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Kielder Spring 09 New Dates

Tinkerbell

By Tinkerbell
in Star Parties & Astro Events

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ZOG

ZOG

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Posted

Best of luck to all of you making your way up to Kielder. The local weather forecast is changeable so, hopefully, you may get some observing in. I hope to get up there sometime to meet some of you and put faces to names.

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James

James

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If you are in the leccy field, then give me a shout. I arrive on Thursday, and me and my brother are both 6 foot...

I am indeed in the leccy field and I'll look out for two thirsty 6 footers... I can only claim 6ft in terms of width...

I suppose I should start a thread about what beer is best for bribes as I'm a whisky drinker...

One more sleep for me (and a lot of packing). :)

James

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PhillyDee

PhillyDee

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I know how you feel, I was on night shift last night, and I dont have time to sleep today. Ive now been up for 23 hours, and am getting incredibly annoyed. I have just finished building my dew-heater, and the dewtapes are nigh on finished. I cannot be bothered and am incredibly tired . . . . AND ive got to pack . . . .

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ZOG

ZOG

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I went up to Kielder last night with the scope and hit on the best night of the weekend. Clear skys but freezing temperatures, lots of people doing their thing but hardly any visitors.

On a night like last night when the sky is very good, you would expect folk to be spending time using their equipment rather than wandering about and that's exactly what happened. The silence only broken by the sound of a mount slewing, a hairdryer demisting, or a can being cracked ;) . I got to meet James (thanks for the views through the scope James, I'm just gonna have to get an EQ6 one day) and Steve (Paxo) who seems to be able to hit Messiers faster and more accurately than any GOTO.

The only thing that spoilt the night for me was the dew, it's all very well using a dew shield, but a flextube HAS to have a shroud on the centre section in those conditions, and despite the use of Phillydee's hair dryer, it was a losing battle. (Phil by the way had an extraordinary amount of gear with him, I don't know how he fitted it all in the car, but the heater in the tent was very welcome, thanks a bunch phil.)

The jury is still out on the Argo Navis, the first fault is that the supplied encoder cable is far too short and needs to be at least twice the length. It hit some targets time after time but consistently missed others, this may have been a temperature issue as the unit does have a built in heating element when being used on external power, so a lot more testing is needed before I can give a verdict, also if anyone knows anywhere that could make me an extension cable for the encoders (large telephone style plugs) I'd be grateful.

All in all though a good night. Kielder demonstrated why it has it's reputation for excellent skys, lots of LOVELY gear on show, and some really nice people to meet. I enjoyed it and will probably do the full autumn camp, weather permitting.

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AndyH

AndyH

Posted
Posted

Just back from Kielder.

Knackered.

The roads killed my rear nearside tyre. Just got to the campsite before it flattened.

New 4 man tent is the bees-knees. Central living area with sleeping compartment to one side, astro storage area on the other. Being able to stand up inside either is a godsend.

These Norweigan army artic sleeping bags really did the job Saturday night. Twas a tad chilly outside !!

Very windy/cloudy as hell on Thursday. Friday pee'd down sleety rain nearly all day. Was staggeringly [removed word] and suffered most of Saturday. Different beer this year. Nimmo's XXXX was the nicest. The chilli off the 'specials board' was a winner.

My Tal 200K continues to make me smile and I 'bagged' more objects on Saturday night than in any session that I can remember. Didn't think the sky was as dark as last November though. M1, the crab nebula, was especially nice. Orion nebula was the best I've every seen it, even although low in the sky.

Points of note for myself. 1/ Get a 12V hairdryer(blumming iced up finder!) 2/ Whilst the Tal 8x50 finder is excellent, in these dark skies some sort of illuminated x-hair is essential.

Great time had again. Thanks to everyone.

Cheers,

Andy ;)

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PhillyDee

PhillyDee

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Definately one of thebest nights viewing ive had!

Many thanks to James for giving me a tour of 'whats out there'. Same too to Zog as the views on his flextube were also excellent! A fantastic viewing of Saturn as well as many fuzzies out there. Last night was worth the gale force winds, torrential rain, partial flooding and general manky muddy place. Ive never seen such an optimistic bunch of people wince this happened around 6ish . . . .

kielder09-moon.jpg

kielder09-moon1.jpg

kielder09-moon2.jpg

Oh, these were taken with my new DSLR (Which I dont know how to use!) Manual focus, and I have original RAW files too. These are unprocessed, and will probably stay that way ;).

