Bill Toomey's Astronomy Page

Welcome to Bill Toomey's Astronomy Page

My current astronomy projects are:

Digital Access to a Sky Century at Harvard (DASCH)

I am a volunteer on this historic data preservation project. Harvard has over one hundred tons of glass plates going back to the 1880s. We are digitizing these plates and making the astrometry available on line.
It is a real thrill to hold some of these historic plates.

Ed(left) and I setting optical plates to be scanned

American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)

I am active in the AAVSO visually measuring a number of binocular variables. I hope to move on the dimmer variables at some point. I am also experimenting with a Meade DSI Pro CCD in the hopes of taking CCD measurements that will be much more accurate.

I am also attempting to so some data analysis.

Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston (ATMoB)

I first joined the ATMoB in the fall of 1983. Since then I have been active at the observing site and participated in a number of activities such as figuring a mirror, the orbital mechanics study group, and Project Astro.

With the Meade DSI Pro on the ATMoB C14 one cold winter's night

A Meade DSI image processing workshop

Project Astro Star Party in Reading MA

My older activities were:

Star Parties and Talks

I was very active giving talks at star parties. It is my goal to eventually start doing this again.

Project Astro

For a number of years I was been part of Project Astro.

Project Astro is a National Science Foundation funded program which pairs Astronomers with Science Teachers to help bring astronomy education into our schools.

Our region is administered through the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA.

Besides going into the classroom, we also provided star parties for the Project Astro schools. I am the speaker at many of these. I usually give talks on how to get started as an astronomical observer, when you know you are ready for a telescope, and the Moon and the planets that are visible the night of the star party.

I was working with a Science Teacher and her students at the Rogers School in Lowell and went in about once a month.

Mirror Making

I finished refiguring the plate glass 4.5" mirror from the Tasco telescope I bought when I was in high school (guess how old that makes the scope). It was coated on Thursday 24 September 1998. We remounted the secondary that night at the ATMoB club house at Hay Stack. The secondary is of poor quality and will have to be replaced. I will make or buy one soon. I also replaced the focus tube with a 1.25" so I can use my standard eye pieces. This scope still needs a lot of work but this is a good start and makes it usable. I have written an article for the ATMoB news letter "Star Fields" about this project.

It is time to get back to grinding my 8" mirror.

Computer Control of Telescopes

One of the projects I never seemed to have enough time for was the computer control of telescopes.

I have two optical encoders from US Digital and an interface from Ouranos mounted on my 8" dob. This provides input to "The Sky" planetarium program which I run on a laptop computer. As I move the scope, the laptop shows where in the sky it is pointing.

I bought one of Mel Bartels' motor circuit boards to drive a telescope from the computer. I used it in a project I did for an Advanced Unix Programming course I took at work through Northeastern University. I have updated the report with some programming changes and have made it available here. I also started mounting the floppy drive stepper I talked about in the report onto an EQ2 mount so it could be used as a camera platform. This mount can only be driven through the polar axis, but it would be a good test of my code. I have an EQ3 mount which I can use to attach two of the floppy drive motors, and I also have a Super Polaris mount with its own stepper motors that I can try after that.

Here are some URLs that helped me get started on this project:

Ouranos interface

US Digital encoders

MicroGuider III info

Mel Bartels' home page

Links to sites that you may like:

Astronomy

Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston

Sky & Telescope Magazine

Astronomy Magazine

Willmann-Bell books

Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics