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About this blog

An obs diary so that I can keep track of the wonders in the sky...

Entries in this blog

17/07/10 More without training wheels

Coming home from work it seemed like it would be a clear night and i set up the big scope, only to have heavy clouds roll in. As the EQ5 takes a greater effort then the goto to set up I decided to wait it out, cover was broen enough to polar align so that was a bonus and was quickly and easily achieved I plant to place markers on my lawn (little slabs or something). To act as a hardstanding for the tripod and a ref point for orientation. With this in place polar will rarely be needed at all. On
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Riding Bareback

Clear night at last and finally a chance to get the new scope out. My clock drive arrived yesterday morning so i was even set up for tracking. My first task was to check the collimation which had drifted slightly but was still good. A little tweak. I then used Venus to align my finderscope. Rather frustratedly I couldn't get it in sight in the scope and the finder was out of focus. A quick search on the grail of knowledge SGL revealed how to focus the finder ...wow. I then continued my mission
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Frustrated little man

So, as i think I mentioned, I have been selling a slew of Doctor Who books on eBay (and making then a fortune in fees). This has resulted in my wonderful new 200P EQ5 setup. First impressions...its heavy. Second impressions. Assembled it is nigh on immovable...good. So i've been feeling the motions of it, blancing tubes and weights. Practicing slewing. Collimating (the secondary was awfully out, the primary not too bad). Setting up, breaking down. Checking out the polar scope. Mavelling at the s
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Transferring passions

I have long been a lover of Doctor Who, in the 90s I collected the Virgin New adventures and the BBC books and its time to say goodbye. You see I now have a new passion. I want another telescope :D. If you have an interest in Doctor Who then it may be worth taking a look at my auctions. http://shop.ebay.co.uk/psonger/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340
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Mid session blog!

Ok so I am in here typing, how odd. Really i am waiting for Jupiter to raise its head an am ill prepared for hunting. I have however caught: M31, its a kick to see Andromeda for some reason. Maybe its the name? It was a lovely clear fuzzie though (is that an oxymoron?) and was wonderful to behold. NGC 869 The Double Cluster looked gorgeous in my clear NE skies i could make out a myriad of pinpricks all trhough the clusters and centered on the ...well...centre! I then took a look at Almach, thi
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2nd June (already!!!)

An unexpected but welcome session greeted my shift swing night, with no work till 4pm tomorrow it was a great opportunity to get out and work on those messiers. I was firstly chuffed to discover that Venus could help me get early alignment! Using that as a 1st reference I could make the 130 slew to Arcturus which was still not visible to (my) the naked eye. Ditto Capella. I then had the sightly epic feeling of viewing saturn in near daylight! Very odd. TECH PROBLEMS Throughout the start of th
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Complete moon now and a fudged up saturn.

Quick update. My moon work last night was very satisfying and got me a 9 tile mosaic. On the flip side i underexposed saturn so badly that on 2 of the three clips you wouldn't know he is there at all! If at first and all that.
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Moon Mosaics and best Saturn yet

Last night really was just a play. A slow careful take your time, play. After some very dim footage of saturn and the moon were recorded it went off to bed and have just finished processing. By jove I think I have cracked it! Certainly the advice of underexposing by eye and enhancing after seems to work and with that in mind i present my best saturn yet and a (almost complete (doh)) lunar mosaic! [ATTACH]24[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]25[/ATTACH]
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Doubt and indecision...have I bought the right scope?

As a sufferer of depression yesterday was a bad day. Feeling frustrated and angry with no good reason at all. I had a nasty moment of doubt over the scope. had I done te right thing, did i buy the best scope, have i wasted my money etc. It occurrs to me that one way to dea with this is analyse it. It helps. My scope cost £240 and is one of these 130P Goto and after a month of ownership small niggles are getting to me... The focusser isnt at all accurate and quite tricky to get perfect, the mou
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Saturn, Kids and Patio Doors

The first chance of a clear night on a day when my offspring could enjoy it obviously had them excited. I was excited for different reasons. I could check my Collimation after moving the primary up the tube. This seemed to work for focusing the toucam without the barlow so result. First off we started to look at saturn...and waited for the clouds to [removed word] off again. I used the time to introduce Jessica to Arcturus, Vega, Pollux and Castor and Ursa Major. Emily got rather bored and after
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More playing with pics, my first honest to goodness fuzzy...and that damn streetlight

I set out determined to get a good image of Saturn tonight. I was using the Fuji s1000fd point and shoot bridge camera (Not quite a DSLR but not quite a compact) and was mounted afocally on a 25mm lens. The Skywatcher 25mm super cheapy lens seems to give me the best results but i do get some nasty chromatic aberrations, whetehr this is a collimation issue or the lense alignment or something else i dont know. I used the AVI mode to get some films that were hgely dissapointing, afocally the im
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04/05/10 (Saturn on Star Wars Day)

I have just been working the most evil hellspawned shift pattern ever created. (5am wake up) and have actually been rather glad of the rubbish weather in the last few days. I managed to pop out a few days ago and just have a play with my newly collimated scope and was satisfied that it was performing better. I also wanted to use Venus (about the only target up there at 9pm for me) to checkif i had improved the stability. By the time the clouds had moved, so had Venus...behind the hedge:/ Packe
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Clouds, Saturn and damn cheap webcams.

I was determined to get out last night. I sat at my PC checking out my VX1000 cheapo webcam and decided to have a play. I bit of fiddling got the case apart and the lens seen followed. The cam inself fist to the focal tube almost perfectly, just had to wait for night. The clouds moved swiftly in causing me huge alignment headaches. after a while i managed to get clear views of Capella and Acturus so we were go. I wanted the alignment for tracking (which i don't think works if not aligned). I
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22/04/10

The evening was wonderfully still so I decided to take the oppurtunity to play with some more afocal photography. Miss Moon was highly obliging and I was quite please with my results althougth my cam does get some awful vignetting due to its powerful zoom lens. I then decided to just have a bit of a gaze and was glad of my moon filter. It truly can be dazzling cant it? After some lunar obs and subsequant drooling over the sheer clarity of the view I decided to take another look at my old darli
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Feeling through the Darkness.

My 3rd proper session was going well and comfortabley underway. My staying power isnt great at the moment and a few hours under the sky is about the best I can do at the moment. This was the second time out with my new eyepieces which are better then the packaged units by far. As cheapies (SW LERs) i do wonder exactly what the daddy lenses will be capable of. Partway through, although I had imaged the moon and marvelled at Saturn, it occurred to me that I was using my goto mount as a tour guide
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