The Hyperstar III is so fast that all other amateur imaging systems are extremely slow and have very disappointing performance in comparison – and that includes the mini-WASP array as currently configured.

Feynman left us many interesting facts/tools and one of the most powerful I have ever come across was his observation that “The same equations have the same solutions”.  By this he means that equations of the same form have similar solutions.  Now this may sound like it is stating the obvious, which I guess it is, but it is an incredibly powerful tool in the right hands.

Maybe around 30 years ago I found two areas where this statement had some very interesting outcomes, but I have not been able to push the results to a final conclusion.  As I am now getting too old for this sort of young man’s thinking it is time for me to put this out for general consumption so that someone with a more agile mind/imagination can finish off this work.

The first subject area is mechanics and the derivation of a set of “Mechanical Maxwell Equations”.  I shall give you the outline of the ideas and it’s up to you to finish it off  The starting point for equations of the same form are the Newtonian gravitational force equation and the equation for the force between two charges.  Using the similarity in form you can “equate” 1/4 Pi Epsilon nought with G – I call this the equivalence of the constants.  Charge then equates to mass and distance is the same in both equations.  We have two more quantities in electromagnetism that we need an equivalent mechanical quantity for, namely B and E.  By looking for similar equations in electromagnetism and mechanics it isn’t too difficult to find that E’s equivalent is a, the linear acceleration, and that B’s equivalent is omega or angular velocity (very interesting that B should equate to omega!!).  You now have all the necessary information to create your own set of four “Mechanical Maxwell” equations.  I have done this, and luckily they turn out to be dimensionally correct – but I have no idea what they mean or what they are saying.  I will leave it up to you to tell me

The second area where “The same equations have the same solution” shows us an interesting route for new thoughts and ideas is in the area of Quantum Mechanics, specifically Hidden-Variable theory.  The form of the de-Broglie/ Bohm equation for a hidden-variable form of wave equation has the same form as the condensate wave function in superfluid physics.  So the Quantum Potential which is the source of all the trouble in de-Broglie/Bohm Hidden-Variable theory is related to a term in superfluid physics which is only important when the superfluid density varies rapidly with position, for instance near a wall or inside a vortex.  When we are dealing with the bulk fluid we can omit the term – which is extremely interesting.

So there you have it.  Two interesting areas of research.  The first might lead to a nice paper, and the second might lead to a Nobel Prize.  Over to you.

Bit embarrassed to say that I am still learning how to use the Hyperstar III.  Rather humbling when I thought I knew all there was to know about getting the best out of the Hyperstar.  I had done a few camera swaps on the HSIII and I was having difficulty getting good stars across the whole of the M25C, something I had not had a problem with before.  Now here is where I was going wrong.  I thought that I could have the M25C adjusters set so that the face plate was perpendicular to the camera body (this means the chip would almost certainly not be flat to the optical axis) and that I could sort out all the chip flatness/collimation with the Hyperstar III adjusters alone.  THIS IS WRONG!!  I slowly caught on that I was not going to get good stars across the chip using the HSIII adjusters alone after spending around 3 hours playing about chasing my own tail – it was clear that the HSIII adjustments were not enough – YOU NEED THE CAMERA TO BE FLAT TO THE OPTICAL AXIS BEFORE IT GOES ONTO THE HYPERSTAR III.  Oh well – live and learn.  So I used Terry Platt’s method as given on his website to flatten the M25C APS-size chip to the optical axis, and I put the camera back on the Hyperstar III last night.

I ran the FocusMax autofocuser on Sulafat (Lyra) and the first 20-second sub looked pretty good without touching the Hyperstar collimation adjusters.  A CCDInspector look at the sub gave me the magic x = 0, y = 0 for the chip flatness (can’t do much better than that), and it gave me 2.7″ for the collimation.  I have never seen a set of CCDInspector numbers this good before for the Hyperstar III/M25C combo.

Hopefully I’ll be turning out some interesting Hyperstar images once again in the not too far distant

Does the EPR “paradox” tell us anything about Physics?

Well the trite answer is yes of course it does – but can we be a bit more specific?

