@sundogplanets Exactly what I've been thinking every time I started playing with some stacking software!
03.10.2025 06:32 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@sundogplanets OK, but it also needs some tricks to handle well. Do you have a fancy mount as well? Or stack multiple images?
02.10.2025 17:11 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
@sundogplanets These are pretty cool! What setup are you using and do you have any tips? I don't think I've ever managed to get such low level of noise combined with rather sharp stars out of my camera.
02.10.2025 07:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
@sundogplanets Some colleagues really like to type formulae in LaTeX!
23.09.2025 15:17 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@pikarl Was ist da dran denn divers? Die haben alle blaue Anzüge an! 🧐
23.09.2025 15:15 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Woher hat die AfD in #Potsdam die Adressen und Namen der Erstwähler, um ihnen Briefe nach Hause zu schicken? 🤔
#obwahl
19.09.2025 06:48 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@spacelizard Yes, that looks long! Good luck with moving there.
18.09.2025 12:46 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@spacelizard Now what?
18.09.2025 12:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Photo of a negative print of the "Ann plate", with stars, circles, raster scans, Lissajous figures and the name "Ann" scattered across the image in black on white.
Photo of a positive version of the "Ann plate", with stars, circles, raster scans, Lissajous figures and the name "Ann" scattered across the image in white on black. The photo is of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present Future".
![Photo of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present and Future"
Text is as follows:
4. On the Ann plate
The famous "Ann plate", showing the capabilities of the AAT's computer control system, appear in teh paper by Pat Wallace in this volume. While the photograph is widely remembered, exactly who took it is slightly uncertain, and probably irrelevant. However, for the record:
Pat Wallace: I did the experiment and processed the plate, but I think an AAT technician was present in the PF cage for opening and closing the shutter, with me at the telescope controls... I guess it was 1975 [It was 22 December 1974]
Peter Gillingham: I don't think it much matters but I'm almost certain Ken Oliver (the first AAT electrician) was the Night Assistant for the night and he was the one in the PF cage. But, as Patrick says, aII he had to do was to open and close the shutter (several times) as Pat commanded.
It's also my quite confident recollection that, one or two nights earlier as we (Pat, very likely John Straede, and I) were discussing what should be traced on such a plate and puzzling over what would be a suitable word, Ann Savage, came into the Control Room and, on being acquainted with the topic of conversation, suggested "Ann" right away, pointing out its geometric simplicity [and only two alphabetic characters had to be encoded!].](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:snbpxx4fxrcw4bvs2okniwfc/bafkreic4rwqasa3fjoci22ny7x4pb7o3hyv7whre7zwbbwpmkgj6kkv5oe@jpeg)
Photo of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present and Future"
Text is as follows:
4. On the Ann plate
The famous "Ann plate", showing the capabilities of the AAT's computer control system, appear in teh paper by Pat Wallace in this volume. While the photograph is widely remembered, exactly who took it is slightly uncertain, and probably irrelevant. However, for the record:
Pat Wallace: I did the experiment and processed the plate, but I think an AAT technician was present in the PF cage for opening and closing the shutter, with me at the telescope controls... I guess it was 1975 [It was 22 December 1974]
Peter Gillingham: I don't think it much matters but I'm almost certain Ken Oliver (the first AAT electrician) was the Night Assistant for the night and he was the one in the PF cage. But, as Patrick says, aII he had to do was to open and close the shutter (several times) as Pat commanded.
It's also my quite confident recollection that, one or two nights earlier as we (Pat, very likely John Straede, and I) were discussing what should be traced on such a plate and puzzling over what would be a suitable word, Ann Savage, came into the Control Room and, on being acquainted with the topic of conversation, suggested "Ann" right away, pointing out its geometric simplicity [and only two alphabetic characters had to be encoded!].
