where it was advertised to be. It was faint and short. It came a little later than expected — it impacted at 05:42:21 UT, initial estimates were 05:41.

I was observing with an 8″ SCT and a 35mm plossl.

I don’t think I was imagining things, but I haven’t seen any independent statistics that would confirm that I could have seen it.

I would have posted this sooner but I was travelling for work.

Globular Clusters Galore

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This last weekend I had my first chance to do some serious observing from Aguanga. I brought my Celestron 8″ SCT up as a permanent addition to the high desert site. I set the telescope up before it was fully dark. My first target, used to get the finder aligned, was Jupiter. A nice view of the planet and the four Galilean moons. Then I waited for dark.

After it was mostly dark (not fully “astronomical twilight“) I found M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. It was a nice pretty ring. I could not see the star at the center.

Using my Celestron sky guide, I looked for good objects in the southern sky. The new house has a great view to the south, something completely lacking in LA. The first and most obvious target was M8, the Lagoon Nebula. Almost as impressive as the nebula in Orion, it was a beautiful wispy sight.

I then turned to the constellation just to the north of Sagittarius, Ophiucus. It has several globular clusters. It straddles the Milky Way, and the globular clusters orbit the Milky Way, so this is a good place to see them. I have always liked observing globulars. Their compact and dense fuzziness, I find them most beautiful. I started in the southern section, looking for what I thought was M9 or M10. Instead, I found M19 and M62. With some help from the star chart, I moved north to find M10 and M12. These were particularly beautiful. Higher above the horizon, I could see foreground stars — really very nice. I’d love to image these object.

Finally, I sought out and found M14. The search showed me several things. The dark of Aguanga is sufficient to see the stars on the chart. I can search the sky with the 8″ SCT. And next time I’ll bring the Telrad. M14 was not as impressive as the others, but it was a good find.

Finally, a complaint. A neighbor to the north has a mercury vapor lamp that is so bright I can see a shadow. with dark-adapted eyes, I feel I could read by the light. Like a full Moon that does not light up the sky, it is a great distraction. A minor annoyance at a great location.