Jump to content

Banner.jpg.b83b14cd4142fe10848741bb2a14c66b.jpg

Hawksmoor

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,256

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by Hawksmoor

  1. 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'.
     
     


  2. 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.

  3. 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!




  4. 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.


  5. 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.
  6. 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.

  8. Hawksmoor

    Lowestoft Pier

    By 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!
     

  9. 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 .




  10. 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.

  11. Hawksmoor
    Toot and I had a great time in Norwich last night. Dr Michael Foale CBE gave a talk about his life as an astronaut to a packed audience at the University of East Anglia. What an accomplished, kind and measured man. A couple of hours in his company passed very quickly. He has great interpersonal skills and although we only spoke to him very briefly, both my partner and I felt we had 'met him' rather than just 'heard him' speak. 
    What an exciting, if not at times scary, life and career he has had?
    Highlights include:
    a spacewalk to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope's computer from a 386 to a 486 ( I had one of each but I only had to fetch them from Currys) stopping the MIR space station from spinning out of control after it had been hit by a supply vessel commanding the International Space Station There were many children in the audience who were very interested in space and science. Dr Foale encouraged them to do what they were good at, pursue their dreams and not to be deterred by setbacks.  He paid particular care to encourage girls to pursue careers in science and aerospace.
    He very kindly - let anyone who wanted to - have their photograph taken with him. A long queue of excited children formed down one side of the Lecture Hall.
    "Dr Foale, I could tell you that the photograph is for my grandchildren, but really its for me"  said a very excited and pleased old man.
    If you get a chance to hear him speak and/or go to events organised by ISSET or a 'Pint of Science'  - go for it!

  12. Hawksmoor

    Learning my Lines

    By Hawksmoor,

    Well eventually, I think I managed to get my 'thinking' head around some of the basics of using Visual Spec software for producing and calibrating a line spectrum of the bright star Vega. 
    About 8 weeks ago, I affixed my homemade spectrometer to the business end of my 127mm refractor and obtained some faint and blurry video of Alpha Lyrae and its first order spectrum.  Anyway time passes and after a lot of fiddling about and numerous software crashes, I managed to plot a wiggly line and identify three of the Balmer Series Hydrogen Absorption lines ( well I think I did or it could all be wishfull thinking). The thing is I've ended up with something and hopefully its a calibrated spectrum of Vega.  I leave you to be the judge?
    I tried using Wiens Law and my spectrum to calculate Vega's temperature and was at least half the published temperature of 9600K.  I concluded that Vega does not therefore radiate energy as a 'Blackbody'.
    Anyway this small scientific step has wetted my appetite for spectra and I have some virgin video of Deneb and Altair to play with which at my current rate of progress should keep me busy until Boxing Day.  I am also considering a new spectrometer design - using a camera with better controls and a a bigger chip. This could see me undertaking some 'serious shed action' after Christmas. More glue Santa if you please!
     

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.
     
     


  16. 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!


  17. Hawksmoor
    'Calculating the Cosmos' by Ian Stewart and 'The Universe Next Door' a New Scientist compilation are both extremely enjoyable reads and have kept me going in between the'dark clear nights' here on the east coast.  So having time on my hands this summer, I prepared a digital image and poem in 'homage' to two of my favourite pursuits: reading books on cosmology I barely understand and eating shellfish most people tend to avoid. 
     
    'Winkles in the fabric of Space-Time' - mixed media - George Roberts - June 2018
     
    "If there were winkles in the fabric of Space-Time
    At the Planck scale squid and plaice would rhyme
    If the Universe and Albert Einstein could spin on one sharp pin
    Might each sardine simultaneously be alive and dead in it's tin?
    Perhaps dark matter would even cease to matter?
    If cod, god and gravity were resolved in batter".
     
