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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
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.
Friday, September 26, 2014 at 10:11AM I came across an interesting video on You Tube about monitoring an expolanet using iTelescope.net This is a telescope that I use regularly - perhaps I should have a go at generating a light curve of a transiting exoplanet.
The weather continues to be poor - rain and cloud so no astronomy possible locally.
Thursday, September 25, 2014 at 9:57AM No astronomy today as storms hit. Torrential rain and later on a bright rainbow with a secondary arc visible from my observatory.
The best was to come later in the evening with a replay of the Martian invasion in War of the Worlds. The storm was uncannily similar to the storm viewed from Tom Cruise's back garden! It went on for over an hour - at least! The video lasts for almost 4 minutes. I am not sure whether that first lightning flash looks more like a nuclear explosion or a Martian tripod!
Stills taken from the video
Wednesday, September 24, 2014 at 8:17PM Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 5:54AM It has been generally cloudy for the last week and I have not had the opportunity to use a telescope. It was promising last night but cloud descended once more. At 6.50 this morning however it was clear (with a little Autumn chill to the air) but the morning was approaching. Orion was very bright and the Pleiades were overhead. Auriga was high in the sky with the "kids" very clearly visible even though it was nearly dawn. Sirius was blazing away at magnitude -1.44 as the brightest star in the sky with Canis Major below it partially disappearing behind the mountain horizon. The Plough was North of East standing on its tail. Sirius was outshone however by Jupiter which was was brilliant at -1.91 and high above the Eastern horizon - below and to the left of Canis Minor and Gemini and above and to the right of Leo. Procyon was visible at magnitude 0.4 between Jupiter and Sirius. By 7.30 a.m. the only objects visible in the sky were Sirius and Jupiter. Venus had not yet risen. At 0825 the Sun rose above the mountain as shown - I am having difficulty typing this as the Sun rose very quickly and my eyes have not yet adjusted from the glare. The positions of Venus at mag -3.93 and the Moon with a phase of less than 1% are shown.
I used the position of the Sun and Jupiter to adjust the SkyX horizon photo ( that I had stitched together from single images) and recorded the settings as below
The sky is very clear now (08:36) - I hope it stays that way into the night. We shall see!
It was clear and an imaging run gave me images of just less than 200 galaxies. I also had my first run on the cluster NGC 7790 using B and V filters as an initial step in determining transformation coefficients for my photometry work. I need flat, dark and bias frames for these and several nights of further images of the cluster to average out the results.
Monday, September 22, 2014 at 9:17AM This galactic star cluster is an excellent object to observe and image. Messier listed this in 1764 but Burnham refers to a Swiss astronomer de Cheseaux recording it in 1745 - number 12 on his list. However did Bevis know about M35 first - see the image of his atlas below. It is worth reading about Burnham and how he became poor in later life with readers of his books confusing him with a more prominent astronomer of the same name.
LA Remote image M35 and NGC 2158
M35 Central below
NGC 2158
This is the Atlas Celeste by Bevis showing M35
Saturday, September 20, 2014 at 10:27AM 
Friday, September 19, 2014 at 9:17AM 
Thursday, September 18, 2014 at 10:30AM 
Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at 1:02PM Early rain and cloud - very windy - I need it to calm down to set up the equipment!
In January last year I took this remote image of the Tarantula Nebula in Dorado. Note the four "Horsemen" that I will describe in following blogs. (The four star clusters in the corners of the image).
