Thursday 29 November 2012

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

Tuesday 6 November 2012

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.







Friday 12 October 2012

Mornings, Evenings and Messiers...




Venus and the crescent Moon looked stunning this morning....  


I really enjoy the early mornings of Pembrokeshire's October and November, they seem to have more than their fair share of clear skies. 

I've noticed that over the last six years;  no matter how bad the weather may be the night before,  there's a good chance of being cloud free in the hour just before the dawn.

Often in the months of October and November I have been lulled to sleep courtesy of a howling Atlantic South Westerly storm; only to wake at around 5.00 am to the sight of starlight.

Usually after about a hour the clouds roll in....... and once again the Atlantic bellows....

So for the next two months I will be looking for that early morning window of starlit opportunity...

Fingers crossed.....

This evening's viewing log:

I didn't expect the stars to be out tonight......  I was wrong....  :0)

Straight into the observatory...roll back the roof and time to chase a couple of Messiers.

I've been meaning to catalogue the Messier list, in a series of sketches. 

Tonight I was able to add two to the list....


M71 was first on the list,. it took me a little while to find it as I was distracted by nearby Gamma Delphinus. 

Gamma Delphinus is one of my favourites; a beautiful lemon and lime green double...well worth a look. 

Tonight though, the seeing wasn't up to much, and poor old Gamma Delphinus looked a bit washed out.  

In fact tonight's star views were pretty awful...  though the two globulars I sketched stood out quite well considering....



Two sketches completed, only another 107 to go....  !!!

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Deck Chairs, No Perseids, Owls and the ISS.

Perseus dancing on our rooftop
I recently bought two secondhand deckchairs.... the cost nearly broke the bank, 50p each..!!! 

They were bought solely for the purpose of Perseid watching.

So armed with my deck chairs, Nikon D50 camera/tripod, I hid myself away in the darkest corner of our garden away from the glare of two particularly annoying street lights.

After about ten minutes of looking towards Perseus, I realised that this view of the Northern sky reminded me of of the view from my Grandmother's back garden, some 35 years ago.

One of Mr Newton's prized possessions

I would often lie on my grandmother's garden bench and watch the stars as they wheeled their way around Polaris.

My trusted nightly companions were my Phillips planisphere and Patrick Moore's Observer's book of Astronomy.

I still have my original Planisphere, bought in 1977.
And after many years of good service it still gets used on the odd occassion.

Back then I used to spend hours out there in the months of July and August drinking in the cosmic wonder of the night sky.



Sitting on my new, "expensive" deck chairs, viewing the Perseids.

I  managed a few hours on Thursday/Friday, followed by an hour, early Saturday morning.

Thursday revealed three Perseids, and all three of them produced a glorious streak of white light as they cut across the darkened sky.  There was also a trace of electric blue colour in each of them.

Friday evening/ Saturday morning revealed no Perseids, but then, I was only outside for an hour.

In all I took about 40 photos, mostly around 15 seconds each, some at 30 seconds.

Not one single Perseid did I photographically capture...  !!!!

Doesn't matter...... I visually saw a few, and I was more than happy to be out in the warm August evening, taking in the glorious night sky, and talking to the owl in a nearby tree...


Although, Thursday evening, I did manage to capture the ISS as it passed overhead.

Looking West
Looking East
I did wave, but I don't think the astronauts saw me....  !!


Pondering with the naked eye.....

Over the last month or so, any astronomy time that I've had, has mostly been taken up with naked eye observing.

I have to say that even though I enjoy using the Tal1, plus the binoculars, my favourite method of astronomy has always been naked eye observing.

Give me a dark night, moonlit or not, a comfortable seat, and the Milky Way streaming overhead.....

Plus those familiar scintillating constellations.......

Along with the Wandering Planets, Aurorae, Meteors, Fireballs,

The Moon, Transits, Eclipses, Conjunctions.......

The list goes on.


So much to see.... so many celestial old friends to revisit.

And so many new friends yet to be discovered.

Clear Skies Everyone

Mark..

Late evening Aurora.

Last night the Aurora Borealis was visible throughout a large portion of the UK. Here in Pembrokeshire it did not disappoint, though in my c...