Phil Fargaze

Looking at the Where is Webb web page, it`s saying `100% complete, Webb is in L2 orbit! ` 

Fingers still crossed for collimation, looking forward to `first light`! 

Celebrations at control centre. Latching complete!

Fingers crossed now for the latching to go smoothly. 

From the Nasa TV web page:-

"No earlier than 9 a.m. (14:00 GMT Saturday)- Live coverage of the unfolding of the second of the James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror wings, marking the end of the observatory deployments."

Nail biting live feed on now for secondary mirror deployment!

You might find this article interesting Diffraction effects during a lunar occultation 

more event details here maybe this will help.

The path width was 79 km. If any more results turn up we can pin down the path a bit more accurately.

Clouded out here. 

17 minutes ago, wimvb said:

I'll inspect the images in PI and maybe make a short time lapse.

Have a try at inspecting the capture at about 21:13 UT. That was the event time for near your location.  There has been a positive result from Sweden, which shows the  actual event hasn`t deviated from the prediction by too much.

If you can, the ideal way is to capture a video sequence with a fast frame rate. I usually record for about four minutes centred around the predicted time. 

It`s cloudy at the moment so I`m not over confident of capturing it. 

Questions! The youngsters will ask all sorts of questions, your knowledge of the night sky will be stretched to its limits and beyond. When I`ve done outreach sessions in the past I`m always amazed at what the youngsters can think of asking about. I also write out a sheet of interesting facts, especially regarding about what they are looking at, however this can lead to more questions! Basic facts like how far away is the Moon can be surprisingly handy, think of it as like revising for an exam.

23 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

I enjoyed that. They crammed in four times the amount of interesting info in half an hour than Universe did in a whole hour.

I hadn’t realised that Herstmonceux started as recently as 1946. It didn’t have a long life did it? Do I gather it’s used by amateurs now? 

It`s a great place to visit, I`ve been to their Astronomy Festival many times with the family. The web site is here

I have owned my XT10 intelliscope since 2005 and I have thoroughly enjoyed using it.  The object location is accurate and easy to use. Funnily enough I have just recently obtained the XT14 truss tube intelliscope which I`m looking forward to getting out to some dark skies this autumn!

Good to hear you like Haw Wood, I`ve been going every spring and autumn since 2014. I have had some fantastic dark sky observing here, cant wait to get back there for the November week. If the weather behaves I might do a last minute trip there for the September or October new moon as well.

I`ve utilised the washing line in the past. I pegged a tarpaulin to it and was able to position it in the correct place to block unwanted light.

A weekend in March and a weekend in October are my usual dark sky trips. 2 hours (90 miles) up to Suffolk with the camping gear and I usually keep it simple with just the 10" dob. In normal times I would have been going this weekend.  Going to really miss it, looking forward to the Autumn already! 

The event was negative for me from east of London. My predicted time was 20h 20m 58s with a tolerance of +- 2 seconds.  I had high level cloud but the camera could still manage a decent view of Regulus. I`m aware of at least 20 other potential observers across Europe so if a positive result turns up I will post it on here.

Don`t hang about do they. That was quite quick for a rocket roll out!

Awesome view at the moment. SN10 being rolled out with SN9 in the background.

I built myself a shed then decided I wanted an obsy so I turned it into a roll off. (see attached pic). Before I put in my C9.25 on a pillar mount I used the obsy with my 10" dob. I got round the high wall problem by making a frame about a metre high out of steel (it could be wood or whatever else) and placed the dob with its mount on that, making sure the roof could still close without hitting the scope.  Because the dob eyepiece was now too high up to easily use, I built a raised floor around the frame so that I could comfortably reach the eyepiece.  The dob wasn`t fully clear of the walls but doing this gave me a lot more sky to see and still provided a bit of protection from the wind. 

Live view of the situation here!

According to this live feed here another launch attempt is in just under two hours (21:40 this eve) 

4 minutes ago, Jonk said:

Very close, aborted at t minus 1.3s....no explanation as there's no audio apart from the hissing from the spacecraft.

Commentary on this feed here

If I am doing EAA with my mono camera I like to go for difficult targets such as distant galaxies and galaxy clusters which would not normally show much colour and I know that I am getting as much detail as possible from a live image. So I am normally happy with the mono image I get. I have not tried EAA with a colour camera but I suspect it would be suited to the showpiece objects such as the Orion Nebula which would possibly bring out some of the colour it contains.  I am thinking that your choice of colour of mono camera might depend on what you intend to view.

I got my Orion XT10 intelliscope in 2005 and it is still going strong. I enjoy using it and get great views with deep sky and planets as well. It is simple to use and the object pointing is always accurate. I like it being a solid tube and it holds collimation very well.  I haven't compared it to other similar scopes but I would recommend the intelliscope  as a good buy.