Day 171 Tuesday 16th September 2014 NGC 7080 an Sb galaxy in Vulpecula
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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
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.
I visited Manchester Museum of Science and Technology today. It was interesting to see how time was once displayed at a railway station. (I miss railway stations now that we only seem to have train stations!!) The sundial below is housed in the museum which includes the oldest surviving railway station in the world - Liverpool Road Station in Manchester. The Sundial was made in 1833 as explained in this web page. Further down the page see how, at the inaugural opening journey, the Liverpool MP was killed by Rocket en-route from Liverpool to the station with the Duke of Wellington and why Prime Minister Wellington was pelted with vegetables on arrival at Liverpool Road Station. Also see that a few months later, when more locomotives had been delivered, the first goods train to arrive at the station brought a consignment of cotton from the Southern States of America - destined for the Lancashire Cotton Mills.
This is how you travelled
The above image is of a Manchester and Liverpool Railway train with first class carriages.
The image below shows first,second and "cattle" class!
The station building - now housing museum exibits
The image below shows the station on the left and the goods warehouse on the right. Note the lack of a platform - steps were needed to get on and off the train.
In January of this year a supernova was detected in NGC 7331. The January discovery image and my image from September are shown below. My SN search did not begin until June. NOTE: The September issue of Astronomy Now has a four page article about NGC 7331 called "A mirror for the Milky Way" on page 46 - worth reading.