Author Archives: FJA

The 2010 Isle of Wight Star Party – hypothermia and the Horsehead

I have just returned from the 3rd IWSP and, while it was an enjoyable event, I have decided that camping in March is a Bad Idea. Never, in my entire life, have I been so cold so, next year, I will get a chalet instead. Because it was so cold, I ended up sleeping on someone’s chalet floor (thanks Iain!)!
One corner of the star party site, showing the kitchen (self catering), the dining room area (left) and various attendees.

Some of the chalets

The Island coastline, looking south-east, seen from the campsite.

Looking south, over the English Channel. There’s nothing between here and France except sea, the only light pollution comes from ships, such as the container ship heading down the Channel from Southampton seen in the distance.

The star party began on Thursday, but as I was stuck in my temp job until lunchtime Friday I didn’t get there until late Friday afternoon. After going home and packing my stuff into the car I went to Brighstone via the VAS Observatory at Newchurch, which was hosting an open day for star party attendees. On leaving the observatory, the heavens opened and it was torrential rain for the next ten miles to the star party site – not a good omen. I put up my tent, amid much swearing – and with help from fellow star party attendee Richie Jarvis – in rain and wind, and wondering just what the hell I was doing.
On check in at reception I had been told that I was doing a talk and that it was on the Texas Star Party and that I was doing it that evening at eight o’clock. There’s nothing like being well prepared to do a talk and I wasn’t, but fortunately I had brought my remaining working laptop with me which, even more fortunately, had a load of hitherto-forgotten photos on it – including a bunch of ones from TSP 2006. With the help of Power Point I managed to cobble something together, gave the talk and it went down well, initial technical issues with my slow old laptop and the projector aside.
During my talk, it had cleared so we all got ready and went outside. We got an hour in before clouds rolled in again and I spent most of it observing with Owen Brazell and his beautiful 20″ Obsession. I also took peeks through a 14″ Orion Optics (UK) dob and a 12″ Skywatcher dob.
The sky closed on us and we went back inside for a talk by Owen on observing galaxy clusters, which was a very interesting talk, as this is a subject I am very interested in, galaxies being my favourite deep sky targets. Once Owen’s talk was complete we looked out but the sky remained obstinately shut so I headed off to my tent. This is where things started to go a bit pear shaped. I am not much of a camper but, so I thought, I’d brought enough blankets, sleeping bags and clothes that I would not go cold. By 2 am I was very cold and decidedly not happy. I got out of the tent and went over to the kitchen, where other party goers were gathered: ‘Fuck camping, I’m freezing!’ were, as I recall, my exact words – in fact, I was so cold I was considering gathering my valuables, putting them in my car and heading home but Richie lent me a cable and Iain Melville lent me a fan heater and I spent the rest of the night a much warmer and happier person, lying in my tent and listening to the patter of rain on the fly sheet.
The next morning, Saturday, dawned sunnier and much more pleasant. The wind was cold but, out of it in the sun, it was reasonably warm. The vendors set up, although, there was nothing I needed, and there was an astro-jumble where we could sell any unwanted items. Owen Brazell had a selection of TeleVue eyepieces he no longer needed, including a 16mm Type 2 Nagler. I didn’t buy the Nagler (beaten to it by Iain) but I did bag a lovely 22mm Panoptic which has now joined my other eyepieces, snug in their case. It’s made my 25mm TeleVue Plossl redundant, so I am going to have to find a home for it. I am looking forward to trying out the new arrival!
The afternoon was spent sitting around and periodically checking the football results online, via BlackBerries, iPhones and laptops. Among the amateur astronomers gathered were a QPR fan, a Spurs fan, a Southampton fan (me – and I am pleased to say Saints beat Leeds 1-0), a Crystal Palace fan and fans of various other clubs. People were also checking the Six Nations rugby scores (England could only manage an abject 15-15 draw against Scotland) and the Formula One Grand Prix qualifying session in Bahrain.
A couple of people were observing the sun, with a Coronado and a Lunt solar telescope. The Sun had some spots and the most spectacular prominence which later detatched. I tried taking a photo through the Coronado’s eyepiece, with mixed results. I couldn’t get the prominence but did get the spots and granulation (click for larger photo).
There was a spectacular sunset, which promised at least some observing the coming night:
After dinner, we got ready and uncovered the scopes. I am going to put the observations in a separate post, but I again joined Owen and the 20″ and we looked at both the bright and famous as well as the faint and obscure. I suggested we have a crack at the Horsehead Nebula, something I have never seen, despite several attempts. We indeed saw B33 and the bright nebula it is in front of, IC 434. If it wasn’t for IC 434, B33 would be invisible as it is highlighted against the ‘bright’ nebulosity of IC 434. Once I got my eye in, the shape was obvious and, after a minute or two of looking, could just about make out the horse’s nose as well as the rest of the head. This was even better than Saints beating Leeds and was, for me, the observing highlight of the evening.
Other highlights included Abell 21, Jonckheere 320, Jonckheere 900, M42 (which was absolutely spectacular in the 20″), M82 and the Trio in Leo.
The Obsession 20″
and an Orion Optics UK 14″ Dob.

