Saturday 19 January 2019

Toomas Karmo: More Work on the Visually Brightest Stars (Upgrade in RASC Publishing)

Kvaliteedihinnang: - Quality assessment:

Selle viiepallilise skaala kohaselt, mis kehtib praegu Eestis, ja kindlasti ka naaberriikides, ja on tuttav kadunud, mitte tagantjärele leinatud, NSVL-i akadeemilise elu vaatlejatele (siin rakendades neid kergeid, lõtvu, kriteeriume, mida Kmo rakendab oma nõgises fantaseeritud "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimelises sangarliku raadio instituudis" ja oma nõgises fantaseeritud "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevki nimelises sotsialistliku matemaatika instituudis" - kus, fantaasias ette kujutatud kaksikinstituutide lõdva ja vähenõudliku hindamisreeglite kohaselt 1/5 on "eepiline läbikukkukmine", 2/5 "läbikukkumine, mis poli nii katastrofaalne, et eepilusust saavutada", 3/5 on "kehvavõitu läbipääsemine", 4/5 on "hea" ja 5/5 on "eeskujulik": 2/5. Põhjendus: Teema ei võimaldanud filosoofiliselt sügavat käsitlemist. -  On the 5-point scale current in Estonia, and surely in nearby nations, and familiar to observers of the academic arrangements of the late, unlamented, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (applying the easy and lax standards Kmo deploys in his grubby imaginary "Aleksandr Stepanovitsh Popovi nimeline sangarliku raadio instituut" (the "Alexandr Stepanovitch Popov Institute of Heroic Radio") and his  grubby imaginary "Nikolai Ivanovitsh Lobatshevski nimeline sotsalitsliku matemaatika instituut" (the "Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Institute of Socialist Mathematics") - where, on the lax and easy grading philosophy of the twin Institutes, 1/5 is "epic fail", 2/5 is "failure not so disastrous as to be epic", 3/5 is "mediocre pass", 4/5 is "good", and 5/5 is "excellent"): 2/5. Justification: The chosen theme did not offer scope for philosophical depth.  


Variandikroonika: - Revision history:

Kõik kalendrip
äevad-kellaajad variandikroonikas on ära toodud UTC-s. UTC, ehk "Maailmakell", on vana GMT-i, ehk "Greenwich Mean Time"-i, täpsustus. Tarvitusel on ISO ettekirjutatud YYYYMMDDThhmmZ ajastembi formaat (kusjuures YYYY on UTC aasta, MM UTC kuu, DD UTC kuupäev, hh UTC tunniarv, mm UTC minutiarv). UTC praegu jookseb Toronto tsiviilkellast 5 tundi ette, Tallinna tsiviilkellast 2 tundi taga. - All times in these blog "revision histories" are stated in UTC (Universal Coordinated Time/ Temps Universel Coordoné,  a precisification of the old GMT, or "Greenwich Mean Time"), in the ISO-prescribed YYYYMMDDThhmmZ timestamping format. UTC currently leads Toronto civil time by 5 hours and currently lags Tallinn civil time by 2 hours. 
 
