Some jaw-dropping amateur jupiter images.

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
Juan Porch:
There certainly have been cases within the last couple of years where a
high
end image processing program was used to combine a Hubble shot,
carefully
disguised and resolution reduced, with an extremely poor webcam image to
create an unheard of composite, or where someone has stolen a great
amateur
image and combined it with theirs to produce that attention getting
image.

Why would someone do this? Where would the satisfaction come from?

Why would someone do it? Well, for the attention maybe or to maybe see that
image in a publication somewhere. Over the last year, I know of one case
where an amateur image was stolen, modified, and used for another imager's
purpose. However, the ball dropped because that person was caught. One
positive benefit of posting an image on the web is that, with Photoshop and
other higher end programs, it is fairly easy to double check images to make
sure they're coming from where they're supposed to. That factor alone has
made the image stealing process quite difficult.

Juan



I'm
pleased? to note that no one _ever_ looked at one of my Jupiter pics
and said "Hubble." Nor have I had any trouble with other amateurs
stealing my astro pics and putting their own names on them ; -)

In the present instance, I accept these images for what they appear to
be--the finest amateur Jupiter pics to date. I know from (slight)
experience that the South Sea islands can have incredibly good skies,
particularly for lunar and planetary observing.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig *dawt* com

On Mon, 09 May 2005 16:30:35 GMT, "Juan Porch" wrote:

There certainly have been cases within the last couple of years where a high
end image processing program was used to combine a Hubble shot, carefully
disguised and resolution reduced, with an extremely poor webcam image to
create an unheard of composite, or where someone has stolen a great amateur
image and combined it with theirs to produce that attention getting image.
So perhaps the "artifact people" are keeping the digital and even the film
folks "in check".

This is not hard to do with images of DSOs, but it is a very difficult
thing to do with an image of Jupiter because it rotates so quickly and
its features are so dynamic. How would you combine two images made at
different times without introducing all sorts of odd artifacts?

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Here is a shot (not mine) through an AP 10" Mak taken from Buffalo NY.
It's pretty impressive for northeast US seeing.

http://tinyurl.com/dlkzw

BPM

Ok
Since I have been involved in site testing for big scopes i can tell you
this

the decisions are very political, and not necessarily got anything to do
with seeing
perhaps water vapor for ir - but not seeing...

why

cos most science is done via spectrograph rather than imaging...

another thing - If you can PROVE that someone is faking it then speak up
and present your evidence scientifically and without rancour

other wise shut your guts


"Mike" wrote in message
news:jLPfe.99413$3V3.62055@edtnps89...

Altitude (within reason) isn't that big a factor in seeing.


Oh Ok, thats why they spend millions on getting above the clouds and
building the likes of Keck.

thanatos wrote:
Ok
Since I have been involved in site testing for big scopes i can tell
you
this

the decisions are very political, and not necessarily got anything
to do
with seeing
perhaps water vapor for ir - but not seeing...


Hmm, I wonder why Lowell Observatory measured seeing at the site of
their future 4-meter telescope in northern Arizona on 117 nights, and
presented a 12-page analysis of seeing conditions.

http://www.lowell.edu/DCT/SPIE_5489-...te_Testing.pdf


Why do observatories such as the ESO on La Silla and Paranal waste
their time erecting seeing monitors and DIMM's, and publishing their
results?

http://www.ls.eso.org/lasilla/seeing/
http://snap.lbl.gov/pubdocs/Seeing_a...ories_v3.0.doc


Maybe observatories such as Apache Point record the FWHM seeing every
night at an hourly interval just as a curiosity.

http://galileo.apo.nmsu.edu/obs-reports/html/


Tom

On Wed, 11 May 2005 10:30:30 GMT, "thanatos"
wrote:

Ok
Since I have been involved in site testing for big scopes i can tell you
this the decisions are very political, and not necessarily got anything to do
with seeing

Which sites? I've seen a lot of reports for observatory sites, and every
one included DIMM or similar seeing measurements for at least a year.
Sure, there is a lot of politics in the final decision, but nobody is
going to choose a site for a multimillion dollar facility that doesn't
have good seeing.

And why do you think that seeing isn't important for spectroscopic work?

