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Hawksmoor

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Blog Entries posted by Hawksmoor

  1. 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.

  2. 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!
     

  4. 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!
  5. 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
  6. 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.
  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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 .




  11. 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)

  12. 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.

  13. Hawksmoor
    What a marvelous day for February. The thermometer in our back garden reached seventeen degrees Celsius this afternoon. A truly balmy day for the East Coast of Britain in winter.
    Whilst taking rubbish out to the dustbin I noticed that Jupiter, Venus and the new crescent moon were arranged in a line leading to the west where the sun had just set. Quite beautiful, with the thin crescent moon on its back and partially illuminated by earth-shine.
  14. 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!


  15. Hawksmoor
    For once a Bank Holiday turned out nice so enjoyed a ramble along the river and took a look at the Sun.
    http://george-artcabinedujardin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/what-amateur-astronomers-do-in-daylight.html


  17. 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.
  19. Hawksmoor

    Winter has arrived

    By Hawksmoor,

    Saw the Doc yesterday who said my back was healing well and light exercise was OK. Took this to mean I could catch a few photons. So I went outside into the garden about midnight to see if I could see a meteor or two. Hooray first night without rain for some time. Moon was a bit too bright for meteor watching and was lighting up really heavy clouds to the east. The wind was strong and gusting. Then it started to snow! Then it rained. Astronomy in the UK is not for the faint hearted or for those without a warm wind and waterproof coat. Perhaps tonight?
  20. Hawksmoor

    Apollo11

    By Hawksmoor,

    After reading the many tributes to Neil Armstrong, I remembered looking at the Apollo photographs on display at the Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, New York. The next time I look at the Moon through the eyepiece of my scope, and if the phase is favourable, I will be sure to check out the Sea of Tranquility and consider the relative permanence of Neil Armstrong's boot print etched in Moon-dust! A fitting memorial for a remarkable human-being. (Images of the Apollo 11 Tranquility Base etc courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University)
  21. Hawksmoor
    I thought I might attend a talk 'Mars Revisited and Revealed So Far' at the Waveney Gymnastics Centre, Notley Road, Lowestoft, this evening at 7.00pm. This will be a big step for me as I am not a clubs and society man. More of a Lone Space Ranger! My wife is encouraging me to be less of a recluse. She is accompanying me this evening, just in case I back out at the last minute!
    If any SGL members are going tonight please say hello. I shall not be carrying a copy of the times, but I'm readily recognizable, short fat bald old bloke with a white beard and a walking stick.
    The rain is still intermittently torrential!
    http://www.clubbz.com/club/2895/lowestoft/lowestoft-and-great-yarmouth-regional-astronomers-lyra
  22. Hawksmoor

    Transit of Venus

    By Hawksmoor,

    My wife found an old disc from 2004 and low and behold the photographs that I took of the last transit were on it and not lost forever as I thought. With better software available in 2012 I have been able to improve them a bit. So was quite pleased bearing in mind the basic kit that I used at the time. Hopefully, if the weather and my back are OK I will have a second chance to get better images on the morning of the sixth.

  23. Hawksmoor

    Transit of Venus

    By Hawksmoor,

    My wife found an old disc from 2004 and low and behold the photographs that I took of the last transit were on it and not lost forever as I thought. With better software available in 2012 I have been able to improve them a bit. So was quite pleased bearing in mind the basic kit that I used at the time. Hopefully,, if the weather and I my back are OK I will have a second chance to get better images on the morning of the sixth.

  24. Hawksmoor
    Spent a rainy afternoon recovering a rather blurry photograph I took a year ago in Norway. At the time I was quite annoyed with my self in not obtaining a sharp focus of the Pleiades whilst concentrating on the Aurora above. http://stargazerslounge.com/members/hawksmoor-albums-aurora-picture16089-aurora-above-pleiades.jpg
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