The weather has been pretty good since the BBQ last weekend and my last observing session. Lots of clear bright sunny days and warm with it. Summer has sprung with a vengeance, although I suspect this is more like ‘one last gasp’ before Autumn sets in. Last night wasn’t too bad. The Moon was just starting to come up in the East, which was fine, as I wanted to try and view as may…
Observing Session: 21, August
Well my weather forecast widget indicated there would be clear skies by 21:00 U.T last night and indeed there was. The transparency indicator suggested conditions weren’t going to be ideal though. Rather than just choosing an unobserved object at random, I used Astroplanner to sort by unobserved objects, their highest transit time, and the lowest air mass I could observe them through. The first of these on the list was M14, but this was…
Observing Session 9, August
Astroplanner view though Altair Astro 250mm, UWA 18mm, 113 X, 43.6′, I’m a bit behind with my observations recently. We managed to get out on the Thursday – a few days before the Perseid Meteor show peak, and got some observing done. In between the sessions at the eyepiece, Sand managed to catch about 20 meteors during the hour and a half session. Unluckily for me, I only saw about three while I was looking…
So what's this Observational Malarky all about then?
Since the Observatory went back online earlier this year, I’ve had a few months to start working my way through the Messier Objects. While there are literally hundreds of observer lists to choose from, the Messier list is probably the best known and it seems to me to be a good starting point from which to launch an observing programme While I’ve been into astronomy since early 2000 and steered my interest toward astronomical…
Mare Imbrium Reprocess
With the cloud base 50 metres below the house, I guess I won’t be opening up the Observatory tonight then! Rummaging through the files on the laptop, I came across some avi’s taken last year for a Moon mosaic I was working on. With nothing better to do, I reloaded this section into Registax six to try and eak out a little more detail. What struck me was the radial ejecta from Aristillus which…
Bank Holiday Weekend
Managed to get quite a lot done this Bank Holiday weekend. Friday night was clear and we managed to open up the Observatory and get some observing done. The G11 is still playing up and I suspected the memory battery cell was flat, so I loose all settings when I power down. That’s been rectified now, so will have to rebuild the pointing model the next clear night we get. Collimation is still not…