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Wed, 11 May 2005 10:30:30 GMT, thanatos wrote:

Ok
Since I have been involved in site testing for big scopes i can tell you
this

the decisions are very political, and not necessarily got anything to do
with seeing
perhaps water vapor for ir - but not seeing...

why

cos most science is done via spectrograph rather than imaging...

another thing - If you can PROVE that someone is faking it then speak up
and present your evidence scientifically and without rancour

other wise shut your guts


"Mike" wrote in message
news:jLPfe.99413$3V3.62055@edtnps89...

Altitude (within reason) isn't that big a factor in seeing.


Oh Ok, thats why they spend millions on getting above the clouds and
building the likes of Keck.


Seeing is very important for professional observatories whether the work is
spectroscopic or not. Politics may enter into it but I don't think you
will find a site established in the last 50 years that doesn't have good to
excellent seeing.

Mike Simmons

right then

1) why do you think that the periods that you quoted site testing is
performed for are adequate to provide a real baseline of seeing/weather? 117
days??? why is this adequate????? no really, WHY?????

please apply scientific rigor to your answer (consider the el nono

2) your own intuitive/qualitative/gut feelins will give you a more
scientific answer than "d'ya think they woulduve built there without doin
good testin".

Again, why do the figures you quoted and the "figures of merit" or criteria
for good seeing constitute a scientifically rigorous and unbiased estimator
of the quality of a site.
Careful now, its kinda a tricky question )

3)don't confuse airmass with "seeing"

4)say, what is seeing anyway? hmm is there a power spectrum, is it 1/f,
1/f^2, white, brown, pinque?
what are the moments? ergodic? stationary (say can I even do a cepstrum?
waveletts? groovy and soso french) hmmm any snap crackle n'pop? leptokurtic
platykurtic????

what the hell does all this mean anyway?

this is where the fricken lies damn lies and stats comes into play eh?

rather than a bald assertion that someone cheated - without proof! eh
"Mike"?

5) spectroscopy, aah let me count the ways ah lurve thee.
One day I will do an extensive analysis of IRAF and other spectral reduction
packages for biases.
The results may be grim, especially in the face of a Poisson Distro... low
photon stats...
Perhaps a stochastic convolution of the PSF in the face of various
aberrations helps eh?

Anyway, not for now, I will resile and slump away glowering, and reserve an
analysis of seeing and spectra for later...

my parting shot is beware tha transverse doppler effect grasshopper


ciao


"thanatos" wrote in message
...
Ok
Since I have been involved in site testing for big scopes i can tell you
this

the decisions are very political, and not necessarily got anything to do
with seeing
perhaps water vapor for ir - but not seeing...

why

cos most science is done via spectrograph rather than imaging...

another thing - If you can PROVE that someone is faking it then speak up
and present your evidence scientifically and without rancour

other wise shut your guts


"Mike" wrote in message
news:jLPfe.99413$3V3.62055@edtnps89...

Altitude (within reason) isn't that big a factor in seeing.


Oh Ok, thats why they spend millions on getting above the clouds and
building the likes of Keck.

Yes, when one puts in the hard work in a site survey and sees that the
results are mostly not taken into account then its clear how the final
decisions could be viewed as "political".



right then

1) why do you think that the periods that you quoted site testing is
performed for are adequate to provide a real baseline of seeing/weather? 117
days??? why is this adequate????? no really, WHY?????

Site testing is an evolving science and the results obtained are usually
forgotten and not followed up on. In general one wants to have
simultaneous measurements from all sites considered and not the usual
one set up that is moved. The sampling should be based on wind
conditions as it drives and is related to the lower levels where the
seeing contribution is the greatest. One can, by knowing the climate
wind rose for a site get a good guess on how well the site testing
sampled the wind directions and thus the "astro climate".

A very good case in point is the site survey for CFHT on Mauna Kea. They
did a good job measuring the thermal high frequency structure from a
multilevel tower and did not catch all the effects due to length of time
the project ran. The data showed the important low level structure
like atmospheric gravity waves and the turbulence as a function of wind
direction but there was no in depth follow up.

The bottom line was that they believed that the seeing was no better
than 1 arc second and the mirror was not figured as well as could of been.

As we know the seeing gets better than 0.5" on Mauna Kea and we saw
times when the image quality reached 0.28" and was steady meaning the
telescope was not atmosphere limited.

Other site surveys have been disregarded because the contractors said
there would be a problem building there.

Older site surveys used near to the ground "polaris telescopes" that
were mostly contaminated by the ground layer.

