Software Bisque

The Case for One Shot Color

starstone — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:12:00 GMT

I've just returned from my very first Advanced Imaging Conference. It's a safe bet it won't be my last. Great fun, saw some friends, made some new ones, learned a lot.

Anyway, I've had an epiphany while there. I _am_ an advanced imager. Yep, no doubt about it. Now, don't think me vain for making such a claim. Being an advanced imager (at least in my mind) only means that I am applying advanced techniques in my pursuit of images. It's like saying "I'm a graduate student"… not the same as saying "I'm a PhD". I still aspire to being an "expert", or keeping with the metaphor, earning my doctorate (my first APOD!) one day.

I took my first image of the moon um…about 13 years ago. I used film. I had a crappy scope, but the moon was bright and at least one or two images per roll were decent enough to make my family proud and impress my co-workers (not yet working in the astronomy industry mind you). I graduated to digital, and experimented with short exposure deep sky, and built a web cam planet imager. Results were less than promising for a few years. I finally got an equatorial mount, learned to polar align, and started at least having something that represented a galaxy or nebula from time to time. Once of course I got a Paramount ME, I really started spending more and more time imaging, and devouring books by Wodaski, Ratledge, Berry, Burnell, etc. I'm even giving talks about astrophotography at star parties now. Saying I'm a beginner is just hiding from the fact that I'm not especially skilled. Well, I'm getting there, slowly, and I've been at it a while now. The last two years, almost manically.

<Warning, I am now channeling Andy Rooney… if you don't know who he is/was, your life is the poorer>

This makes me "advanced". But I'm still not an expert. I do have a modicum of confidence now though, and it's high time I spoke up for myself. A number of friends and colleagues have been patting me on the head like a good little boy because I'm a one shot color imager. To make matters worse, I use a DSLR.

Oh heavens. Might as well be using a TASCO 60mm refractor.
(Mine was red!)

So here's the thing. I know that the cooled monochrome cameras have VASTLY better noise characteristics, and are HUGELY more sensitive. I also just don't care, because it doesn't matter. Have I lost my mind? Nope, it's all a matter of your goals and environment. I suspect that a great many of our customers and many people in the astroimaging community at large are in the same boat I am. Two things:

1. I want color images (not monochrome, not Hydrogen Alpha).
1.b. Okay, I admit Ha is pretty frigg'n cool… but back to the _color_ part.
2. I'm a portable imager.

Frankly, it's just plain silly to think that I'm ever going to switch to a monochrome camera and use a color wheel. #2 is why. If I had an observatory, or was imaging almost exclusively from my back yard, that would be one thing. But I'm imaging in my back yard, I'm imaging from at least three other locations in Florida, a spot in Georgia, Tennessee, and two places I like in North Carolina. Now that I can go all night on battery, I plan to explore some even darker sites in Florida this winter.

So… given my experience with portable imaging, here's what my common sense tells me that someone with a spot at New Mexico Skies just doesn't get. I set up at dusk. I do my alignment and am ready to go by Astronomical Twilight. From there…. sometimes I've gotten as little as an hour before clouds move in. Sometimes past midnight, sometimes till dawn. Next day, I'm gone. No way to know for sure how long your going to get. Clear sky clock and the water vapor satellite doesn't know about the pond down the hill, or the recent rain storm that has left the ground wet, and will raise a nasty fog as soon as it cools off. Or, oh gee, I blew a fuse and the night is over. If I can get an hour of imaging in (then some darks), often I can at least salvage something. What am I going to do with two hours of luminance, and 30 minutes worth of blue filter?

Zip. That's what.

So, spare me the monochrome camera's are better song. Oh, sure I could image blue in Florida, green in North Carolina, and then get some Red and luminance in Tennessee. Yeah, that's going to happen, and I'm going to balance against all those sky conditions, align them and spend three months getting one picture? I don't think so. That's not "advanced", that's being a masochist. Monochrome camera's and filter wheels, just don't _always_ make sense.

It's possible that from my back yard I can image a given object over several nights and make it work (I have actually done a two night image), but most of the time that's just not going to be the case. A red image under really dark skies, a blue image under somewhat light polluted, etc. Just goofy to try and make that work. Until I have my own observatory, and as long as I'm traipsing around with an MX, I'm probably always going to be a one shot color imager. I suspect many present and future customers are too. This doesn't mean I'm disinclined to use a one shot cooled CCD camera instead of a DSLR mind you… in fact I have my eye one one in particular. But for the foreseeable future, one shot is definitely where I'm going to be.

Of course, all opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else at Software Bisque and/or is not an official statement from Software Bisque on the topic. Oh, and don't look at the sun, it can blind you.

Richard

More Field Testing

starstone — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 01:16:00 GMT

Well, I'm counting down the days until my next vacati... um, working field test trip. I'm leaving at the end of this week for the StarFest star party at Bays Mountain Park and Planetarium in Kingsport TN. After a weekend there, I'm heading to the Mid Atlantic Star Party, but only for a few days. Then whiplash back to Western North Carolina to PARI (Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute) and the PARI Star Party that I help organize. PARI just bought an MX and I've volunteered to "help" install it and set it up for them. I'm a "Friend of PARI" Volunteer, so no, Software Bisque personal installations does not come with all MX purchases! Two friends of mine here in Florida have also bought MX's (see, so confident, I'd sell them to my friends! LOL). They too have gotten a little bit of hands on support... but hey, that's what friends are for, right?

Well, I had the last prototype MX, and I had to send it back. I was only slightly sad by this because in it's place I get a nice brand new production mount. The electronics in my old one were not the same as the production mount, and there were a few "prototype" thingies that stuck out a bit. If I'm going to be showing it off, it should look just like the one your going to get I suppose.

So, about this field test. I have some new software that I personally have been working on, that we plan to talk about at AIC in a few weeks (yes, I'll be there!). If your of the Mac persuation and a DSLR imager, you'll be excited about it. There, now I've gone and said too much! There are also some new features in TheSkyX, etc. that I just haven't had a lot of practice with. A good work out will be a good thing.

I have the smaller of our two 48v batteries and I'm going to give it a run in some colder weather (probably), and I have a new dew control system, and battery system for my Canon DSLR camera (that's what I image with), and spare batteries for my Mac laptop. I use a slightly older Mac laptop for my scope and imaging runs because the older Mac let you swap batteries. Apple doesn't think you need to swap batteries... well, my newer laptop will make it all the way on a flight to the west coast, but it's no match for a full nights imaging run. Running my laptop off a bigger battery (and not using an AC inverter - what a waste!) is a project that is also actively being looked into. Anyway, over a week, skies permitting I'll be banging on our latest hardware some more, using the very latest and some new software bits. Can't wait! I might even get a decent picture or two out of the deal.

Of course I'm also showing off our baby. If you're going to be at any of these events, be sure and say hello. I shouldn't be too hard to find. :-)

"On the road again....."

