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Hawksmoor

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Blog Entries posted by Hawksmoor

  1. Hawksmoor
    I was so keen to use my new 'fixing plate' - piggy-backing my little 66 mm. Altair Astro ED refractor, that I defied the clouds, a rain shower and finally extremely bright moon light.  First of all and to test the seeing I tried capturing some video clips of Neptune using my 127mm.Meade Apo Refractor and a x3 Televue Barlow.  An absolute disaster ! - Neptune was quite low over my neighbour's roof and the tiny image was 'bobbling' about on thermally active localised air currents.  Further more and because the planet was so near the horizon, colour dispersion was a major issue. I eventually gave up and decided to use the little Altair scope to image the full moon which by about 1.00am was looking quite good and stable in a dark sky.  Using my QHY5-11 colour camera at prime focus provided an image size that was just too big for the chip - so a 2-pane composite image was the way forward.  I also used the 127mm. Meade  with the x3 Barlow to capture some video of Mare Crisium but the atmosphere wasn't stable enough to take this amount of magnification with any great success.
    The plate works quite well but the alignment with the main scope is a bit out - will give this a bit of thought and will probably make a few adjustments at some time in the future - I have a lot of projects on the go at the moment!




  2. Hawksmoor
    Having read this article in the June edition of the Sky at Night magazine I became unusually fired up by the thought of a bit of DIY. After some preliminary rumaging around in B&Q and Maplins, I set about constructing a Yagi aerial under the cover of my car port. Tension mounted as the July edition of Sky at Night, containing part 2 of 'How to use radio signals to catch meteors', landed on our door mat. Following tricky negotiations with my partner, the long suffering Anita, I ordered the pricey bit, the FUNcube Dongle Pro +. I await the delivery of this latest bit of kit in high expectation.
    In the mean time I have completed and erected the aerial which now sways incongruously above the roof of my shed. Its been up two hours or more and as yet I have received no objections from my neighbours. I have decided, rather ostentatiously, to call my shed the Jodrell Plank Observatory and the completed installation the LVST (Lowestoft Very Small Telescope).
    Anita has not really stopped laughing since I erected the aerial, I'm not sure why but hey she is a girl!
    I'm rather hoping I can get this all to work otherwise I'm out of pocket to the tune of £200 and my wife, children and grandchildren will probably have me put in a home for eccentric old folk.

    :smiley:
  3. Hawksmoor
    Some time ago, I published an image of the shadow transits of Ganymede and Io I had taken on the 9th March 2014. The moon Ganymede was clearly visible but try as I might I could not find Io against the clouds of Jupiter. I used APS 'creatively' to try and convince myself that I had found it but eventually realised that if you clicked the sharpening tool enough times in any location on the cloud tops of Jupiter you could create a nice Io just about anywhere you wanted to!
    Anyway and eventually, I stopped clicking my mouse and engaged my eyes and brain. I had always been aware that in my image, Ganymede's shadow was far from circular. I had dismissed this as an artifact of the curvature of the planet, the shadow was close to the limb so an elliptical rather than a circular shadow was not unexpected. However when I thought about it, if it was being caused by the curvature of the planet, you would expect the major axis of the ellipse to run perpendicular to a tangent drawn at the the limb and roughly through the centre of the face of Jupiter. Even a cursory inspection of the image showed this not to be the case. Enlarging the shadow showed that the pixels were centred at two points and one set of pixels was distinctly less bright. Could this be a partial solar eclipse of Io by the moon Ganymede? As Io orbits inside the orbit of Ganymede this would appear to be a theoretical possibility. Any thoughts and advice on this would be welcome.