After about three hours, the weather decided that it was going to be a pain again and shut us down. After listening to a late talk by Richie, we looked outside again, but the sky was so bad it wasn’t worth the bother, so I headed to my tent. It was then that a mini-disaster struck, as the fan heater I was lent decided not to work anymore. By then I was cold and I certainly wasn’t going to shiver in my tent all night so I found Iain and told him that his heater was either buggered or I was doing something wrong. Iain declared it ‘buggered’ as it was quite old and told me to get my sleeping bag, etc, and doss on the chalet floor. So, I fetched my valuables, sleeping bag and mattress from the tent and spent what was left of the night on the floor which was warm and pleasant after the tent.
After the raffle I decided to pack my car and head home. I would have liked to stay on, but work on Monday morning and the horror of the tent made it not possible so, after farewells, I came home. Between Wroxall and Whitely Bank I had a brief moment of confusion when I tried to remember where I was. I think that mild hypothermia and sleep deprivation were the cause of this and I am glad I got home in one piece.
It was a good star party, although my ‘domestic arrangements’ were a disaster with the conditions being so cold the tent was untenable. Next year, I will get a chalet. If it hadn’t been for Iain helping me out, I’d have packed in and gone home on Friday, as I had mild hypothermia and was not a happy person. Also, the communal shower area was hideous. It wasn’t dirty, but it was freezing, the stone-tiled floor was horribly cold on feet, painfully so, and the shower was uncontrollable – but at least it was hot, rather than freezing.

And, why do I never do anything in raffles? But the raffle was still worth attending, just for Owen’s reaction to winning a Revelation eyepiece set! It was negative, but hilarious.

On the upside, when it was clear, the observing was good, and I managed to bag the Horsehead for the first time. There’s no substitute for aperture and good, dark skies, and it shows. I now have aperture fever and am wondering how long it will be before I can afford a 20″ of my own – I hope that by the time I have saved £4000 David Lukehurst is still making his big scopes.
I will make a separate post about the observing and put it up tomorrow.


Sketch the lot? Or not?

Looking back at some of my past observing sessions, I wonder if I should go about things slightly differently. I love sketching what I see as it’s nice to have a pictorial record of your sessions. However, the downside of this is that I don’t cover as much ground as I would like, maybe only doing five to ten objects in a session as opposed to maybe twenty or thirty. No, it’s not a race, but last year I began the Herschel 400 and, because I sketch objects as well as describing them, it is progressing at a much slower rate than I am happy with – to date I have only completed a paltry 5%, although this is due in part to me being easily distracted and wandering off to seek interesting non-Herschel objects nearby – and I am thinking that maybe, for the purposes of completing the H400, I should stick to written descriptions and the odd sketch instead of trying to sketch the whole lot.
So, for my next observing sesh, I will do only written descriptions and sketch maybe one in three or one in five of the objects and see how it goes. Hopefully the result will be that I cover a lot more ground.

