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.

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.

Thanks for all your comments. I'm never too sure what I'm doing astronomy wise and electronically speaking a red mist descended somewhere after valves but before printed circuits. Anyway I followed the instructions found on the Internet and in the Sky and Night Magazine and low and behold it actually works. I too have encountered the Vista Spectrum Lab software issue and had to borrow my wife's laptop that runs using Windows 7. It would have been helpful if Maplins provided a 'how to' sheet in with the BNC coax connector. Lots of cursing and the plug still drops off if I look at it. Grrr! The FunCube Dongle Pro+ and supporting software all works well. Very efficiently provided by Howard at Halincrest Ltd. The Yagi aerial works nicely and I have captured a few meteors. Saving up for a second hand computer to wire up and leave running in monitor mode.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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 .

Post script 03 April 2014: The irony of being prevented from imaging Mars by a Saharan red dust storm over Lowestoft has not escaped me!

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!