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Hawksmoor

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  1. Hawksmoor

    Les Granges

    By 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
     

  2. Hawksmoor

    Right up Mount Teide

    By 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!
     

  3. Hawksmoor

    Excitement mounts

    By 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!
  4. Hawksmoor

    Antares

    By Hawksmoor,

    Every year in June the red super-giant star Antares becomes visible from our south facing bedrooms and over the roof tops. This year Saturn can be seen just above the claws of Scorpius,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,quite a sight without binoculars or a telescope.
     
    I managed to get a nice photo with my little Lumix compact camera balanced on the window-sill. The minimal light pollution after midnight and the lightly applied assistance of APS providing all the help this inexpensive camera needs to capture this star 600 light years distant and nearing the end of its pre-supernova existence.
     

  6. Hawksmoor

    Saturnalia

    By 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.
     


  7. Hawksmoor
    The 26th of April turned out to be a nice clear night. It wasn't balmy out but on the other hand it was metallic simian cold! Winter was behind me and as I looked up at the waxing moon I noticed that Jupiter was much further west than it had been a few weeks before. I decided to capture my last Jovian images of the season and take a picture or two of the our old Moon. As a bonus I managed to get some video clips of Venus as it climbed above our house extension roof.
    I'm looking forward to seeing the summer constellations and the Milky Way arching over our backyard. As I get older I'm turning into a warm weather astronomer!
  8. Hawksmoor

    Chasing the Eclipse

    By Hawksmoor,

    As the weather forecast -Lowestoft seafront for the 20th March - was for cloud, cloud and more cloud, my partner and I set off for predicted 'clearing skies' in rural Lincolnshire. This required an early morning call at 4.30am. Strewth this was just like being back at worK! Anyway after quick coffee and cereal, we leapt into rhe 'family wagon' and headed at a brisk pace north west. It was a dark and stormy morning, but as we approached our favoured observation site, a recently manured field twixt Gedney and Holbeach in Lincolnshire, the clouds began to evaporate. As we set up our camera and laptop the sun suddeny appeared through and between the clouds. Donning our eclipse glasses we assumed our default nerd personae and were approached almost immediately by a journalist and photographer from the local newspaper. Clearly, we were a two for the price of one photo opportunity. A number of passing and local folk enquired as to our purpose and state of mind. Many were genuienely impressed by the live view image on my Canon DSLR, of the moon moving infront of the sun.
    We managed to capture some nice images and video of the eclipse. After packing our kit in the back of the car we adjourned to the near by tea room for mushrooms on toast and hot chocolate. At midday, we set off back home to Lowestoft.
    Days later the memory of the eclipse still lingers, as does the smell of manure in our car!

  9. Hawksmoor

    Man Flu

    By Hawksmoor,

    Have been coughing and sneezing my way through February. When you add "am I feeling up to setting up my scope" to "are there clouds" to "is there too much moonlight" ?? Its all too easy to leave the scope in its box and rack up in front of the fire.
    Anyway, the 21st February presented a fine clear night and I enjoyed imaging the ‘king of planets’.

  10. Hawksmoor

    Enthusiasm

    By Hawksmoor,

    Last night, I stood and watched as my ten year old grandson looked through my old 10x50 binoculars and found for his first time; the Andromeda Galaxy and then the Pleiades. Looking out into space and back in time is and should always be very exciting! He was very pleased with himself. Binoculars are a great way into astronomy for the younger child. Negligible set up and minimal supervision required - wide variety of observeable treats and maximum time taking in the view! Have set him a challenge to find the monthly binocular highlights in my astronomy magazine and am looking forward to his reports..
  11. 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.

  12. Hawksmoor

    Io Mystery

    By 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.


  13. Hawksmoor

    Funny old week

    By Hawksmoor,

    Last few days it has been very hot, so quite unusual for us folk on the windy East Coast. Even went in the sea and it was WARM!
    Due to haze and visiting grandchildren didn't use either of my telescopes but on the plus side had some great wide-field views through my 11x80 binoculars . M13, M92 and M31 :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: . Managed to view a number of very bright slow moving meteors, quite beautiful! I also thought that with averted vision I could just pick out a grey dot where M57 should be, but this could be old eyes and wishful thinking! :shocked:
    Worst shock horror! Visiting my friends on their boat I dropped my trusty and well used Lumix compact camera in 6 feet of murky salt water. :mad: Good news my long suffering partner bought me a new one. :kiss:
    I am still testing my homemade meteor detecting radio telescope (The LVST). Have been building a website for it. If interested please visit at
    http://missbissuk.wix.com/lvst
  14. Hawksmoor
    Having connected the FunCube Dongle Pro+ to the newly erected Yagi aerial and my wife's laptop, I sat back in my shed watching a lot of wiggly lines dance across the screen and listened to a lot of white noise. Rather like an avante-garde 1960's art installation. Then it happened, there was a little whistle reminiscent of a canary on Trill and a little line appeared on the scrolling graph. I apparently had captured my first meteor or possibly the 14.30 Airbus from Norwich to Amsterdam.
    The LVST has been tested but as yet Jodrell Plank is not operational, I need to save up for a second hand computer to leave running in monitor mode.
    Anyway I'm quite pleased with my new toy and for those that are interested I will keep you posted on further developments.
  15. 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:
  16. Hawksmoor

    Sunny

    By Hawksmoor,

    As it was a lovely day, I decided to follow the advice in the June edition of either 'Astronomy Now' or 'The Sky at Night', sadly I cannot remember which as my brain has gone awol, and set about a little light maintenance on my mount and tripod. Amazing how stained stainless steel can become when left to the ravages of the East Anglian climate. No wonder those gnarled lowestoft fishermen wore heavily oiled waterproofs!
    I also tried out my new transformer which worked perfectly, hopefully passed are those frustrating nights when having finally located the faintly fuzzy or fuzzily faint, my battery - exhausted by aimless slewing - finally expires at the first sighting of my Kodak 'Box Brownie'. Anyway, aiming at the Sun with homemade white light filter securely taped to the fat end of my scope and DSLR in movie mode fixed to the other, I tried a bit of spot and limb photography.

