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Big Hello from the East

owned

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owned

owned

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Thanks for the warm welcome.

To answer the questions. I'm in southern China, (rual town) and have been for over 10 years.

I only have one scope at the moment and thats a 6" f/12 air spaced doublet refractor on a GOTO GEM.

Rog.

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yeti monster

yeti monster

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What's the light pollution like where you are? I only get to hang around ShenZhen when I'm ashore, and I've rarely seem anything brighter than the Moon around there...

...did you get to see the 2009 Eclipse or the recent transit of Venus by any chance? I was fortunate enough to be over here for both events, travelling up to Wu Han for the eclipse.

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owned

owned

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What's the light pollution like where you are? I only get to hang around ShenZhen when I'm ashore, and I've rarely seem anything brighter than the Moon around there...

...did you get to see the 2009 Eclipse or the recent transit of Venus by any chance? I was fortunate enough to be over here for both events, travelling up to Wu Han for the eclipse.

The light pollution is not too bad as I’m away from a city. In the big cities its really bad and even seeing the moon can be difficult at times. There is a bit of sodium street light pollution as I live on a well lite estate, but even that’s not too bad.

At certain times of the year there can be dense smog and everyone thinks its pollution from the factories, but its not, it’s the high temperatures and very high humidity levels. Most days will be over 90% where I am which is quite inland. On days where humidity drops to under 70% then it will be clear. March to June are the worst months as it rains every day and is really humid. The best months are September to December, so I’m trying to get my act together and prepare for the good seeing we get then.

High temperatures also make astronomy difficult. As I am inland it gets hot here. Today was 38c (100.4f) and it will not go lower than 33c (91.5f) at night this time of year. Last week my digital thermometer was reading 43.3c (110f) in the shade. It doesn’t upset my refractor too much but I think I’m going to get a large Newtonian or SCT soon, so that might be fun. Don’t think I’ll need a dew heater ha ha. Maybe a dew AC.

I was in China for the 2009 eclipse but just at home in the south. I did get a shot of it though. I used a 200mm lens on a canon D20 with an old welding mask in front of the lens.

Here’s what that looked like.

post-25344-0-08386400-1344422618_thumb.j

And here’s a shot of the moon from my 6” f/12 refractor. This was on an average day so it gives you an idea of the pollution.

post-25344-0-25922900-1344422742_thumb.j

Polaris is very low here and you are looking though a lot of atmosphere to see it, so polar aligning is not easy. Where I used to live in the UK was amazing. There wasn’t a town for 10 miles in any direction and we were really high up. On clear nights you could look up and the Milky Way was a thick white line and the whole sky just looked like a white sheet, as there were so many stars. Only other time I’ve seen that is on the 2 trips I made across the Sahara desert. I’ve never seen the Milky Way from where I live now.

Rog.

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yeti monster

yeti monster

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We get high temp and humidity out here too, just standing still in the shade will have you drenched in a minute, add a bit of graft and it's all too easy to dehydrate. At nights it doesn't get much better either. When we do get clear skies, and I can get away from the rig lights, I've been able to see the Milky Way, just never seen it as clear as some folk say it is supposed to look.

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