Hawksmoor

Weather looking good at the moment - tonight?

Weather on the East Coast has gone into a serious decline. Rain wind and more rain. Haven't been able to see Comet NEOWISE, the Moon or anything vaguely celestial for several days. In a rush of blood to the head and during a brief period of sunlight yesterday morning, I decided to affix my triangular Australian 'Sun break' to its wall mounted anchor rings. Spent the afternoon regularly emptying the pooling rainwater from its distended fabric embrace. Made the informed choice of taking it down before 'the wind got up' and we all went impromptu wind surfing. Today, the gale has abated but the rain remained tropical until about 23:00 when low and behold we have stars. Wandered the neighbourhood with my 'big bins' trying to find a location with a sufficiently low northern horizon, to enable a quick view of comet NEOWISE, but sadly without success. Eyed with suspicion by a number of late night revellers returning home. Probably a wise fashion choice, not to have worn the knitted black ski-mask!

Saturn and Jupiter looking good but still too low to use my pier mounted refractor. Will try and get some video using my old 90mm ETX mounted on the 'star adventurer'. With my patio doors open I reckon I could capture some planetary pictures without having to leave the house. According to Metcheck, the next cloud free night will be on Wednesday. Will set up the rig tomorrow - just in case.

Now in my Lowestoft slumber chariot awaiting Morpheus.

Night night Stargazers

Weather remains inclement. Spent the day, off and on, assembling 3d printer kit. Off to bed as no stars and have just finished watching Modus, some violence, moderate swearing and a preposterous story line.

Nighty night stargazers from George in Lowestoft

Weather still very mixed and suddenly winter cold here on the coast. But on a positive note our Tai Chi DVD has dropped through our letterbox and I have ordered a digital vernier caliper from Amazon for £13-99. I really wish the delivery man from Hermes would dress the part. A golden helmet and winged feet would be excellent. I've always felt rather let down by our local 'Badger Builders' whose workman don't wear black and white striped safety helmets.

George waxing philosophical as the Moon wanes in Lowestoft.

Weather terrible but Metcheck advises me that there is an imaging window of opportunity in Lowestoft  between 22:00 and 2:00 tonight - so going to set up at 21:00 and hopefully capture some more Mars video clips.  I have become so stir crazy that I've started buying air plants. on-line and am making little  rock, driftwood and Tillandsia tableau. 🙃

Weather tomorrow night predicted fair, so might have a go at Mars and Uranus. Cloudy tonight here on the coast so off to bed.

Night  Night stargazers

George

Well I think I captured an image on the 20th Jan 2017 of the asteroid Vesta with my Canon DSLR at  f=45mm mounted on my Star Adventurer, but it is one small dot amongst many!  I will collect a few more images towards the end of the month to see if it has moved against the fixed starry background.

Well knock me over with a tripod I can actually see the Moon and Jupiter through and between the clouds. A few stars as well! Took some widefield DSLR snaps as it looked quite pretty. Jupiter is too low for me this year. Too many roofs on the way!

Discovered my Funcube Dongle on the LVST had thrown a wobbly so had to reboot. Now working ok but sadly have lost a lot of data since the beginning of the year. On a more positive note I have been trying to develop a methodology for analysing data using Excel and INZite software (a relatively painless interface with R). Have been using Perseid data from 2016. Will stick a few graphs on once I've finished playing with the data. So don't laugh at an old bloke trying to do science-lite.

George by moonlight in Lowestoft

Well last night I could have photographed the Moon full on 'Lionel Richie' but tonight at 20;50 BST, no chance. Up on the cliffs at Pakefield with all my travel kit, I was nice and early at about 19:45. Clear view across the North Sea with just a little mist and some light cloud on the horizon. So I say to myself with a bit of luck I will capture a snap or two through the mist and cloud - very atmospherIc!  So we lug my kit from the car and set up. But oh no that 'e' word was about to work its magic and right on queue at 20:45 darkness fell and the four riders of the apocalypse obliterated all photons through south to east. - And then! - "hang on what light through stormed cloud breaks"? - "could that red disc be the Moon"?  A burst of 10 rapid shutter movements broke the cliff top silence.  - So, if anyone wants to see 10 images of the Saga around  the UK cruise ship heaving to off Lowestoft -  I'm your man. If you want to see a photo of me taking said saddo snaps, my wife kindly posted the one she took, on Facebook. She did not stop laughing for some considerable time after.