![Photo of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present & Future". The relevant part of the text is as follows:
As I releated at [this] meeting, Californian astronomer Sandra Faber told me before I left Keck that, on seeing the Ann plate image projected at an astronomy instrumentation meeting attended by Pat and Graham Bothwell (at MIT?) she knew that a new era in instrumentation had dawned.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:snbpxx4fxrcw4bvs2okniwfc/bafkreihpzjlgxuafwn5m6tpx7powux65fijdumzsimvmr7e36zrzddqjhu@jpeg)
Photo of a page from the symposium proceedings "Celebrating the AAO: Past, Present & Future". The relevant part of the text is as follows:
As I releated at [this] meeting, Californian astronomer Sandra Faber told me before I left Keck that, on seeing the Ann plate image projected at an astronomy instrumentation meeting attended by Pat and Graham Bothwell (at MIT?) she knew that a new era in instrumentation had dawned.
This is the "Ann Plate", a photograph that was taken during the commissioning of the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in 1974 as a demonstration of the capabilities of new telescope.
The AAT was the first large telescope to be completely computer controlled […]
[Original post on aus.social]
15.09.2025 03:34 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Why is AST SpaceMobile awful? If they launched all 400ish satellite they're planning, and you lived in say, downtown Toronto, you might not be able to see stars, but on the summer solstice you'd be able to see the Moon, Venus, and a handful of AST SpaceMobile […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
14.09.2025 15:59 — 👍 1 🔁 11 💬 2 📌 0
Bei der live gestreamten Diskussion um 21:00 werde ich dann auch versuchen, mich sinnvoll zu beteiligen.
#LNDA #Astronomie
13.09.2025 08:38 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Original post on fediscience.org
Ich halte heute Abend um ca. 19:30 einen öffentlichen Vortrag im Rahmen der "Langen Nacht der Astronomie" im Kino des Großplanetariums in Berlin. Mein reißerischer Titel ist "Die größten Sternentstehungsgebiete
im Universum" […]
13.09.2025 08:33 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Will give a talk tomorrow at the "long night of astronomy" in Berlin. Looking forward to that! 👍
The scary part is the live-streamed discussion session afterwards. 😱
#astronomy #publictalk
12.09.2025 16:38 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.social
Coming down off the adrenaline from running around looking for my animals to see someone sent me a link to Tony Mallama's article about Reflect Orbital, complete with hideous quotes from their company (plus a link to an old research paper on eye damage the paper author shared with me and I […]
09.09.2025 19:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@Thriveth Isn't that where the opening of "No Time to Die" takes place?
06.09.2025 13:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
"Diese Rechnung dient nur der Information. Es ist keine Zahlung erforderlich."
Das sind mir die liebsten. 😂 👍
04.09.2025 17:21 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@spacelizard All the options seem awful... What did politicians think how this would work?
Does one have to do this for mastodon as well? And if I ever travel to Australia can I then not use it from there?
04.09.2025 06:57 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Ich habe nur nicht verstanden, wie sie ihn trotz falschen Namens überhaupt haben verhaften können.
(Naja, und warum man die Bänder nicht rollen darf.)
29.08.2025 11:14 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
26.08.2025 16:01 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
25.08.2025 08:04 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@Devorppa That's why we do press releases or post about papers on social media. The articles themselves are not the place for that.
21.08.2025 16:29 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
@spacelizard @esoastronomy Wow, they have a lot of lighting at the ELT! 😱 Why are there floodlights that illuminate the base from below? That's like the churches and monuments that @skyglowberlin regularly points out. I hope it was just to get this photo and is not on regularly...
14.08.2025 08:08 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
@spacelizard I like yours better! The lasers are bright but not as aggressive as in the picture on the left. In my memory from walking on the platform at night they have rather a soothing color and brightness.
14.08.2025 08:05 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A fuzzy white dot on a blue background, with surrounding contour lines
3I/ATLAS measurement from HST is in: can see the coma but not the nucleus. Sets effective nuclear radius of r < 2.8 km (H>15.4), significantly smaller than earlier estimates (as anticipated).
Jewitt et al, (submitted?) arxiv.org/abs/2508.02934 🔭☄️
06.08.2025 03:17 — 👍 139 🔁 45 💬 3 📌 2
Original post on aus.social
Boycott #Google and #Amazon is the til:dr summary of this article … there are plenty of other search engines and maps providers (etc), so use them
Quote:
The UN report unequivocally lays out Google’s complicity. Through its involvement in Project Nimbus — a US$1.2 billion contract awarded by […]
24.07.2025 05:26 — 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
