Author Archives: FJA

Double vision

On Tuesday (11th August) we FINALLY got a clear night. Well, clearish, as the haze was bad but it was certainly better than the near 100% cloud cover we’ve been getting recently.

Because of the murk and the rising waning gibbous Moon, I decided to stick with a few doubles in Bootes, plus some ‘lollipop’ bright objects elsewhere in the sky. It was also a short session as it was gone 11pm and I had to be up for work the next morning.

My observing notes read as follows:
A rare clear night this summer – July and August have been frankly bloody awful with only a couple of clear nights for observing, including tonight.

The transparency tonight is not good and I am only using a small refractor (my 12″ is out of action, and likely to remain so for a while or until I get a new one), so concentrating mostly on double stars. After having been out here a while, the sky conditions are not good. It’s milky and there’s very little contrast in the Milky Way with some high thin cloud and the waning gibbous Moon interfereing.

Alcor and Mizar in Ursa Major:
One of my favourite doubles, this well-known system is a lovely white pair, visible to the unaided eye but superb through the small refractor at 37.5x

Albireo (B Cygni):
My favourite double, the bright gold star and it’s slightly fainter, bright blue companion are stunning.

Delta Bootis:
Faintish gold star with faint blue companion. Wide double. Nice.

Unfortunately only a short session, due to having to go to work tomorrow. I’ll be glad when the long nights are here and BST is back to as it should be, GMT.

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Have decided to go for a 12″ Lightbridge or Revelation. I had decided on the LB, but my work contract finishes two weeks earlier than planned, so I might go for the cheaper Revelation instead. However, I was pretty annoyed to hear that the Revelation has now gone up from £549 to £660 in the past week. Bugger!

Scopes and stuff

Hopefully, in a few weeks’ time I’ll have a new 12 inch scope. My current temporary work contract, due to finish on Friday 7th August, has been extended until September 7th, so I hope it won’t be more than four weeks before I can afford to spend £500+.

I have narrowed the choice down to 12″ Skywatcher Flex Tube, 12″ Meade Lightbridge and 12″ Revelation (GSO, same as the Lightbridge). Ideally I would have gone for something like the Orion Optics UK 12 inch but at just under £900 this is out of my price range and, anyway, one of the cheaper ones will do nicely until such time as I can afford a bigger-aperture scope. These days, though, even the cheap scopes are good and I wish they’d been around when I wanted a larger scope ten years ago, then I wouldn’t have messed around buying mirrors and then waiting (interminably it seemed!) for the damned scope to get built and then getting problems with the f**king thing! I also considered an Orion (USA) Intelliscope 12″ but they are a hideous price, over £1000.

The Island Planetarium at Fort Victoria sells scopes (Meade, Orion USA, et al) so I have gone there in my search. They deal with B, C & F so that narrows the field down but there are still some good choices on offer. Getting it from the Planetarium resolves the issue of someone having to be at home to accept delivery of the thing or the even worse hassle of a visit to the mainland to collect it.

I have considered the Revelation 12 inch Dob, if they still do them (Telescope House do, via the net but whether the wholesalers BC&F do, I don’t know), as it’s a positively bargainous £550 – and a decent scope too, from the reports I have read – although I have heard that the tube is a bit of a big bugger, weighing in at around 23 kilos, but as the rucksack I lugged round Australia and SE Asia a few months ago was around the same weight, I do not foresee a problem. If I do my back in again, though, there might be an issue but until then…

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I am curious as to exactly how many clear nights we really do get here in the climatically-challenged, sea-bound British Isles. Opinion varies slightly on the quantity of clear nights (depending on your geographical location as there’s a lot of variety even in this tiny country) although we all agree on one thing – there’s NOT NEARLY ENOUGH of them! So I am doing a spreadsheet over the next few years that should give me a clearer (pun not intended!) picture of our local sky conditions here on the Isle of Wight. It’s not scientific but should be interesting.

Binocular session 24 July 2009

This was a very short session due to a migraine I’d acquired during the course of the day, so it was out for a quick sesh with the 8x42s. I am doing the AL Binocular deep Sky program at the moment, but I had lost the charts so decided to pick off a few objects in Cygnus instead. Luckily a couple of them are on the AL list (which – surprisingly – does not have many summer objects on it).
This was the first clear night dark enough to properly observe in ages. I poked around in Sagittarius, Bootes and Cygnus. Cygnus is my favourite area of the summer sky and is incredibly rich, being located in the Milky Way. Here, our sky is quite dark and it was better than mag 6, and the MW is very bright and detailed, with rifts and dark lanes.

The objects:
NGC 5466 – Globular Cluster in Bootes: This is easy to find, being in a direct line from the Bear’s tail (handle of the Dipper) to Arcturus, but not so easy to see in binoculars. It’s a very faint round glow.

NGC 6910 – Open Cluster in Cygnus: Small knot of stars adjacent to Sadr. Telescopically, this is one of my favourite OC’s but in binos it’s not more than a bright knot with a couple of bright stars attached.

