Hawksmoor

Mrs H safely returned from knee surgery and now is the 'upgraded model' with artificial knee and hip!😍

I'm am currently happily married to a Cyborg 'off world' kick boxer!

All a bit 'Blade Runner' in Lowestoft, so this year 'blurry images' of Saturn will have to wait.

It’s official my Lenovo is intermittently expiring and in doing so corrupting the operating system. It is time for it to fade into the cloud. I’m hoping the recently acquired video clips of Syrtis Major can be saved.

Tottering start to imaging in 2023. Managed to get some video of Mars in between the clouds. Unusually all my kit performed faultlessly.Then when I brought my laptop into the house it stuttered and appeared to expire. It has seemingly died before only to be revived by the local IT legend Robin. It is with him as I type!    
George laptopless in Lowestoft.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Observing and Imaging Year to all at FLO and Stargazers every where. Thanks for all the help, likes, laughs and kind comments you have sent to me over the last 12 months. Mrs H has asked me to add her best wishes to you all.

Just got in from the backyard after a ‘cold night’ imaging a wobbly Mars. Had an unexpected shower of something similar to fine snow and a low of -4C. I’m getting too old for this malarkey in winter. Now on an intravenous Horlicks drip courtesy of Mrs H.

George the human icicle in Lowestoft next the sea.

A few  rather beautiful rockets of the more terrestrial kind over Lowestoft tonight also a very pretty Jupiter Moon conjunction. Took  few stills with my Canon 600d and a zoom lens (f between 200 and 300mm). Messed about with the images to bring out Jupiter's moons Callisto and Ganymede. Io and Europa were lost in the glare from Jupiter. Our Moon was waxing gibbous with the terminator highlighting the 'Bay of Rainbows'. All very lovely and even a few clouds couldn't spoil the view.

Beautiful sunset and new Moon over Cambridgeshire tonight.

Our daughter and three of our grandchildren are with us for half term so was able to show them the partial solar eclipse safely from our backyard. Lots of medium and high level clouds about over Lowestoft this morning, so images up to my usual blurry standard. Will post a couple of the least worst tomorrow.

Was also coerced into buying lunch from Burger King. The veggie burger was tasty and better than I had envisaged but by teatime I was suffering from spleeny 'burger regret'.

George recovering in bed in Lowestoft.

It's odd how every now and then even an absolute Muppet like me has a moment of revelation! I have been merrily separating stars from nebulous stuff, processing each bit and then recombining them using 'screen' blend mode for longer than you can say Professor Ian Morison. Unfortunately, I have always been troubled by the softness of my stars.  Then today it suddenly occurred to me  I should be 'screen' blending the nebula into the stars and not the other way around. Tried it and lo' and behold the stars are much sharper and the nebula more nebulous! Who would have thought it? What a complete numpty!!

Our friend Irene sent me a photo of a Falcon 9 taking off from the Cape as captured by her brother Jeff Payne from the balcony of his flat on Bermuda.

Argh! I believe my Lenovo 'workhorse' laptop just died. 

George now irritable in Lowestoft.

Just packed up after imaging Jupiter. My first go for this year.  All a bit 'wobbly-wobbly' tonight over Lowestoft. So I'm not expecting the data to be very good. My kit all worked reasonably well so must not grumble.

George in Lowestoft and now in bed.

Taking a break from looking after the post op Mrs H, I ventured out to take my first blurry video of the ringed planet. Battling with full on moonlight and a sea fret moving in land and across my southern horizon I managed to capture a few blurry clips before the fog won. I am now in bed contemplating tomorrow's editing and video processing fun and games which will have to compete for time with cooking the Sunday lunch, making some scones for tea and 3d printing a cooker for my graddaughter's dolls house. A house- husband's day is long and arduous!

Nice to view tonight Antares and the claws of the scorpion just above my southern horizon as seen  from our backyard. Had a fledgling robin fly in through the open bedroom window. Bird now safely back with mum and dad in our garden. All's well that ends well!

Nighty night stargazers.

Wonderful clear and steady astro observing last night in Lowestoft. First time I've ever managed to see all the elements of the Veil Nebula from our backyard using handheld 8x30 binoculars. Took a few images of NGC7000 using modded and unmodded DSLRs . Will have some fun stacking them and combining them over the next few days.

If all goes well, Mrs H will be having her knee replaced next week, so housework and nursing may get in the way of Affinity Photo time. 

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.

I had a positive Covid flow test today. It never rains but it pours. On the other hand it does explain the dry cough, temperature and head ache!

Not been up to much astronomy for a while as Mrs. H had her hip replaced yesterday. She is in hospital for a couple of days but doing well! I shall be swapping my personal technical challenges from 'Astro Kit' to 'Washing Machine'. Who would have thought Bosch washing machines would have got so 'digital' over the last 48 years? 

George contemplating a short-medium term period of domestic drudgery in Lowestoft.

Purchased Affinity Photo and am now bravely facing the learning curve. Lets hope my aged brain is up to it! Thing is, once you stop learning and reinventing yourself, 'you become a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard'.

The recent Affinity Photo post on SGL looks very helpful and am awaiting the arrival from FLO of Dave Eagle's Guide.

Nighty night stargazers.

Nice crisp transparent moonless night to bring in November. Had my mini-rig up and running taking some images of the Andromeda group of galaxies with my Altair Astro 66mm Doublet and Canon 600d camera. Now in bed thawing out!

Nighty night Stargazers.

Quite a bright afternoon in Lowestoft today, had a ring doughnut covered in sugar plus a black coffee on the seafront. Nice!

Having read Ken Harrison's excellent book Astronomical 'Spectroscopy for Amateurs' at least twice and innumerable visits to Robin's 'Three Hills' internet site, I have decided to haul myself up on the shoulders of giants and try to make yet another spectrograph this time involving a homemade adjustable slit! After a lot of deliberation I have come up with a modular design based on the 'Watkis Spectrograph'. I am currentlyputting together a heap of parts mostly gleaned from old bits of redundant/broken kit or stuff purchased from the NET in days gone past when I thought 'That's too good an offer to miss' (followed by a long languish in a box in the shed). Each module appears to pass the Transpec V2 spreadsheet test - so fingers crossed. At least I will have a project to keep me going through the winter.

After an intensive week of gardening we had Sunday at leisure.  Carried out a partial water change , filter backwash and general clean up of our tropical fish tank. Then I took apart a pair of misaligned zoom binoculars from circa 1980's. An absolute treasure-trove of eight lenses in lens- cells and four prisms plus some bits for a DIY focuser.  This should  come in handy astro-shed- spectrum project wise. Happy but tired old bloke now drinking a lager and anticipating dinner. It is very cloudy in Lowestoft, so not much change there!

Beautiful night. Been out with bins and my 66mm Altair refractor. Not really dark this time of the year but warm as far as 2:00 in the morning goes in East Anglia. The Milky Way through Cygnus is a pretty thing and the view through 11x80 bins is breath taking. Hopefully I will have captured some widefield snaps in and around Sadr.

Hope the skies are clear for you wherever you are.

Night all you Stargazers.

Amazing how many clouds can mysteriously appear out of a clear blue sky at the mere sniff of an eclipse!