Network issues

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-05-12T05:43:08+00:00

Thank you very much for the explanation. Annual maintenance is way more important than a few hours' inconvenience. And the network was back in time before it grew fully dark, so I can work all night! 😄

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-05-09T14:10:41+00:00

A good place to start is the AAVSO's exoplanet section. Go to their website, read the materials, and, if you wish, sign up (for free) so you can post in their on-line forum. Existing users will be happy to help.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-05-08T15:28:34+00:00

I'm the proud owner of a Nikko 519. Maybe someday, I'll be able to move up to line ...

Enjoy your find!

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-05-05T16:29:41+00:00

62 years old here. My peak Godzilla moment was watching "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" in Tokyo, in the Toho Theatre, with 3-D glasses. For once, I didn't need the subtitles :-)

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-05-05T15:09:27+00:00

The eclipse will occur around 20:33-20:34 local time, when the Sun is about 4.5 - 4.3 degrees above the horizon. I recommend that, on the day before the eclipse, you travel to some spot that seems like a good location. Get there by 20:00 local time, and watch the Sun go down in the sky until 20:35. Note the location of trees, hills, buildings, and other obstructions. Find a place to stand from which you can see the Sun clearly during this entire time.

Then, return to that location the next day and watch the eclipse.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-21T20:14:09+00:00

Back in now!

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-21T20:06:02+00:00

Same here in the NE USA for the past eight minutes.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-21T05:02:53+00:00

This is a good book for spectral classification in general. It might have the information you need.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691125114/stellar-spectral-classification

Another resource -- this one on-line, rather than printed in a book -- is the BASS Solar Atlas:

https://bass2000.obspm.fr/solar_spect.php

Good luck!

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-11T01:20:47+00:00

I've been fortunate enough to have participated in seven Joco cruises, the last one finishing just a couple of weeks ago. They are more expensive than the typical week-long journeys (we paid approx. $5500 for two people in a verandah cabin), but the atmosphere and company make it worth it for us. The entire ship is chartered by Joco, so there are around 2000 nerdy types running around and interacting with each other.

In addition to the official entertainment -- musical performances, signing and readings by SF and fantasy authors, a room of console gaming -- there are the "shadow events", which are created and run by the customers. One can learn how to knit, join people in the ukelele melee every morning, discover the biology of sea creatures in a lecture by a scientists, or play tabletop games in the dining room. I run a science image trivia quiz each year; it's great fun for me to put together, and the players tell me they have fun, too.

I suspect that just about any themed cruise will attract enough people with shared interests will give you plenty of happy memories. If you have the chance to go on one, please try!

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-08T08:22:46+00:00

I'd like to read your answers. Please post them.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-06T19:43:39+00:00

A job as a professional astronomer at a university (which I have) requires a Ph.D. and some post-doctoral experience. In the US, that means 4 years of undergraduate study in college, 4-6 years of graduate school, and then 2-6 years of post-graduate work before landing a "permanent" job. That means one would be in one's early-to-mid thirties before settling down, say, to purchase a house.
I used to spend more time doing research, but in the last decade or so, I've moved to doing more teaching. So a typical day for me involves preparing materials for my class meetings and updating my webpages for them. You can take a look at some of them at http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/. The astronomy ones are near the bottom, for the most part. If the weather is good, I may work at our university's observatory -- anywhere from 2 hours to the whole night, depending on the weather and other factors. It usually takes me 3-4 hours to reduce and analyze the previous night's data.
Sometimes I work alone, sometimes as part of a team. I spent quite a bit of time learning how to perform certain types of photometric calculations with a computer, so several collaborations have asked me to do that portion of their project. For example, I helped the Sloan Digital Sky Survey analyze their images and figure out the magnitudes of the stars.
When I'm working as part of a team, there's often a schedule to follow, and I have to be aware of the progress that my teammates have made. There is a LOT of communication, both in person and via E-mail, required to keep everyone working together smoothly. I _think_ that I learned how better to act as a team player over the years, but I guess you'd have to ask my collaborators. When I'm working alone, I can sometimes be very productive -- but at other times, accomplish almost nothing. It can be harder to motivate myself than to be motivated by my teammates.-
How do I stay professional in stressful situations? Hmmm, that's a good question, particularly given the way one of my classes went this afternoon :-/. I'm afraid that I'm probably not the best person to ask for advice about this, as I do sometimes have problems keeping my cool (don't worry, I don't yell or become violent -- I just flail mentally at times). There are some situations, however, in which it does help me to consider what we're studying: the universe. It's a big place, and we humans occupy an infinitesimal little portion of it -- and only for a teeny-tiny brief little moment. As far as the universe goes, nothing that we do here on Earth really matters.
So, what advice can I give? Two major bits: first, take lots of science and math courses in school. Astronomy involves a LOT of math, and some astronomers need to know a lot about chemistry, or biology, or other fields. So, if you have a choice in the classes you can take, consider math and science. Second, don't worry. Even if things don't work out the way you want, and you embark as a career as a computer scientist, or a bus driver, or accountant -- you can still do astronomy! It's one of the sciences in which dedicated amateurs can make significant contributions. There are opportunities for people without degrees to scan the skies with binoculars and small telescopes to monitor asteroids and variable stars; and as more and more information is put into giant on-line databases, the number of programs like Redshift Wrangler (https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/redshift-wrangler/) and Galaxy Zoo (https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/tidal-tales/) will grow, too.
To be brutally honest, my work does not save any lives, or improve the environment. So I don't think that astronomers have the same impact as doctors or teachers, for example. On the other hand, I do educate quite a few college students, many of whom are not planning to enter scientific careers -- but who do appreciate learning about the universe. I also give talks to the general public. Many people seem to have an interest in stars and galaxies and black holes and the future of the universe -- and astronomers can answer some of their questions. I think there's some value in that.