    George Roberts from the book 'A Brief History of Gastropods'
     

  18. Hawksmoor

    Christmas Day Dip

    By Hawksmoor,

    Invited by two of our children and grandchildren to meet them, early on Christmas morning, on the beach at Southwold for a swim. Had serious misgivings about this: as I dont do getting up early,  I do not have a wet suit and recently have been under the weather.   Anyway as my partner does have wet suit and was keen, a few bah-humbugs thrown in my general direction got me out of my 'toastie slumber chariot' before 8:00 UT and by 10:00 we were at the water's edge. There had been a hard frost overnight   but by the time we entered the water, the air temperature was a balmy 2 deg C . I managed a brisk 2 minutes before I fully realised why in previous years I had restricted swimming in the North Sea to the months of June, July, August and September.  
    Enjoy your Boxing Day Stargazers
    George thankfully no longer in the North Sea and in Lowestoft
     

  19. Hawksmoor

    Transformer

    By Hawksmoor,

    Christmas upright Armchair Astronomer 'transforms' into horizontal Settee Astronomer without any visible expenditure of energy as Moon obliges by rising almost directly in front of his sitting room window. I could get to like this 'indoor astronomy' as it offers a warmer winter alternative for the older stargazer.

  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

    DIY put together wide-field camera

    By Hawksmoor,


    Imaging Equipment
    I am a hoarder so never throw away stuff that might come in useful.  Being a tad environmental I try to re-purpose, re-engineer and re-use old kit that I purchased  back in the day when I was gainfully employed.  My old pre digital SLR lenses were first connected to my  DSLR with a shiny new adaptor but then fell into disuse when I realised my EOS lenses performed better. 
    Now retired, with more time and reduced cashflow, I decided that rather than modding my DSLR, if I could attach my old lenses to my QHY5L-ii mono and colour cameras, I had the makings of a wide-field camera that would be more sensitive to H-alpha.  BUT - old Hoya lenses have male 42mm 1mm thread connections and modern 42mm kit comes with 0.75mm threads.  Try as I might none of the UK suppliers or even  China appeared to have an appropriate adapter. In the end I found what I wanted - a 42mm(1mm) to T2 adapter on the RAF internet site based  in Belarus.  I already had the spacer and the C/CS connector I needed to complete the camera.  After placing my order the adapter arrived in the post from  'Sergei' in Moscow. A very nicely engineered bit of kit! How a meerkat could make such a brilliant thing with small furry paws escapes me!
    I do enjoy messing about in my shed with old bits and pieces!
    I briefly tested the camera the other night in less than good conditions and it appeared to work delivering an image roughly 6 degrees square. The weather is forecast fair for tonight so  I might try it out properly on the realm of galaxies in Virgo. 
    Ever onwards and upwards!
     


  22. 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
  23. 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
     
     
     


  24. Hawksmoor
    Joined Breckland Astronomical Society and attended our first meeting this month. Very much enjoyed Prof Carolin Crawford's talk on 'Exo Planets' and received a friendly welcome from members. The snow stayed away long enough for us to get to and from Great Ellingham which is some hour away from our home by car.
    The clouds parted on the thirteenth of March for us to see Comet PanStarrs very low over the marshes. The graveyard at our local church provides a great elevated and unobstructed view west over the Waveney River valley. At 6.15pm we set off for the churchyard with two friends. I fixed my camera on a tripod pointing towards the horizon where the sun had not long set. Between us we had two pairs of binoculars so we took it in turns to search the sky for the comet.
    The crescent Moon was absolutely beautiful with earth-shine illuminating the rest of the disk. The 'dark-side' was so bright that the maria were clearly visible, I don't think I've ever seen earth-shine so bright. We picked up the comet for the first time at about 6.50pm using my 11x80mm binoculars and a little later in 10x50s. Finaly it became visible without optical aid. I managed to get a number of images using 18-55 and 90-300mm lenses. The focus could have been better - guess whose camera hasn't got 'live view' and who forgot to take his spectacles with him?
    Anyway since the 13th the weather has been quite grim and there have been no further opportunities to view the comet or any other celestial treats for that matter.
    Seeing the comet, however, really cheered me up. You can't beat a good comet.
  25. Hawksmoor

    Lovely Night

    By 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.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.