Finally! Some telescopic observing

Saturday night was clear and, for once, I was able to get the 12 inch out for some galaxy hunting. Once it was set up and had been left to cool for an hour, I headed for Leo and the stars in the Lion’s head to see what was lurking among them before nipping over to Ursa Major.

Date: 6th March 2010:
Conditions: Cold -2C; getting a bit breezy as it got dark; no Moon (not yet risen), the odd bit of drifting cloud
NELM: c6.0-6.1
Seeing: Ant II
Instrument: 12 inch f5 Dobsonian with 35mm Televue Panoptic (43x); 25mm Televue Plossl (61x) and 8mm Televue Radian (190x)
First, Leo, and as only the head (a.k.a. the Sickle or the Backward Question Mark) was clear of the house roof, I went there.
NGC 3190. Almost-but-not-quite edge-on looking with large bulge. 190x
NGC 3193. An oval to the north east of 3190, with slightly brighter middle. 190x.

NGC 3226 and 3227 (Arp 94). Interacting pair. They are oval, with slightly brighter middles. 3227 is more elongated than 3226 and is larger. 3226 lies to the north of 3227. 190x.

Then it was across to Ursa Major and the M81 group. M81 and M82 provide a very pretty view in the 35mm Panoptic, exactly the sort of view that can have you glued to the eyepiece for ages just admiring the view – in my opinion there is no finer sight in deep sky observing than two or (even better) more galaxies in the same field of view and if they are big bright galaxies, then that’s finer still. I could just see a hint of a dark lane in bright M81, while M82 (Arp 337) was full of detail, with a couple of dark rifts cutting across the bright galaxy and a ‘fuzzy’ appearance to the outer edge.
NGC 2976. This is a large faint, uniformly bright (or not bright!) oval with a mag 12.5 star adjacent to it and a mag 14 star to the NW. 190x
NGC 3077. Small, oval, brighter middle. 190x
Unfortunately the session was cut somewhat short because I had toothache which was steadily worsening (and, by yesterday [Sunday] it was so bad, observing last night was completely out, despite lovely clear skies; a visit to the dentist today revealed a cracked filling – but every cloud has a silver lining, I wasn’t charged as it was a recent filling that had given way) but I still managed an hour and saw some nice galaxies. However, I don’t think my observations are as good as they could have been, due to toothache-induced lack of concentration, and the sketches are worse.

Binocular quickie, 4th March 2010

Opportunities to get out and observe have been few and far between just recently, as much to do with not being able to get out as bad weather, and even on Thursday evening, which was beautifully clear, I only had an hour. So it was out with the 8x42s to knock some of the last eight or nine remaining items off my AL Deep Sky Binocular List.
Conditions: Clear, quite cold, around zero. No wind and no moon (not yet risen)
Naked eye visual magnitude: 6.1
Seeing. Ant II
Instrument: 8×42 Leica binoculars
The last few items on the list that were accessible this evening were open clusters and all, except NGC 2343 in Monoceros and NGC 2360 in Canis Major, were in Puppis, very low in the south. Here at 50 North our theoretical cut off is -40 South although, in practice, you’re looking through more atmosphere so things are rendered fainter by haze and murk although, when it has been clear recently, the sky has been very clean, probably due to the biblical amounts of rain we had the week before last. I have been able to see deep into Puppis and even into Columba, the Dove – more on Columba a bit later.
I knocked five objects off the list:
NGC 2360, open cluster in Canis Major:
Fairly largish clump. Can see some stars with the good old averted vision. Elongated east to west.
NGC 2343, open cluster in Monoceros:
Small, round, clump of stars. None resolved. Quite bright.
NGC 2527, open cluster in Puppis:
This is where things get a little awkward, as this bugger is low down. Faintly seen as roundish patch.
NGC 2539, open cluster in Puppis:
Faint round patch south of M48. Looks granular when you look at it with averted vision.
NGC 2571, open cluster in Puppis:
Very crappily placed for us unfortunate northerners. Dim, roundish…you know when you’re really struggling to say something about an object? This is one of those times.

