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My Telescopes

My Main Telescope - C14 and Paramount ME

My new Paramount MyT and 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Telescope

MyT Hand Controller

My Meade 12 inch SCT on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

My 4 inch Meade Refractor with Sky Watcher Guidescope and ZWO camera on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mount with Canon 40D

 

My Solar setup using a DSLR and Mylar Filter on my ETX90

DSLR attached to ETX90. LiveView image of 2015 partial eclipse on Canon 40D

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About the Site

 I try to log my observing and related activities in a regular blog - sometimes there will be a delay but I usually catch up. An index of all my blogs is on the main menu at the top of the page with daily, weekly or monthly views. My Twitter feed is below. I am also interested in photograping wildlife when I can and there is a menu option above to look at some of my images. I try to keep the news feeds from relevant astronomical sources up to date and you will need to scroll down to find these.

The Celestron 14 is mounted on a Paramount ME that I have been using for about 10 years now - you can see that it is mounted on a tripod so is a portable set up. I still manage to transport it on my own and set it all up even though I have just turned 70! It will run for hours centering galaxies in the 12 minute field even when tripod mounted.

 

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Thursday
Jun122014

Day 82 Thursday 12th June 2014

Current Sky at a Glance from Sky amd Telescope

 

A very warm but blustery day - particularly up in the mountains.

I drove down to Mojacar to the bank and supermarket but drove along the "prom" which is definitely getting into summer holiday mode but a pretty empty beach running for miles. I bought 6 large bottles of drinking water and 6 packs of 6 small bottles of water - it is a long way to go to the supermarket when I only have to go round the corner to Tesco at home - so I need to stock up here!

 

I have moved the TAL 1 and it is now here.

 

It still has a reasonable view of the sky. It is so light it can easily be relocated to see any part of the sky. I have a "digiscoping" (why don't I like that word?) bracket that I aim to try out with the TAL1 , my iPhone or a small camera.(I can also use it on my Swarovski 80 Birding Scope) To use the iPhone I have to use the bracket with another iPhone holder. Very fiddly!

Here is the bracket designed to hold a compact camera that has a tripod thread.

Here is the iPhone adaptor that effectively holds the ipone and provides a tripod socket. The second photo shows it attached to the first bracket.

 

Here it is with the iPhone attached and showing the image of the hoder with its camera.

 

I adusted the altitude of the Paramount to the precise latitude of this location this morning based on the assumption that 1 "tic" on the adjusting knob is 2 minutes of arc I set the altitude to 37 degrees using the scale and moved 3 further "tics"to correspond to the 6 minutes as indicated by my compass app on the iphone.

 

I downloaded an App to tell me the height of this location

 The latitude shows a difference of 1 second of arc between the two apps - I must have been in a different part of the property!

Full Moon tonight - itreally is very bright - diffused by some light cloud. Not a good observing night.