On Mauna kea you can get 1" from the first 20 meters of air.

The other challenge is usually there is a lack of strong influence on
the atmospheric side when it comes to something most astronomers do not
directly study. It took decades be for the role of atmospheric gravity
waves was accepted.

Another issue is that the telescope structure, enclosure design and
construction have a strong influence and can confuse the results of the
site survey as contrasted to the delivered image quality.

Most efforts now are to the titanic telescopes that will have their
glory in the infrared and so water vapor is more important than seeing.

Some think that you need a multi level multi color multi beam adaptive
optics and you can correct the seeing.

I feel that above all you start with good seeing and work to preserve it.

To measure seeing one needs at least a 1 meter telescope and a well
tuned SCIDAR. This is expensive and is usually done after the fact.

One also needs atmospheric scientist and not astronomers attempting to
play a trained and well seasoned meteorologist. Recent advances in high
resolution atmospheric models and remote sensing such as FMCW radar and
LIDAR are not being integrated by the observatory builders in site
selection.

Oh well, it's only a Hobby and the seeing is what it will be.

Dan (been there done that)

Nice reply Dan,

The real issue is why are we building ground based scopes at all!

Quite frankly any ground based scope is an AMATEUR scope

Build a Shubble

or a Hubble Bubble

or just plain something that hasn't been thunk up yet
why hasn't it been thunk up yet?
because we need to build ontologies that allow us to grasp new concepts,
to do so requires new experiences (not remote ones) and time in space

so the next real Hubble (the one that answers as many questions as the old
one)
should be in space and parked near the ISS
(or better yet A REAL SPACE STATION - a Von Braun Wheel...)

that way the astronauts can do what they are named for (astronomy)
instead of "make work" so that the military-industrial complex can be kept
in war fighting shape.



"Dan Mckenna" wrote in message
...


Yes, when one puts in the hard work in a site survey and sees that the
results are mostly not taken into account then its clear how the final
decisions could be viewed as "political".



right then

1) why do you think that the periods that you quoted site testing is
performed for are adequate to provide a real baseline of seeing/weather?
117 days??? why is this adequate????? no really, WHY?????

Site testing is an evolving science and the results obtained are usually
forgotten and not followed up on. In general one wants to have
simultaneous measurements from all sites considered and not the usual one
set up that is moved. The sampling should be based on wind conditions as
it drives and is related to the lower levels where the seeing contribution
is the greatest. One can, by knowing the climate wind rose for a site get
a good guess on how well the site testing sampled the wind directions and
thus the "astro climate".

A very good case in point is the site survey for CFHT on Mauna Kea. They
did a good job measuring the thermal high frequency structure from a
multilevel tower and did not catch all the effects due to length of time
the project ran. The data showed the important low level structure like
atmospheric gravity waves and the turbulence as a function of wind
direction but there was no in depth follow up.

The bottom line was that they believed that the seeing was no better than
1 arc second and the mirror was not figured as well as could of been.

As we know the seeing gets better than 0.5" on Mauna Kea and we saw times
when the image quality reached 0.28" and was steady meaning the telescope
was not atmosphere limited.

Other site surveys have been disregarded because the contractors said
there would be a problem building there.

Older site surveys used near to the ground "polaris telescopes" that
were mostly contaminated by the ground layer.

On Mauna kea you can get 1" from the first 20 meters of air.

The other challenge is usually there is a lack of strong influence on the
atmospheric side when it comes to something most astronomers do not
directly study. It took decades be for the role of atmospheric gravity
waves was accepted.

Another issue is that the telescope structure, enclosure design and
construction have a strong influence and can confuse the results of the
site survey as contrasted to the delivered image quality.

Most efforts now are to the titanic telescopes that will have their glory
in the infrared and so water vapor is more important than seeing.

Some think that you need a multi level multi color multi beam adaptive
optics and you can correct the seeing.

I feel that above all you start with good seeing and work to preserve it.

To measure seeing one needs at least a 1 meter telescope and a well tuned
SCIDAR. This is expensive and is usually done after the fact.

One also needs atmospheric scientist and not astronomers attempting to
play a trained and well seasoned meteorologist. Recent advances in high
resolution atmospheric models and remote sensing such as FMCW radar and
LIDAR are not being integrated by the observatory builders in site
selection.

Oh well, it's only a Hobby and the seeing is what it will be.

Dan (been there done that)