@spacelizard@aus.social
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

spacelizard

@spacelizard@aus.social

Does astronomical instrumentation (e.,g. https://mavis-ao.org) at AAO in Sydney.
Interested in all things space-related, hobby electronics, & lizards.
A lot of my posts will be photos of lizards, you can find (or block) them using the #LizardPosting hastag.

he/him

#fedi22 #astronomy #science #software #space #reptile #lizard #making

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spacelizard, to TeslaMotors
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

ABC news have decided to take on the "electric cars aren't really better for the environment" misinfo.

The analysis seems to be fairly thorough, and has been tailored to the Australian situation.

Their conclusion is the lifetime CO₂ emissions for a mid-sized electric SUV are at least 2-3 times lower (depending on state) than a comparable petrol SUV, with the difference becoming larger if the owner has solar power at home.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-27/comparing-electric-cars-and-petrol-cars/103746132

spacelizard, to random
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Seeing everyone's aurora posts while being in Sydney reminded me of this classic @oatmeal cartoon.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/celestial_events

spacelizard, to random
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The stealthy, patient kookaburra did eventually succeed in stealing a chip from the woman on the right.

Photo of a kookaburra, looking down on the customers of a cafe.

spacelizard, to random
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

World champions of "We'll fix it in software."

Working around a memory fault on a 47 year old spacecraft at a distance of 24 billion kilometres: https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/04/22/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth/

spacelizard,
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I'm hoping that someone will publish a deep dive into this once the dust has settled, I'd love to know more about how they diagnosed the problem and implemented the fix.

spacelizard,
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A very long and detailed thread that's been following Voyager 1's problems since they started last November: https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/111570537492379275

Thanks to @pink for the link.

dgar, (edited ) to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

For your reference.

~ Originally by @AstroKatie

spacelizard,
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@dgar I think @AstroKatie deserves the credit for originating this joke. She posted it on Twitter, using emojis, years ago.

spacelizard, to Astro
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Fascinating. It turns out that the secret to the seamless compositing in Mary Poppins was an optical beam splitter just like those used by astronomers today in Sodium laser guide star adaptive optics systems.

H/T @ja2ke via @grumpygamer

https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk

spacelizard,
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

And I mean exactly the same type of beam splitter. In both cases it's separating the 589 nm Sodium D-line light from everything else.

These days astronomers use these to pick out the light from meteor-deposited, laser-stimulated sodium atoms 90 kilometres above the ground.

60 years ago Disney used them for a near perfect form of chroma keying, for precisely one movie!

spacelizard,
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I'm more than a little curious about how they could have made a narrowband 589 nm beamsplitter 60 years ago. Having made 3 they then, apparently, found themselves unable to make any more.

spacelizard,
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@mattkenworthy I can totally imagine it being something like Barry, that one vacuum deposition tech with the near super-human skill at absolutely nailing all the layer thicknesses, finally retired and none of the younger techs were accurate enough make a Disney™ filter to spec.

ja2ke, to random
@ja2ke@idlethumbs.social avatar

This video from Corridor Crew is pretty amazing. They re-create the nearly perfect compositing from the penguin dance sequence in Mary Poppins, which was achieved using high intensity sodium vapor lights and a very custom beam splitter, instead of a blue or green screen. It truly feels like a lost art rediscovered. When the matted footage just perfectly drops in I gasped haha https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuIVsNzqDk

spacelizard,
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@ja2ke Fascinating! I work in astronomical research and can say that astronomers regularly get beam splitters of exactly this type (separating Sodium light at 589 nm from everything else) custom made for use in our instruments. Our use case is obviously completely different (laser guide stars for adaptive optics) but it's the same optics.

spacelizard, to Astronomy
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

I've been getting myself excited about getting the MAVIS instrument (https://mavis-ao.org/) on the telescope, even though that's still ~3 years off.

I was looking at this gorgeous image of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (https://esahubble.org/images/heic2017a/) and realising that MAVIS could do this with significantly higher resolution. Thanks to being on an 8 metre rather than 2.4 metre telescope MAVIS will have 3.3x the resolving power of HST, and the pixel sampling will be 5.4x finer (7.36 mas vs 40 mas).

I'm just looking at this 400% zoom crop and imagining a MAVIS image that's pin-sharp at the same magnification.

400% zoom crop of the previous Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter, showing the Great Red Spot.

spacelizard, to Astronomy
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I want a big poster print of this. Fortunately we do already have a high quality digital copy of it so it would be easy to do.

spacelizard,
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@astro_jcm It's great, isn't it?