  17. Hawksmoor
    I suppose I could take up fishing. Anyway, I have replaced my ailing and recently failing power tank with a 12 volt 5 amp power supply from 'Modern Astronomy'. It is sitting in my shed awaiting a clear dry night- could be some time then. Apprarently and according to the very nice weather-woman on Anglia TV, the weather is to improve on Wednesday. The hail is currently bouncing off my conservatory roof. I have been playing about with some old data and reworked an image of the Horsehead Nebula etc. Will have to have a proper go imaging this next autumn.

  18. Hawksmoor
    I suppose I could take up fishing. Anyway, I have replaced my ailing and recently failing power tank with a 12 volt 5 amp power supply from 'Modern Astronomy'. It is sitting in my shed awaiting a clear dry night- could be some time then. Apprarently and according to the very nice weather-woman on Anglia TV, the weather is to improve on Wednesday. The hail is currently bouncing off my conservatory roof. I have been playing about with some old data and reworked an image of the Horsehead Nebula etc. Will have to have a proper go imaging this next autumn.

  19. Hawksmoor
    No moaning from me this time! The night of the 22nd and the early hours of the 23rd of April were absolutely splendid. It rained in the morning, knocking the dust out of the atmosphere, then as darkness fell (clang) the sky cleared, there was no moonlight, Mars shone bright and steady and a lone meteor flashed across the sky. The software driving my planetary camera didn't crash and when I looked at the first clip I could see that Syrtis Major was located almost on the meridian, my cup flowed over and after recording about 10 avi clips so did my laptop hard drive.
    I attached my Canon 400D DSLR with a telephoto lens at f =80mm to a homemade bar which I bolt to my NEQ6 mount and after a bit of fiddling about, I managed to improve the polar alignment sufficient to take a number of 120sec exposures of star fields etc. I really enjoy taking wide field photos.
    I also spent a lot of time just looking through my 11x80mm bins. It's so very easy when you get hooked on taking astro-photos to forget the wonder first derived from just looking up and out into space.
    I went to bed at 3.00am a happy old astronomer .




  20. Hawksmoor

    Grrrrrrrrrr !

    By 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!
  21. Hawksmoor

    Supernova SN 2014J

    By Hawksmoor,

    The evening of the 9th of March was cloud free and clear and presented a number of photo opportunities, e.g a double shadow transit of Io and Ganymede, obtaining spectra of Sirius and Betelgeuse (with my newly homemade diffraction grating), Supernova SN 2014J in M82, the planet Mars and a small comet in Gemini. Well the moon put paid to imaging the comet and Mars would not get above my hedges and trees until about 1.00 am. so I decided to save them for a better night later in the month. I had an accident two weeks ago and am nursing two broken ribs and a haematoma in my right bicep so did not fancy staying out later than midnight (when the Council turn off the street lights) which meant that in imaging M82 I would have to contend with light pollution from both Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Anyway, I managed to capture some photons and am currently processing them. All things being equal I'm quite pleased that I could see and image the Supernova ( at my age I might not get to see another one through the eyepiece). The image was created from 9x30sec lights, 3x darks and 3x flats stacked using DeepSkyStacker and finished using APS. I used a Canon 600d DSLR, a Meade 127mm Apo at F7.5 all on a NEQ6 mount (unguided)

  23. Hawksmoor
    Lowestoft weather has been so changeable, breaks in the cloud so infrequent and the comfort of my fireside chair so all enveloping, that I have hardly ventured out with my scope for what seems an age. Pining for some photons, I set up my DSLR on a tripod and photographed Jupiter dodging the clouds and coming within 6 degrees of the Moon. With a bit of ham fisted Photoshop jiggery pokery, I constructed a composite image of the event. Looks a bit 'Macbeth' but I quite like it!
    If the weather stabilises, I would like to take some 'this season' avi- clips of Jupiter and maybe have a crack at a 'guided' image of the Horsehead or Crab nebulae.

  24. Hawksmoor
    Spent two early mornings, 4.00am to 7.00am, comet hunting. Second morning more successful, managing to get some images of a very small and faint Comet ISON and the bright planet Mercury with a tripod mounted DSLR. Second session more productive as I swapped the relative warmth of my sheltered backyard for the cold but improved eastern horizon of Lowestoft Seafront. I must say the beach was uncrowded at 4.30am. but oh my it was cold!!!.
    Why I didn't wear a thermal coat and hat I do not know, but hey that's the excitement of comets. It took me three hours, copious amounts of tea, a fried egg sandwich and a bath before I finally thawed out. Clearly my dear and accommodating wife thinks I've lost the plot.

  25. Hawksmoor

    Nova in Delphinus

    By Hawksmoor,

    The evening of the 16th and the early hours of the 17th of August presented clear skies over our backyard and having read about the new Nova in the Constellation Delphinus, I decided to try and find it and photograph it with a tripod mounted DSLR. Even with the help of info from the Internet, finding the Nova amongst the rich fields of the Milky Way was a bit of a challenge. Hats off to the Japanese amateur astronomer, Koichi Itagaki, who discovered it!


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