Day 97 Friday 27th June 2014 - Camera Orientation.

I went through the process outlined yesterday with the Paramount but could not get the mount to slew accurately to objects on the Eastern side of the mount. When I checked the home position it was HA 3.5 and should have been approximately - but not exactly - 2h. That can be caused either by incorrect synchronisation or inaccurate time or location setting. The time and location checked so it must by that I synched incorrectly. Having reset the home position to default the problem I had with unequal purple/red areas on either side of the meridian in the sky has corrected itself. I need to make sure that polar alignment is correct so I am going to abandon the paramount approach and go back to Drift Alignment tonight. I aim to use the camera to check drift direction.

The key is that

1. If the OTA is on the West side of the mount NORTH is at the TOP in the images taken by the camera.

2. If the OTA is on the East side of the mount SOUTH is at the TOP in the images taken by the camera.

To simplify things I need to make sure that the camera is N-S aligned. This shows the setup. This image shows the OTA on the East side of the mount.

Note that:

1. the counterweight bar is horizontal on the West side of the mount.

2. The OTA is at right angles to the polar axis so is pointing at zero declination.

3. The "top" of the OTA (arrowed) is aligned with North.

4. The camera is "upside down" so that the bottom of the camera - where the cables are - is also aligned with North and the top of the OTA.

If the OTA is slewed to the other side of the mount with the counterweight bar to the East it looks like this.

So the camera has turned upside down so that North is now at the top (rounded) end of the camera whereas previously North was at the bottom end. On the screen of course this means that North has moved from bottom to top also. Here is another way of looking at it.

Day 96 Thursday 26th June 2014

Another problem I had last night was with the Telrad glass - it kept sliding out of the finder. This had happened before and broken and this was a replacement glass. A good feature would be to have some sort of catch that holds the glass in place. In the meantime this morning I used my tube of trusty UHU glue to put a couple of spots at the base of the glass holder - that should keep it in place! It is very hot already though so the heat might affect the glue setting time. It is 11:15 a.m.  now and the thermometer says 29 Celsius in the shade. The Telrad is out in the full Sun although I have covered it over. It gets very warm in the afternoon. Time for a coffee now that I have my Tassimo with me!

I checked the balance this morning and made a very slight counterweight adjustment - it seems OK to me - I know the ME can cope with some unbalance very easily.

My plan for tonight is to delete all of the T-Point data and start from scratch:

1. Delete pointing data.

2. Switch on the ME and home it to its fixed mechanical position. Of course it is fixed in relation to the mount but not the sky yet!

3. Slew to Saturn when it is near the meridian (about 11 p.m. local time) - but not too near to avoid a horizontal counterweight bar.

4. Adjust the mount in azimuth and altitude to centre Saturn in the centre of the camera images. It is vital not to touch the joystick or use the laptop software to move the telescope.  I will need to take the laptop out to the telescope and use a short USB lead to replace the long one that runs 30 metres into the house. When this has been done the mount should be roughly polar aligned.

5. Rotate the camera to get the optimum North-South alignment to correspond to the Motion Controls in the SKy software.

6. Synch on Saturn and map a point into a new TPoint model.

7. Test the pointing near Saturn.

It is now 11:33 a.m.and I can hear the wind beginning to blow - only slightly - it seems to be a pattern here. Most days it is hot and sunny with winds increasing from late morning until late afternoon and then it dies down - but not always! It has been completely still air this morning until now.

I will keep an eye on it! I find wind very annoying.

Day 95 Wednesday 25th June 2014

A good day and a clear night. My pointing seemed to have gone since the previous evening and, because of the small image size I could not find a single object using the camera remotely. I even tried taking images and trying to plate solve them but the SKyX could not identify the field because it was being fed incorrect RA/Dec data from the software due to apparent incorrect polar alignment/T Point data.  I am hoping this was not caused be the recent very strong winds perhaps shifting the scope a little. It did not appear to have moved and was starpped securely to the Sierra Cabrera mountain range!! Both the 8 X 50 finder and the Telrad were misaligned- as it worked out only by a small amount - but enough to miss the field of the camera!  After a very long time I had to admit defeat and remove the camera. I used a 32mm eyepiece  and was able to get Saturn centred in the eyepiece and align the Telrad and the 8 X 50 finder. I then replaced the camera and Saturn was in the 12 minute square field! It was the early hours of the morning by then. I synched on Saturn. I was able to map a few very nearby stars.

I kept finding myself in the "horizontal counterweights" situation and stalling the mount with the resulting continuous beeps - they seem very loud at 2.30 a.m.  I must check the balance in the morning and restart the entire polar alignment process from scratch - hopefully tomorrow night.

I have always had this sort of problem when moving the paramount away from its permanent pier. I am sure I will resolve them soon.

The sky was clear and moonless - the Milky Way stretching across from the mountain range - Scorpius is very prominent and Mars and Saturn very bright with Spia in Virgo between the two but nearer to Mars.. Saturn was quite a sight through the 32mm eyepiece with the C14 but I didn't have time to look at it closely.

The summer triangle was prominent but not as clearly separated from the other stars as it is in light polluted Lancashire.

