For the first May bank holiday weekend my wife, the dog and myself took ourselves away to the Lake District for a 4-day break. Before going I had checked the weather forecast which predicted a pretty poor weekend for the whole duration.
As we packed everything ready to go away, I looked at my giant binos [...] Read more »
I received an email from Joao in Mexico, who has just purchased an XT10i, and had a question for me about the Intelliscope unit supplied with his new XT10i telescope. He was confused because the Intelliscope altitude encoder board supplied seemed to be too large when he came to install it on the side panel. [...] Read more »
After my experimental “first light” imaging session with my newly modified Phillips SPC900NC webcam for Long Exposures (Steve Chambers mod), I have now processed the images and this is what they look like. They’re not visually fantastic, but for a first attempt I’m well pleased. Generally they were 15-20 second exposures. They couldn’t be any [...] Read more »
Its the end of another long cold session with my Celestron C6-SGT and everything is packed away. Ice is melting off the screen of my laptop as I type and drink a nice mug of hot chocolate. Its been a very nice clear night and finally, at last, I have been able to try out [...] Read more »
Here are the processed images of Mars from my imaging session last night using an SPC900NC webcam and 2x Barlow, with my C6-SGT XLT telescope.
These were approx. 10 x 30 second duration AVI sequences which I aligned and stacked using K3CCDTools, and including some histogram and unsharp mask enhancement to bring out the details.
I only [...] Read more »
Just a quick diary post tonight. More practice at setting up and polar alignment of my EQ5 Synscan Goto, and C6 SCT, to try and get some webcam images of Mars. I’ve managed to get some footage at prime focus and 2xBarlow recorded into K3CCDTools. Too late to be processing tonight, so pics will have [...] Read more »
Good nights for astronomy are often few and far between in the UK. We’ve had the usual run of miserable, rainy, cloudy nights. Sometimes when the early evening sky looks promising, inevitably the clouds roll in by the time we’ve had our supper!
So when a good, clear, cold night comes along you grab the opportunity, [...] Read more »
Well, maybe I’m slow on the uptake, but while experimenting with my iPod Touch more over the last few days to see what other astronomy related apps I can find (Star Walk, Starmap Pro, Moonwalk, etc), and the excellent NASA App being a fantastic resource, I have taken the time to find out more about [...] Read more »
Last night/morning (Jan 29th/30th) was the first time I have been out with my C6-SGT not only for 2010, but also for a whole year (previous post explains about my pond building antics putting my astronomy on hold!).
Coming home from work the evening sky was beautifully clear, and I was in a great mood taking [...] Read more »
Happy New Year to all my readers.
My last blog post was back in April when I had used my XT10i telescope as a theodolite measuring levels for my new pond.
Blimey, after a whole years work on our new koi pond and patio I am only just getting back to doing some astronomy. My favourite hobby [...] Read more »