Having bagged those five objects and with the rest not accessible, I decided, with the help of charts, to find out how far south I could actually see. My southern horizon is not too bad, despite a low hill in the way, but the constellations were placed well enough that the one I was after, Columba the Dove, was unobstructed – well the northernmost part is. I still had to get a garden chair to stand on, just to get slightly more elevation to peer over the hedge as this stuff is even lower than the clusters I was looking at in Puppis. I managed to see Sigma Columbae, plus one or two others in that constellation, and I’m hoping to do this again next week at the IW Star Party – weather permitting – as, with nothing but sea all the way from here to the Cherbourg Peninsula, I might be able to see a bit more.
It’s nice to see Leo rising in the east, spring galaxies await!

Yuck, murky conditions indeed

Clear skies were forecast for this evening so, wanting to get a bit of observing in before the Moon rose, I grabbed the binocs and headed outside, hoping to knock off some of the rest of my AL Binocular Deep Sky objects. Once my eyes had adapted it quickly became very apparent that I wasn’t going to be doing much – the conditions were terrible with a high thin veil over the stars.

It is supposed to clear later on, but the moon is one day past full and is 98% of full, and was already washing out the sky it’s not worth the bother, I’ll just go to bed instead. I am just pleased I didn’t lug out the 12 inch.

It’s the Isle of Wight Star Party next week. I am looking forward to this, no matter what the weather may bring. I had intended to go to and from home and the holiday camp in Brighstone but what I might do instead is take my tent, brave the cold and camp there as I don’t think I can be arsed to drive between there and home. I have managed to get next Friday afternoon off work so I can come home, get my stuff and head over there and not have to go over in the dark.

Sky Quality

I borrowed Vectis AS’ Unihedron Sky Quality Meter a couple of weeks ago, to see what the sky in the back garden is like. I live in a rural area, although light domes are apparent in the distance from Newport, Sandown and Shanklin, and during nights when the Moon is not about I often get skies of NELM (Naked Eye Limiting Magnitude) 6.5, although usually it’s anything between 6.0 and 6.5. Someone mentioned the SQM at one of our observatory nights a couple of weeks ago so I asked if I could borrow it. Unfortunately, I have only been able to use it on one occasion, due to the awful weather just recently. However, I took several readings over the course of the evening, which I’d describe as a very average evening, and got readings of 20.9 which correspond to NELM 6.1. I need to take the SQM back in time for the IW Star Party but I’ll borrow it again and try it on a very dark night after midnight, which is when I suspect I’ll get even better readings.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I could step into the breach and do a talk on visual deep sky observing at the February VAS monthly meeting this Friday just past. I agreed, as I don’t mind public speaking, and I’m pleased to say that, despite me forgetting I was doing the talk until Wednesday and therefore not doing any practice with it at all, it went well, with no inadvertent swearwords, no collapsing into giggles and no stuttering! I think I managed to convince at least a couple of people that visual observing is a viable alternative to imaging.
I mentioned my clear night spreadsheet and eyebrows certainly were raised when I mentioned that, in January and up to 25th February we’d had a decent proportion of nights – apart from a long cloudy spell between 9th and 24th January, then another seven nights of clouds between 11th and 17th February – when some observing was possible, corresponding to 33% of all 56 available nights to date. I pointed out that it is a far from scientific method and it only highlights observationally usable nights, where you can get any observing in from a long session with the big dob to an hour with a pair of binoculars – if I was only including totally clear nights, then that total would easily be cut by half to two thirds. However, I have still not managed any observing since 4th January (the night before the snow), mostly due to laziness and cold – we got some nice nights when the snow was on the ground but sheet ice and compact snow made conditions that were bordering on lethal and it was just not safe to lug the scope out.

Texas, here I come!

