20 November 2007

I moved some books and magazines around and gathered all of my astronomy books onto one shelf. While I was moving things I browsed in my Harris' Farmer's Almanac 2007 and was looking at the conversion data in the back of it thinking about maybe putting it into the Solver in the HP 95LX. While there I came across a table that was hard to interpret and after studying it for a while I realized it was how far a heavenly body moves over a certain period of time. This table is after their short list.

Time		Distance
	minutes	degrees	R.A.
1/15 sec	0.001	0.0003	0h00m00.07s
1 sec	0.017	0.0042	0h00m01s
4 sec	0.067	0.0167	0h00m04s
1 min	1	0.2500	0h01m00s
4 min	4	1.00	0h04m00s
5 min	5	1.25	0h05m00s
15 min	15	3.75	0h15m00s
30	30	7.50	0h30m00s
1 hr	60	15.00	1h00m00s
3 hr	180	45	3h00m00s
6 hrs	360	90.00	6h00m00s
12 hrs	720	180.00	12h00m00s
24 hrs	1440	360	24h00m00s

I have also started indexing my astronomy books so I don't end up with more than one of something, which has happened more than once. Eventually that list should make it into the resources section of the sidebar.

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I had just given up on ICQ/CBAT/MPC having received any new submissions and had extended the date range on my spreadsheet through the end of the month and updated it with the data from about a half hour ago. I was all ready to upload a new chart but checked the page one last time and there was new data there for yesterday and today, and maybe some additional data for earlier dates that isn't as obvious. I quickly reworked the data for yesterday and today and have the latest chart uploaded.

The comet is still growing in size and getting fainter. That makes sense to me since it is becoming more extended and the gas/water/dust at any one location is not as dense as it used to be when the comet was much smaller, unless it is continuing to give off material which is not likely since it is moving away from the sun.