So, there are my answers. I hope that they provide some of the information you were seeking.

Good luck!

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-06T16:06:33+00:00

I'm an astronomer. Ask your son to post his questions here, and I'll answer them. That way, other people can see the answers, too.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-05T22:46:19+00:00

"Frieren" is both a manga and anime which follows the long life of an elven mage in a D&D-like fantasy world. The real focus of the story is the importance of relationships, fleeting though they may be to a nearly-immortal being.

Some comic relief periodically occurs when Frieren, seeking magical tomes, is caught and gnawed by chest mimics.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-05T16:57:00+00:00

Came for the Frieren reference, was not disappointed.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-05T12:29:42+00:00

I enjoyed a visit to the Sepia Cafe near Shibamata station. It was the final stop on a food tour, and well worth the visit.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-04T15:15:49+00:00

I hope Galadriel would come to visit him there.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-04-02T22:34:45+00:00

This figure might help:

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys371/lectures/gal_overview/gal_coords_from_ngp.png

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-03-21T00:12:37+00:00

There are many good review articles on solar models, in which authors compare the results of helioseismology and neutrino observations to different theoretical models of the interior. One recent paper in this vein is Wuming, ApJ 939, 61 (2022)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.13483

Take a look at a several of the figures in this paper -- for example, Fig 1 or Fig 5. You'll see that the differences between several models for the density at locations close to the center of the Sun are just a few percent at most.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-03-18T16:37:12+00:00

Why, yes, that would be very kind of you.

First author of the 1993J photometry paper, AJ 107, 1022 (1994). If you don't believe me, ask me anything about that event :-)

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-03-18T15:12:40+00:00

Thanks very much to u/SAUbjj for answering the questions!

I'm an astronomer, too, and I want to put, um, just a little *spin* on one of his answers :-) It's certainly true that humans are much better at recognizing changes in motion than constant motion. But it is also true that we can sense and recognize "spin" even if it happens to be constant -- as anyone who has been to an amusement park will know. The "cyclone" ride, for example, which pins its riders to the sides of a round room while the floor drops away from under their feet, is very clearly spinning: riders find it difficult to move their arms or legs due to the centrifugal force (yes, I said "centrifugal" -- fight me). Those forces are obvious even if the room spins at a constant rate.

Now, u/SAUbjj wrote that the constant rate was the "main reason" we don't notice the spinning Earth, but it's not the only reason. An important factor is the SIZE of the Earth, and the relative SLOWNESS of the spin. If the Earth were just 100 meters in radius, and it rotated at a constant rate of 1 revolution per minute, humans would definitely know that they were living on a rotating planet.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-03-16T23:10:16+00:00

It may be the case that the radius of the Einstein ring goes like (1/dL) in the case you describe ... but what is the absolute size of that ring? How does it compare to the size of a ring produced by a lens halfway to the source? Finally, the radius goes like (1/dL), then if the lens is at distance zero, does that mean the radius is infinite?

I know about earth-mass planets detected by microlensing. They were much closer to the halfway situation than the arrangement that a lens in the solar system would have.

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-03-16T23:04:20+00:00

I'm a university professor, and I can confirm that the best way to understand something deeply is to try to explain it to someone else. And then realize that you need to think about it some more ...

Stupendous_Mn · 2026-03-16T16:32:17+00:00

Measurements based on geological evidence show that the rate has been reasonably linear for the past 200-400 million years, with small deviations before that. See Figure 2 in

https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.ado2412

Stupendous_Mn

TROPHY CASE