NGC 6866 – Open Cluster in Cygnus: A small knot of stars between Sadr and Delta Cygni. A hazy, roundish patch. Hard to keep bins still at this angle and the remnants of the migraine made it impossible to look up at an angle for any length of time.

I love observing with my binoculars, they are the ultimate “grab ‘n’ go” scope, but I will be glad when I have got a servicable scope again!

Scope bother – the tale continues

A few posts ago I mentioned that the mirror cell of my home-made Dob was not very good, with the collimation slipping several times in a session. Also the mirror itself – unrelated to the mirror cell problem – has started to oxidise (looking through from the back it is like looking at a starry sky), but, I was told at our society’s weekly get together last night, that’s normal (funny, my old 8.5 inch never had this problem) and it also looks filthy. I washed it a few months ago, but got some instructions on how to try and – carefully! – get more of the crap off it.
Therein lies a lesson: never, ever, let a non-astronomy relative talk/nag you into storing a scope in the bloody garden shed!!! It was the mould that has done some of the damage.

Below is the mirror in its currently grubby state. I have labelled a cat hair, just in case it looks like a scratch – no, the cat has been nowhere near my mirror, but her hairs have a nasty habit of getting everywhere. I will get the mirror recoated sometime, but in the meantime, I have put it in a box in a cupboard until I decide what to do with it. The rest of the scope can go back in the shed!



Because the home made 12″ scope is a bit cumbersome and pretty big, plus takes up too much storage space, I have decided to buy an off-the-shelf 12″ Dob, such as a Revelation (made by GSO and sold by Telescope House here in the UK) or Lightbridge (sold by Meade but actually made by GSO). I have heard mixed reports about these, but at £550 for the Revelation, you can’t go too far wrong. Taking into account the mirror cell problem and mirror problem with my current scope, deciding to get something else is not a hard decision and besides a cheap scope will do until I can save up for a 16″ Orion Optics UK Dob.
I also have an 8″ Celestron Newtonian on a Vixen GP mount which I can use in the meantime. However, this scope’s mirror is also in a poor state! I hasten to add that it was like it when I acquired the scope (I was given it a few years ago by someone who no longer wanted the thing).

I hope that it won’t be too long before I can get back into observing with a decent-sized scope. I am currently temping (the economic climate is shot to shit and prospects are gloomy at present) and I am hoping that my current short-term contract lasts a few more weeks so I can get my hands on a new Dob.
In the meantime, I will carry on observing with my binoculars and other small instruments. I have a deep sky binocular project on the go at the moment, so it’s not as if I am wasting time.

Texas Star Party 2010…???

I am getting itchy feet about going to the Texas Star Party again. I am hoping I can get to the 2010 event, depending on my finances. I am currently temping while the economy remains shot to pieces and permanent jobs are few and far between, so my getting to TSP 2010 is looking 50/50 at best.

The 2010 TSP is from 9th to 16th May inclusive, which gives me just under ten months in which to save up some money.

Here are my accounts of previous TSPs I’ve attended:

TSP 2006
TSP 2008

ISS and Space Shuttle

On Wednesday evening, I watched on NASA TV the launch of shuttle Endeavour on her mission to the International Space Station. I am always impressed by rocket launches, although sadly I have never seen one in the flesh, and it’s even more impressive when you log into a tracking page to see that the shuttle is directly above your home twenty minutes later! I did dash outside to try and see the moving space shuttle dot, but it was still cloudy. Pity, as there would have been two dots – one dot being the shuttle orbiter itself, the other the jettisoned external fuel tank.

On Friday night, I watched the ISS (with shuttle attached) come over. It orbits the earth from west to east and is now very bright as all the relevant bits and pieces are now attached.

On a related note, I read in the paper that Britain is – finally!!! – going to allow its citizens to fly on manned space missions. Up until now any Briton in space had to go as a ‘space tourist’ (Helen Sharman) or change their nationality (Michael Foale, Piers Sellers and Nicholas Patrick) because that old bag Thatcher vetoed the UK funding manned space exploration thus effectively barring UK citizens becoming astronauts. Up until now the UK had always said that the £180 million it pays into ESA should not be used for funding manned space exploration. How short sighted and stupid is that? Fortunately Lord Drayson, the current science minister, has reversed that stupid policy and before long, we should see British astronauts in their own right. This country has deteriorated a lot in the past couple of decades and it would be nice to have something to be proud of again.

Pity I am too old – 40 in January – and too unfit (dodgy ears and mild asthma)… 🙁

Washout Down Under! A tale of woe.

I got back from a two-month trip to Australia and South East Asia last month. Fortunately this wasn’t an astronomy trip, although I was hoping to fit some observing in of course, because the weather was – let’s not beat around the bush here – frankly bloody awful! I joined some friends from the Texas Star Party who were visiting Australia for the ‘Deepest South Texas Star Safari‘ being held in Coonabarabran. We met up in Sydney and had a nice meal at a restaurant in The Rocks before meeting up again the following morning at Sydney Central railway station. The weather omens were already bad – it rained all day and we drove from Dubbo to Coonabarabran under leaden skies and driving rain.

