Tag Archives: astronomy

New featured images – Astronomy

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
April 16 2020

I have almost 1400 posts and pages, and with a redesign that I’ve recently been working on, i.e., changing many things behind the scenes in layout and workflow, I need to go back and fix a bunch of featured images for sizes. So at the same time, since I’ll be using the Featured Images in a slightly different way along with other graphics in my site, I’ll take advantage of the update to also consider new images.

For astronomy posts, most of which up until now have been about astronomy and telescopes and imaging, oh my, I’ve tended to use a whimsical graphic for all of it.

Boy with tongue out while looking through telescope

It has a transparent background, PNG format, and I like the light nature of it. It reflects my approach to astronomy, generally informal, non-scientific, heavy focus on observing over imaging or logging. In short? Fun.

But my astronomy posts are not all about “fun”.  » Read the rest

QotD: Black Holes (PWQ00008)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
January 14 2020

“What happens in a black hole, stays in a black hole.“


~ Anonymous

  » Read the rest

AstroBlog 2019, outing #24 – Star Party at CASM

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 6 2019

The nights are longer and colder, but yesterday (October 5th) was International Astronomy Day so we set up for a night at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum. It’s not quite as good as Carp as we can’t turn the parking lot lights up, but we set up a little farther away on the grass (I had thought we would set up on the pavement as we did one other time, but we were all on the grass and a clear patch of gravel). I was initially worried about dew but had no issues for the night.

One of the best parts of events at CASM is I don’t have to be the event marshal. 🙂 I just go and observe. I helped out on the social media side for announcements and promotions, but that was all. Chris in our group is the lead for liaison with the Museum and did solar observing during the day.  » Read the rest

AstroBlog 2019, outing #23 – Star Party in Carp

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
October 6 2019

I had my doubts about the star party scheduled for September 21 in Carp, including the fact that I’m a bit tired of organizing them. I don’t mind GOING, but I’d much prefer to go with Jacob, set up his scope too, and then just be able to leave when we want to, even if only there for an hour or so. If I go as an event marshal, I have to stay all night. I had no other marshals seemingly available for this one, so I went without the cub. However, when I got there, one of the other marshals had shown up and already had all the cones set out, etc. Awesome!

I set up in a different spot than normal, and parked in the upper bowl just in case I decided to bail early. However, I was surprised that the location of the setup changed the experience for the night.  » Read the rest

Reading Michael Swanson’s “The NexStar User’s Guide II” – Chapter 07 – Connecting a PC, Mac, Tablet or Smartphone to Your Tablet

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
September 8 2019

For reviewing purposes, I skipped over the short Chapter 6, focused on Sky Portal operations, as I’ll do that chapter after I have a chance to connect to my tablet and test some of the operations. I thought of doing the same for Chapter 07, Connecting a PC, Mac, Tablet or Smartphone to Your Tablet, but it’s a short chapter, and easily dispensed with here.

Some of the highlights:

P.165 – Wired Connections for RS-232 Hand Controls…I knew that most of the wired connections used a USB to Serial adapter, and plugs in to the RJ-22 Jack (I thought it was an RJ-45, but apparently not!). However, one “new” thing in the guide is that there is a way to do a wired connection to a tablet or smartphone using SkyWire + Sky Safari with an iOS device. I had no idea there was an option for a physical wire connection.  » Read the rest