Hawksmoor

Lowestoft weather is putting on a fine display for the Geminids - cloud cover from horizon to horizon, persistent rain and gusting winds. Great!

Grumpy old man in Lowestoft

Mrs H planted out the petunias this week. Gales have since battered the east coast. It's no Midsummer Nights Dream in our backyard right now! The LVST yagi aerial is blowin' in the wind, the aerial is blowin' in the wind.

Night all from Lowestoft too close the sea.

Moon quite beautiful in broken cloud above Lowestoft tonight.

Purchased Ken Harrison's book 'Astronomical Spectroscopy for Amateurs'. It arrived this week and I have started to read through. Packed with useful information and straight forward explanations! Have also managed to get my new laptop to run VSpec  - (cunningly by reloading Fritz Chessbase. VSpec must use some shared file - not sure why or how but it now works). Will review whether to buy RSpec after I've messed about with VSpec for a while. Have yet to master adjusting for Instrument Response using VSpec it is relatively simple using the trial RSpec software. Noticed Ken's book has a section on achieving this with VSpec, plus I have the relevant sections of the VSpec manual downloaded. Early this morning whilst I was trying out my homemade widefield astrograph, I noticed Vega was rising in the east so will soon be available for spectrometer calibration. -Yay!

The weather is not good but the promised 'sleet' has not yet materialised. -BUT- I have had a wonderful day maintaining and reorganising my astro and photographic kit. Best of all I managed to acquire new pre-sectioned inserts for my airline storage cases and have spent a happy afternoon making nests for 'my stuff'. I love that moment when the foam detaches and it makes a lovely scrunching sound. Old men are easily pleased!  Mrs H just rolls her eyes upward to the heavens.

I shall await a warmer day for sorting out my equatorial mount on it's pier in the backyard.

Last night's 2 day old crescent Moon - a real pretty view from our kitchen.

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!

Lovely afternoon so went for a walk. Saw a green woodpecker and the sun felt warm on my old back. Lowestoft will get snow on Sunday according to Metcheck.

Mrs Hawksmoor and I are booked in to get our first Covid Vaccine injections on Sunday  - so  we are hoping the snow does not intervene.

Benefited from a small window of clear sky on a freezing foggy night. Tried to find the comet near Capella with my big bins and took a few snaps with my dslr on the Star Adventurer. Not convinced I spotted it so must be very faint. Will look at the images tomorrow and see what shows up.

Night all.

The weather was not kind so imaging Quadrantids wasn't an option. I did however wander into 'Mission Control' (my shed) at lunchtime today and noticed that my 'software defined radio' (The LVST) was pinging like mad as radar reflections from meteors over the South of France were being picked up by my Yagi aerial. I leave the LVST running 24 -7 - 365 days a year. I must download all the data from 2020 and get on with some data analysis.  Unfortunately, like Mr. Toad,  I am a backsliding animal!

George 'data-rich' near Sole Bay.

Just checked out NORAD tracks Santa. The 'man in red' is going well and the reindeer team look fresh and up to the job. Hope I'm on 'the nice list'!

The closest conjunction has been and gone whilst the cloud, rain and wind held sway over Lowestoft. Perhaps tomorrow will be still, dry and clear.

George slightly sad on the East Coast.

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

Nice aurora display over the Shetlands last night. Good views from the new webcam location at Eshaness Lighthouse as well as from old faithfull Cliffcam 3. All at www.Shetland webcams.

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

Had all sorts of grim weather here on the east coast. Whilst going upstairs on Sunday I caught a quick glimpse of Saturn and Jupiter starting to look quite close. I pressed the Poundland minitripod back into use and captured this technicolour blurry image with the planets in hazy cloud - with my Canon 600d at ISO6400 through the back bedroom window. The clouds made for a prettier picture?

Looking forward to closer and clearer!

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! 