  4. Hawksmoor
    Last night was absolutely beautiful in Suffolk. There was a little high level cloud but otherwise it was quite perfect for backyard astronomy. I decided that I was going to take my first photos of Mars. I used the Logitech Webcam that I had previously cannabalised and took several AVI clips through my refractor using a 3x Barlow lens. I did not get any dark or flat frames which probably would have improved the results. I then processed the images using Registax, IRIS and Photoshop. Although the picture is a bit blurry and not in the same league as some of the images of Mars already on this Forum , I was quite surprised and pleased with the result.
    :)
  5. Hawksmoor
    Well last night, my partner's Aurora alarm app went off whilst we were having dinner - so pudding had to wait!  We loaded the tripod and camera bag into the family truckster and headed off to Corton Beach under cloudy but clearing skies.  Sadly, the street lights dont go out until midnight so Corton Beach, relatively close to our house, provides a dark site with a northerly view back over the cliffs largely missing the 'orange glow' that is Great Yarmouth. Whilst we were on the Beach the clouds began to clear and both of us thought we could see a green glow over the cliffs and just below the tail of the Great Bear. Anyway I took a number of photographs the best of which was taken whilst the app was telling us that photography would show the aurora from most of England. I have attached the image - 20 sec exposure - ISO1600 - F3.5 - tripod mounted Canon 600D DSLR - 18-55mm at 18 lens  which has had the following image processing :
    Application of autocolour at about 20% Colour saturation enhancement using LAB color and adjustment of channels by increasing contrast. Colour blurring using a gaussian blur. Saturation of red and yellow colours reduced to reduce the orange red glow of some 'low pressure' sodium street lighting that I could not avoid when taking a photograph looking north. General lowering of saturation across all colours and some repetitive luminosity layers to finish I think it shows some auroral activity. Looks very much like the low level auroral display that I photographed in Tromso several years ago. But as my partner says when I reach for the 'imaging software' - "Cheating again" - So who knows for sure ?
    A bit of a bonus was the very dark sky view east out across the North Sea.  Quite beautiful. We watched the Pleiades rise out of the sea and the Milky Way was absolutely marvellous. The dark lanes of dust could be traced with your finger and the Andromeda Galaxy was an easy spot with the naked eye. I took a sequence of images more or less centred on the Double Cluster in Perseus - 6x20 secs RAW-ISO3200 f=18 and F3.5- stacked in DSS - FITSwork etc.  I do like widefield astro photography and very much enjoy reading articles and viewing widefield images created by Professor Ian Morison - I have some way to go!
    It was very nice to see a couple of meteors - one was quite bright - and to capture the less than bright one shooting by and just under Messier 31 - an exposition in 'near and far'.
     
     


  6. Hawksmoor
    You could have knocked me down with a feather, when at 1.00 am. yesterday my partner said "why dont we go down to the seafront and see if we can spot the Aurora".  So off we went in the family truckster with tripod and camera box in the back.  We were originally going to set up base camp at the UK's most easterly point but the lights from the Birdseye factory were a problem. We ended up on Corton Cliffs with a fine view North towards  Great Yarmouth and the offshore wind turbines. Well after an hour we had both convinced ourselves that there was a green auroral glow hugging the horizon. I took a number of 30 second images at ISO1600 with the aim of putting together a panorama using Microsoft ICE.  Well here it is believe it or not?
    The red glow is light pollution from Great Yarmouth - those 'Norfolk Boys' dont turn the lights off at midnight like us ECO warriors in Suffolk.
    We returned home for 3.00am and had some pea soup to warm up - nice.
     

  7. Hawksmoor
    Toot and I had a wonderful week with Olly and Monique in the Haute Alpes. We enjoyed the magnificent dark skies, the stunning Milky Way, looking through Olly's big Dob and drawing and painting with Monique.
     
    We saw for the first time: The Crab Nebula, The Swan Nebula, The Eagle Nebula and all of the Veil Nebula. The Witches Broom was fantastic and through a wideangle eyepiece and Olly's monster of a Dob it appeared almost 3D. We also looked at the Lagoon and Triffid Nebulae before they dropped below the horizon. From our backyard and through my 127mm. refractor, we quite often look at M13 but such views were no preparation for the visual trreat we had through the big Dob at Les Granges. Blew our socks off!
     
    The skies were really dark and each clear night, I treated myself to a couple of hours taking unguided photos with my Canon 400d DSLR mounted on a travel tripod. I have attached a selection of images from our week.
     
