I did the thing at Vail, Starry Nights, and it went well.
P Cygni
P Cygni is a neglected LBV. You search for Eta Carinae on google and get hundreds of epic images of the fella, but nothing of P Cyg! Not even my Fe II image, which is now reproduced here:
Parallactic Angle
So it turns out parallactic angle and field rotation are essentially the same thing. While working on the data pipeline for the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey, I've needed to deal with this. The parallactic angle is dependent on the alt/az, and therefore the time, of the observation. So using an RA/Dec in J2000 coordinates to get alt/az isn't going to work, because my observations weren't in 2000.0.... my best hope is that the PA in the NCDF files is actually the correct parallactic angle. YARGH!
Photo Contest
Photos featured in an article
My photos, article by Jeff Marlow: http://www.atmagazine.co.uk/content/view/853/94/
PHP and CGI working in the same directory
While it's not possible to get CGI and PHP to work within the same file, you can get .html and .htm files to use cgi/php scripts alternately in the same directory with the following .htaccess file:
RemoveHandler .htmlAddType text/html .htmAddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php .html AddHandler server-parsed .htm .html
If anyone can prove the previous statement false, please do! I spent hours googling and hacking to try to get php and cgi to work within the same file. Also, the way the above file is parsed makes no sense to me. It is inverted from how I would have thought it should work.
Port vs Fink
Port failed to install: adam-macbook ~$ sudo port install py25-matplotlib---> Building py25-hashlib with target build---> Staging py25-hashlib into destroot---> Installing py25-hashlib 2.5.2_0---> Activating py25-hashlib 2.5.2_0---> Cleaning py25-hashlib---> Fetching py25-zlib---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-zlib---> Extracting py25-zlib---> Configuring py25-zlib---> Building py25-zlib with target build---> Staging py25-zlib into destroot---> Installing py25-zlib 2.5.2_0---> Activating py25-zlib 2.5.2_0---> Cleaning py25-zlib---> Fetching py25-setuptools---> Attempting to fetch setuptools-0.6c8.tar.gz from http://cheeseshop.python.org/packages/source/s/setuptools/---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-setuptools---> Extracting py25-setuptools---> Applying patches to py25-setuptools---> Configuring py25-setuptools---> Building py25-setuptools with target build---> Staging py25-setuptools into destroot---> Installing py25-setuptools 0.6c8_2---> Activating py25-setuptools 0.6c8_2---> Cleaning py25-setuptools---> Fetching py25-tz---> Attempting to fetch pytz-2007k.tar.bz2 from http://cheeseshop.python.org/packages/source/p/pytz/---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-tz---> Extracting py25-tz---> Configuring py25-tz---> Building py25-tz with target build---> Staging py25-tz into destroot---> Installing py25-tz 2007k_0---> Activating py25-tz 2007k_0---> Cleaning py25-tz---> Fetching py25-dateutil---> Attempting to fetch python-dateutil-1.4.1.tar.gz from http://labix.org/download/python-dateutil---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-dateutil---> Extracting py25-dateutil---> Configuring py25-dateutil---> Building py25-dateutil with target build---> Staging py25-dateutil into destroot---> Installing py25-dateutil 1.4.1_0---> Activating py25-dateutil 1.4.1_0---> Cleaning py25-dateutil---> Fetching fftw-3---> Attempting to fetch fftw-3.1.3.tar.gz from http://www.fftw.org/---> Verifying checksum(s) for fftw-3---> Extracting fftw-3---> Configuring fftw-3---> Building fftw-3 with target all---> Staging fftw-3 into destroot---> Installing fftw-3 3.1.3_0---> Activating fftw-3 3.1.3_0---> Cleaning fftw-3---> Fetching py25-nose---> Attempting to fetch nose-0.10.4.tar.gz from http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-nose---> Extracting py25-nose---> Configuring py25-nose---> Building py25-nose with target build---> Staging py25-nose into destroot---> Installing py25-nose 0.10.4_0---> Activating py25-nose 0.10.4_0---> Cleaning py25-nose---> Fetching py25-numpy---> Attempting to fetch numpy-1.2.0.tar.gz from http://downloads.sourceforge.net/numpy---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-numpy---> Extracting py25-numpy---> Applying patches to py25-numpy---> Configuring py25-numpy---> Building py25-numpy with target buildError: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0" && /opt/local/bin/python2.5 setup.py build " returned error 1Command output: setup_package() File "setup.py", line 89, in setup_package configuration=configuration ) File "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0/numpy/distutils/core.py", line 184, in setup return old_setup(**new_attr) File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/core.py", line 151, in setup dist.run_commands() File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py", line 974, in run_commands self.run_command(cmd) File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py", line 994, in run_command cmd_obj.run() File "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0/numpy/distutils/command/build.py", line 37, in run old_build.run(self) File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/command/build.py", line 112, in run self.run_command(cmd_name) File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/cmd.py", line 333, in run_command self.distribution.run_command(command) File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dist.py", line 994, in run_command cmd_obj.run() File "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py", line 130, in run self.build_sources() File "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py", line 147, in build_sources self.build_extension_sources(ext) File "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py", line 250, in build_extension_sources sources = self.generate_sources(sources, ext) File "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_python_py25-numpy/work/numpy-1.2.0/numpy/distutils/command/build_src.py", line 307, in generate_sources source = func(extension, build_dir) File "numpy/core/setup.py", line 87, in generate_config_h raise SystemError,"Failed to test configuration. "\SystemError: Failed to test configuration. See previous error messages for more information.Error: The following dependencies failed to build: py25-numpy py25-tkinter tcl tkError: Status 1 encountered during processing. I don't want to deal with it so I'm just using Fink.
Postscript to PDF conversion
ls *.ps | sed 's/\(.*\).ps/ps2pdf \1.ps \1.pdf/' | bash because it's impossible to view multiple postscripts in a single window.... how annoying. Corollary: ls *.pdf | sed 's/\(.*\).pdf/pdf2jpeg \1.pdf \1.jpg/' | bash
ps2pdf keep resolution, crop to bounding box
`` ps2pdf -dEPSCrop -dAutoRotatePages=/None -dAutoFilterColorImages=false -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dUseFlateCompression=true l007_displaycrop.ps `` ref: this post
PSDs, cross-correlation...
scipy is capable of doing fft-base cross-correlation, convolution, etc., but it requires the stsci package, which is not generally easy to install. For that matter, scipy can be a pain some of the time. So agpy now includes a 2D cross-correlation code and a power spectrum / power spectral density code. These are pure-numpy codes that should be easy to use without any other bothersome dependencies. EDIT: I have them check for scipy (which can cause crashes if you have a bad scipy install, e.g. 32 bit executables on a 64 bit system) because scipy uses FFTW and numpy appears not to. Also, this code & related stuff has been discussed on astrobetyter agpy correlate2d psds