  • 20190131T0943Z/variant 1.1.0: Kmo muutis kvaliteedihinnangut allapoole (varem 3/5, nüüd aga 2/5). Ta veel täiendas pakutud Tartu-Tõravere meteoroloogiajaama andmeid. Ta jättis enda kätte õiguse teha veel pisikesi, sisusliselt tähtsusetuid, puhtkosmeetilisi õiendusi, järgmise 48 tunni jooksul, kui siin protkollimata variandid 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, ...   - Kmo revised his quality assessment downward, from  3/5 to 2/5. He also supplemented the information he had been offering on the Tartu-Tõravere meteorology station. He reserved the right to make further tiny, nonsubstantive, purely cosmetic, tweaks, over the coming 48 hours, as here-undocumented versions 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, ... . 
  • 20190119T2026Z/variant 1.0.0: Kmo laadis piisavalt  lihtivud tööd blogspoti serverile. Ta jättis enda kätte õiguse teha veel pisikesi, sisusliselt tähtsusetuid, puhtkosmeetilisi õiendusi, järgmise 48 tunni jooksul, kui siin protkollimata variandid 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, ...   - Kmo uploaded an adequately  polished version to the blogspot server. He reserved the right to make further tiny, nonsubstantive, purely cosmetic, tweaks, over the coming 48 hours, as here-undocumented versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, ... . 
[HOIATAV TEAVE: Tunduvalt vigane bloggeri-nimeline serveri tarkvara on viimaste kuude jooksul näidanud kalduvusi paigutada soovimatut valgevahet niimõnesse siia laaditud esseesse. Kui tundub, et ekraan lõpeb tühja ruumiga, tuleb veel allapoole liikuda, hiire abil. Essee lõpp ei ole käes enne, kui esineb tavaline bloggeri sõnum "Posted by Toomas (Tom) Karmo at". - Bloggeri tarkvara on ka näidanud kalduvusi, vähemalt kui rakendatud minu varema, aegunud, veebi esseedekirjutamise brauseri kaudu, toota HTML-i, mida eri allalaadivad brauserid formaadivad erinevatel viisidel. Mõned allalaadivad brauserid on võimalikult vahest mitte korralikult sisse lugenud kõik need "Cascading Style Sheets'e" (CSS-e), mis igas tavalises veebibrausers juhivad lehekülje servade, kõrvalparagrahvide jms. paigutamist. Kui Te oletate, et Teie kasutuselevõetud brauseris esineb CSS-e probleeme, olge kannatlikud: tõenäone on, et ehkki osa sisust on paigutatud mõnda veidrasse kohta (näiteks, brauseri alumise serva vastu, kui ta pidanuks minema parema serva vastu), siiski kõik serveri sisu on lükatud Teie brauserisse ühte või teisse kätteleitavasse paika. - Viimaseks, on võimalik et on bloggeri iseärasusi-eksitusi, väljaspool minu kontrolli, tähtede suuruse määramises, ridade vahemaa määramises või trükiploki parema serva õgvendamisstiili määramises. - Kes soovib aidata sääraste veebivigade parandamisega, või kes soovib ka teisigi tehnilisi nõuandeid pakkuda, võiks julgesti mulle kirjutada aadressil Toomas.Karmo@gmail.com. - CAUTION: A bug in the blogger server-side software has in some past months shown a propensity to insert inappropriate whitespace at some points in some of my posted essays. If a screen seems to end in empty space, keep scrolling down. The end of the posting is not reached until the usual blogger "Posted by Toomas (Tom) Karmo at" appears. - The bloggersoftware has also shown a propensity, at any rate when coupled with my erstwhile, out-of-date, Web-authoring uploading browser, to generate HTML that gets formatted in different ways on different downloading browsers. Some downloading browsers have sometimes perhaps not correctly read in the entirety of the "Cascading Style Sheets" (CSS) which on all ordinary Web servers control the browser placement of margins, sidebars, and the like. If you suspect CSS problems in your particular browser, be patient: it is probable that while some content has been shoved into some odd place (for instance, down to the bottom of your browser, where it ought to appear in the right-hand margin), all the server content has been pushed down into your browser in some place or other. - Finally, there may be bloggervagaries, outside my control, in font sizing or interlinear spacing or right-margin justification. - Anyone inclined to help with trouble-shooting, or to offer other kinds of technical advice, is welcome to write me via Toomas.Karmo@gmail.com.]




On 2018-01-01, I uploaded a blogspot posting, as http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com/2018/01/toomas-karmo-visually-brightest-stars.html, on a publishing initiative at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC). At the time, RASC had just undertaken the simultaneous issuing of 2018 Canadian and 2018 USA editions of its venerable annual Observer's Handbook

Now, at the start of 2019, it is appropriate to upload an update. This update I write no longer from the vicinity of the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, but from my new quarters in the dark-sky hamlet, Tõravere, of Tartu Observatory in Estonia. 

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The 2018 RASC initiative has succeeded, with the debut USA edition generating sufficient interest to justify RASC in issuing a 2019 USA successor. We may now hope that in 2020 and later years,  RASC proves able to follow the precedents it successfully set in 2018 and 2019. Further, I privately hope that over the coming years the USA edition will attract at least a few readers over here in Europe. 


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As RASC moves forward, I try to move forward too, from Estonia, in my continuing capacity as lead author of the Handbook visually-brightest-stars article. 