    During the day Olly helped me improve my very basic astro imaging digital skills. The man has considerable patience! He also took me through an imaging run using side by side mounted refractors to capture several hours worth of colour and luminance data of M33. Whats more I got to take home the data to practice my new learnt skills. At some stage my version of the M33 data will appear in my gallery.
     
    We really enjoyed our stay at Les Granges, Olly and Monique are very nice people and excellent hosts. I cannot think of a better place to enjoy and image the night sky. During the day and if you can pull yourself away from the laptop, the landscape is spectacular, there are plenty of opportunities for walking, cycling, climbing, birding, photography, painting and even collecting fossils. A great place for both strenuous activiy and rest.
     
    Thanks Olly and Monique
     

  8. Hawksmoor
    I am just about recovering from my second bout with the Covid virus so I thought I would do something vaguely astronomical which wasn't cloud dependant.  We have had a lot of clouds in Lowestoft recently. I discovered a nearly completed low resolution transmission spectrometer with fixed slit in the shed which I was building some time ago for obtaining the spectrum of extended objects. Sounds very technical but as per my norm, very Valerie Singleton and Chad Valley.
    Anyway somewhere in the past I read that it was possible to obtain a spectrum of sunlight by connecting a fibre optic cable to a spectrometer/camera set up and retiring immediately. No collimating and focussing lenses involved! Now I may have imagined this, probably the drugs! 
    So being bored I finished off the spectrometer, fixed an audio fibre optic cable to the front end and my modded Canon 200d to the other end. When I pointed the end of the fibre optic cable at the sun I was able to snap away and collect some data which I promptly stacked. 
    I then set about reducing the data to create a spectrum profile.  This is probably where I went wrong. First, how was I going to calibrate the profile which was all very lowercase squiggles? Well as the image encompassed the zero, first and second orders,  I could approximately identify one point 0 on the x axis. 
    I then remembered that the temperature of the Sun roughly obeys Wien's law and as the internet could provide the visible wavelength at which the Sun delivers max flux I could obtain a second calibration point on the x axis for the highest y axis point on the flux curve. A linear calibration could then be performed. 
    As I knew our Sun is a G2V star, I used this profile to correct my image profile for camera response. 
    All very well but am I fooling myself? 
    I remember being set an exercise by the legendary lighting Engineer, Joe Lines. It was 1969 and I was living a bohemian student life in Manchester. We had to create a lighting scheme and provide all the relevant calculations. I set about the task with much enthusiasm, a little knowledge and even less talent. A week later, project completed, I handed in my weighty treatise and awaited assessment by Joe. A further week later my flat mate Paul collected his and my now 'marked' submissions and left mine on my desk in my squalid room. Written on the bottom in red ink was "7/10  Stop fooling yourself Roberts". This came as something of a shock because Joe Lines was an extremely patient and kind man! What could this possibly mean?
    What I only found out months afterwards, was that my friend Paul had added all the words after "7/10". I believe from that day onwards, I have suffered from what they now call 'imposters syndrome'.
    I attach photos as supportive evidence of how wrong you can be!
    George 'coughing' in an overcast Lowestoft
     
     
     


