How to Use iTelescope.net

By: Francis Walsh, Texas

Telescopes produce hard science for astronomers to explain the universe but not everyone had access to telescopes until a group of telescope owners and astronomers created global telescope networks like iTelescope.net. Learn how to use iTelescope.net for hard science and you may discover something about astronomy you could not explain before. A wide variety of different telescopes and CCD cameras are ready to be controlled through the internet using networks designed for remote access. It is easy to become a pro after learning a few steps to point and expose images of any part of space you want to know more about.

Things you will need:

Internet
Browser
Membership/Free Trial
Password
Storage

Step one

Access and use iTelescope for free. Get a new membership account by filling out the registration form here: https://go.itelescope.net/register/register.aspx. Complete the form and click ‘Register’ after confirming your information is correct and answering the security question.

Step two

Log into iTelescope using the user information you were given after registering a new account for the first time. Verify the information and then enter your username and password into the log in form when you access https://go.itelescope.net/. Click on ‘Remember Me’ and your computer will make retrieving your password easy in the future. Click on ‘Login’ to access the telescope network.

Step three

Click ‘Available’ next to T3. ‘Available’ will become visible when the weather conditions are clear at night and when no other astronomer is using it. Enter your username and password to access the control panel for the T3 telescope and wait for the telescope interface page to open. Select a target from the available list of objects and enter a number for the amount of images you want to take and how long each image is to be exposed. Scroll down and click ‘begin image run’.

Step four

Click on ‘System Status’ after closing the alert box that informs you the imaging run has started successfully. The System Status page shows you the steps the telescope is taking to image your object as well as show you the current sky camera from Mayhill, New Mexico.

Step five

Preview the images as they are taken and stored online using the ‘Preview Last Image’ button under ‘System Status’ title of the page. The preview image will open in a new window and you can see almost instantly the images that you took.

Step six

Retrieve your images after they have been stored online by the iTelescope servers. The images are first saved in their entirety and then made available for download by the astronomer. Go to https://go.itelescope.net/default.aspx to access the ‘Select Action’ drop-down menu. You can do a number of actions here but to download images you want to click ‘Get My Images (via Web or FTP)’ https://go.itelescope.net/default.aspx.

Step seven

Click on the files that you want to download. Each telescope and each image series has its own folder and designation. Download the files directly to your hard drive or external storage device. Extract the data from the compressed file folders and open the images in FITS Liberator or Makali ‘i to view, enhance, and learn from the professional images that you took using the T3 telescope and camera package http://www.itelescope.net/telescope-t3/.

Tips

• Indulge in the FAQ http://support.itelescope.net/forums and tutorial videos http://www.youtube.com/user/iTelescopes available. Novice astrophotographers can benefit from hearing from others and seeing how others interact with the equipment.
• You can capture the screen of a preview image and paste it into a program like Paint to have the images you took handy right away. The full-size images are being stored on the iTelescope image servers and will take a little longer to become available.

Warnings

• Exposure is the name of the game in astrophotography. After exposure there is composition. Astronomic images files (.fit format) are known for being difficult for amateur photographers to work with. Special software will be used to interact with some original files. Hubble has a free download FITS Liberator processor http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/downloads_page/ and Makali ‘i, http://makalii.mtk.nao.ac.jp/ is another free, scientific, image processor for original .fit images produced by science platforms.
• Download all images as soon as possible onto a secure local driver. Images are kept for only up to 60-days on the iTelescope servers.

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The Impact Zone

By:  Francis Walsh, Texas

The Impact Zone Brief: “Perfect Black Bodies”

In astronomy, the perfect black body can absorb all wavelengths and frequencies of radiation. Radiation is a product of heat. Radiation comes in all shapes, sizes, and speeds of wavelength but its affect, and its power, comes from more than the generation of heat. A perfect black body is a theoretical object because a perfect black body has not been found that can absorb the theoretical radiation that sits in opposition to the perfect black body. Earth is a black body but it is not perfect by any means.

The Sun produces EM or EMR (electromagnetic radiation) from its core. EM is energy emitted and absorbed by charged particles which travel in varied wavelengths in the vacuum of space. The wavelengths created become the field of radiation that encompasses the sun near the core and far away from its surface. Within the radiation field of the Sun there is what is known as the near and far fields of our Sun’s radiation. The near field EM of the Sun is affected by the charged particles produced closest to its core. The EM in the near field is far different than the radiation that resides in the far field. By the time the radiation reaches the far field, electricity and magnetism are present in wavelengths traveling in oscillation to each other as they travel away from the surface of the Sun. Both electricity and magnetism are of a fixed ratio to each other in the form of EM they travel. EM travels at the speed of light.

