Stargazing with BBC London Radio (and about 300 other people)

[DirkSteele]

The Baker Street Irregular Astronomers hosted a Perseid Meteor event last night on Primrose Hill in London.  BBC London Radio joined us and broacast live from 10pm till 1am.  Mentions on the radio and our general advertising saw around 300 people show up.  I decided to take the LZOS 130/1200 Apo for the event (easy in the taxi, regrets as I carried it up the hill!).  It ended up being the largest scope in attendance which drew the biggest queues (several times I had more than 50 lined up for a look).

Before it was completely dark, I started with the Double Cluster which was nicely framed in the 17mm Type 4 Nagler.

Some clouds briefly covered that part of the sky so spun west to take in a couple of globulars, M13 and M3.  Transparency was not great so these were struggling to shine but with a little help, everyone that looked was able to spot them.

Came back to the queen of the skies, and took in the E.T Cluster (NGC 457) which proved to be the most popular DSO of the night.  Some people struggled initially to make out the stick figure, but a quick Google Image Search to show them what to look for and most were rather impressed.

5 minute interview with the host.  Sadly she came over just as another cloud bank hid NGC 457 so I had nothing to show her but talked about my passion started for astronomy and my trips to dark far away lands.

Quick looks at M27 and M57 (used UHC which helped), before moving onto the Gas Giants.

Saturn naturally was a real croud pleaser and the sky was pretty stable so ran the scope at 200x.  It would have taken more, but I using a manual Alt Az and was having to nudge the scope every 20 seconds to keep it centred for the crowds.

Towards the end of the session, Jupiter cleared the trees and showed some decent detail though atmospheric dispersion was visible.  Europa was just kissing the planetary disc when first viewed and slowly drfited away over the rest of the session with the other three moons all in a line further out.

Packed down around 1am when the show stopped broadcasting, but not before showing the BBC crew a very impressive Saturn at 200x.

I was so busy showing the sky, I did not look up so saw a grand total of zero perseids!  Though we had a radio detector on site and I "heard" a couple.

 

 

[Deadlake]

How is you review going of the LZOS 130 mm / f9 going? 

As you mention mounts which one where you using?

I've finally got the AZ100 with motor kit working with a joypad. I mention here as would be great for outreach (tenuous link?) as the scope is controlled from a joy pad

Aka control this:



With this



Screen looks a bit like this:
 

Note the star 1+2 align buttons can be hidden.

[DirkSteele]

Just now, Deadlake said:

How is you review going of the LZOS 130 mm / f9 going? 

As you mention mounts which one where you using?

I've finally got the AZ100 with motor kit working with a joypad. I mention here as would be great for outreach (tenuous link?) as the scope is controlled from a joy pad

Aka control this:



With this



Screen looks a bit like this:
 

Note the star 1+2 align buttons can be hidden.

That looks very cool!  I was using the Tele Optic Ercole, but I used a cabon Fibre tripod (also up to the job) but the pillar extension was a bit light weight and caused some shakes when it was breezy,  I had to keep it as light weight as possible as I was walking several hundred metres up the hill.

 

The review is almost finished (its a bit long but I go into the history of the scope which was quite fun to research and can be skipped).  Still need to do a couple of critical tests and the "studio" photography but hopefully I can get it published in the next few weeks.

[Deadlake]

7 minutes ago, DirkSteele said:

I was using the Tele Optic Ercole, but I used a cabon Fibre tripod (also up to the job)

Gitzo tripod or something else?

[DirkSteele]

8 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

Gitzo tripod or something else?

Gitzo 5532S.  Which is the most stable of their entire line up (at least it was when I bought it about 10 years ago).

http://alpha-lyrae.co.uk/2014/05/15/gitzo-systematic-series-5-gt5532s-carbon-fibre-tripod-review/