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Lawn astronomy, the Summer Triangle & Where's my Teapot.!

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The Summer Skies..   Thanks to the recent warmer weather (at last!!) Wednesday evening was perfect for some Lawn Astronomy. Out came a blanket and a good sized cushion to prop my head against. I made myself comfortable by lying on the warm garden path, and with my 7x50 binoculars beside me I began my tour of the Summer Triangle, and it's surrounding companions. I spent a while bino viewing Deneb, though I was soon mesmerised by the bright lights of the surrounding star fields, it was time to venture along that Milky expanse.... It is always wonderful to see the Milky Way, ethereal and ghostly, as it snakes its way towards our Galactic Centre. Last night's view of our Galaxy was particularly magical,  I spent ages just simply drinking in the galactic photons. They renergised my astro batteries beautifully. As part of my astro tour, I stopped off at Aquila, and was able to capture Altair and it's companions of Tarazed and Alshain in the same field of view

Venus Transit as viewed by Mr & Mrs Pembs...

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June the 5th 11.00 pm  First Contact via Hawaii......... Both Helen and I were looking forward to seeing the transit, but due to cloud cover, Pembrokeshire was wrapped in a thick blanket of the grey stuff...   Also our part of the planet was badly placed for the beginning of the event, so we watched First Contact via the webcam at the  Mauna Loa Observatory Exploratorium Fascinating imagery and the background music and narration were almost hypnotic...   Thank you to all at the Mauna Loa Observatory for putting on the Live show.... Up at 04:15am - Off to find the Transit Show..... Looking Southward... The alarm went off at 04:15. Outside the grey clouds were still smothering the Pembrokeshire skies. Helen and I got on the motorbike and went out looking for some hopeful gaps in the early morning sky. We drove maybe two miles, and yes the clouds were beginning to thin...but still no clearing in the East.....however there was a lovely early morn

Venus Transit 2004 .. I found another picture.

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Goodbye Venus ..See you in 2012 Yesterday I was looking through one of my old astronomy log books, and I found the above picture. I've always thought I had just the one picture of the 2004 Venus Transit....It looks like I was wrong...  :0) Time to attack it with Macintosh software........ After a bit of photo manipulation using iPhoto... I managed to obtain the following image... Hidden in a drawer, I have some video footage of the 2004 transit. In total I think I have the last 15 minutes of the transit.   If I convert this footage from analogue to digital I will be able to exam more closely the individual frames.. It seems yesterday morning I had one photo of the 2004 transit....  this morning I now thankfully have two....  If the video footage can be transferred to the computer ... I'll hopefully have a lot more images of the event to look through.... Fingers crossed that the video footage is salvageable....  :0)

Waiting for the evening star....

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Tal1 patiently waiting to snag the evening star The back garden doesn't get used that often for astronomical observing, it's a pity as it affords some lovely views of the setting inferior planets . Tonight though it was time for the Tal1 to be let loose on Venus.  I simply parked up the scope and waited for the night to draw in... About an hour later the sky was still blue, but Venus shone brightly...... ......time to put the Tal into  action.... Firstly I took this image with just the 25mm plossl and the zoom on my digicam: Afocal image.. with simple digicam Then I connected our Nikon D50 via a camera adapter to the Tal's focuser using the prime focus method... It took a few attempts to capture a decent image, but finally I managed the following image. Nikon D50 prime focus plus x3 Barlow Not the best shot in the world, but at least it gave me a record of the current Venusian phase... It was a beautiful evening, the seeing was Antoniadi

Astronomy and Poetry go hand in hand.

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Camille Flammarion All astronomers are poets of that I am sure. You can't help but feel the calling of the poet, once you've gazed upon the night skies. To better emphasize my point, I often mention one of my favourite astronomers..  Camille Flammarion. I was first introduced to Mr Flammarion some 10 years ago when I purchased a small book of his in a local charity shop. The manager of the Charity shop, knowing how nuts I was about astronomy, kept the book to one side for me. I'm glad she did. .after a quick browse I was immediately drawn into the world of this wonderful French astronomer.  The book was "Astronomy for Amateurs" Who could not be captivated by the opening paragraph.. " The   Science of Astronomy is sublime and beautiful. Noble, elevating, consoling, divine, it gives us wings, and bears us through Infinitude.  In these ethereal regions all is pure, luminous, and splendid.  Dreams of the Ideal, even of the Inaccessible, we