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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
Jun192014

Day 89 - Thursday 19th June 2014

Still cloudy with bits of Sun this morning but refreshingly cool. The wind does seem to be getting up and looking dark. (10:46 a.m.)

Next Sunday is International Sun Day and Andy Devey has asked me to help him in some "Sidewalk Astronomy" down on Garrucha Sea front and to use one of his telescopes to let the public view the Sun.

This is the press release on Spectrum FM's (local radio station) Facebook page.

I spotted that it was clear in Auberry California and that the 610mm (24 inch)  telescope T24 was available so I decided to test out this telescope with an image of M13 which was quite high in the sky.

This is the telescope data:

This is the telescope

and this is the image of Messier 13 the globular cluster

 

The galaxy visible at top right (about 2 o clock) is IC 4617

Here are the SKyX details which are taken from the Revised IC Catalog.

Object Name: IC 4617
Object Type: Spiral Galaxy
RA (2000.0): 16h 42m 08s
Dec (2000.0): +36° 41' 03"
Dec (Topocentric): +36° 39' 38"
RA (Topocentric): 16h 42m 41s
Major Axis: 1.2
Minor Axis: 0.4
Axis Position Angle:  32° 00'
Magnitude: 15.20
Source Catalog: Revised IC
Blue mag: 16.0
Constellation: HER
Surface brightness: 14.3

 There are a number of other galaxies in this field but are all at least 4 magnitudes fainter than IC 2617 - and not visible!

Finally - a clear night and my C14 almost ready to go. I spent the evening until about 2 a.m.  getting the focus sorted out and using T-Point to build up a document. I will insert images in tomorrow's blog.