geoflewis

21 hours ago, kirkster501 said:

@geoflewisvery sorry to hear of your loss. Hang in there.

Thanks Steve. Geof

20 hours ago, carastro said:

So sorry to hear you news Geoff, been through the same 2 1/2 years ago.

Thanks Carole, I look forward to catching up with you again a few weeks from now, at Kelling Heath. Geof

7 hours ago, Xiga said:

Thanks Geof, and sorry for not responding sooner. Summer is a busy time for me, so I've been caught in a 'work-eat-sleep' black hole of late, which hasn't left much time for anything else recently. Really sorry to hear about your Mum 😥 . I have yet to go through the pain of this myself, so i can't offer much of worth i'm afraid, but what i can say is that 92 is a serous innings! Even as a (relatively) young man of 41, i would take that right now if i could. 

Hope you have some luck on M16 and i look forward to seeing your future work. 

Thanks Ciarán, the funeral was yesterday a mix of happy memories of a long life well lived and the sadness of a final goodbye. We got back home last night to a clear sky, but I was way too tired and too soon for me to open the observatory. Lots of other things to do the next few days to get back to normal after a week away, plus we are having a new bathroom fitted w/c 2 Sept, so as they say, life goes on....

Geof

Brilliant indeed 👍

Falmouth Cornwall at a golf and country club for 'eclipse week'. We had to book and stay the same week the prior year to book the 1999 'eclipse week'. We had 6 days out of 7 fabulous weather, guess which day was 100% cloud 😧 - we didn't even get a glimpse at any stage, just experienced the increased darkness under cloud. I had to wait 18 years and travel to the USA to see my first total eclipse, but it was worth it 😎

That's an excellent image Ciarán for 54N. It was (is) on my list for this summer. As the planets are too low for me to waste time on them night after night, this year I wanted to allocate time to summer DSOs this year, but my 92 year old mum's health took a downturn during the last couple of months with her passing 24 July, so this summer turned into several 300 mile round trips to be with her rather than hours at the telescope - the sky will always be there, but my mum won't be 😢. Now of course the Moon is interfering, but I may give it a try (skies permitting) in late August / early Sept, though likely I won't get much time on it as it will already be well past the meridian by the time we get into even astro darkness.

Cheers, Geof

3 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Martins site is well worth book marking, lots of great advice on there. I had the pleasure of meeting last year, a real nice guy and very helpful. His images are inspiring, as is his home made scope"fossil light" a superb piece of engineering!

Ditto to this. I have met Martin a few times in recent years at Kelling Heath, attended one of his planetary imaging presentations and had the opportunity to look at and through his scope, which is a gem. He is very knowledgable and approachable and his website is a must read for tips and advice on planetary imaging.

9 minutes ago, HunterHarling said:

I think you'd be able to get some great images with the modified Canon and any lense less than 25mm would probably work

Hunter, thanks for the recommendations. I don’t have any lenses for my Canon 600D, as I purchased it from new, as modified for DSO imaging with my telescopes. Since I went to mono CCD 3 years ago I’ve never used it. I actually sold it then bought it back a year ago, so have been thinking about adding a wide field lens for Milky Way shots, as it’s not been used since I got it back. Cheers, Geof

Well done Paul, you have a couple of lovely Moon pics there. Geof

28 minutes ago, Ibbo! said:

Here is one from about 1 hour later.

Nice one Ibbo. Cheers, Geof

Cracking image Dave and yes, those are the correct IDs for the crew’s craters.

Cheers, Geof

Wonderful image Hunter, thanks for sharing it. I keep thinking I'll try a Milky Way shot, but just never get around to it. Really I need to invest in a widefield prime lens for my astro-modified Canon to do it justice, but perhaps my 18-200mm Nikor lens at 18mm might be worth a try, even though my Nikon camera isn't modified, though it does suffer with serious amp glow at even a few seconds exposure.

Cheers, Geof

I already posted this elsewhere, but thought I may as well enter it here, so sorry for the double posting. The image was capture a few minutes (+exactly 50 years) after Neil Armstrong fisrt stepped onto the lunar surface.

The 3 craters (annotated) commemorating the Apollo 11 crew are well seen and I've also marked as accurately as I could the actual location of the landing site. As indication for the scale of the image, Armstrong crater has a diameter of approx 5km (3 miles), with Collins and Aldrin both at approx 3km (2 miles). The large crater (Delambre) in the bottom left corner has a diameter of just over 50km (32 miles), from which I deduce that the image is approximately 300km square covering an area close to 100,000 sq. km, or approximately 38,000 sq. miles. So no, I didn't capture an image of that first footprint.....😜

Cheers, Geof

5 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

Great work... 