The Handbook printed edition does not offer much scope for change, apart from the systematic updating of celestial coordinates in the brightest-stars table and the opportunistic updating of miscellaneous other tabulated data. The online brightest-stars work, on the other hand, can and should get overhauled from one year to the next. 

For 2019, I have made only minor amplifications in my three-author collegium's online essay (now incorporating, however, all the substance from the printed-edition essay, so as to make the online version intelligible to those readers who lack the printed Handbook).  My main online overhaul for 2019 has been not in the essay, but in the long star-by-star table that follows it. For present blogspot purposes, it suffices to reproduce what I write in the 2019 online essay regarding the 2019 online table: 

[Here is] an extended version of the printed-edition table, (a) with extra stars (the brightest 313, allowing for variability, where the printed edition has almost 30 fewer, allowing for variability), and (b) with additional remarks for most of the duplicated stars. The online essay and table try to address the needs of three kinds of serious amateur: amateurs who are also astrophysics students (whether or not enrolled formally at some campus); amateurs who, like many in RASC, assist in public outreach, through some form of lecturing; and amateurs who are planning their own private citizen-science observing runs, in the spirit of such “pro-am” organizations as AAVSO [the American Association of Variable Star Observers; https://www.aavso.org/]. 

Our online project, now a couple of years old, must be considered still in its early stages. We cannot claim to have fully satisfied the needs of our three constituencies. Above all, we cannot claim to have covered all the appropriate points from stellar astronomy news in our “Remarks” column, important though news is to amateurs of all three types. We would hope in coming years to remedy our deficiencies in several ways, above all by relying more in our writing on recent primary-literature journal articles, and by making appropriate citations of the primary literature.

Already at this early stage, we have tried to pick out a few tens of the more important recent journal articles. /.../ 

The online essay and table may be downloaded for free by anyone, whether or not a member of RASC, from https://www.rasc.ca/sites/default/files/Brightest%20Stars_2019.pdf. Particulars on the printed-edition Handbook can be had from https://www.rasc.ca/handbook.

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As an appendix to today's posting, I upload photos from my smartphone. As the last in my trio of Yuletide blogspot photos, from 2018-12-23, I selected the snowy road from the Tõravere rail platform to the Tõravere hamlet. Today I continue on that same wintry theme. 

The Administration Building in Tõravere could barely be glimpsed in my Yuletide photo, at the far end of a straight tree-lined approach. Here is how it looked close up a few days ago, under a fresh snowfall, in the rather dim light characteristic of early afternoon in January at a latitude just nine or so arcseconds S of  58°16´ N:  






And here is the internal astronomy-compound road leading westward from the Administration Building, to the various telescope domes, at the same time of day, under the same snowfall:




The little brick shed in the foreground (a left mouse-click yields an enlargement in the browser) has a mural of an antlered buck against a starry sky. To see the mural painter's conception of E.T., on the other hand, against a similarly starry sky, you have to walk around the corner of the shed, viewing it from the north rather than from the east.

The columns on the south side of the road are part of the rather large Tõravere astronomical park, illustrating the cosmic distance scale in a powers-of-ten style. 

The building glimpsed in the rear, where the road turns, is not a telescope dome, but the support building for the instrument plaza of the Tartu-Tõravere meteorological station. This is a part of the Estonian Environment Agency network, as mapped at https://www.ilmateenistus.ee/ilmateenistus/vaatlusvork/. The Tartu-Tõravere weather instrumentation is denoted on the Environment Agency's map by a green square lying 20 km east of the principal fully Estonian lake, Võrtsjärv.  Tartu-Tõravere is one of just three continuously manned stations in the Estonia's network of roughly 20 meteorological posts. (All but two of the others, likewise denoted by green squares, are roboticized, and operated remotely. The many coloured disks on the map denote not meteorology, but posts for the aquatic monitoring of the sea-land edge (yellow), of  bog-or-swamp (red),  and of rivers or lakes (blue).). Lightning strikes are monitored at Tartu-Tõravere in radio. Special attention is given, in a longstanding pair of local meteorological traditions,  to actinometry and to cloud taxonomy. Apart from meteorology, the Tartu-Tõravere station operates a magetometry hut - a facility of some special significance at present, with the North magnetic pole now moving rapidly, and with the next outright reversal in the Earth's magnetic poles now coming due. 

[This is the end of the current blogspot posting.]