Physics is an “after the fact” science relying on experiments and the observations on the results of those experiments.  What do I mean by “after the fact”?  I mean you set up an experiment to measure some property or event and the experiment, if successful, will give you a numerical value for that property or event, so far you have learnt absolutely nothing new – but please keep with it  By setting up various different experiments and conditions we can measure the mass, “apparent” size and the charge on an electron.  But we cannot say WHAT an electron actually is.  Why not?  Well one reason is we don’t know how to set up the experiment to do that.  The experiments we set up measure the PROPERTIES of an electron – that is all.  We can smash things together in high energy particle accelerators and see how various particles are created (or annihilated) and what the energies involved are – but these experiments say nothing about what the particles themselves are.  How can they?  They are only measuring the EFFECTS that the particles themselves create.

Mathematical Physics is great at providing predictions.  It still requires the experiment to be performed to give the mathematical predictions any substance – any “reality”.

This situation is rather like the 4-year old kid who keeps asking why? to an initial answer to a question.  Eventually we come to a stopping point.

The EPR “paradox” was thought up as a hard test for the theory of Quantum Mechanics.  Quantum Mechanics gave its answer, a nasty answer that goes (like most things in Quantum Mechanics) against common sense.  Aspect and some other brilliant experimentalists created beautiful experiments to measure the results of an EPR-type problem, and yes, Quantum Mechanics gives  us the same answer as the experiments and common sense doesn’t.  But can  you take things further than this?  Can you, with the information provided, say anything about the MECHANISMS involved?  I don’t see how this is possible.  You created the experiment given the parameters you wished to measure to confirm (or otherwise) the EPR “paradox”.  You did not set up the experiment to look at the MECHANISMS involved (and basically you wouldn’t know how to do this anyway) so why would you expect an EPR-type MEASUREMENT to give you an insight into the underlying mechanisms?  This is very much the situation of the 4-year old kid asking “Why?” one time too many.

But if this is the case, doesn’t every experiment and every part of Physics run into this very same problem?  Even the simplest Physics that we think we know EVERYTHING about?  I think it has to  - doesn’t it?

Let’s take a very quick look at Newtonian Mechanics – not much there we don’t know everything about is there?  Masses flying about, velocities, energy (potential and kinetic), acceleration, inertia – oops what’s that one?  Inertia?  What’s that then?  Well it’s the resistance to an applied force exhibited by any body possessing mass.  Yes but what IS it?  Well it’s possibly caused by the interaction of the body with all the other mass in the Universe – but actually we really don’t know.  And what is mass anyway?  I don’t think the Higgs Boson goes very far in telling us what “mass” actually is.  So even in a science that we think we know quite well and that was dealt with a couple of hundred years ago sufficiently well for us to send space probes on Grand Tours – we don’t have to go very far back with the Why? question to hit our stopping point.

A lot of these Physics problems come down to “fields” as their ultimate answer, where “fields” is a great euphemism for “I don’t know”.  When Maxwell came out with his 4 equations for electromagnetism he hit similar issues with the scientists of his day.  What were these “fields” where are the “springs” and the ether that carry these waves?  What are the mechanisms?  I guess I am also asking what the “springs” are in all our theories – and my contention is that we simply don’t know.

If we’re stuck in asking the basics of such “very simple” questions – then where do we stand in asking the biggies?  What happened before the Big Bang for instance?

The Scientific Method is a very powerful tool for explaining what we can observe, it should be, after all the experimental method has proven to be a great way to provide the hard numbers to our observations.  But for the underlying mechanisms?  What do we do for those?

I have a very strong feeling (shouldn’t really allow “feelings” to come into it – that’s getting into Metaphysics ) that we are seeing EXACTLY the same problem rearing its head that we have already seen in mathematics.  Godel’s Theorem didn’t help us much there – but at least mathematics has a name for the issue – Physics doesn’t.  How about Greg’s Enigma??

I will presenting “Deep-Sky Imaging from the New Forest Observatory” at the Webb Deep-Sky Society AGM meeting on Saturday 15th June 2013.

The venue is the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA.