Thanks. Geof

3 hours ago, Stu said:

Excellent stuff Geof, glad you got lucky!

Thanks Stu, I was listening to the rerun of the 'live' feed between Mission Control, Columbia and the LM, which was great fun. I had hoped to start a capture run just as Armstrong uttered those imortal words, but with so much cloud around I made sure to get some, albeit poor quality, videos in the can much earlier. In fact I was working through those for about 1 hour before the time of the Moon Walk (ok 50 years later) as I was totally clouded out. If I hadn't had the 'live' feed to keep me company I'd have given up and gone to bed. Imaging my surprise when about 5 minutes before D-time, the Moon started to poke through the clouds, so I was scrabbling around trying to reframe the camera and check focus. I heard Armstrong utter the words, 'Ok Houston, I'm on the porch', then silence. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that I'd lost my wifi connection, so I never got the 'one small step....' trigger to hit record, so I just started recording anyway, probable a few minutes late. It was to lose that playback feed, but I got the video that I wanted. Geof

1 hour ago, maw lod qan said:

Thanks for the image. Good seeing the craters named for them. I could see Armstrong good, then as Aldrin move through the sweet spot, it would appear. Collins remained hidden.

Thanks and glad that you got some visual. Geof

41 minutes ago, jock1958 said:

Great image Geof. I was 11 during the landing and vividly remember the grainy images on the TV - loved every minute of it!

Thanks Jock, yes, I too remember it very well. I still have the various press cuttings and Moon landing special inserts from various newspapers somewhere, though I couldn't find them yesterday when i was looking for them. Probably still packed and in the loft from when we moved house 3 years ago....!! Geof

38 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Well done Geof, got a bit of clear here at just the right moment, haven't looked at the vid' yet, closed the obs'y at 4.30 as the sun was coming up and went to bed for 4 hours.

Dave

Thanks Dave, it was full sun up by the time I eventually closed down and went to bed about 5:15 - I got up again around 10ish. I look forward to seeing your process video pic. Geof

6 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Excellent Geof. I went out around 23:30 but lots of cloud around and the seeing was really poor. You did really well to get that image. A great way to mark the anniversary. 

Thanks Neil, yes, I was pretty stoked when the clouds cleared right on time; that doesn't happen very often in my experience - perhaps once in 50 years.....!! Geof

Well I've just wrapped up an all night session (actually still need to close the obs) and its fully dawn here, remembering the first moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldrin which I watched live as a 14 year old lad. I fought cloud all night, so captured some video data early on, then for once had good luck as the clouds rolled back right at exactly 50 years after that 'one small step.....' The seeing was not great, but the timing of the capture was what I was really after.

Here's the resulting annotated image being the best 500 of 5000 frames captured with an IR filter through my C14 using my ASI 120MM-s camera . The video was processed in AS3, Registax and PS/CS2.

Thanks for looking,

Cheers, Geof

Thanks Stu, but not looking so good here. It did clear after the rain, but now have cloud building again. I got on Jupiter for about 3 minutes, not quite long enough to focus the camera. I will leave all set up and fingers crossed that I can get a look at the Moon when that rises later,,,,

Geof

4 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Read about their use but not really taken it in and obviously it comes with no instructions so can anyone recommend a good how to source on using one.

Hi Dave,

Try these 2 articles from Martin Lewis's website. He's one of the best UK based planetary imagers with lots of useful info posted on line.

http://www.skyinspector.co.uk/atm-dispersion-corrector--adc

http://www.skyinspector.co.uk/adcs-part2

Good luck, Geof

I've just watched the SGL Moon Landing Special on iPlayer and thought it was well worth it.

Geof

Another fabulous image Avani.

Geof

Thanks Pete,

Geof

12 hours ago, Littleguy80 said:

Looks like another cloud out in Norwich. Will be looking forward to all your reports though. Enjoy  

Hi Neil, I was in a pub at East Harling yesterday evening (about 10 miles west of my home in South Norfolk). Around 10pm I stepped outside to see a totally clear blue sky with a brilliant Moon and Jupiter, so called it a wrap at the pub and drove home - to a totally clouded sky, and I mean totally, not one patch of clear sky - go figure...!!

Geof

5 minutes ago, xtreemchaos said:

cracking shots Geof, mighty detail mate. well done. charl.

Thanks Charl,

Not sure about 'mighty detail', but any detail is good to see from this far north.....😌

Cheers, Geof

Thanks Chris

Thanks Steve, they’re a tough get from the UK currently, but Mars should be much better (easier) next year. Geof

2 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

Very good for the location.. I find that the the atmospheric conditions down here are not playing ball either...

 

Thanks @MarsG76. Yes, very difficult from up here - fancy a swap..? 😉