Clear sky tonight. Managed to observe one  straggler Leonid but as usual my camera was pointing in the wrong direction. Managed to capture two long sequences of exposures. Canon 600d camera - on  Star Adventurer driven mount - lens at f=18mm and ISO 1600 -exp 45 secs. & 60 secs. Widefield images of Auriga and the Pleiades. Just completing calibration frames then off to bed. Lovely night with Orion looking splendid.

Night night Stargazers.

No Leonids for me tonight as the rain and cloud have persisted. Decided to call it a night at 1:00am and have gone to bed. Maybe I will catch a few stragglers tomorrow?

Nighty night cloud dodgers.

Nice weather all day here on the East Coast. Spent the day fabricating a mild steel door for my pizza oven. Since I increased the external insulation the fire protected timber door becomes carbonised  after two firings, so a double skinned aluminium silicate wool insulated steel door is the way forward. Makes you wonder whether Pompeii was brought down by a volcanic eruption or a faulty pizza oven design?

As I had not seen a cloud all day, I decided to set up my big refractor to catch some more Mars videos. Soon as it was up and running the clouds appeared along with some straggler fireworks. Went in to eat dinner and when I came out it was clear! Managed to capture some clips of Mars and was pleased to note that Syrtis Major was prominent. The atmosphere was not that stable and the wind was also a nuisance as I do not have an enclosed observatory. Will have to wait and see how the videos process. All done and dusted by 10:30. Had a glass of brandy to warm up as it has turned cold.

Nighty night Stargazers.

If I were a sea-fairing man I would describe the current weather in our backyard as a persistent 'squall'.  I think I can safely 'stand down' the telescope for the foreseeable future.

To cheer myself up I have been reorganising my tropical fish aquarium including a bit of re-wiring and have purchased on-line an Eheim Ecco Pro 130 external cannister filter.  My on going battle with ' algae' will hopefully turn a corner with better water treatment and the imminent arrival of four veg hungry Otocinclus Catfish.

Best regards from George up to 'fishy-business' in Lowestoft.

Great night in Lowestoft tonight. Managed to capture some more video clips of Mars. Unfortunately, very similar aspect to the captures I obtained in September. Also captured two videos of the crater Clavius and tried out Topaz DenoiseAI (now purchased) for the first time on a lunar image. Much impressed by how much this software improves high res views of the Moon.

Now in bed and awaiting the arrival of the 'Sandman'.

An unexpected clear night. Went outside and looked up. The Milkway is directly overhead running from Auriga in the east, through Cassiopeia and onto Cygnus in the west. Looking south Pegasus and Mars take pride of place. With the street lights off, M31 is visible to the naked eye. The Pleiades cluster is now quite high in the South-east and Betelgeuse is just visible over our hedge. Winter is on its way!

Nighty night stargazers.

Decided to try out Topaz Denoise AI - Quite impressed by use on a couple of planetary images. Will have a go with some widefield photos tomorrow. Think I may well be investing $99.99 of my 'paper-round' money in this software. If so there will be no more astro investments until 2021. 

Still grim astronomy blight weather here on the East Coast but on the whole a productive day.  Made a metal sleeve from a bit of scrap stainless and fixed it over a crack in the ABS on Mrs Hawksmoor's Jenome sewing machine. Said crack was preventing the cotton from moving correctly and this in turn was causing stitches to be dropped and some stitches not to work at all!  Generally it is a well made machine but why use ABS in a location where a moving thread over time is likely to wear a groove and mess everything up?  It now works Igor! and I am in her good books.  The other 'result of the day' was addressing the stripped thread in my x2.5 Barlow. Overtime and due to my real fear that one or other camera was going to drop out and fall to its doom on the concrete paving, I had overtightened and stripped the thread in the soft aluminium. Yet again the £5.99 Tap and Dye set from Lidl's middle aisle has saved the day. I await the M4 al thumb bolt from my friend Mr Amazon Prime as I now have a new M4 threaded hole awaiting its company. Now this small engineering feat may not rate with all you proper engineers but for an ' itinerant artist and bodger' like me, this is a "small step for man but a giant leap for Hawksmoor"