  9. Hawksmoor
    The weather continues to be very unfavorable for astronomy, so I continue to play in my 'shed of delights'. I have addressed some of the issues associated with using a 500 line diffraction grating as a simple filter cell.  I did not want to permanently adapt my QHY5-11 camera for spectroscopy and so designed a 3d printed block to allow it to be brought very close to the imaging chip at the optimum angle for a first order spectrum at 550nm. This appears to have minimised 'fish tailing' of the spectral image and aided obtaining focus upon the spectrum rather than the star. 
    In between visits from grandchildren I tried my new spectrometer out on my 66mm Altair Astro refractor.  Sitting in our living room on 07 July I could just make out a few stars above our neighbour’s house roof ( approx South). Being a bit idle, I pointed my spectrometer-refractor combo through the patio doors at a brightish star at a convenient height and obtained my first spectral image with the new spectrometer.  I didn't obtain any darks and flats or any such 'technical marlarkey' as I was really just giving it a go in between the clouds. I was quite surprised that I captured a reasonable image of the 'mystery star’.
    One of the not immediately appreciable downsides of using a 500 line diffraction grating is that, as the spectrum is more spread out than using  a 100 or 200 line grating, it produces a significantly dimmer image. Possibly this will be improved by using my 127mm refractor, by stacking more light frames and by taking darks and flats. 
    I prepped the spectral image using the freeware IRIS and then had a go at producing an initial calibrated profile using John Paraskeva’s excellent BASS software. I am amazed at the generosity and skills of people who devise and contribute to the development of freeware that open up access to scientific hobbies for old blokes like me!
    Having obtained a profile, I guessed the star in question was an A type star. I then used Stellarium to look for bright  A stars that were observable to the naked eye from our living room on 07-07-2021. The best candidate for my money is the A07 star Mu Serpentis. (This is probably wrong but ‘in for a penny in for a pound’!)
    Next up I intend to:
    Image Vega and obtain a camera response curve for the set up.
    Learn more about using BASS software.
    Complete a half constructed 3d printed 100 lines/mm set up for obtaining spectra from fainter stars.
    Come up with a rudimentary grating design to address extended objects of interest.
    Mess about with a fibre optic link between my telescope and a spectrometer.
     
     


  10. Hawksmoor
    The pier construction project for my 5 inch refractor is nearing completion. Today, I bolted the oak capping, the mild steel levelling plate and my NEQ6 Pro equatorial mount to the top of the reinforced concrete column.  All in all I think the project will have cost me about £120 for materials but I did have some of the stuff I needed already in my shed.  The weather, true to form, has suddenly turned grim - grey clouds horizon to horizon.  I guess this is my fault.
    Everything seems to have turned out alright so unless the earth crust folds under the imposed weight I should be imaging Jupiter very soon subject to jet stream and cloud cover.
    The fabrication-construction stages were as follows:
    Obtaining via the Internet the laser cut 6mm mild steel disc for making the levelling plate. Drilling it to take the  3 stainless steel threaded studs used to fix the levelling plate to the top of the concrete pier. Drilling it to enable my existing extension pillar/puck to be bolted to it. Cutting and welding reinforcing bar to create a reinforcement cage for the concrete pier. Choosing the best location and marking out for the pier. Drilling my existing concrete paving through into the concrete sub base ( i didn't want to dig the paving up for the pier foundation). Chem fixing shear studs and the bottom of the reinforcement cage into the concrete sub- base. Constructing the timber formwork for the pier. Casting the concrete in two pours. Removing the formwork after 14 days. Painting  the levelling plate using three coats of Hammerite. Making the timber pillar capping and eyepiece tray from some surplius oak kitchen worktop. Boltting and levelling the capping, levelling plate and NEQ6Pro to the top of the concrete pier. Now I can turn my shed endeavours towards Spectrometer Mk3.

     
  11. Hawksmoor
    After completing my current oil painting blitz, I spent some time today completing 'Spectrometer Mark2' in the 'clean room' or the kitchen as my wife likes to call it.  The primary reason for the redesign is my desire to use either my QHY5v or QHY5-11 as the imaging camera, without dedicating either camera to capturing spectra.  So a modular approach seemed sensible and the ability to experiment with different diffraction gratings was also an objective.  Mark1 was virtually built for 'nowt',  Mark2 has required the expenditure of a few quid mainly on purchasing an extra mounting bracket for the QHY5 (I already had one in my bag of astro bits and bobs).  I made the base from hardwood samples  handed down from my late and great mate Barry Shulver.  The tilt and turn mechanism, for holding the diffraction transmission grating, was fashioned from a camera holder and tripod obtained from everyones favourite country 'Poundland'.
    I used an on-line transmission grating calculator to work out the diffraction angles for different gratings and basic trigonometry to calculate the distance between the gratings and the cameras chips to fit the first order spectrum on the chip.  Hopefully, if I've got it right , it should work ok - so watch this space for my continuing 'Chad Valley' exploits in 'Off World Spectra'!
     