Something else is going on with the Sun though. If the Sun radiated as a thermal source only, the light that we receive from it would vary because of a change of frequency from the speedy ultraviolet wavelengths down to the visible light spectrum and even radio waves. Max Planck has the goods on “Planck’s Law” in physics which has a lot to do with understanding the electromagnetic energy contained within different wavelengths of radiation. [1]

Scientists have viewed the Sun using filters of various types to see the sun in ten of the wavelengths that are present. The SDO (Solar Dynamic Observatory) [2] gives us all a view of the Sun wearing sunglasses that can only see a certain wavelength of EM. The (AIA) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly shows us ten different white light, ultraviolet, and extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to keep tabs on our closest star. This examination is the most comprehensive report we can get from the Sun. The time is coming where we all understand the parts that radiation, electricity, and magnetism play when speaking on space weather and a solar threat to Earth.

The sun is generating short wavelength gamma and x-rays at its core. As they propagate toward the surface of the Sun they become elongated into the radio waves that are known as SF (solar flux). Once outside the active core region, the far field radiation continues to move away from the Sun as the solar weather Earth endures. Somewhere in the transition from near field to far field radiation, something occurs that is not fully explained and understood by science. The particles that move away from the Sun are moving at accelerated speeds and come with a radio signal that gives the Sun its consistent brightness. The wavelengths that are created are not created by radiation alone. That is, there are wavelengths created by a source other than the thermo-nuclear rector that is purported to be at the center of the Sun. The Sun produces electromagnet forces that may not conform to the way physics sees the standard model working. A perfect black body will be able to absorb all ration and wavelengths but there is no perfect body known in the solar system. Even black holes are being reported as emitting space weather at such great magnitudes that it escapes the event horizon and takes with it mass that would have otherwise been consumed by the black hole. It is becoming well known that black holes are not the most powerful of all bodies and they are not the theoretical perfect black bodies they were once thought.

What is escaping the black hole? Why, it is electromagnetism and it’s going to be discovered to be the most important feature of star development, regional space weather, and in universal terms, the wavelengths of energy that can escape a perfect black body or be unable to be absorbed due to the size of the wavelength it becomes. Our ability to understand the dynamics of electricity in the universe depends on understanding the electromagnetism that is created from the center of stars and emitted back out into the universe in either near or far field radiation shield of electromagnetic wavelengths of varied length. From short x-ray and gamma-ray radiation confined near the center of the solar core to the elongated wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible, and radio waves that hit the Earth on the way to the edge of the Heliosphere.

Researching the Sun continue as this solar cycle progresses. Specialized training requires an environment that compliments the lessons being taught and the information being learned. The Sun will be the foremost threat to communication here on Earth. After communication there is a threat of physical changes in humans when extremely charged and fast moving particles enter the atmosphere here on Earth and are able to strip away components of the atoms we rely on for life. It may star with the air we breathe but it eventually ends with the DNA that we are made of. The Sun produces enough energy during extreme solar outbursts to instantly change life here on Earth. While our scientists create videos about what is not going to happen in 2012, maybe their time would be better spent on what makes the Sun such a threat and how its dynamic existence could produce an environment where no one is able to escape the long-term affect of extreme Solar weather on a fragile eco-system that is protected but not protected from the extremes of Solar activity during Solar maximum.

It’s time to move from a false threat to a real one now that we have about a year of preparation. Don’t think this solar maximum has to be like any other because the last cycle we just left, solar minimum, was of unexpected length and quiet. I expect this solar maximum to be the one that carries us from knowing what the Sun is doing to understanding what it is doing to us here on Earth. There is one fact that stands as the most important in this effort to understand the Sun. We didn’t know anything about the Sun not too long ago and our ability to see the Sun’s activity was the realm of the astronomer. This solar maximum will bring new eyes and idea to the science of electromagnetism, radiation, and the Sun if not to change the model then to understand what the model missed in its explanation and physics of the Sun.

I have cancelled Cosmic Obsession “NightLife” presented on American Freedom Radio because I don’t work with anyone who would rather speak about my efforts with someone else when they should be talking with me. I have little respect for anyone who does that. The station offered very little to the listeners except regular commercials. No way to communicate outside of callers calling in and the level of professionalism inside the studio there was enough for me to leave. All Danny Romero had to do was say my name and I was gone.

You can now Order a Painting. Donate $25, $50, or $100 to fund my goal of bringing more new content to your desk every day. This summer will be filled with activities that could use your support to make come true. Painting will be 8X10, 16X20, 18X32 depending on your donation and shipping will be required before shipping. International shipping is expensive and may take longer to receive your artwork. Every painting has made it to its owner and we currently have paintings on six different continents.

Commission a painting or choose from the new list of painting that will become available by Monday April 2, 2012.

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Listen to me today from 4-5PM CDT on Revolution Radio. The only place you get to hear the truth these days. http://www.freedomslips.com

Reference:

[1]Planck’s Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck’s_law

[2]SDO Solar Dynamics Observatory
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
[2a] SDO Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Dynamics_Observatory