Tracking a SpaceX launch over the internet

Great job Doc, as always.

I have a question please: there appear to be three or four fiberglass encased antennas surrounding the launch pad atop the towers beside the rocket.

Are those in fact antennas used prior to the launch or are they a different component / serve a different purpose?

Great question, those are actually lightning masts for protecting the rocket.

Does Musk pay you for this Astromutt? What about the night launches out of Dreamland and from the Malibu Canyon? Do you ever track those or just the 1950’s Buck Rogers style rockets? Do you really believe these rockets are the cutting edge of going into orbit and beyond in 2021? Unless you are a shill you can’t be that naive.

Or you're just wrong and this is the cutting edge for getting into orbit. Once Falcon Super Heavy is operational that will revolutionize access to space just as Falcon 9 has revolutionized it. I'm sorry that sensational claims have desensitized you to real progress in access to space.

Lol, so what constellations would that be? The same ones we have now? Because if were moving 483,000 miles per hour pretty sure after the fucking stars would have changed by now, thousands of years ago. Funny how only doom comes from fake ass space. Sheep porn

Here's "all the movement" of Polaris over about a half century of time. It's just barely detectable in old photographic sky surveys. The high resolution measurements of the proper motion of Polaris come from the 2007 reduction of the Hipparcos data:
[link to www.aanda.org]
The proper motion of Polaris can be independently verified using ground-based telescopes; since proper motion builds up over time, using high resolution images taken decades apart you can see its effect from one image to the next. For example, you can detect the proper motion of Polaris in images from the first and second Palomar Sky Survey that were taken using the same telescope almost 50 years apart. I used the following photographic film plates:

Plate XO001 (A2TX) photographed Aug 22, 1952 5:20 UT
Astrometrically solved image:
[link to nova.astrometry.net]

Plate XJ896 (A2NG) photographed Jan 17, 1998 5:12 UT
Astrometrically solved image:
[link to nova.astrometry.net]

The images 46 years apart should have a total motion of Polaris of about 2.1 arcseconds according to the hipparcos data (44.48 x 11.85 mas = combined vector of 46 milliarcseconds per year = 0.046 arcseconds per year * 46 years = 2.1 arcseconds).

For diffraction centroiding of Polaris, I measured the intersection of the diffraction spikes to find the position of Polaris in each image:
[link to drive.google.com (secure)]

[link to drive.google.com (secure)]

Zooming in on the difference between the intersection points in the diffraction spikes, and drawing a line between those intersection points, you can see that Polaris has moved about 2 arcseconds between 1952 and 1998, just as expected according to the Hipparcos data. And just as expected, the direction of motion is positive in right ascension and negative in declination (resulting in a higher right ascension value and slightly lower declination value in the 1998 image):
[link to drive.google.com (secure)]

So yes, Polaris has proper motion and does move over time, but due to the vast distance between our solar system and Polaris it takes years for these motions to become noticeable even in telescopic images at arcsecond resolution. Even over tens of thousands of years that it takes precession to cycle through, it would only move a fraction of a degree.

Does Musk pay you for this Astromutt? What about the night launches out of Dreamland and from the Malibu Canyon? Do you ever track those or just the 1950’s Buck Rogers style rockets? Do you really believe these rockets are the cutting edge of going into orbit and beyond in 2021? Unless you are a shill you can’t be that naive.

Or you're just wrong and this is the cutting edge for getting into orbit. Once Falcon Super Heavy is operational that will revolutionize access to space just as Falcon 9 has revolutionized it. I'm sorry that sensational claims have desensitized you to real progress in access to space.

Astromutt. I am sorry you are wrong. I am colleagues with the man who built the Powerpack for the Russians for the Space Station. He learned from the sentient computer that was recovered from Soroco. We have the whole 9 yards. You just don’t want to (or get paid not to see it). But I respect your passion and you keep people looking at the skies. But I know more than you and that’s that.

If you can't provide evidence to support your claim, then your claim is dismissed. I'm open to evidence, but you aren't providing any. Your claims are not evidence. If you know more than me, prove it.