Richard

PATS Post Mortem

starstone — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:24:00 GMT

Last weekend was the fourth annual Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show (PATS). It was great fun and I got to meet a lot of our customers. Of course the new Paramount MX was the star of our booth (see below). Working from Florida, these kinds of events also give me a good chance to catch up with Steve, Tom, and now Sarah Bisque. Yeah, we talk on the phone, exchange daily emails, and there's the occasional meeting via Skype, but there's nothing like discussing the industry and future plans over sushi or some good Italian food!

Another good reason for doing these kinds of shows is the face to face interaction with our customers. On the one hand, there's the guy who shows up and tells me my Gas Giants app was the greatest app ever made by man… well, not quite, but he was quite happy with it and it was very gratifying. On the other hand, there's always someone who wants to show up and be the "trouble maker". Thing is, even with the occasional "trouble maker", when it's face to face, both parties realize the other guy is really just another human being trying to do the best they can, either to deliver great products, or to use your product (which they may think is less than great). Face to face tends to open everyone's eyes. I suppose this is why we have diplomats… much harder to launch a missile at someone you've had dinner with, and have met their kids.

Running up to PATS was RAW (Riverside AstroImaging Workshop). I went out early to attend these workshops on Friday, and it was well worth it. I've come a long way on my imaging trail, and I picked up some great new imaging tips from Greg Crawford, Warren Keller, and R. Jay GaBany.

Speaking of imaging, I have a personal project I've been working on "off the clock". I've been working with the Canon SDK and I'm hoping to have an X2 driver for any other aspiring DSLR imagers out there with Canon cameras. My personal goal is by AIC (yes, I'll be there too)… and get this, we are going to give away the source code to it for free. Hopefully this will help others make X2 plug-ins for their favorite camera's too. The Canon SDK is 99.99% cross platform too, so the same source will work on Windows and Mac OS X. I'm hoping to set an example that others will follow. It seems to me that camera support is the biggest hold up on more widespread adoption of Mac in Astronomy. My own personal opinion…. Parallel's and/or Bootcamp don't count ;-)

Well, star party season is almost upon us! I'll be at StarFest, Mid Atlantic, and PSP next month with a Paramount MX. Stop by and say hello! I'm actually co-chair of PSP, so I want to especially invite anyone who's in the area to come to that one! See http://www.pari.edu/psp for more info.

See you at AIC too!

Richard

I need more power Scotty!

starstone — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:28:00 GMT

So apparently last night somebody spilled some Pepsi on a control panel or something and blacked out half of Southern California. My daughter, who lives in San Diego was telling me how dark it was. Awesome! Break out the telescopes!

"We can't cook anything", she complained. They drove for two hours to find a Denny's that was open, had power, and wasn't crowded with a million other people who couldn't figure out how to make food without electricity. Kids these days ;-)

So, this brings to mind my recent quest to cut the cord. At least the umbilical that is, to AC power when I'm imaging. I started hauling a Paramount ME with me to star parties last year and of course, "Do you have Power?" kept coming up. There are a lot of very dark places to sneak off to in Florida, and none of them have power. I'm also rather fond of one or two spots up in North Carolina and will drive up there to do imaging when I can get away with it. The problem with my NC spots is power can be hard to come by. One spot, I've yet to image from has no power, and I'm determined to do a night long run there soon. There's a sweet very dark sky spot in Florida I've heard about through the grape vine too, in a state park… no power.

So, I need portable power for my laptop, my camera, my dew control system, and finally the mount.

Well, it appears the world has standardized on 12V for most portable electronics, and portable 12V power is pretty easy to come by. Problem solved… well, almost. It appears the Paramounts run on 48V, not 12V like everyone else. Why? Well, because it's "better". There are all manner of electrical challenges and problems that just go away when you stop trying to make it all work on only 12V. I've found this to be true with at least two other 12V scopes I've used in the past. Both, from two major brands, seem to pretty much stop working reliably at all on battery power after they get a few years old. On AC, everything is peachy king. On battery… well, one of them acted like it was demon possessed. I've taken note that many mounts run better on 18v rather than 12v it appears too. Yeah, physics is physics, and no amount of wishful thinking or market demand is going to make 12V work for everything.

Well, back to my power problem. Four 12v batteries in series should do the trick. That, and a wheelbarrow. There's also the generator option. I live in Florida… I have TWO generators. So, there's the generator…. a wheelbarrow… then a couple of gallons of gas, some two stroke engine oil, and one of those big heavy computer UPS things for when the gas runs out or the generator just catches cold. Let's not forget the constant brgrgrgrgrgrgrg sound all night long, and the lovely smell of gas fumes and exhaust. That stuff gives me a headache.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible solution? Sure, you and your buddies out camping, power to spare. You can even run a TV to watch the game, and run a coffee maker. Heck, why not put an air conditioner in your tent. Well, if I'm going to do that, I might as well have an RV (which I would not complain if someone would like to donate one!). I'm more of the…um… Toyota Corolla camper type camper, and I'm often by myself. Which means _I_ have to do and move everything, and I don't have a lot of room to spare. Given the option of NOT having power, it sounds great. But only great in the way that having your infected leg amputated rather than dying from septic sounds great.

When I got my prototype MX for testing, Steve also sent me one of our 5ah 48v batteries for evaluation (this was before we announced them). I call it the "blue battery" because inside that little black baggy thing, it's actually blue. It's an amazing battery, and it's based on some new battery technology, not the old school lithium ion stuff. At 5.5 lbs, it weighs less than the carrying case that has my eyepieces (yes, I do still occasionally use them). My son calls it a ZPM after a science fiction show we used to watch together. You could power a city with a ZPM for 100 years, and it would fit in your back pack.

My ZPM can power my Paramount MX or my Paramount ME for three nights worth of imaging. That's almost as impressive. I don't have anything that's battery powered that will run for three days. The technology is also very resistant to cold, but I haven't had a chance to put that to the test myself yet. I will soon though.

Now, when I think about it… I have spare batteries for my laptop. I have a heavy duty battery to run my dew heater (or jump start my car if the need arises - LOL), and now I have a small battery to run the mount. I can even run my DLSR off the mount's 12V supply up on the versa plate, which is also being powered my ZPM. All together these batteries take up less space and weigh less than the gas to run a generator would. They smell better too.

Yeah… I'm thinking not. Read my lips…. 5.5 pounds. The size of my shaving case. Three nights power. Costs less than my best eye piece.

I'll take two please.

See you at PATS! Got some new hotness running on an iPad to show off!

Richard

Paramount MX Serial Number 1

Daniel R. Bisque — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:49:00 GMT

In 1996, Software Bisque delivered the very first Paramount to Fairbanks, Alaska. Michael Rice, then Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, installed his mount in a remote observatory that was accessible for much of the year by a 50 mile snow cat ride…or a three day dog sled excursion that would have given even Balto pause.

Mike occasionally shared with us the trials and tribulations of operating an observatory in the middle of nowhere, with temperatures routinely dropping to 50 below. He also learned a thing or two about the need for ultra-reliable equipment for remote observatory operation.

After retiring as Vice Chancellor of UAF, he and his wife Lynn founded New Mexico Skies, a new-style “bed and breakfast” geared to the astronomer.

In 2002, Steve Bisque took a road-trip to Cloudcroft to personally deliver the very first Paramount ME to Mike and Lynn’s place. The ME quickly became the backbone of a new business venture hosting remote telescopes under world-class skies.

Today New Mexico Skies and Fairdinkum Skies in Australia host over 40 remote observatories that rely on the Paramount ME for consistent, reliable and precision performance.

As we finish assembling the first production run of Paramount MXs, it’s only fitting that Mike and Lynn receive the very first one to herald the dawn of a new era in “truly portable or permanent use” robotic telescope mounts.

We’ve placed Paramount MX delivery responsibilities in the hands of United Parcel Service this time. And, much to our UPS driver’s dismay, the next several months (and hopefully longer) will bring a deluge of Paramount MXs shipping from of our offices here in Golden to destinations all over the globe.

We want to express our sincere thanks to all who have placed deposits for the Paramount MX during the past several months. Now that Paramount MX #1 is out the door, we’ll do our best to deliver your mount to you as quickly as possible, and will let you know exactly when your mount is ready to ship.

We’re also looking forward to learning where astronomy takes you.

Paramount MX on the Road Again...

Daniel R. Bisque — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:40:00 GMT

Paramount MX at the SCAE this weekend!

...(read more)

Paramount MX, The Mount-On-The-Go

starstone — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:17:00 GMT

Well, I didn't get one of the first Paramount MX's, but I did get pretty much the last one before the "real" production run. Mine differs from yours (you did order one, right?) only in the control board electronics, and I'll be getting a production version in a bit, but first we have some anxious customers who'd rather have theirs. Mine works great in the mean-time!

Psst... don't ask me when yours is shipping... (George, you know who you are)... They don't tell me these things either. All I know is... "soon".

So, I've been planning this week long road trip with the MX, up through some dark sky sites in Georgia and North Carolina to give her a shake down as a portable imaging mount (remaining arsenal includes Canon T1i, and a 190mm f/5.3 Mak-Newt).

First UPS "lost" pretty much the only free available MX in existence, and it finally shows up four days late. Talk about sweating bullets. First night out was in Georgia at a state park. There was some entropy involved too because for the second time in a month, I got run off from a state park due to a brush fire.... this time before I even arrived! Well, first night out, I found out the MX is not an ME... it's a bit smaller. It's quick to set up, quick to polar align, and well, just darn cute. Personal imaging trips in the future will always be the MX... and the ME will remain at home unless I'm showing it off at a star party. Oh, won't that be cool, I can't wait until my first star party when I have an MX and an ME set up next to each other... imaging on both of them of course! Talk about dual core multi-tasking! Oh, shoot. I need two cameras now... I digress.

If you know how to use an ME, you know how to use an MX.... mostly. A lot of refinements I really like. It rained most of the week too (dang'ed my luck). But I did get two half nights in, the last I actually did some imaging rather than playing with it and TPoint/SuperModel. Yeah, I took pictures the first night but all test images. The last night I was at PARI (Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute) in Rosman, North Carolina, up on their "Optical Ridge". Gorgeous inky black skies. The attached picture I snapped of my set up just before it got dark.

Well, it appears the next issue of Astronomy Technology Today is going to have an article recounting my adventures to some degree and a blow by blow of the new mount. I don't want to steal too much of their thunder, but I will say that for those of you waiting, it's worth the wait ;-)

Richard

Sub 10 Arcsecond All Sky Pointing Accuracy

Daniel R. Bisque — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:21:00 GMT

There’s a really exciting new feature in the TPoint Add On called the “Super Model”*. The Super Model automatically determines the best pointing model for your imaging system. With a single button click, TPoint performs an extensive statistical analysis of the pointing calibration data and converges on an optimal pointing model using all the processing power of your computer. It goes far beyond the iterative approach that was required to create a pointing model in earlier versions of TPoint.

What does this mean? You’ll achieve the best possible pointing accuracy with the minimal effort and spend more time imaging.

To demonstrate, the above TPoint scatter diagram (with Jupiter superimposed for scale) shows 7.4 arcsecond all sky pointing accuracy from a Super Model. (Jupiter’s apparent angular diameter from Earth varies from about 30 arcseconds to about 50 arcseconds.)

So, for this system**, slews to objects fall within an area the size of Jupiter. Not bad for an amateur telescope!

You can read more about the Super Model in the TPoint Add On User Guide.

* The Super Model feature is exclusive to TheSkyX Professional Edition for Mac or Windows version 10.1.10 or later with the optional TPoint Add On.)

** This pointing calibration data was collected using the Automated Calibration feature on a permanently mounted, accurately polar aligned Paramount ME carrying a ring mounted C-14 with the mirror locked in place. The SBIG ST-8 was rigidly attached to an Optec TCF-S focuser and all cables routed so that there was no drag or sag on the system.

The Next Update of TheSkyX...GPU Shaders

starstone — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:56:00 GMT

The next update to TheSkyX is getting very "pregnant" and should be out soon. There is some really cool new hotness coming for T-Point, but I'm not working directly on that, and I won't steal Daniels thunder on that little gem. What I do want to talk about is some new OpenGL technology that is making it's debut in this update. Moving forward, we (well, I) are going to be adding incrementally some OPTIONAL GPU (that's the graphics card) accelerated rendering technologies. Today's graphics cards can do floating point math far faster than your CPU can (ah, remember the days when you'd add a floating point co-processor to speed up your astronomy software?), and this has applications for graphics, as well as some other things.... stay tuned ;-) Well, back to the debut new feature for TheSkyX, I've made a custom albedo map of the moon (mostly recycled from Seeker work), and some of the new digital elevation data now coming out of all these new moon missions. I've created what in the OpenGL world we call a "Normal Map" for the surface of the moon, and using that I can create a more realistically rendered image of the moon. It's not EXACTLY the same as the view through the telescope or your camera, but it is much closer than anything we've done before, and I hope you'll like it. In the attached image, I've included three views of the moon from March 31, 2010. The first image on the left is a photograph I took of the Moon on that evening. Next is the new GPU shader rendered version of the Moon, and finally on the right is the old way we rendered the moon.

It's important to point out, that the "old way" is still in there. In fact, we don't think the majority of our customers are going to have OpenGL 3.0 or later graphics cards and drivers right away. But those that do, will get a view of the moon that was not possible with the older graphics technology. Speed up time why don't you... you can watch the craters come up and out of the flat surface and the shadows change as the suns angle changes. While the terminator doesn't EXACLY look the same, I think over all this is a much better approximation of how the moon looks.

Which brings me to another improvement to the Moon display. I myself am a big lunar observer and photographer, and of course I had quiet the collection of full lunar disk images to look at while working on this. What I found was that our libration calculations was not quite "there". This was very difficult to see and validate with the old Moon view, but the new rendering was close enough to the photographs that it was much easier to see for example that Mare Crisium was a bit too far away from the limb for this date. So, there you go, it's not just prettier, it's actually more useful if you're also a lunar observer!

Poor Seeker... I know you probably think I've forgotten you, but I haven't. I've had a new update "almost" ready to go for a while now and I promise I'm going to spend some time there to tie up all the loose ends. It's actually going to be a pretty Hefty update too... more on that next time.

On The Job Training

starstone — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:28:00 GMT

Well, I still have one more Star Party to look forward too this “season”, and that’s the Winter Star Party. It’s a little later this year, coming the first week of March really. Good seeing in the Florida Keys usually, but this being my 7^th consecutive WSP, I can tell you the light domes from Marathon and Key West have grown worse over the years. It’s still much better than my back yard, don’t get me wrong, and still so worth the trip. I fear ten years from now that may not be the case any longer. Better come now ;-)

If you do come this year, you will be in for a treat. The Paramount MX is getting pretty close (in fact, we are taking preorders now!), and the Winter Star Party will be it’s first public operational showing. Not like NEAF or PATS where it was just sitting in our booth. Either Steve or I will be imaging with it. I don’t think we are doing any special presentations; just look us on the Berm (that’s usually where I set up). I’ll probably bring the Paramount ME too, which I’m totally in love with now.

I was reflecting recently on how much I’ve learned working for Bisque (and how danged lucky I am). This April will be… I can’t believe it… 8 years! Wow. When I came to Bisque I was a pretty avid amateur astronomer (spent a short time at Starry Night in fact), but was mostly a visual observer, who dabbled in lunar imaging. Shooting the moon is pretty easy compared to deep space photography, and most of my deep space attempts are… let’s just say amusing. A good parallel would the crayon drawing of Daddy holding a… something pointy?... that you might have on your refrigerator. “Oh, he’s so cute, look he can take pictures through the telescope too…”. A CCD Camera just wasn’t going to happen for me, but I was really interested in using my DSLR (I am an avid daytime photographer btw) with the scope. When I got my first “high end” scope, a few years back I took the lazy way and got a GOTO (enough star hopping already), but it was an Alt-Az. I really needed an equatorial, so I picked up a low end mount and started learning the ropes. I had tried using a Wedge… I nearly flung it into the bushes at a state park once… there is no substitue for a good equatorial mount I think. Then along comes the MX… I finally talked Steve into letting me use an ME so I could learn the ropes and possibly be more useful than just making 3D graphics for Bisque. Oh how my life has changed. I know it is a lousy craftsman that blames his tools… but boy does it make a difference when you have the right tools! Try driving a nail with a rubber mallet sometime. Now, I’m staying up entirely too late taking hundreds of images, stacking them, etc. All on my Mac btw… I have the bug, and am now totally ruined. I was just starting to get decent results before the ME showed up, and I think that’s probably the best way to learn, frustrating as it is. If your first car is a Rolls Royce, you are never going to appreciate what a fine automobile it is. Anyway, I’d describe myself now as “Competent Beginner”. Not outstanding, but getting recognizable galaxies and nebula… who knows, I’ve made a name for myself in the OpenGL world, ten years for now maybe I’ll be one of those imaging guys with a couple of APODS, and a picture or two in Sky & Tel. Hey, a boy has to dream right? The image processing aspect fascinates me, and there is tremendous overlap with my other graphics programming experience. Who knows where this will lead. Someplace exciting I think.

I’m afraid I’m not terribly good about keeping the blog up to date, but I do tweet frequently about my OpenGL work (@OpenGL). I started a new twitter account, @AccidentalAstro (the Accidental Astronomer), where I’m going to tweet about observing, astronomy events, and what I’m working on at Bisque. I seem to do pretty well with the smaller updates, so maybe I’ll be more on top of things there, and it makes more sense than telling my OpenGL followers about how the iPad star charting app is coming along...

Okay, enough blogging, back to writing code. I should have a couple new things to show of on the iPad for Bisque by the Winter Star Party too… but not if I don’t get back to work!

Discover Gas Giants

Daniel R. Bisque — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:07:00 GMT

Software Bisque's first iPhone/iPad application has arrived at the Apple App Store!

Gas Giants shows Jupiter's and Saturn's major moons for any date and time, and is a really handy tool for visual observing. Richard Wright, our primary iOS developer, has done a great job with Gas Giants. Judging from early feedback this simple app is an invaluable tool for visual observers.

Please let us know what you think!

Gas Giants Web Page >

On The Road Again

starstone — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:16:00 GMT

Getting ready to pack for Night Fall in Borrego Springs, CA. I'm giving two workshops on using TheSkyX and a morning (morning?!?! What ARE they thinking… it's a STAR PARTY!) talk on our move back to the Mac and iStuff plans. I've always dreamt of spending the night in the desert, and not in a 55 gallon drum… anyway, I'm really looking forward to this.

In the mean-time, Gas Giants, our first iPhone app has been submitted to the App store and we are waiting for Apples blessing. I expect we'll make some noise as soon as it's available. I'm also hard at work on our next iPhone/iPad app, and actually I'm stopping on the way back from Night Fall in Golden do do some planning and such with Steve and the brothers Bisque. Staying at Tom's house with his cats<g>. Learning from him sometimes is like drinking from a firehouse, but he's got a nice setup and he just makes TPoint look so easy ;-)

In my other travels, I recently attended the US Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC. I was helping out in the PARI (www.pari.edu) booth, and never in my life have I seen such a mass of humanity. There were reportedly over a million people there. It was geek heaven, and we had thousands of people at our booth. My one regret... I never made it down to the NCIS booth to get my picture made with Abby. Maybe next year... Anyway, reports of the death of interest in science and engineering appear to be somewhat exaggerated. There were plenty of interested and very bright young future customer... um... minds there. I swear, I taught a 5 year old to do spectral stellar classification on a computer. She couldn't even read, but she could match patterns!

So, one other thing to crow about. I finally have my own Paramount! Well, it's not "mine", but it's mine in same way "your" desk at work is "your" desk and "your" computer, etc. One weekend with it in my back yard and I'm indentured forever. Now I can never quit. I've played with them before, but never just had one with my own scope doing my own thing. It's similar to when I won an expensive Nagler eyepiece at the Winter Star Party, all my other eyepieces were instantly turned to trash. Now all my other mounts are plastic battery operated toys. After setting it up, I spent some time wiping it down with a cloth getting all the styrofoam bits off of it, and I realized this was the uber-geeks equivalent of waxing my Ferrari. My wife came out, inspected the thing, and asked it if came in blue. I'm sure going to miss her.