I also like the original drawings like this one. When you think about how it was done, with a pencil at a drawing board, it's a real work of art.

spacelizard,
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@spacegeck @astro_jcm My dad worked as a draughtsman at Carbodies (the company that built the iconic black taxi cabs in the UK) before becoming a production engineer. Decades later when he started his own business and needed to do some mechanical design he initially went back to what he knew: a drawing board, propelling pencil and a set of technical drawing tools. I watched him produce a number of detailed, precise drawings at our dining room table, which I think gives me an appreciation of the amount of work that must have gone into these telescope drawings.

spacelizard,
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@grb090423 It's certainly an impressive sight up close, especially when it's moving. A timelapse I made 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA_2CXATBSw

At 3.9 metres in diameter the telescope itself is no longer that big in the current era of 8-10 metre diameter telescopes though, and especially so with several 25-40 metre diameter telescope under construction.

spacelizard,
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Prompted by the interest yesterday I did a bit of digging and found the high res scan of this Anglo-Australian Telescope cutaway diagram (the version attached to this post is 4x downsampled from that).

Unlike the version hanging on our wall the scan has the artists' credit, Oliver Rennert. He's a German artist who's still active, and has a website. On the painting page, under commissioned work, there is a clean version of the cutaway without the annotations: https://rennertart.de/index.php/bilder-2/

Looking through the rest of the images there it seems he's been commissioned to do quite a few technical/scientific illustrations over the years.

Edit: The scanned version we have is a digital remaster of an original photographic print done by Ian Lewis.

Scan of a cutaway illustration of the Anglo-Australian Telescope. In the bottom left is the artist's name, Oliver Rennert.
Cutaway illustration of the Anglo-Australian Telescope from Oliver Rennert's website. This version does not have annotations.

mattkenworthy, to random
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Visiting New Zealand for the first time, I tried avocado on toast this morning and despite it being completely delicious, I can now no longer afford to buy a house. Damn you New Zealand!

spacelizard,
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@mattkenworthy New Zealand are stealing our dishes again? Smashed avo is Australian, dammit! It's like Pavlova all over again!

spacelizard, to Astro
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Ah, yes, Jupmer. My favourite planet.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
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Still thinking about the concept of studying ant communication by getting down to ant level. Make a tiny robot (we don't know how to make walking robots that small, so wheels it is) the robot would have a camera, little pads to collect pheromones (which could be dropped off to be analyzed) antennae IR sensors and maybe a way to stridulate?

Then one could really find out what's going on in there.

Worst case you have made an immersive ant VR experience!

spacelizard,
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@futurebird Purpose built FPV (first person view) quadcopters and goggles to go with them are very much a thing, though more of a niche hobby than the camera drones from DJI and the like. They are built tough with the expectation of crashing regularly, so significant damage is fairly rare. The very smallest ones (like mine here) are so light weight that even a high speed crash involves a small amount of kinetic energy, so they can be crashed (almost) with impunity.

spacelizard, to random
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

I feel I have to give Corsair credit for this.

If you somehow damage or lose a keycap for a Corsair mechanical keyboard you can go to their website and fill in a form and they will send you up to 10 replacement keycaps for a fixed fee of $15 USD, shipping included.

OK, that's a lot of money to pay for one small piece of plastic, but it's still significantly cheaper than having to buy a full replacement set or, even worse, having to buy an entire new keyboard just because no retailers stock replacement keys for your old keyboard anymore (as seems to be the case for my K63).

Having a manufacture supply spare parts for their products direct to customers feels like a level of customer support from a bygone age, and i was delighted to discover that it hasn't gone entirely extinct just yet.

https://help.corsair.com/hc/en-us/p/KeycapRequests

spacelizard,
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

Another keycap on my keyboard broke. Fortunately I have a spare from the last time I ordered a replacement keycap from Corsair. Unfortunately it's a D instead of a G.

I'm not a 100% touch typist so this innovative double D keyboard layout is causing me occasional moments of confusion.

spacelizard, to TeslaMotors
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

On Wednesday mornings I have to take my son to a 2 hour course, and work nearby until he's finished. This morning I'm trying out using the back seat of the car as my mobile office instead of loitering in the nearby cafe. It's not bad. Airconditioning (under my control), sound system (also under my control), a 60W USB-C PD port to power my laptop, cupholders for my coffee, and a pleasant view outside. The main problem is that hotspotting off my phone is murdering my mobile data quota, but I'd have that problem in the cafe too (no WiFi).

spacelizard, to random
@spacelizard@aus.social avatar

Spotted a small lizard in the kitchen this evening, and managed to catch it so I could release it outside. Hard to get good photos with a phone camera since it was so small and the lighting wasn't great, but I think I got a clear enough look to identify it with the help of the field guide. I reckon it's a Weasel Skink, Saproscincus mistelinus, which would make it a widespread but not frequently seen lizard.

Photo of a small reddish brown skink with pale spots on its back and a pale spot just behind its eye.
Photo of the cover of "A Field Guide To Reptiles of New South Wales", 4th edition.
Photo of a page from the Field Guide to Reptiles of New South Wales, showing the entry for Saproscincus mustelinus, the Weasel Skink.

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