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.

Thanks for taking the time to read my report and comment. Have to say the comet is quite small and faint. The skies over our house are quite dark after the street lights go out but it was still quite difficult to find it through my Altair Astro Lightwave 66mm scope which I have been using to photograph it. So if your sky is light polluted you would struggle to find this comet.

The early hours of the 8th of January were not for the faint hearted. Although the ambient temperature was well above freezing the wind chill here on the UK east coast was significant. After a couple of hours outside I needed a hot cup of industrial strength Marmite to thaw out my inner self. On a positive note the sky was clear of cloud and significant moonlight. I thus set foot to first view Comet Catalina through my big bins and then photograph it. The comet was far too low in the north east for me to use my big refractor- so bins it was. I store my dustbins in a fenced enclosure on the north side of our house, sounds grand but isn't, and so balancing my bins on the bin enclosure fence I discovered that the comet had conveniently raised itself above Arcturus such that said balanced bins pointed straight at the comet. In the past I have not found comets to be so accommodating. I must say with the street lights off after midnight, my 80x11 bins did a good job of showing the comet albeit quite a small image. With averted vision I could clearly see the spread of light between the two tails. Nice! I then spent an hour and a bit with fixed tripod, Canon 600D DSLR and EOS 18-55mm lens, snapping away like a good-un! Twenty or so RAW images later, raw- well the wind was, I returned to the warmth of our house. Today I have done what my partner, Toot, describes as 'cheating' using a number of software programmes to collate and enhance my snaps. I have attached the resultant annotated image for your inspection! The reasons why I like comets a lot! They are truly exotic denizens of the deep. Their astronomical configuration, position and luminosity are constantly changing in real time. They are often hard to locate, they disappear and sometimes reappear. They are very old but have the appearance of youth. Their performance is unpredictable. They are sometimes spectacular and always exquisite. They travel alone. They are evaporated and reinvigorated by sunlight. They are driven and destroyed by gravity. They might have created all life on earth and may one day end it.

Toot an I have just returned from a short tour of Turkey. Part of the itinerary involved very early pre-dawn starts. Looking out from our hotel balcony on the 4th. December at approximately 04.20 I saw what I thought was a comet . Oh no it wasn't, oh yes it was! At first I thought it was a first glimpse of Comet Catalina. It was approximately south east and close to the horizon. The twin tails appeared to be as they should be pointing away from the sun. But then I returned home to Suffolk and viewed Catalina through my big bins. My comet was much too bright and much lower in the sky than Catalina. So either we spotted a new comet or more likely the con-trail from a twin engined jet flying away from us at an acute angle. Oh no it wasn't, oh yes it was, oh no it wasn't Anyway I managed to photograph what ever it was with my Canon compact camera. You can make your own minds up!

Hi and thanks for your comment. My wife and I used to be members of Breckland Astro Society. We very much enjoyed the monthly talks but in winter it was a bit of a trek from Lowestoft - so let memberships lapse. Les Granges was excellent all round, so very happy to recommend it! best regards from Anita and George Roberts aka 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