Richard

Party Time!

starstone — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 18:02:00 GMT

I believe the point of a blog is to update it more than once every six months for so... okay, REALLY, I'm going to try and do better.

First of all... I think somewhere it says 'Seeker Developers Blog" or something like that. At least it used to. I am still working on Seeker, and I'm still in charge (mostly) of our Theater Suite for planetaria and such. Lately, though I've been pushing our mobile developments forward. I've shown some things off privately, but so far I don't know if there has been any "official" announcement, so let me be the first to spill the beans on the web site:

Yes, Virginia, Software Bisque has noticed the trend towards mobile development.

Our first iPhone/IPad app will be out very soon (it's actually done), and it's called "Gas Giants". I'm sure you can guess it's intent. I'm hard at work on what's next, and no, iOS is not the only mobile platform we are "thinking" about.

Star Party season is here! Woot! I actually live in Florida (alas, not Colorado like the brothers Bisque), and all summer I languish for clear skies and good seeing. Tomorrow I'm loading up my car and heading up to the Mid Atlantic Star Party in Robbins, NC. I'm giving a talk Thursday about our new mount, TheSkyX Pro, and our "iStuff" I'm working on. I'm kind of a beginning imager, and I hope to practice a bit with my Canon DSLR.... yes, not everyone at Bisque uses $50,000 SBIG cameras... okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but some of you know what I'm trying to say. I just got myself the shiny new Canon DSLR SDK from Canon, and Matt Bisque just cranked out our final polished up SkyX camera/focuser plug in architecture and documentation. You do the math on that. :-)

Back to the Star Party circuit... after MASP, I'm going to my own clubs (Central Florida Astronomical Society) star party at Kissimmee Prairie reserve in South Florida. It's actually this weekend, so I'm coming straight down, picking up my amateur astronomer son, and going straight there. Honestly, the skies are better than at the Winter Star Party in the keys (yes, I'm attending there too, and trying to drag Tom and Steve along as well), and it's a LOT less crowded. Of course good seafood is harder to come by. Oh well.

Next stop is Night Fall in Borrego Springs, CA. I've longed for years to spend the night under desert skies, and I'm looking forward to this one a lot. I'm giving two workshops and a talk there too... oh boy, do I have somebody fooled.

Finally, is the PARI Star Party in Rosman, NC. This one is my favorite, but I'm a bit biased because I'm sort of the co-organizer for it. Fingers crossed, toss the chicken bones, and say the magic words... I _MIGHT_ even have an MX there to show off on the helipad one night. This one is a bit smaller and informal, and somewhat new. If you need a URL, here's a ity bity one: http://tiny.cc/urxv5

Time to get packing. So many scopes, so little room in my trunk....

Richard

TheSkyX Professional Edition Has Landed!

Daniel R. Bisque — Sat, 08 May 2010 06:26:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce that TheSkyX Professional Edition is now available on the Software Bisque Store. We encourage everyone to visit the Software Bisque Home page to read about this exciting release, including the new Add Ons and the Universal Subscription.

For me, it's been a long day, and I'm off to get some sleep. Thanks to everyone for your patience, and have a great weekend.

Farewell Dr. Dave

Daniel R. Bisque — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:18:00 GMT

Dr. David B. Toth, a long-time friend, passed away on February 26, 2010. The Bisque brothers will miss him dearly.

An emergency room physician by profession, Dave was a passionate, intelligent, articulate man who loved life and pursued many interests; one of them happened to be amateur astronomy.

Dr. Dave, for whatever reason, was a champion for Software Bisque. He first met Tom Bisque in 1992 at the Texas Star Party and they quickly became buddies. Since then, Dave has attended almost every conference, star party, and astronomy-related event with us, in the role of “adopted brother”. He always went out of his way to help, including spending long days in our booths fielding questions. All on his vacation time.

Dave was also a valuable contributor to SB, and many other astronomy-related forums. He was even known to hop in his plane to visit a stranger, just to lend a hand.

Friends like Dave don’t come along very often. Our condolences to his wife Ronda, and his two sons Michael and Christopher.

Paramount ME Assists "Super-Earth" Discovery

Daniel R. Bisque — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:24:00 GMT

A few years back, we wondered what Harvard University was up to when they purchased eight Paramount MEs. I'm always fascinated to hear about how the Paramount ME is actually used "in the field" by amateurs and professionals. We learned later that the Paramounts would be part of an exciting project called MEarth. Located at the Fred Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, the eight mounts, each carrying a 16-inch RCOS telescope and an Apogee CCD camera, search small red-dwarf stars for transiting "super-Earth" objects.

Six months into the project, MEarth today announced its first "super-Earth" discovery! Exo-planet GJ1214b, the second-smallest ever discovered, is orbiting the star GJ1214 located about 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus and most likely contains water. Now the Hubble Space Telescope can be used to further characterize the planet.

Check out the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Nature and Time.com web sites for more information about this exciting discovery. Wow!

Even though we're not directly involved with MEarth, it's great to see Software Bisque products making contributions to cutting-edge astronomical discoveries. Far out stuff!

The MEarth (pronounced "mirth") Project is an array of eight identical 16-inch-diameter RC Optical Systems telescopes that monitor a pre-selected list of 2,000 red dwarf stars. Each telescope perches on a highly accurate Software Bisque Paramount and funnels light to an Apogee U42 charge-coupled device (CCD) chip, which many amateurs also use. (Photo credit: Dan Brocious, CfA)

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Lock Up the Developers!

Daniel R. Bisque — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:39:00 GMT

"It’s now December 2009 and TheSkyX Professional Edition has not been released! How is this possible? Your developers must be a bunch of monkeys that sit around and Facebook all day... it is high time to lock those guys up and release TheSkyX Pro already!" -Anonymous Customer

Harsh assessments like the above can be a good thing. They make us take a hard look at what we’re doing and where we’re headed. Yes, despite our best efforts, and blue sky release date estimates, TheSkyX Professional Edition is not shipping. Stepping back, there are many reasons why.

Have you noticed the computer industry is rapidly changing?

On the Windows side of the world,

Windows 7 is showing promise as a viable replacement to XP Pro. Is it time to finally upgrade your ageing observatory computer?
Windows computers with 64-bit processors (so that the 64-bit OS Editions can be used) are now particularly affordable and really, really powerful.

SB purchased a brand new Dell “box” from Micro Center last weekend. It came with 8 GB RAM (remember, 32-bit applications cannot access this much RAM; 64-bit apps can), 1 TB HD, a relatively fast ATI video display adaptor (critical to OpenGL applications like TheSkyX), and Intel's new Core i5 quad core processor running at 2.66 GHz. (Four processors can do lots more work than just one!)