If anyone found a sont ericson phone in the leccy field or somewhere, contact me, I managed to lose mine somehow!

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gary1968

gary1968

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Good to hear there was some observing / good skies. I couldn't make it this time but will deffo be there in the Autumn. I will be booking a pitch as soon as the dates are announced, speaking of which anyone know when this will be yet?

Looking forward to seeing the images.

Gary

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James

James

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Well... what an interesting weekend that was!

On the Thursday afternoon when I arrived two lads from the northeast came over unasked and helped set up my tent - it took a few minutes for me to realise it was PhillyDee and his brother Mark ;)

Bumped into Jamie a little later, we hadn't met before so there was that brief look as we tried to figure out if the bloke in front of us was the same one as seen in our avatars.

We actually had about an hour of clear skies on the Thursday evening - enough time for us to get the kit set up, alignment done etc and a few objects looked at. I had some doubts about how my scope would stay level in the mud but it seemed to be OK.

Friday was an interesting day. Bumped into more people including Steve (Paxo) and had an evening meal with Jamie and his mates from Glasgow at the Anglers Arms (I don't know if they figured out I was from Edinburgh originally or not :D Perhaps the rivalry between the two has faded somewhat). Either way, after the waitress confused my request for nachos with one for a 'nut roast' I was able to settle down to some whisky drinking...

Friday night was best described as brutal. We had rain, sleet, hail and snow and gale force winds. My tent was nearly flattened several times (and it's a strong tent) and I eventually had to go and move my car onto the grass next to it to shield it and prop boxes up against the tent poles on the inside (yes, I did remember the poles this time ;) ). At least one tent was mangled overnight.

After no sleep, Saturday dawned a little drier, at least the air was, the ground was pretty wet and muddy. It was off to Kielder castle for a fry up breakfast then I went to one of the presentations about one mans efforts to track down information about historical supernovae based on interpreting data from the far east (mostly Chinese and Korean astronomers).

A quick browse round the vendors stands ( :rolleyes: ) and it was back to the campsite to check out my car which had now sunk in the mud up to the engine...

As the day went on the weather began to clear and frantic phone calls on the payphone were made to Kate to get her to check the weather forecast. Steve had seen a forecast that morning and was hoping for clear skies and Kate was adamant that the BBC were predicting a clear but cold night. Despite one forecast doing the rounds that it would cloud over at 9 it was actually clear for most the night with a couple of brief spells of cloudiness.

As I'd decided I wouldn't be imaging I thought I'd start looking at Messier objects following an order established to best enable you to see all of them in one night. I couldn't get M77 & M74 but M33, M31, M32 & M110 were all barely visible and I got going. In fairness by the time I got to Virgo I wasn't really able to confirm which was which object and I didn't think using goto was quite right so I switched to more general observing and happily showed some people a few objects through my 10" Newt.

I packed up at about 4.30 and climed into bed with my trusty little fan heater keeping my tent toasty warm, just as well as it was about -5/6 degrees outside. I dropped off nicely to sleep but woke up an hour later to discover that the power had been cut (it had been announced but I'd forgotten). It was absolutely bl**dy freezing and ice had formed in my water bottle. Plonker that I am I actually had with me a decent sleeping bag for cold conditions but I hadn't used it as the heater was working so well. Unable to sleep, I decided to get up to a beautifully clear morning with everything covered in thick frost.

Eventually I was able to get everything packed into the car and I toodled off to find a man named Steve (is everyone in astronomy called Steve???) who would be able to pull my car out of the mud. Steve obligingly towed my car out and in doing so earned my undying gratitude.

Then it was time to face the 6 1/2 hour journey home. It had been a challenging weekend.

Will I go again? Well, Kate has made it clear I won't be again this year but next year is a possibility. I found it genuinely physically hard to cope with the mud,wind and the rain (too long living in England :D ). The skies are indeed dark - light from Newcastle is visible to the east but all the other directions are dark. I'd say the skies were perceptibly darker than Kelling but there are areas near me such as Exmoor and parts of Devon that are just as dark.

My main astronomical memory will be the awesome site of Cygnus and the Milky Way rising over the trees next to the site. I could, and did, spend ages just staring and taking it in.

Well, sorry, that's a little longer than I intended! If you've made it this far congratulations are in order :hello2:

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