George in a stormy and wet Lowestoft

Well the BBC Weather site turn out to be correct after all.  After a day of wall to wall cloud, rain, rain and a bit more rain, it cleared up and I saw stars the moon and astro stuff like that. Tried out spectrometer Mark 2 with mixed failure. Far too many reflections off chromed tubing so today has incluided corrective 'flocking'.

Anyway to cheer myself up I took a quick video of the terminator on a waxing gibbous moon. Quite pleased with the result, bearing in mind the Altair Lightwave Doublet refractor has only 66mm of aperture!

Widefield gives a nice overview, without 'stitching ', of Copernicus, Kepler, Aristarchus and Gassendi.

Well the weather turned out better than the forecast and as I didn't get 'wellied'' on cocktails I decided to trust myself  in the garden with my 11x80mm. bins.  Such fun!.  Managed to see Callisto far out in its orbit around Jupiter, two comets : 'Johnson'  not far from Delta Bootes and '41P' low in Lyra, and three Globular star clusters M13, M92 and M5. 

It seemed to me that the coma and or tail associated with Comet 'Johnson' was more extensive than that associated with '41P' but the densest part of '41P' around the nucleus appeared brighter.

Shame I didn't get the scope out as originally planned because I think there was an Io transit this evening.  Anyway, no moaning, all in all it turned out to be a great night for stargazing !  

Hopefully, tomorrow night will be good enough to get the telescope out and look for Saturn low on my horizon in the early hours.

George 'relatively sober' and much cheered by some top-notch binocular viewing from Lowestoft

Well yesterday morning after 2:00am turned out clear and transparent. So I stayed out in the backyard until 4:15am when I called it a day. Used my 66mm Altair Doublet on my Star Adventurer mount to take some nice widefield images. Managed to get lots of snaps of the comet as it passed M35 in Gemini. Really enjoyed sweeping the sky with my big bins - M33 very obvious and the Andromeda Galaxy virtually went right across my bins fov at 11x. Could see the double cluster and M31 unaided and the Milky Way virtually overhead was breath-takingly bright. Also noted 5 bright meteors. Great to see Orion striding up and over my hedge to the South east. Guess winter is on its way. I will post an image of the comet tomorrow.

George now in his Lowestoft slumber chariot awaiting sleep

Went for a walk in Norfolk today and came face to face with a hare. Completely mad of course and it isn't even March!

Night all.

George in Lowestoft

Went out for a meal at 'the Crown' In Southwold - Very clear night and even with street lighting on could clearly see the winter Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon. The stars between Auriga, Taurus and Orion were spectacular! According to Metcheck,  Lowestoft weather is set fair for 'Sunday Night and Monday Morning' so may try some widefield  imaging in this area.

Night all.

When I went for a walk this evening I actually saw some stars!  It had clouded over by midnight but I did get to gaze upon my mate Orion and all the other mid winter culprits.  As I walked home I was able to watch Cygnus sinking into the horizon with Vega just keeping its head above the trees.  

Let's hope we've all been  good girls and boys and Santa brings us clear skies in 2017.

Nighty night Stargazers where ever you are.

When you see wide field photos  in AN and S@N they usually have a wonderful foreground landscape.  A wild lake, a dark forest,  a deserted beach with abandoned lighthouse or an engineering masterpiece all adding grandeur to the night sky phenomenon pictured. So tonight I give you Comet 2020F3 NEOWISE over my neighbours' guttering - awesome !

Whoo hoo! we had stars in Lowestoft last night. ?  Not sure what was to blame for the dodgy images, was it the bad weather/Christmas lay-off affecting my kit or was the old astronomer using it  to blame? 

Got out the 66mm Altair refractor on the Star Adventurer and my trusty bins , didn't get to bed until 3:30am.  Anyway I have a few more blurry images of 46P/ Wirtanen and I think I managed to capture a smudge that might be 38P/Stephan-Oterma. Could see 46P through my 11x80 bins handheld but very diffuse and cloud like would have missed it 'sweeping' but knew where to look. 38P not visible through my bins even though I knew where it should be, however the mince-pies aren't what they used to be.

Real nice treat - saw a very bright and orange coloured meteor - slow moving in the east comiing from the direction of Orion.  No it wasn't a flare or firework!

Nice clear night and dark after the Moon set, M81 and M82 very easy handheld through my big bins.

George tired but quite content in Lowestoft.

Wind and rain! Rain and wind!

So rather than "pining for the fjords", I thought to try a bit of astro 'DIY' light. Managed to fit an old Orion EZ red dot finder onto my Altair astro 66mm Lightwave refractor. 