All for $800.00.

The new Windows operating systems (both 32- and 64-bit editions) mean there's new technologies we're trying to exploit (like concurrent processing that takes advantage of every core in your computer) and extensive testing to be done. This takes time.

On the Mac side of the world, or should I say "universe",

Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) is now 64-bit end-to-end and includes many exciting new technologies like OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch.
Apple's coming out with (and selling) so much new killer hardware it makes my head spin.

Again, wrt TheSkyX Pro, here's yet another new OS with new features and technologies to use. More time finishing TheSkyX Pro.

Then there’s the software development tools side of the world:

TheSkyX is built on Nokia’s Qt , IMO the world’s best development environment. The trolls at Qt Software just released version 4.6 of their latest framework yesterday. This latest framework has tons of features and powerful technologies for Windows 7, Mac OS X, 64-bit hardware, scripting, and on and on and on.
Qt 4.6 (and the previous recent release of Qt 4.5) on the Mac side is based on Cocoa (the future of Mac application development).

TheSkyX Pro, when released, will be built on the latest version of this powerful new framework. We hope to offer true 64-bit versions for both OSes, too. Did I mention this takes time?

Then there’s the TPoint Add On side of the world:

Patrick Wallace recently released a new version of the venerable TPoint Telescope Pointing Analysis Software. Among the exciting new features is the ability to create the “ultimate super model” from your pointing data, with a single button click. No more guess work adding terms when building a model.

We're busily trying to incorporate this new version into the TheSkyX Pro's TPoint Add On.

Then there’s TheSkyX Serious Astronomer Edition side of the world:

TheSkyX SAE users are providing great feedback. Thanks everyone!

All the suggestions, changes and improvements in TheSkyX SAE go directly to TheSkyX Pro.

So, in the end, incorporating and digesting all the exciting new technologies into TheSkyX Pro has conspired to delay its release. Should we be locked up for trying to make our products better in this rapidly evolving climate? Hopefully not.

But the answer to the $64,000 question, "When will TheSkyX Pro actually be released?" will have wait until after the new year.

At the end of the day, we cannot express how much we appreciate everyone's interest in TheSkyX Professional Edition. Thank you. We hope you have a merry Christmas season and a happy new year.

Observing Season is here!

starstone — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:47:00 GMT

I just got back from my latest trip to Golden. I live and work in Florida, and work for Bisque remotely. Occasionally though, it is useful to pay a visit to the "home base" and do some planning, and just have a few meals together with everyone. Lots of exciting stuff going down! For one, in Florida, we amateur astronomers have another name for Winter: Observing Season. My scopes sit in my shed most of the summer. Between the oppressive humidity, giant bugs, oppressive humidity, soaking dew, oppressive humidity, poor seeing, and did I mention oppressive humidity? Winter is another matter. Cool and sometimes even cold at night, the air is dry and stable. Sub arc second seeing is the planetary and lunar observers paradise. It's also great for astrophotography. I've taken a lot of pictures of the moon in the past. My favorite instrument for this was an 8" Meade Newtonian that they don't make anymore (StarFinder). I've tried taking pictures through my LX200 SCT, but I've had very poor results on the moon with it. Last Winter Star party, I made a tragic and costly mistake in the hobby. On the last day the vendors were trying to get rid of stuff and I picked up an 80mm F/12 "Guide Scope". My first "real" refractor (or so I thought at the time). Refractor lovers know where this is going.... I took it home and turned it on Saturn. Saturn was gorgeous compared to the view through my 8" SCT. The beginning of a slippery slope. I took some lunar images through it and was delighted. A couple of months later, I bought a used 6" Celestron refractor from a friend at NEAF. I was ecstatic, and took it to my first star party two weeks later. Hands down better than my LX200 I thought (view wise). Jupiter, Omega Centauri... spectacular. I had no further need of my 8" SCT, and gave it to my son. I took some lunar images through it... Hmm... pesky color aberration near the limb... but I could live with it, after all other than that it was still a superior view to what I was used to.

Then, recently I spoke at the Mid Atlantic Star Party, and there was a young man there trying to sell his fathers telescope equipment. He had recently passed away, and his son just wasn't into the hobby. He had a small refractor there. It was a Takahashi, FC-76. (This is the part where Darth Vader says, "And now your failure is complete..."). I bargained with him, offered half what it was worth, told him he could get twice what I was offering if he was patient, but it was all I could do, and I promised it would not be on e-bay or astromart the next week. I took it home.

You know those allergy commercials where there are children dancing in the field of flowers? All looks well until they peel this imaginary film away and you see "clearly". Well that's what it was like when I looked though my Takahashi the first time. All my other telescopes were instantly turned to garbage (incidentally, the same thing happened the first time I looked through a Naegler eye piece!). I have always been a big time lunar and planetary observer mostly, and the moon through my Takahashi... there is no substitute. I have named her Vera. She will be on ebay, after you've pried her from my cold dead fingers... um... where was I? Oh yes, well I've been taking pictures of the moon through Vera, and I must say I don't think I'll ever take pictures through anything else I have. I have actually done a comparison between all three scopes. It's like comparing my Canon DSLR to one of those disposable cameras you buy at 7-11 that's preloaded with film. Yeah, it's that good. Only my Naeglars are worthy of Vera, and my cheapo barlow will now have to go too.

What does all this have to do with what's going on at Bisque? Well, I'm getting pretty decent at lunar photography and now I'm actually going to try some deep sky stuff. Tom Bisque is of course the master of this, and on my trip he showed me how to use T-Point, and the ropes for polar aligning a Paramount. I don't have a Paramount of course, but I am getting one of the new smaller mounts, which will be ready soon. I got to tour the machine shop and see how they are being made, and they are coming along nicely. Prototype will be ready soon, and I'm going to be the "Poster Boy" for beginner deep sky astrophotographers. I have a DSLR, a decent scope, and soon a brand new mount from Bisque. And, I'm going to do everything on my MacBook pro, and only using software from Bisque (well, maybe Photoshop)... and no, not running Windows. While there, Tom was futzing trying to get a blue tooth adapter on Windows to work with a Paramount. I just used the BlueTooth adapter in my Mac (using the yet to be released TheSkyX Pro for the Mac), connected to the Paramount, and started slewing. First try. Yeah, I'm the Bisque Mac Fan Boy too ;-) Tom is getting there.

Well, observing season is here, I'll soon have one of the new mounts to try out, TheSkyX Pro is in late late development, and if it weren't cloudy right now... Vera and I would be spending some more "quality time" together...

Richard

On Netbooks...

starstone — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:15:00 GMT

I've been on the road a bit, and it's always great talking to customers, meeting other vendors, and of course doing some sight seeing along the way. Had a great weekend in Pasadena at the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show. Steve, Tom, and I walked around old Pasadena on the last night and I used my iPhone to find out when the ISS was going to be over. When it did, I took pictures, and we pointed like a bunch of geeky tourists. A couple of the "normals" noticed, and totally freaked out when we told them it was the space station. Sort of an impromptu sidewalk astronomy event. It was really fun!

