scotty1

From Saturday am, on the way home after a photo session, the nocties joined in.

Hi happy-kat, The first photo was at 210mm 2.5secs exp. f5.6, iso 2500. Second pic 300mm 1.6 seconds exp. f5.8, iso 2500 APS-C sensor.

Two from yesterday morning 02.45am, 5 min walk from home. pentax K5+pentax HD 55-300 ED WR iso 2500 1.6 secs f5.8

A couple from the loft at about 02.45 today untracked with pentax k5+300mm zoom 1.6 secs, the clouds cleared about 02.30...

Two shots of Venus during the recent High pressure, while driving on the 19th of jan. i observed a fireball in the east about 17.15, later the same evening i took this photo. on another evening Venus is setting

Took this photo of Venus yesterday, it clouded up on my way to the lake 😞 Another shot with the moon on Dec 30th

Had a look from the garden 01.40-02.20 it clouded up at 02.30, only observed three meteors, one was heading the opposite way towards the Quadrantid radient. observed this one from the Quadrantid radient at 02.15 regards scotty

The weather turned out too be OK, if you were awake in the early hours of Saturday the 14th. Observed six bright Geminids between 02.00-02.40 GMT. This one passed Orion Also saw a couple on Saturday before the moon and cloud arrived, i missed this one flying through Taurus about 8pm looking east, but luckily my K5 was taking 15 seconds exps at 2000 ISO. By this time it was a bit cloudy. regards scotty1

Can you imagine what Galileo must have lived through? Let alone Copernicus? Yes but must of been awesome in their era to view the sky without light pollution. Clearer skies moving in from the west now behind the cold front.

Hi Marvin, I have already been asked by plod, why do i have cameras poking out of my loft sometimes 🤓. They are amazed that anyone would want to look for/photograph lightning, auroras, noctilucent clouds, or meteors comets. We should be watching T.V..... Hi Paul, I was looking at the Andromeda galaxy last year through binoculars and a meteor zipped through the view, and that was neat. This was while Comet Wirtenan was around. During the full Lunar eclipse when we had the red moon, i think a meteoroid was filmed hitting the moon?, the eclipse made it easier to see the impact.

I observed a moderately bright Geminid yesterday at about 21.20 GMT, this inspired (trick🙈ed) me into setting my camera running in the loft. I saw another 2 meteors between 23.00-23.30 from the garden, they were not very bright, it was -1C so i called it a night. It was likely too early for any quantity of Geminids to be seen. If the sky clears the moon is a major hinderence this year...all on me surfaces.

Hi Alexwolf, Thanks for your reply. I am not sure how to use those workarounds, ssleay32.dll, libeay32.dll and libssl32.dll 🤔. I found the 0.18.1 version suggested by Davey-T, and it works ok with adding comets from the list. I reinstalled the 0.19.2 version again (4th time) and it now works ok too 🙃, so must of been a glitch in the initial setup. thanks for your help scotty1

Thanks for your help.

Hi Davey, The version i have is 0.19.2 i tried uninstalling and downloaded it again with the same result, when i click on the import orbital elements the page takes 5-6 goes to change, i am on windows 10 64bit version. Do you have a link the older version please? scotty1

Hi Davey, In my oder version of stellarium i would get the objects found/import data page. With this version i don`t get that page. I get to this page and press the import orbital elements in MPC format, And then this popup appears saying download a list of objects, but it stays at 0%. Also could this be because i don`t have a windows activation key for windows 10 yet? Although other apps i have seem to work.

Hi Davey, I didn`t see an option for individual comets, my old version of stellarium had a list of individual comets that could be added into the comet search option. I never had to download anything. All the tutorials on youtube on how to add comets are from several years older versions of stellarium, so i thought i would ask here. thanks scotty1

Hi Alex I have downloaded the latest 0.19.2 version of stellarium, i can`t add comets to the list. I had an earlier version of stellarium that i could add comets to. I had to re-instal the latest version after my Hard drive died. I tried the plug-ins add comets route, there are no comets to add like the older version. when i click on the add MPC list of observable comets,and import orbital elements in MPC format. It then says download list of objects from the internet. I tried to do this but the bar in the bottom right of the screen is stuck at 0% and does not download anything. Any help would be appreciated thanks scotty1