Local Bolide

I woke up this morning to learn that a very bright and apparently loud (sonic boom!) meteor flashed over a location that is rich in all sky cameras so I decided to take a look.

Yes indeed the MMT all sky camera had gotten it, from an image with the timestamp 19:11:05 MST.

Here's an image showing the event:

The upper left is the image just before and the lower left is the image just after, with the event image of course being in the upper right.  The object is very low on the horizon (maybe about 25-30 degrees, but I'll have a better analysis of this later) and towards the North-NorthWest of the MMT.

The KPNO images aren't out yet as of this blog, but I'll keep an eye out for it today and post when there's an image to be seen.

UPDATE

The KPNO images just came out from last night and I'm sorry to report that, ARGH, clouds.

Music Featured on Ambient Online Podcast

I'm very honored to have been featured on the most recent podcast of Ambient Online.  Much thanks to S1gnsOfL1fe for appreciating the kind of sound I'm producing enough to want to share it with a larger audience.  As of this moment, this podcast has been played ***128*** times.  For me, that's a HUGE number.  Very groovy!

A screen grab of the AO podcast my music is featured in.

As I recall, the rhythmic background/baseline was done with my Theremin.  This is actually the 2nd version of this song.  The first was ok, but when I listened to it there was something missing and one track just didn't seem to fit.  So I reworked it a bit and recorded some new tracks and it's better now.  Of course I'll never be happy with it but I understand that it's ok to leave it alone and move on to new pieces.

Here's a link to the AO podcast.

More astronomy updates soon.  I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about my next move with the all sky camera project and I'll try to detail that in my next post.

Back From NowHere

I finally got my head around the problem I've been trying to solve with my all-sky camera project and am now proceeding.  The problem was to find the proper algorithm to calculate the RA and DEC of any pixel location in a given image.  At least on paper this is now complete.  I still need to encode and test it, and this is the next task which I figure will take a little while because there are quadrant complications that I need to figure out.

Once this is done, I can calculate the position of interesting targets in these all-sky images.  This will allow me to start doing some moderately interesting science.

Here's what one of my desktops look like:

Frame on left is my IRAF screen, showing the image header info.  Frame in right is the MMTO all-sky image I'm currently working with.

Thank the gods for the book 'Spherical Astronomy' by Robin Green for the math, and one of my college professors (Dr. Roemer) for the fearlessness to tackle these calculations.

Latest music on my soundcloud channel: http://soundcloud.com/cosmiclettuce

Peace to All.

More new songs, which to my amazement continue to happen.

• Song Of The Day #31 'Flung Into Space' 
• Song Of The Day #32 'Oh My There's A Hole In My Submarine'
• Song Of The Day #33 Remix
• Song Of The Day #34 01 August 2013
• Song Of The Day #35 'Twenty-Nine Is Prime' 
• Song Of The Day #36 03 August 2013
• Song Of The Day #37 04 August 2013

Song Of The Day #24 ''Seeing Terra From Far Far Away'

Yesterday, NASA released an image of the Terra-Luna system from Saturn.  During the day, I happened to hear a cover of 'Leaving On A Jet Plane' originally written and sung by John Denver.  I've always liked this chord sequence, which is G-C-D.  I took this and created the following song -- inspired by a beautiful image and a beautiful song.

Song Of The Day #7 05 July 2013

Unknown Author

Not a sea of flame

Whose waves and deeps

Shall gulf the sun’s and worlds

But as a night, a darkness, and a silence

Past all light

Beyond all sound,

Oblivion waits and sleeps

Within its absolute encircling sweeps,

The universe

A stream of stars that sight deems countless

But upon whose gleaming flight like some eternal tide,

Oblivion creeps

A darkness and a silence,

There shall draw to one eclipse

The systems,

And disperse this strange and troubled dream

Of time and place

Then sun nor world shall be, nor light, nor law,

But endless night and emptiness of space

A vast nirvana of the universe

Music is Everywhere

Wow a lot's happened in the past several months.

Too much to post here.  Best just to put my links in here so you can hear what I've been up to.

http://www.youtube.com/user/AstroAndMusic

https://soundcloud.com/cosmiclettuce

I'm creating a new song every day and I've been doing it now for nine days in a row.  Tomorrow will be number ten and I'll start spreading the word about it.

Peace