Just two weekends ago, I was invited speak at the Mid Atlantic Star Party in Robbins, NC. I must be a jinx to NC because this was my second star party in two months there and it was over cast both times. Still had a great time though, and after my talk, I was "mobbed" by a couple of guys who wanted to know if TheSkyX would work on their Netbooks. Well… yes, but it might not be too fast. I had already had an on-line discussion with someone about the OpenGL not being too spiffy on them, but TheSkyX does work. The "word on the street" is (according to these guys) that the netbooks are becoming wildly popular with amateur astronomers because they are cheap, have long battery life, and they can drive their telescopes in the field. I have to admit, my new super hot Mac laptop does not go out into the dew, but I use my last generation laptop (whatever that may be) for telescope control myself. The idea of those notebooks had not really occurred to me, but apparently it has to a number of our customers.

Today's Netbooks are designed to be cheap, portable, and have long battery life. There are some engineering choices that must be made to accomplish this, notably they do not have fast CPU's, and their graphics chips likewise have slow clock speeds, and not a lot of gates on those chips supporting a wide 3D feature set. They are ideal for on the road word processing and web surfing. Trying to get Seeker to run on one might be "possible" (with some), but it is a fools errand, you might as well try and run todays latest 3D intensive video game. Even if you got it to run, the frame rate would be very low, and your battery life would likely be measured in minutes, not hours.

TheSkyX on the other hand is a completely different story. When setting up the OpenGL rendering layer for TheSkyX, I intentionally picked an older subset of 3D hardware functionality so that it would run well on older and less capable 3D systems. The rendering needs for TheSkyX are quite simple compared to Seeker as well. In fact, TheSkyX does run on most netbooks quite well, and even has a non-OpenGL mode that is still faster than TheSky6 was. Getting it to work on a Netbook takes some tweaking… well, at least until now (or soon, I should say).

When TheSkyX Pro ships, there will also be maintenance releases of TheSkyX SAE and Student Edition. These will have some user interface tweaks and a "Small Screen" installation option that automatically sets the toolbar and dialog sizes appropriately, and sets the target frame rate to a smaller value to conserve battery life. Ideal for controlling a small scope in the field, or I guess use with a non-controlled scope or binoculars in the case of Student Edition.

I talked to Steve about this right after I got back from MASP, and Steve went out and bought a little HP Netbook himself so he could make sure everything looks and feels right. See, we do try and listen to our customers ;-)

Richard

Theater Suite News

starstone — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:42:00 GMT

As I mentioned in my last blog, the next maintenance release of the Theater Suite is about ready to roll. It's not as simple as me just checking in source code, so don't expect it tomorrow, but it's coming soon.

In this next release we have significantly reworked the theater mode screens. TheSky has a better and more logical layout, and Seeker exposes more of the normal functions when in theater mode now. In addition, some controls were very temperamental (scroll bars) in the last build and are working well now. Syzygy simple works now. That was a challenge and a half. Syzygy communicates with the other apps via sockets and there were some crazy timing issues messing things up quite a bit on most peoples systems. Especially under Windows. Works great now, and a last minute Vista related bug was the last bug squashed. The biggest addition to the new edition is Mojo, a completely new media player. The last media was more of a technology demo as we just needed something to play videos… or so we thought. I spent some time at a few planetaria and talking more with people to find out more of what they wanted. Honestly, I did have someone unload a bunch of feature requests on me very early… and I wasn't sure we'd really need all that. Sounds unfair, but it took several other people telling me the same sorts of things to get through. Sometimes there is a danger in listening to just one customer, and I've spent weeks before working on a feature that only one person wanted. I've grown cautious… perhaps too cautious. Anyway, the new Mojo is great I think, but it's also only the beginning. I have big plans for it, taking into account a great deal of feedback that I still haven't had time to implement. I'm not going to be bored anytime soon, that's for sure!

It's been a busy summer for the Theater Suite. We demonstrated our 4kx4k rendering capabilities on a 60 foot dome at SEPA in Nashville, and I gave a demonstration at CAPE in North Carolina to a smaller group of planetarian's. Probably won't generate much sales, but they are a fun small group, and it's a good opportunity to just get to know some real planetarium people better, and… well… listen to them. I learn a lot taking these little "vacations". :-) Finally, I also gave a presentation at a Media Globe Users Group meeting in Hickory North Carolina. We "sort of" built a tour of the solar system together. I pulled the trick they used on the cooking shows, and had a completed version done and rendered ahead of time. Good thing too, they asked so many questions and were so excited, I could hardly cover the material I thought they'd want to hear. By the way, I did just say MEDIA GLOBE. We pretty much don't care much about hardware… we make software. Whatever you got, we want to plug into it. IBM made hardware and software for the hardware. Microsoft made software for everybody's hardware. We want to be Microsoft.... did I just say that out loud?!?

Richard

Seeker News and Snow Leopard Technologies

starstone — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:31:00 GMT

Sometimes programming is a bit of a chore, sometimes it's just so much fun you don't want to go home at the end of the day. Lately that's how it's been with me. I've just finished up a maintenance release for the Theater Suite and gotten back to some really fun programming. I think I'll talk about the Theater Suite in another posting. I want to get right to the fun stuff!

I've been working again on "Just Seeker"… you know a version that YOU can run on your desktop and not just on a planetarium dome. We should have a new release for you hopefully before summer is over. One of the most exciting new features is the addition of more asteroids. More asteroids? How many more asteroids? Try just over 460,000 asteroids. You will be able to download the latest MPCORB.DAT file from the minor planet center and dump it in the Seeker data directory and visualize every cataloged asteroid at once. Even more exciting, I have three calculation engines to evaluate the orbital elements in real time. CPU based, which uses multiple cores. For small numbers of asteroids (there is a slider to adjust how many are shown) this works quite well and has a good frame rate. There is also a GLSL implementation that uses OpenGL graphics hardware. This implementation can evaluate all 400,000+ asteroids and keep the frame rates very fluid (60+). For Snow Leopard users, we will make a special build available that uses OpenCL. 100+ fps with all 460,000 asteroids. It's got to be one of the coolest things I've ever done to see those guys spinning around with time sped up. I've broken them down into color coded groups too: Near Earth, Potentially Hazardous, Trojans, and "Others". Turning the different groups on and off is a powerful tool for seeing the scale and structure of the asteroids.

Also in Snow Leopard, I'm using Grand Central Dispatch. Wicked easy threading model. Apple marketing overplays it a bit… the technology is basically just an easy to use thread pool manager. Yeah, you could build this yourself, but they've done it for you, and it really encourages you to make better use of multiple cores. Apple has like with OpenCL made GCD an open standard…. perhaps one day we'll see this on Windows compilers. Not holding my breath on that. Unfortunately, I still have to do threads "the hard way" for non Snow Leopard and Windows systems.