I booked my flight to Texas this morning. I could have booked online or phoned an airline but, wanting a change of scene, I headed to town and went to a travel agents. My flight is with United Airlines and I fly to San Antonio via Houston (and return the same way) on 7th May. It wasn’t as expensive as I thought, only costing £457; last time I paid nearly £600 but that was because I’d left it very late to get a ticket.
Less than three months to go; I am looking forward to seeing everyone again!
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Through a link on Cloudy Nights I found this lot. Cloud Appreciation? I take it none of them – or not many – are astronomers. Mind you, having said that, I suppose there’s a slight crossover when you think of noctilucent clouds, which astronomers love. Noctilucent clouds notwithstanding (and they dissiapate after nightfall), I hate clouds – at night – and I don’t think I’ll be joining any love-in over them. However…maybe the CAS can have their clouds in daytime and we astronomers can have clear starry nights? That way we’d all be happy as the cloud-people won’t moan about astronomers complaining about the clouds.
Mind you having just said all that…I am not above saying ‘Hey that cloud looks like the starship Enterprise, or an elephant, or a bird, or the starship from Alien…’ and so on. I may not like ’em much but clouds can be entertaining, for a few minutes, anyway.

Starting again at 40

I have signed up to do a BSc (Hons) degree with the Open University. The first course I am doing is a basic science course in order to get some practice in as, since doing a Foundation course in Science during 1995/96 and starting then abandoning, through lack of funds, a BSc Geology degree the following academic year (96/97), I have done nothing academic whatsoever.
The reason for this decision to do something academic after so many years? Well, I was 40 back at the end of January and the realisation that, a stint in the Royal Navy until 1992 and the aforementioned foundation degree aside, I have actually done bugger all with my life and achieved nothing. So, instead of being depressed about it, I decided to do something about it and contacted the OU who sent me a prospectus. I phoned them and registered to do the basic science course as a preliminary to doing a more in-depth course, as a first step to getting a degree. I have initially linked it to a Geosciences degree (I can make it more astronomy-oriented by doing courses which have Planetary Science content) but there is scope to change it to an Astronomy and Physics-related degree if I decide my maths is good enough and if I decide that’s what I want to do. I have more interest in Astronomy and Physics than I do in Geology but these are very maths-heavy so I might stick with the rocks.

Hopefully, I can get the degree done in five years, or even four if I put some effort in, so I will stand some chance of getting a decent, if short, career before I get to my sixties. However, as I am doing this for interest and a sense of achievement, a career will be a bonus although, to be honest, I really don’t want to spend the whole of the next 20-25 (or even more) years temping and working in shit retail jobs!
I have begun a blog about this, rather lamely titled ‘Science, me and starting again at 40‘.

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On a sadder note, I see on the Texas Star Party website that John Robert Prude, the patriarch of the famous Prude Ranch, the home of the TSP and my favourite place in the world, passed away on Tuesday. Quote from the TSP website:

“TSP and its attendees which to express condolences to the Prude family, for the passing of John Robert Prude on Tuesday February 9, 2010. John died at his home (“the Big House”), where he kindly gave permission for TSP 1982 to be hosted on the ranch. Over the past 27 years, we have enjoyed a lot of astronomy-inspired history because of the Prude’s consideration and efforts. Vaya con dios, John! You will be missed!”

Stuff…

I haven’t gone away, I am still here. However, since getting off to a flying start 2010’s observing has taken a nosedive, with endless crap weather and almost constant cloud cover. We did have three clear(ish) nights at the end of January, but these were – typically – around a Full Moon, so I didn’t bother. I haven’t even seen Mars this opposition.
Like other amateurs, I am hoping that the coming spring will bring clear skies and galaxies.
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I got my registration confirmation for TSP a couple of weeks ago. It’s looking likely that I’ll be there but that’s subject to an upcoming temporary work contract which begins on 15th February. If that falls through and I can’t get anything else, I’ll have to give TSP a miss. My fingers are crossed that all will be well, though
In the meantime, we have the now annual Isle of Wight Star Party to look forward to in March, from Thursday 11th to Monday 15th March. I am a volunteer for this event, so I’ll be there from the Friday night until the Sunday evening. Obviously, I hope we have good weather for this, not only for the – hopefully lengthy – observing sessions, but because I am camping and don’t fancy it if the weather’s unpleasant.