Last Night's Jupiter sketch.

Seeing: Antoniadi III

Last night was cold and windy, and the fast moving clouds were also playing havoc with my Jupiter observations.

Tal1 did a good job of dampening down the vibrations of the gusting wind - even at X169 the image was pretty well vibration free.

I decided to make a brief sketch and then get back to the warm fire as quickly as possible to draw up my results.

Here is the finished sketch in pencil.

Tal1 captures the Great Red Spot.

Just before supper last night, I had a quick look through the telescope.

Jupiter was shining brightly over in the East, so I trained the scope onto the King of the planets.

With the 15mm Kellner and X3 Barlow I was able to up the magnification to X169.

Considering the pretty poor seeing I was surprised to see any detail on the gas giant.

Whilst observing I thought I saw the great red spot.

It was only just visible through my 110mm reflector.

Messier Revisited.

This year I'm hoping to sketch a lot more of the Messier objects list - using the Tal1. 

To get me started, I've reworked a couple of my sketches from last years collection.

Also I've added a photo of the Pleiades that I took; I think back in November.  

I'll have to dig through my CD's to find the actual date.

I've had Tal1 for nearly two years, and in that time I've not as yet attacked the Messier list with any real conviction.

Over the years I've seen many of the Messier objects through various telescopes, but it will be interesting to see what the mighty Russian reflector is capable of.

With Tal1 as company it will be nice to revisit some of my Messier favourites.

I'm expecting mostly to make sketches of my Messier-Tal1 findings, but sometimes it will be easier just to train our Nikon D50+ 300mm lens onto my intended target.

The picture below of M45 was taken with our 70-300mm telephoto lens.

I wonder if the 300mm lens will capture the Beehive Cluster ?

The Messier Album an observer's handbook.

One book that is indispensible if you're chasing the Messier objects is, The Messier Album an observer's handbook by John H. Mallas and Evered Kreimer.

John H. Mallas visually observed and sketched the Messier's with a lovely 4" Unitron refractor. 

Whilst Evered Kreimer photographed the Messier's with his 12.5 inch Cave reflector...again another beautiful looking instrument.

Between these two astronomers, they managed to produce a beautifully illustrated and informative book. 

John H. Mallas's sketches in particular give a wonderful representation of what you will actually see through most small telescopes with the naked eye. Equally Evered Kreimer's black & white photographs are really impressive ... 

Most of the photos in this book are black & white.

Although there are 16 pages in the back that contain colour pictures of the Messier objects, from several other amateur astronomers. 

In total the volume runs to some 230 pages.

Plus if you look on Amazon, you can pick this up for only only a few pounds.

If I was only allowed one Messier book on my shelf this would be the one.

Astronomy by Candlelight.. Happy New Year...

I do a have a red safelight in the observatory, but I find no reason to hook it up and use it...

The reason being...... I enjoy candlelight.....

The soft subdued glow of the naked flame imparts a feeling of warmth that no red safety light is able to do.

Also when my hands feel a bit cold, I move them for a while closer to the flame.

Now if I could also run my RA drive on mechanicals, be it a wind up clock, or maybe a falling weight, then that would be my perfect astronomy set up.

Sir Patrick Moore... you will be missed.

It was with much sadness on Sunday that I learnt of the passing of Sir Patrick Moore, CBE, FRS, FRAS.

Since the winter of 1976 Patrick Moore has been a constant companion on my astronomical journey.

I must have been about nine years old when I was first allowed to stay up late to watch the Sky at Night.

I was hooked from the first episode.

From the opening title music of Sibelius's At the Castle Gate...the simple studio props, the fascinating interviews, and especially the wonderful enthusiasm and eccentricity of Mr Moore, how could I not be hooked.

Often at the end of an episode Patrick would mention that a newsletter/factsheet was available.

To obtain this A4 information sheet,  you simply sent off a stamped addressed envelope to the BBC.

Whenever Patrick mentioned it was newsletter time, I couldn't get to a post box fast enough to send off my SAE.


Back in April of 2005 my wife, our son Jac and I were lucky enough to meet Patrick Moore, at his home in Selsey.

We could not have had a warmer welcome.

He gave me one of his books, which he signed, a gift I will always cherish.

It was a day I will never forget.

RIP Sir Patrick Moore.

For Patrick...

Early this morning Helen and I set out to capture a shot of Mercury, Venus and the crescent Moon.

This is the one of the shots that was taken. It was a beautiful morning, with frost on the ground.

Morning Star Mercury & Co, over Haverfordwest...

Early this morning I grabbed the Nikon D50, plus a small tripod and headed off for an astro adventure.

I decided to walk to the outskirts of our village to afford myself a better view of Mercury..

From our garden I have no chance of seeing Mercury if it's in the East; there are too many trees and especially too many houses barring any possible view...

After setting up the camera I was lucky enough to capture this image of all three planets.....  seconds later some passing clouds snuffed out Mercury's light.

Mercury-Venus-Saturn : 06h:49m 

I then moved to a better location, about 200 yards further along.....

Now I had an uninterrupted view towards the East.

The lights of Haverfordwest were twinkling in the distance.

Mercury was once again free of the clouds, and I witnessed a beautiful celestial display of all three planets.... plus my favourite named star... Zubenelgenubi.

Mercury-Zubenelgenubi-Venus-Saturn: 06h:56m UT

There were loads of clouds to the West, but luckily the East was fairly cloud free, at least in the parts of the sky that mattered to my observations....

Mercury over Haverfordwest  07:05 UT

Happy Mercury hunting....

Clear Skies

Mark

Jupiter on my mind ~ plus echoes of Mr Herschel.

Afocal method

Last night I tried a bit of afocal photography with my little Hitachi DZHV582E digicam.

I've had this little camera for about 18 months, and in that time I reckon it's been used practically everyday for one thing or another. Mostly it's used to capture my solar pictures and videos.

If you ever see one of these little cameras.. .grab it... it's ideal for afocal photography.

Well worth the intial £40 I paid for it.

Capturing the Jovian Light...

I trained the Tal1 onto Jupiter and placed the 25mm plossl plus x3 Barlow in the focuser.

This gave me a magnification of x96, anymore and the image started to degrade.

I then simply placed the camera over the eyepiece (afocal method) and over exposed the shot to capture the Jovian moons

As many amateurs know, by exposing for the satellites I completely washed out any detail in the actual planet -  as you can see in this picture.

Over Exposed

I then under exposed the next shot to capture the detail in the planet  as shown here.

Under Exposed

After some copy/paste and a bit of further tweaking, I managed to secure this final image.

Now that I've figured out the camera and photoshop settings, I will be able to log many more Jupiter images on this blog.


Musings on the perfect planetary reflector:

Jupiter has always been a difficult planet to view and photograph with my small Tal1 telescope.

But considering the size of the Tal1 main mirror (110mm) I'm not going to complain.

For many years I've wondered about making a small planetary-only reflector.

Much has been written about the merits of a 6 inch f12 spherical mirror reflector.

Many say this type of telescope would be ideal for planetary work.

Plus a spherical mirror would hopefully be easier to produce with these Welsh hands.

Mr Herschel's 6 .2 inch/f13 reflector

I've a mind to try making a 6 inch f12 reflector.


I've read that Sir William Herschel made, and favoured a 6.2 inch f13 reflector.

If it was good enough for Mr Herschel, then it's good enough for me.