Images taken using the original Hyperstar/H9C,  Sky 90/M25C, Hyperstar III/M25C and the mini-WASP array will be shown during the talk.

Anne Baring’s new book “The Dream of the Cosmos:  A Quest for the Soul” has a Pleiades image from the New Forest Observatory on the cover.  The Publisher has done an excellent job in putting the book together.

As I’ve mentioned before – this is MY blog, so I can write what the hell I like.  My cage has just been rattled by a piece written about Harvard and it mentions teaching in Universities.

You have teachers at a school and you have Lecturers at a University.  Ever wondered why they are given different names?  It’s because at school you are spoon fed, and that is the job of a teacher.  For that age group it is a vital and necessary job, and it needs to be done extremely well.  At University the aim is to get you to start learning on your own, hence a Lecturer who basically tells you what to go away and learn.  Well that’s how it used to be at one time anyway.  In the grand dumbing down which is so fashionable today it is becoming hard to differentiate Lecturers from teachers.  Even harder because the Administrators at University will call it “teaching” and it is your “teaching load” not Lecturing or Lecturing load.  The insidious incursion of the dumb downers is even seen and felt in our institutions of higher education.  Well, why shouldn’t it be?  When those running our Universities are quite often no more than (unqualified)  accountants and honorary pen pushers who would look at you like you were a lunatic if you asked them what their philosophy of higher education was – what the hell do you expect?

And the terrorist outrages against schools we have seen recently?  Terrorism?  Religion?  Some fanatical adherence to some arcane cause??  No.  They just want you to be as thick as they are – they can’t deal with educated people with a mind of their own – such people are dangerous (to morons anyway).

If you really want to rebel – get educated – it will create a great deal more upheaval for society long-term, than carrying out some petty crime.

Rant over.

The Image of the Month for May 2013 is the recent reprocess of the Coathanger Cluster (Al Sufi’s cluster, Collinder 399) in the constellation Vulpecula.  This reprocess by Noel Carboni included data from the mini-WASP array plus deep data from the Hyperstar III.  To the left of the cluster we see the sparkling little open cluster NGC 6802, which reminds me a lot of little NGC 1502 sitting at the end of Kemble’s cascade.  This image of the Coathanger represents around 8-hours of total imaging time using OSC cameras M25C and M26C.  I like the Milky Way background and the prominent dark patches in this image.

A recent Noel Carboni process of mostly mini-WASP test data (I used one scope for imaging whilst trying to set up the other two scopes).  This is Polaris the alpha star in Ursa Minor.  Although it looks like a single bright star it has two close companions and two more distant companions – it is also a Cepheid variable!  The green cross hairs at the 2 O’clock position from Polaris show the position of the celestial pole, the point which all the stars appear to rotate around.

In 1973 when I was 19 I left home to start work at Harwell and also to take an HNC at Oxford Polytechnic (as it was then).  This was a time of great awakening for me, I had found the whole school experience to be a complete and utter waste of time and couldn’t wait for the day when I could leave.  Starting at Harwell was that day and was also the time when I discovered (for myself, no prompting from teachers) that learning could actually be a rewarding experience.  So it was in 1973 that I bought one of the many books that would transform my world-view, in a very positive way, forever.  1973 was the first publication of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmic Connection”.  Some 40 years later I have totally forgotten its contents and the original book is long gone – but I have on my desk an Anniversary issue which I am slowly re-reading, and I understand why it gave me such a buzz such a long time ago.

Today I finished reading “The Varieties of Scientific Experience” also by Carl Sagan, and Carl has done it yet again – I got the same buzz from reading this book that I got from reading the “Cosmic Connection” 40 years ago – thank you Carl

What can I say about “The Varieties of Scientific Experience”?  Firstly, I think this should be compulsory reading for GCSE schoolkids, those that have sufficient intelligence to follow the plot could go on to do good things.  Secondly, it should make an educational read for politicians and theologians alike – so maybe they wouldn’t like it very much.  Logical argument, beautifully written, and very humanistic with none of that highly annoying zealotry that we have come to associate with Richard Dawkins.  Carl – you are very sorely missed!