Thanks for letting me tell you a bit about Amateur Astronomy at the May meeting…  Here are some images from my presentation…  First, some pictures I hope you’ll enjoy…..

 

The Trifid Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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The Jellyfish Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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The Eagle Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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Western Veil (Witch's Broom) Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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Iris Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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Horse Head Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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Helix (Eye of God) Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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The Orion Nebula  (credit: N4NVD)

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Jupiter - March 20, 2018  (credit: Christopher Go)

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Saturn - April 12, 2018  (credit: Christopher Go)

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Here are some examples of what is known as “Star Trail” photography.  These type of pictures can be done with just your camera on a steady base like a tripod or a table… 

 

(credit: N4NVD)

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(credit: N4NVD)

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Here is a video I created using the same frames used to assemble the picture above:

 

 

Check out http://www.startrails.de/ for the free software used to create these images and video, instructions on how to use it, and much more.

Many Hams are also active Amateur Astronomers, and their activities often “dovetail” with Amateur Radio much more closely than you might expect.  For example, our local astronomy club, The South Florida Amateur Astronomers Association (http://sfaaa.com) is currently working on development of a Radio Astronomy project that will allow relatively inexpensive individual “earth stations” to join in a networked configuration to create a large array of stations.  Most hams these days who are experimenting with software defined radios will already have a good deal of the hardware required to assemble one of these “earth stations”.  This project is understandably garnering interest from the larger scientific community, and I’m really interested in following where this goes. 

At the SFAAA monthly meeting this past Thursday I learned that there are some developments coming out of this project that will be of great interest to those of you who utilize the Raspberry Pi for your digital mode operations, such as FT8.  The team is (out of necessity) developing a time synch procedure for the Raspberry Pi that has achieved an accuracy in the nanosecond range (stratum 1).   I asked if the team would be willing to share the hardware and configuration requirements to achieve this level of accuracy and got a very positive response, so you Raspberry Pi users stay tuned, and I’ll share the details as soon as I get them from the team.

Here are some pictures of the hardware and a combined view of 4 network nodes receiving a signal simultaneously.

 

(credit: SFAAA)

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(credit: SFAAA)

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(credit: SFAAA)

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(credit: SFAAA)

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   (credit: SFAAA)

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