  12. Hawksmoor
    After many a night of stretching pillow cases over the end of my telescope, no offence intended, I have finally got around to making myself a light-box for taking flats.  I can only hope this will improve my images.
    I gleaned most of the materials from the back of my shed, added a few LEDS and a switch from my best mate Mr Maplin and attached a bungee and batteries from everyone's favourite country 'Poundland'.  It doesn't look pretty but I cant wait to try it. Come on weather make an old man's evening just a little more cheery. I've almost used up the Scandinavian Noir series I recorded from the Telly.  If the I don't get a clear night soon I will be forced to watch tennis or football.

  13. Hawksmoor
    Its a beautiful sunny day on the East Coast. Have been to the hospital to have an MOT on hip and back. Received great service and care from all staff at the James Paget Hospital. The NHS is great!:hello2:
    Having a bit of time on my hands and wanting a sit down, have spent an hour with an old photo of M57 which I took last summer in my backyard. Quite pleased with myself in that I have worked out how to use the de-convolution algorithms in IRIS software. (Probably less than pleased with myself in that I didn't better polar align my scope).:)
  14. Hawksmoor
    Late on February 10th and in the early hours vof the 11th, I tried out my newly purchased QHY5-11 camera.  Whilst awaiting the appearance of Jupiter over the hedge, I had my first go at 'guiding' using ther QHY5-11 as a guide camera and my Canon DSLR as an imaging camera.  All went surprisingly smoothly. Orion was loitering in the south-east and although the light pollution was not good ,  I targetted  Alnitak and all the usuaL culprits.  I chose a guide star, locked on and started a series of 3 minute exposures.  One was ruined by a passing satellite but after excluding this one, I managed thirty minutes  worth of photons without mishap.  Oh how my cup floweth over!  Then disaster, the guide star broke up before my very eyes and everything went 'pixels- up' on my clockwork laptop.  Trying not to panic, I saught reassurance by telling myself that the camera driver was probably playing up.  So I followed the set course used by computer experts worldwide. I turned everything off. Then turned it all back on.  As the camera booted up, I scanned the computer screen for stars. Completely black!!!!!!!  At this point I imagined the next morning's conversation with my long suffering wife.  " You only purchased the camera yesterday and you broke it on the same day"!  "What are you like @*$££££"?
    Then it dawned on me, the earth had been spinning and both Barnard 33 and my selected guide star had disappeared below the ridge tiles on the kitchen extension to our house.  No wonder PHD Guiding had struggled!  What a turnip?   I have to say this act of genius was not a one off. The week before I had stayed up to four in the morning taking video clips of Jupiter using my old QHY5v planetary camera. The following day whilst eating my breakfast I realised that I had forgotten to use the infra-red filter.  So if anyone wants several gigabytes of blurry videos of Jupiter, apply immediately to avoid disaapointment. I must be getting old!
    Anyway, the image of Alnitak, the Flame and Horsehead nebulae turned out better than I thought and I did get some useable AVIs of Jupiter.  The seeing was a bit poor so the Jupiter images are not that sharp, but all in all  I'm quite pleased with the QHY5-11.  I believe QHY are bringing out a new camera this year to replace the QHY5-11 so I purchased it at a very good knock-down price from Modern Astronomy.