Also decided to reuse my redundant QHY5v planetary camera for obtaining low res spectra. Managed to complete a few basic calculations and mount a transmission grating at an appropriate distance from the imaging chip. Then set about getting my laptop to communicate with the old camera. Went to QHY site and downloaded the most recent driver for the QHY5v.

Downloaded a more recent version of Sharpcap which seems to work with the QHY5v using ASCOM. Need to work on settings as first captures were hyper noisy. Not really sure what I am doing but I've never let this stop me in the past. "Ever backwards and downwards"!

George now tucked up and pleasantly cosy in my sleeping chariot.

Winters arrived. Frost predicted for tonight and Orion and Gemini visible over my backyard fence before 23:00. A bit of cloud about so didn't get the telescope out. Content with 30 mins with my bins.Quick look at Orion' s Sword, M35 in Gemini, the Double Cluster almost straight up, the Andromeda  Galaxy riding high in the sky, M36 and M38 in Auriga the Pleiades and the Hyades in Taurus. Might try a bit of astro photography tomorrow night if the clouds take a night off!

Nighty night stargazers.

Woo Hoo!  

Eight years after we put up a bird-box with a web-cam in it,  we finally aquired our first family of 'birdoes'.  All a bit blurry but good fun watching the four 'blue tit' chicks being fed by their parents.  My word those little birds work hard to raise a family and we can watch them doing it from the comfort of our living room, even when its cloudy and raining!

Tweet dreams Stargazers 

Yesterday was notable for its contrasts. The morning and afternoon were the component parts of a perfect September day - cerulean blue sky unbroken by cloud.  I felt great, had a nice afternoon out with friends and then returned home hoping to go all 'astronomical' as night fell.  Sadly on my horizon clouds were forming both literally and figuratively. I gave up on the astronomy early evening and the made my first and rather obdurate error of the day. My partner had warned me not to use the date expired cream in making my signature dish - 'bread and butter pudding' but like many old architects before me 'George knew best'. Now my younger son is a research biologist and as he has said before "it wasn't Lysteria because that probably would have been fatal - more likely the Lysteria was killed by the cooking process but the toxins they produce have a pretty unpleasant impact upon the more elderly adventurous cook". Well without getting into graphic details"  Little of my night was spent in bed.

However in the early hours of the morning I looked out over my garden to see my old friend Orion striding across the close-boarded fence between our house and our neighbour's. So as 'Big Will' would have said "All's well that ends well"

George making a bit of DIY astro kit and recovering in Oulton Broad

Yet another beautiful day on the east coast. Went for a walk along the dunes at Winterton on Sea. Watched the little terns fishing and return to shore beaks crammed with silver fish. Was watched in turn by a suspicious seal.

As the evening was clear I decided to photograph Jupiter and Saturn rising up over the sea from a vantage point on Corton Cliffs near Lowestoft. Got some nice widefield images with my Canon Dslr simply mounted on a standard tripod at f=18/mm. and ISO 1600 and 3200 - 10sec  exposures. Will try stacking them tomorrow to bring out fainter background stars and increase signal to noise. Got back home just after midnight. Waxing Moon setting in the west was very red nestling in the trees near the horizon.

Night all - from George in bed in Lowestoft

Yet another lovely autumnal day in Oulton Broad with cloud moving in as night falls. However, my partner on her daily walk took this lovely photograph of the sun heading for the horizon over the Broad.

Very clear and chilly night in Lowestoft. Spent a half hour in the garden after the street lights went out. Nice to scan the winter sky with my big bins. Lots of interesting clusters and fuzzies to see this time of the year. 

Leo Major just about due South and at a good elevation - lots of galaxies just about visible through my 11x80 bins as tiny smudges or fuzzy stars. A bit further east and lower in the sky Virgo is now on show with a few more fuzzies on the edge of visibility.

Had a look at Mellotte 111 in Coma Berenices - a large and beautiful open star cluster. Not far away the globular star cluster M3 was an easy spot.

Galaxies M81 and M82 were easy to find near the nose of the Great Bear. This time of the year he stands on his tail and has moved sufficiently East so as not to be hidden by the bulk of our house.

I finished off my session with a quick look at the Beehive Cluster, M35 and the three Messier open clusters in Auriga.

A quick trip around the Universe in 30 minutes. Not many hobbies can offer so much in so little time.

George in bed in Lowestoft.

"and today's and tonight's weather in Lowestoft has been brought to us by clouds".?‍♀️