Searching for Aphrodite's ocean birthplace; Counting pages read and martinis ordered; Finally got needed insight into Einstein's General Relativity

Greetings from Palmia Observatory (offsite and docked in Haifa) Well this has been a busy vacation week and I have just a couple of astrophysics and cosmological topics to go over today. First of all, Resident Astronomer Peggy and I have been having a lot of fun and had a chance to investigate the birth place of Aphrodite (or Venus if you prefer the Roman name. The legend has it that she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione and rose out of the sea near the island of Cyprus. Well, we went to Cyprus and looked

Trying to do astronomy from a moving ship and does the shipboard physics colloquia actually exist?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory (offsite at the island of Cyprus)

Well its been a busy week, what with trying to find our way around the cruise ship "Viking Sea", but we are getting used to it.  We also tried viewing the stars from the top deck and found that even though the skies are dark, the cruise ship itself is surrounded by lights.  There are lights illuminating the water and wake and even though it is

What books do you take on vacation or a cruise?; Here are the half dozen or so books I am packing.

Greetings from (offsite) Palmia Observatory

Well, I've had quite a time deciding what books to take with us on our cruise vacation.  Resident Astronomer Peggy has a couple of paperback novels and some science periodical, like Science News, The New Scientist, Astronomy, and Sky and Telescope magazine and her Ipad, so she is good to go.  I had a hard time because as much as I want to read a lot of good books, I know that as often as not, the books

Resoution of Pluto's RA and Dec discrepancy and electing to try new astrometry software package

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, we left off last time with one remaining mystery regarding the different values of reported RA and Dec for Pluto.  What to do about these different reported values?  They don't differ by much and as long as you are just interested in getting Pluto in your camera frame field of view, both seem to be acceptable.  But if you want to use astrometry to verify that yes, indeed that dim object of just a few pixels in your image is Pluto, then, yes, you need accurate astrometry and the catalog location used for finding Pluto has to be right.  So this is what

The most precisely tested physical theory; More analysis of Pluto images and validation of 95mm aperture viewing; Five events for consideration to be on your calendar: Offsite travel

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well we are finally resting up from our wild weekend at Nightfall in Borrego Springs just in time to pack our bags for vacation travel.  Last time, I described the attempted capture of an image, or at least a few pixels, of Pluto and how, as a lot of amateurs know, the first and second and maybe other attempts often does not go as planned.  Well Borrego Springs was no exception as we discussed earlier, but you might be interested in some of the other analysis I've been doing to explain what went wrong.  But before that we should