  15. Hawksmoor
    Well I never got to photograph the Transit of Venus because of the awful weather which has continued almost unabated. However, after a day when we experienced a power outage because of a lightning strike, and torrential rain and hailstones, the clouds parted and by the time we went to bed and the street lights went out, the stars shone in astronomical twilight. Looking out our bedroom window, which faces north, Noctilucent Clouds were evident. Using my compact camera and leaning out the window, I was able to get a couple of rather grainy images.
    for more see http://george-artcab...om-windows.html
  16. Hawksmoor
    When I was a ten year old kid I used my pocket money to buy job lots of old broken clocks from Maidstone Market.  I would take them home and spend hours in my Mum and Dad’s cellar taking them apart ostensibly to get them working again. They never did but hey I never let failure deter me.
    Nowadays, being happily retired (and no gloating intended), I have many an hour to while away in my shed.  Nothing that I can get away with, gives me greater pleasure than recycling old bits of metal, plastic, wood and abandoned technology - for astronomical functions. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t – so no change there then!
    My latest project, to construct a thermometer for taking the temperature of stars or as it might be described a ‘Chad Valley Spectrometer’, is well under way.  It remains to be tested but what with the transit of Mercury and the sudden outbreak of rain which followed, I await a clear night with mounting excitement. 
    The ‘Starthrotch Analyser’, catchy name ehh, has been constructed from a vandalised Logitech E3500 webcam, a section of chromed tubing, some aluminium plate left over from a DIY yard gully, 3 BRE hardwood samples from my late and great mate Barry Shulver, a piece of galvanised mesh, half a dozen screws, some pieces of black felt, Gorilla glue and lots of Evostik impact adhesive.  I did have to purchase from ‘Edulab Scientific Supplies’ for about £10 - 3 slide mounted 100 lines/mm transmission gratings.  All in all and if it works, quite a‘thrifty’ piece of kit!
    My daughter, Rachel, was quite impressed. She thought the general appearance of the ‘Starthrotch Analyser’ was very ‘1960s Star Trek’, my partner Toot believes it would not have looked out of place in ‘Blake’s 7-the cardboard years’. Praise indeed!
    I will let you know in a future post whether it works or not, although my best guess is it probably won’t! 
    I wonder if I could make an operational ‘photon torpedo’ from a second hand Halfords top box and an obsolete Tom Tom - SATNAV?  Anything is possible in a shed.

  17. Hawksmoor
    I decided to try the month's free access to the Bradford Robotic Telescope on Mount Teide, Teneriffe. So thanks 'Sky at Night' Magazine! The free trial is limited to a number of given objects and the exposures and filters are all preset, so you cannot go wrong, but all in all I was quite pleased. I am considering investing the less than prohibitive £3 a month inorder to try out the real thing. Seems to me a very inexpensive way of accessing objects near or below my southern horizon with better kit than I can afford under clearer skies. I also can do it without getting cold or staying up half the night. This month in Lowestoft it has been mega-wet and if autumn turns out anything like the summer, I cannot see me gathering many photons in my backyard!
     

  18. Hawksmoor
    It's a very miserable afternoon in Lowestoft. It is raining and the sky is an unrelieved expanse of grey stretching from horizon to horizon. Early this morning the sky was clearer but not sufficiently devoid of cloud to permit the useful deployment of my 'scope. Due mainly to my overwhelming cheerfulness, I spent a happy pre-dawn hour with my 11x80mm binoculars looking at all the usual summer astro-culprits . This afternoon I have been removing malware with mixed success from two laptops. Why do companies and individuals invest so much time in devising and spreading digital diseases across the internet?
     
    On a much more positive note and egged on by my son, I purchased an Altair Astro Lightwave 66ED-R refractor to go on my Star Adventurer mount. Its a very nice looking bit of kit, all new and nicely engineered in its aluminium travel case. Next month I'm off to Northumberland for a week's holiday, so weather permitting and assisted by some of my grandchildren, I should be aquiring some widefield photographs of the 'dark' night sky. No wonder excitement mounts!
  19. Hawksmoor
    Well I've made a start on constructing my permanent backyard telescope pier by drilling the 6mm. mild steel laser cut 200mm. dia. disc to take the three levelling threaded studs and the 12mm. bolt for fixing my pillar extension tube to the plate.  My investment in new drill bits and cutting oil turned out well, particularly as I have no pillar drill and had to accomplish the task using my trusty handheld Black and Decker. 
    I am trying to minimise the costs involved by using as many bits and pieces that have spent many a year languishing in my shed.  Using the extension tube, which I already possessed, saved me the cost of a 'puck' and after rooting about in my shed I found some reinforcement bar and most of the timber I required for formwork to cast the reinforced concrete pillar.
    By coincidence my friend Mr. Lidl had reduced the cost of a small angle-grinder to £9-99  and as I had given my larger disc-cutter to one of my sons, largely because I could no longer pick it up let alone wield it in any purposeful way, I parted with the cash and now have an effective machine for cutting the reinforcement.  I have borrowed an arc welder from another son so I can weld the reinforcent together- excellent!.
    As a fair weather astronomer and sometime builder I'm awaiting a warm dry spell before putting the formwork and reinforcement together and mixing and casting the concrete (two pours). Looking out the window I guess this might be a while!
    Last night about 1.00am the sky over Lowestoft was dark and transparent. Jupiter was big and briight due south and most of the usual culprits for this time of year were visible through my handheld 11x80 mm. Helios biinoculars. I still could not find the comet lurking somewhere between the Great Bear and Hercules although I could easily see fuzzies of the same magnitude. I think I'm losing it!
     