Unfortunately I could only stay one night because the next day I had to return to Sydney and then travel onto the southern town of Wollongong 80kms south of Sydney, for a pelagic birdwatching trip which was scheduled for the Saturday. This one night was a complete washout, it rained all night, which was pretty disappointing. It became even more annoying when I got to Wollongong and the f*cking pelagic was cancelled due to high winds! Aaargh! So infuriating! I could have stayed in Coona and got some observing in a few days later as the weather improved. As it was, my sorely depleted finances wouldn’t allow me to return to Coona and I was flying to Thailand a few days later in any case. In the end, I consoled myself with some binocular observations from light-polluted Sydney. Scant consolation, but at least I got to poke around among what stars were visible.

We did, however, attend an interesting meeting of the local astronomy club and I got to see the famous Siding Spring Observatory, albeit from the road.

It wasn’t a complete disaster, it wasn’t as if I’d travelled 12000 miles just to observe, and I had been to Australia and pretty much scoped out the Southern Hemisphere winter skies in 1997. But one thing’s for sure – I am going back to Australia and the DSTSS properly in a couple of years’ time!
And I never did hear from the Astronomy Society of New South Wales, which is very disappointing.

Sky quality – the lack of quality

I have found over the past few years that observing in the UK is becoming more and more frustrating. It is not the lack of clear nights as the quality of clear nights, we still get as many (or as few!) as we ever did, but there seems to be a lot more haze about than there used to be. This is due to pollution in the atmosphere which is no great surprise bearing in mind that the UK is one of Europe’s (even the world’s perhaps) most densely populated countries (60+ million and rising all the time – ridiculous).
I brought back a stack of Larry Mitchell’s Advanced Observing Lists from the TSP last year and, while a proportion of the objects are within my 12-inch Dob’s capabilities (when I can get the mirror cell problem sorted), I have quickly come to the conclusion that I have no chance of doing the list, not from here.

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About a week ago I emailed the Astronomy Society of New South Wales about observing but so far I have not received a reply. I hope it’s because they’ve not received the mail, rather than forgetting about it or, worse, ignoring it. I did use their contact form, so there’s no excuse for the mail having gone missing. I can’t imagine them having ignored it, amateur astronomers are a decent bunch and do not tend to ignore people. So I am assuming that it’s because these things are run on a voluntary basis that they haven’t got round to it yet.
Still annoying though.

Scope bother

I had been keeping my 12 inch in the shed. The scope was well covered over and the shed is dry as far as I could make out – I certainly wouldn’t keep an expensive mirror in a damp environment – but when I got it out yesterday the mirror was in a disgusting state, covered in dust and something that looked suspiciously like mould. I was not pleased but, following instructions I found on Cloudy Nights forum I decided to wash it. Anyway, I got it cleaned up okay, although there are still marks on the mirror but these are such that they won’t degrade the image. I have moved the scope back indoors, although my aunt doesn’t really want it in the house. I could take the mirror in and out of the scope but it is a time consuming operation and a huge pain in the arse to do.

Since getting the scope, collimation with it has always been a bother. As far as I’m concerned, collimation holds no fears, it’s a piece of cake, but I don’t want to be doing it five times in one observing session. The mirror moves around too much in the cell and the things that hold it in place are set too far apart. Also, I can never get it collimated perfectly, there’s always a cometary look to stars at high powers, which is no good. I am going to ask my friend who built it to makes some adjustments to it. I won’t need the scope for the next few months as I am going to be away in SE Asia and Australia (hoping for some southern sky observing – a small sky atlas, a printout of the AL’s Southern Sky Binocular Observing list and my binoculars are coming along).

2nd Isle of Wight Star Party, 26-30th March 09

It was the second Isle of Wight Star party last week. I could only get there for the early part of Saturday night as I had to be up and out early Sunday morning, but the weather was great. It was mostly clear, if cold and windy. I spent my limited time there observing with Owen Brazell and his new 15″ Obsession UC which is a super scope (I want one, I can’t afford one, especially as the exchange rate is now so bad; thanks in part to the Americans, the banks and HM Government f***ing up the economy between them).
We observed (well, ‘looked at’ is probably a more accurate description) some bright lollipops: M42, M78, M43, M51, Thor’s Helmet (which was partially obscured by cloud) and Hubble’s Variable Nebula. HVN was incredibly bright through the 15″ and one side the right side (as we were looking at it, with the ‘head’ at the top) much brighter than the left. Fan shaped. A fascinating object.
By this time I had to leave and get home as I had an early start Sunday and the clocks were going forward (why can’t they leave them alone? There’s nothing wrong with GMT that a little education of the thicker sections of the public who think that BST gets us, magically somehow, extra daylight, can’t cure.)

The 2nd IW Star Party was an outstanding success, with all four nights being clear, unlike the washout of last year. Hopefully this bodes well for the future.