Day 94 Tuesday 24th June 2014

An extremely windy day. The only telescope not strapped down - the TAL1 was blown over. Thanks to solid Russian engineering (I used to own a Lada Estate - built like a tank - it was bought by a Russian and reshipped to his home country! ) - it was undamaged except for a slight split in the plastic end cap and a tear in the scopecoat. It can stay indoors for the moment - it is easy to set up when I need it. As it grew dark the wind dropped and skies cleared. Saturn and Mars were bright and Scorpius was a blazing constellation. Cassiopeia was observed low in the North East - looking very large in sort of "Moon horizon enlargement" effect.

Someone asked me how many Supernovae had been found to date this year and I was caught out. I had to look it up.

So the answer is 74.

I am waiting for an available clear night to be able to start my search this year once I have finalised the setting up process.

Day 93 Monday 23rd June 2014

My visitor returned today

Clearly he regards me as the intruder - he obviously has a tunnel into the house and comes and goes as he pleases - I think he likes me chasing him because he is good at not getting caught - I only managed it once!

No observing today but I had been looking through old Sky at Night videos on You Tube and came across the reference to the star Spica which is very prominent between Saturn and Mars at the moment. They referred to Spica being 12 thousand times brighter than our sun. Hard to believe but it is a long way away!

Here is the programme. I am afraid the tug of war section leaves me cold. Not a good idea. There are too many people in the " crew" approach to the Sky at Night -too many PhD's! Just get one good "anchor" like Patrick and stick to it! Maybe I am just getting old and it is what children want.

 Dismounting from my hobby horse and back to the point -  Spica is shown in its position on the HR diagram alongside other stars of different shapes and sizes- I really must get a list of these in my head so I can be outside on a clear night and point my green laser at stars corresponding to different parts of the HR diagram

This is where Spica is this week- courtesy of the SkyX - the Sierra Cabrera range on the horizon. Incidentally (believe it or not) the little blue "stars" on the chart are all supernovae discovered in 2014 so far - I have built these into the chart.

Day 92 Sunday 22nd June International Sun Day

The day was spent next to the marina at Garrucha with Andy Devey and his wife who brought two solar telescopes for a "sidewalk astronomy" session.

This is Andy and his wife, Judy.

Go to this link to find out more about the day.

 I pinched this from Andy's web site to give the flavour of the day!

Friday 20th June 2014 First images from the C14.

Current Sky at a Glance from Sky and Telescope.

Yesterday I used a telescope in California to take an image of M13 in Hercules. That telescope was a very expensive 24 inch scope with a 5 minute exposure.. Last night I took an image of the same object with my C14 here in Spain. The exposure was only 5 seconds and I think compares favourably with the one from California considering the exposure and aperture differences.

M13

OK the California image is considerably superior (with a more appropriate camera) and of course relies on a good tracking system (the Californian system was not guided- it can track for 5 minutes without it - at  very high price. My 5 second image was taken at a temperature of -5.23C which was almost 30 degrees below ambient temperature.

I spent time creating a T Point Model to refine the polar alignment then extracted the polar alignment azimuth and altitude correction data then used the az and alt knobs to make the adjustments. I then had to start again to produce another T-Point model to improve pointing and used not only stars but also galaxies and globular clusters. Of course it is more accurate just to use stars to produce a model but I also wanted to make sure the camera and optics were functioning properly. At the end of the night I realised that there was still quite a lot of work to do on pointing and on occasion I had to use the finder scope (that I initially aligned with Mars at the beginning of the evening).

I always feel that when taking initial galaxy images I could be missing supernovae because I have not yet set up my checking system. It is vital however to make sure that pointing is accurate to be able to take images of a substantial number of galaxies each clear night.

My first image taken was of M63 in Canes Venatici. This is a 30 second image at +4.89C.

M63

My next (single) exposure was of M51 in Canes Venatici (not far from M63) and was 30 seconds at -5.23C.

M51

I used the image of M51 to determine the basic set up of my system as it had been dismantled and put together again. I used the astrometric tool in SkyX to solve this plate and it provided the following information.

The image scale is 1.44 arcseconds per pixel giving an angular size of 12' 17" for the image. The position angle is 186 degrees approx. so the camera is upside down with South roughly at the bottom -  but needs to be rotated by 6 degrees to give a North South vertical position to each image which is much more convenient. When a meridian flip is carried out the camera will rotate 180 degrees giving North at the top.

The next image was of NGC 5904 better known as M5 in the constellation of Serpens Caput. This Globular Cluster is a 30 second image at -5.23C.

M5

 The next image was of M12 another globular  - there are so many good ones - this one is in the constellation of Ophiucus - again 30 seconds at -5,23C. A very interesting shape.

M12

Another nearby globular in Ophiucus is M10. When Messier discovered this he described it a being a nebula with no stars. Messier used a range of telescopes so I don't know which one he used to discover M10 but it may have been a speculum metal reflector which would give poor images. Again a 30s image at -5.23C

M10

 Another globular cluster in Opiucus is M107

M107

Yet another globular in Ophiucus is M9 or NGC 6333

M9

I then imaged M80 in Scorpius

M80

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.

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.

Day 79 Monday 9th June End of first week in Spain

It is a week since my plane landed at Murcia (San Javier) airport. I reckon I have another two weeks to go before I can start supernova searching. I have until November at this excellent site - of course the days are long at the moment but in a couple of weeks the nights will start to get longer.