  20. Hawksmoor
    I look forward to Saturn coming to opposition each year or each 378 days to be precise. The sky over our backyard in the early hours of the 24th of May was clear and the stars shone bright. In the east, the stars of Cygnus and Lyra were shining brightly and Saturn was a brightish yellow presence due south over my neighbour's house rooftops. Through the eyepiece its rings shone bright, the Seeliger effect making a clear difference. Sadly, my imaging and images were affected by the planet's low altitude and the turbulent atmosphere through which the reflected light from the planet had travelled. Images taken with my 2.5x Barlow were significantly better than those in which I used my 3x Barlow.
     
    I managed to get some still images of the planet's moons using my Canon 600D DSLR and made a composite image using the image of the planet obtained with my QHY5v camera. I really like placing the planets in a starry background. For me it provides context for the subject of my photographs.
     


  21. Hawksmoor
    Well normally I'm a bit of a " give it a go" or "I wonder what happens if I push this button" sort of bloke. Anyway for whatever reason I purchased a couple of ledger type books from Poundland and started two observational logs. One log for visual observations and one for the LVST (the Lowestoft Very Small radio Telescope). So last night, I used the moon to calibrate the focus points for my camera - telescope -barlow lens combinations and wrote it all down in my log book. Train spotting next!
    The sky was a bit cloudy and the moon was in one of the gum trees at the bottom of my garden, so imaging was not really on but I quite liked this photo. Nice craters on the limb.

  22. Hawksmoor
    If it looks like a clear night, is cloud free like a clear night and you can see stars like on a clear night............ It probably isn't a clear night because there's just enough fog, mist or other agent of atmospheric mischief sufficient to prevent me obtaining a sharp avi-clip of Mars. It's 12.20am, the Council has been kind enough to extinguish the street lights, Mars is approaching opposition and I might as well go to bed!!!! I'm not adding an 'entry image' because I haven't got one. Grrrrr!
  23. Hawksmoor
    My eight year-old grandson came to stop with us for the weekend. We picked him up after school in Southend so after a two hour journey to our house we were all tired. The mist cleared by the time we reached Lowestoft and he asked about the bright star in the sky. I said it was the planet Jupiter and he was interested to see it through my scope. Showed him Jupiter, the Pleiades and the Moon through my refractor. He thought it was all great! Astronomy in your backyard doesn't get better than this.
  24. Hawksmoor
    Just got back from Iceland having enjoyed a few days sploshing about in the geothermal waters, looking at waterfalls and geysers and eating lots of cod. As you can imagine, we were very excited at the prospect of seeing the Aurora Borealis.  Unsurprisingly, nights went by under a dense blanket of cloud. Then, on the morning of the last full day of our holiday, the sun came out and so did we.  After a full 10 hours traipsing about a glacier and investigating basalt columns on a black beach we returned to our hotel in Reykjavik.  Night fell - clunk!  One by one all the light pollution came on all over the city - but what was that faint sepulchre glow advancing from the far North across the slate grey Arctic Ocean?  Hurrah at the twelfth hour we got to see the Northern Lights. An excellent display it was too - lasting for about three hours. With the naked eye we could clearly distinguish green , magenta and blue light and we managed to take some photographs. Our astronomical cup overflowed.
    I have attached a rough and ready annimation which gives some impression from the early moments of the display.
     

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