Another place in the new Seeker I'm using multiple cores is for satellite computations. I've also added five satellite constellations (one is Space Junk) that consists of just over 5,000 objects. Again color coded you can turn them on and off and it's a power visualization tool. Satellites are a little more intense computationally than asteroids. 5,000 satellites at once is going to really stress your system, and unfortunately they require double precision math all the way through… no graphics card assist… at least not with the current generation of graphics cards.

There's lots of new content on the horizon too. An audio "Factoid" feature will make Seeker well suited for school aged kids who need to do reports on the solar system. There are a few other goodies on the back burner simmering nicely. I'm going to hold back a little just in case they don't make the final cut this round, but they are also way fun to work on, and I can't wait to get them out to everyone.

This brings up a paradigm shift that is starting to happen with Seeker. My initial philosophy was realistic visualization only. Illustrational features (you can't actually see all those asteroids in space, nor the satellites buzzing the earth) was left to TheSkyX. Customer feedback indicates this is a bit narrow minded on my part and I'm slowly starting to see the light. A long range plan is forming for Seeker, and you might say the current version is only the tip of the iceberg of what is yet to come.

Oh, one last note. I'm on twitter now! Follow @opengl for updates about my other OpenGL related work and the class that I teach at Full Sail in Florida.

Richard

Blast from the Past...

Daniel R. Bisque — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:04:00 GMT

I recently ran across this YouTube video of a Computer Chronicles show that featured TheSky with "push to" telescope control from in 1992.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2525578882968773249

My how times have changed!

Busy Bee

starstone — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:57:00 GMT

Well, I have been one busy bee since I returned from the Winter Star Party. The next big event was NEAF, where I met one of my hero's (as well as 100's of thousands of other Astronomy Cast fans) of the astronomy podcast world, Pamela Gay (I'm secretly in love with her, shhh....). Steve and I were introduced to her at a social event the Friday night before hand, and then she came by our booth twice the next day! We all talked with her a bit, and she was just a super terrific person to met and chat with. I gave her a free copy of Seeker :-) She absolutely did not have that "I'm a celebrity and your not" air about her either. Great... now I'm twice the fan.

I believe to my ruin, I have "crossed the line" when it comes to telescopes. I have three 8" reflectors currently, and while at the Winter Star Party, I picked up a used 80mm refractor. My astrophotography interests lie mostly with lunar photography, and my 8" SCT is just horrid at trying to shoot the moon, so I thought a small refractor might do the trick. I made the mistake of looking at Saturn with it. Wow, what skies I thought, and pulled out a bigger reflector.... crap. Total crap. Now, I'm ruined, and I think I'm going to become one of those snobby "refractor" people. At NEAF I bought a 6" refractor... I took it to my local clubs star party. Yep, I'm ruined. I plan to donate two of my 8" reflectors to an educational facility, and the 8" SCT is now in the hands of my very happy 16 year old son. It's not even a super high end refractor either... yeah, I'm ruined! I think the "trash scope" for a lot of people prejudices us against refractors. A shame really. Speaking of "Trash Scopes", check out www.365daysofastronomy.org. It's a daily pod cast about the International Year of Astronomy. I'm doing one on December 26th, called "Confessions of a Christmas Trash Scope".

June is going to be just nuts. I'm going to the annual Apple Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco and have some specific plans to improve Seeker while I'm there. In particular, my QuickTime code needs to be brought up to date more, and I'm not doing the best job possible getting the best bit rate out of it. Last year I spoke with some engineers there and got some pointers, but never got around to digging deeply into it. My goal this year is to spend some time in the labs and "get it done"... with a little help from my friends of course! The Apple Developers Conference is actually one of my very most productive weeks all year. I'm also very excited about learning more about Snow Leopard... there are definitely some interesting technologies there that we might get into.

The week after that is SEPA (SouthEastern Planetarium Association) in Nashville, TN. That's going to be a great week too. We will have a 25' inflatable dome in the vendor area courtesy of our friend Christi Whitworth over at PARI, and have a killer demo planned for the 60' dome, all made with Seeker! Christi is also going to help me with my workshop there and talk about how she used TheSkyX scripting to create a Messier Marathon for one of her "Evening at PARI" presentations (that's www.pari.edu to save you a Google on that). Steve is coming too, and we'll be showing in our booth/dome a really nice projection system from Ashe Enterprises. Going to be a great week I think!

Richard

Finding your Mojo

starstone — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

It's probably about time I updated my blog. It may have been a year or so since my last post and I'm going to get back into the habit... promise!

I just returned from the annual Winter Star Party. What a week! The weather was much better than last year... much much better. There were a couple of nights when most people gave up and left, then later, the clouds would clear out, and I observed nearly all night long. It was good therapy, and of course I got to see some friends I don't get to see that often. One special friend I had hoped for couldn't make it, but once I quit pouting I had a great week. Ah, next time...

So, what have I been up to? Mojo, that's what. Mojo is my "code name" for the new media player for the Theater Suite. I have big plans for Mojo, not all of which will be realized by the first release, but should be in place by the end of the year. The current media player for Theater Suite does just what it "has" to, which is play pre-rendered movies. The new Mojo is a combination of Garage Band and Final Cut Express and PowerPoint... but for Domes. I believe by mid year it will be a differentiator and a keystone feature of the Theater Suite! The first usable version should be available in the next maintenance release sometime this Spring... I think. Stay tuned...

So, if your not into the "Planetarium" part of our planetarium software, what's up? Well, I have also been working with Lochness productions on a new educational feature for Seeker (which will also be in the theater suite too). Since it's Lochness, you can guess it's more content related than anything else, but there will also be some programming to go along with it. You'll just have to wait and see ;-)

Oh yeah, we are also planning on going to SEPA... all of the above will be demonstrated there, so come and see us!

Richard

TheSkyX Student Edition Review in S&T...

Daniel R. Bisque — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:22:00 GMT

It's always truly exciting when one of our products reviewed in a major astronomy publication. Sky & Telescope's April 2009 review of TheSkyX Student Edition is no exception. Woo hoo! If you have not done so, please check out the S&T Test Report section on pages 38-39.

After reading the review, there's a few items I wanted to point out:

TheSkyX Student Edition accesses a database of over 25 million IP addresses to automatically turn your computer's IP address into a longitude and latitude. Pretty cool stuff.
TheSkyX Student Edition update addresses the "no automatic download of minor planet data" and the "minor interface bugs" items in the "Things We Don't Like" column.

Thank you S&T for considering TheSkyX Student Edition as "review worthy", and thank you Mr. Heafner for another positive software review! (See the November, 2007 edition of S&T magazine for his Seeker review.)