Hawksmoor

Children's eyes are far sharper than those of adults. When asked what he could see through his small plastic telescope, my 5 year old grandson Ozzie said " Tim Peake on the space station". Clearly I should have gone to Specsavers!

Clouded out in Lowestoft tonight!  Off to bed.

Cold and windy night here on the coast. Cloud, rain and bit of sleet earlier, with the sky clearing after midnight but too much wind for astrophotography and old men.

Night all, from the old man by the sea.

Currently in North Cyprus, very dark skies but quite a lot of wispy cloud. In a moment of transparency I saw Venus at about maximum magnitude. Absolutely stunning! Looked like a bright lamp hung within a dusting of faint stars. You can see why the ancient civilisations gave it goddess status!

Did anyone see a very bright meteor last night? Some time after 23.00. My partner  and daughter saw a fireball over Lowestoft, very bright and quite slow moving. From the direction it came from, likely to have been a Perseid. I was in my shed at the time and as she shouted out I got a long duration ping on my SDR meteor set up. Quite the largest I have recorded since I set it up. Not sure the geometry would work so might have been a coincidence!  When I have finished my SDR run for this year's Perseid shower I will find the screenshot and post it. Lovely night took some nice images of the Milky Way, Picked up the ISS through my big bins - it actually appeared rectangular!  M27 was very clear and easy to see through bins plus lots of open and globular clusters.  Although I observed quite a few meteors I did not get any images. I did however capture an Iridium Satellite flare.

Did some work on the pillar and also made a slit and diffraction grating holder for Spectrometer Mk3. Excitement mounts and then gets off again.

Early night to night as I did not get into my bed until 3.30 am. this morning. Great night last night - 4 hours  11.00pm. until 3.00 am cloud free.  Clouds rolled in just as my battery died - good timimg.  Saw the ISS pass overhead at about 9.30pm. always a treat  and just before I packed up I  saw two bright meteors simultaneously - coming from the same radiant almost due south. Tremendous visual perspective effect.

Eaten too much!

End of an era. Just decommissioned my two old DELL Windows 7 laptops - no longer wifi enabled to the internet. Will save me the annual Bullguard subscription which has just come up for renewal. Will  use them in the future for data storage,  'guiding' and other non internet jobs until their little processors fade quietly away! 

Finally got my 3d. Printer to print. Yay!

Fireball-meteor: 02-12-2016 between 20:30 and 21:00 GMT. Over Darsham, Suffolk travelling west to east seen from the A12.  Went by car to pick up grandchildren from Southend on the way back both my wife and I saw a very bright ball of a meteor pass over the road infront of our car. No noticeable colour. Quite spectacular, quite slow moving and curved down towards the ground at the end of its trajectory before we lost sight of it. Did anyone else see this?

First day I have felt a little better since contracting covid. Mrs H still testing positive but looking a bit more like herself. Both of us have been under the cosh for thirteen days with different sensory symptoms. This is a very surprising and unpleasant virus to contract. In the past I have had flu and pneumonia more than once and my experience with covid has been comparable and not at all like a head cold as some report. Take sensible precautions to avoid it, particularly if you are getting on a bit or have other medical issues.

Stay safe stargazers.

Friends in Shetland have a sky full of Aurora, in Lowestoft I can see the glow from Great Yarmouth and cloud moving in from the north - time for bed said zebedee!

Frustrating day with a 3d printer. PLA insists upon getting stuck in the extruder nozzle but wont stick to the plate. Thankfully, I have nothing better to do but I'm convinced  that I could have whittled the gismo I'm trying to print, from a solid block of ebony using a blunt spoon, in half the time I've spent to date. I am just too old and obdurate to give up!  On a positive note Mrs. H made a tasty fish soup for tea!

Getting closer but wish the weather would improve, especially as the Geminids are due!

Getting even closer but I wont be able to capture future images, weather permitting, from the back bedroom window!

Had a quick go at Venus using my ETX 90 RA on my small  rig and QHY5-11 planetary camera. Over did the gain as Venus is so bright at the moment but at least I captured an image of the crescent before Venus dropped below my kitchen roof.

Had my 72nd Birthday today and the excellent Mrs H purchased GradientXTerminator for me!

Hats off to astrophotographers in the Peak District. Clouds, light pollution from Sheffield and planes from Manchester Airport, all a bit much for a country boy from Suffolk. Enjoying the oat cakes though!

George not in Lowestoft.

Have an excellent Christmas Reggie!

best wishes from George and Anita (Mrs H)🎄🎄

Heads up regarding a considerable chunk of AI software which seems to work rather well on deep sky  images . Anyone who has looked at my deep sky photos will know that they are invariably blurry and have considerable room for improvement!  Well I came across this as a reference on the wonderful internet resource 'Professor Morison's Astronomy Digest' . It is his latest post https://www.ianmorison.com/astrosharp-astronomical-sharpening-tool/. . Astrosharp is a freeware AI based sharpener which uses a model trained on Hubble images. Very much worth a donation to its creator!

Unlike Russel Croman's  excellent Blur Exterminator which currently is only available as a Pixinsite plug in, this works as a standalone program. (I don't have Pixinsite)

I have inserted one of my  blurry photos which has had a 60% sharpened layer blended into the original. This was applied to a pre-sharpened image so if astrosharp had been applied earlier in the workflow it would have been better. Definitely worth downloading in my opinion!

Heads up. Friends in the Shetlands have indicated that the aurora is visible and getting stronger. Have just seen on Shetland.org webcam - Cliffcam 1.

Help! We are being overrun by snails. It must be the incessant rain?

Hi Reggie

May I and Mrs.H  wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New (Stargazing) Year.

Best regards George

Home in Lowestoft and guess what lots of clouds - so no Perseids for me tonight!🥹