Day 10 No observing, imaged the Calar Alto Observatory with Sony Alpha 350 with 300mm lens.

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A warm day but cloudy - no observing today. I did however go on a short trip up the Sierra Cabrera mountain to see what the birdlife was today (hoping for Bonelli's Eagles)  - I saw absolutely nothing - they all stay in if the sun is not shining here - which it usually is. En route I spotted and photographed the Calar Alto (Wikipedia Link) observatory on the mountains in the distance through a lot of haze - here is a very magnified photograph of it through my Sony Alpha camera with a 300mm lens and 2X Teleconverter. The observatory is a Spanish- German Observatory (Calar Alto Homepage Link) with a 3.5m telescope (evidently the biggest European Telescope on an equatorial mount - cetainly bigger than my 0.4m SCT!). Most of the telescopes are owned by by the Max Planck Institute.

Day 9: A clear night, CGEM with Canon 40D and 38mm Lens, Jupiter, IC 2159, NGC 2175, M36,M37,M38, M31, Pleiades and the California Nebula, Orion setting over the house, Sky and Telescope Sky Week Video.

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A bright and sunny day. I had problems with my USB hub - I could not get this to work so I had to resort to a cable to control the CGEM and a cable to control the camera to allow me to slew the telescope to a target and take images from inside the house. The evening was clear with the Moon gone and I took a few wide angle  images as below all using my Canon 40D and Canon zoom lens.All of the images were taken with a focal length of 38mm.

This was Jupiter in Gemini. M35 is visible on this image at top right. The nebula IC 2159 which is in Open Cluster NGC 2175 is just about visible.

Here is the image again but annotated with object names and magnitudes.

 I then imaged the region of M36, M37,M38

and here is an annotated version

 The next image is an image of M38 that I took remotely.

 This image is of the western sky with M31 at the bottom right.

and annotated

I then imaged the region around the Pleiades

It also shows the Californian Nebula.

 Orion setting over the house - my temporary location only has a view North which is also where most light pollution is located coming from the coastal towns of Garrucha and Mojacar.

This edition of Sky and Telescope's SkyWeek Video talks about Orion

Day 8 CGEM Setup Part Two

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Still cloud around but looks more promising today. The weather forecast says sunnny today and clear tonight - we shall see.

By miday the sun had arrived with blue sky - not windy - looking good.

I continued setting up the 4" refractor on the CGEM today.

This image shows the power going into the CGEM. I have two ways of doing this - directly from the mains dc adaptor or via my car type cigar lighter cable from a mains to ciglighter output socket power supply that I bought recently. The image shows the latter cable plugged in. The problem with the former is that there is no threaded lock on the power cable for some reason - although there is a thread provided on the CGEM. The latter cable however did come with a threaded locking collar. With the less secure former method the cable has fallen out during observing which is infuriating as the CGEM does not have an absolute shaft encoder so you have to plug in and start again on the alignment process! I decided therefore to go with the latter method as (also) I can use my mains connected ciglighter approach without the need for a battery power pack. The hand controller simply plugs into the appropriate socket an the CGEM head as shown.

I then set up my illuminated reticle eyepiece so that I can guide through the 4" manually for long exposure images using my Canon 40D with a variety of lenses. The power for this comes from a ciglighter plug cable using 12V. The original LED on this eyepiece had died so I soldered in a 12V LED (includes a series resistor) to replace it. It seems extremely bright but I will test it later. I just realised that I have a variable output 0-12V interface for heater tapes but may have forgotten to bring that with me! That would probably have done the trick with a bit of fiddling.

 The eyepiece is located in the 45 degree prism which fits into the 2" barrel and has a 2" to 1 1/4" adaptor to accept the reticle eyepiece.

I attached the Canon 40D to the camera mounting bracket that I had in fact bought for the C14 but did not fit that - even though it was advertised as doing so - I managed to get it to attached to the 4".

The image below shows the Canon replacement battery interface that allows me to use a ciglighter input to a dummy battery that fits the battery compartment with a wire neatly fitting through the gap on the battery door.

The image below shows the wiring into the battery compartment.

This is the mains to 12V supply with an adaptor (next image) plugged into the socket.

The adaptor is shown below. The outputs are:

1. Canon 40D Power Supply.

2. CGEM Mount Power Supply

3. Illuminated Reticle Eyepiece Power.

 This means that all I have to do is switch on the power supply and the camera will power up when swirtched on, as will the CGEM, and the eyepiece LED will be on immediately.

Another requirement is for USB control of the Canon 40D and the CGEM. The image below shows the adaptor that is connected to the mains powered scope to house cable on one side and the CGEM USB input cable and the Canon 40D USB input cable on the other.

Day 7 CGEM Setup on the Terrace Part One

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A grey start to the day - dry but cloudy- seems to be improving slowly.  Perhaps the good weather is waiting for the Moon to get out of the way - also New Mexico, California and Siding Spring in Australia seem to be clouded out so I decided to set up the CGEM on the terrace.

First the tripod

then I adjusted the tripod with the equatorial head peg in the North direction.

and I levelled the tripod

and placed the equatorial head onto the tripod

 and tightened up the tripod brace

and checked the tripod level on the tripod bubble

 then used my iphone to get my current location in Latitude and Longitude

 so that I could set the latitude scale to the correct position.

I then screwed in the counterweight shaft

and added the counterweight

and the 4" refractor OTA

 and then balanced the OTA tube

and the OTA/counterweight. Both axes clamps untightened at this balance point.

The next thing to do was to insert the bolts for the azimuth adjustment of the equatorial head. This shows the locating hole for the first bolt

and the bolt in place. This bolt if screwed in will move the head towards the East(Clockwise).

The other bolt is shown here and if screwed in would move the head towards the West(anticlockwise).

I then attached the handset to the Southern leg of the tripod as shown

and plugged it into the panel

Day 6 telescopes unloaded - Cabrera Tour Variable Star V0645

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A misty start to the day - could not see the Mediterranean Sea at all - then a little rain but looked brighter at 11:30 a.m. I removed the Paramount ME from the truck today - it did not feel safe in the back of the truck going round the steep mountain bends and I could hear ominous rumblings from the back - it can stay indoors until I find a suitable site for it. I also brought in the CGEM mount and aim to set that up here with my 4" refractor and Canon 40D when I can.It is a relatively cold and cloudy day today. I walked briefly around Cabrera with some images shown below. The first one is taken part way up "heart attack hill" - you have to take it very easy to avoid one!

This one is slightly further up - the Moroccan restaurant is below.

The next image looks down on the old hotel grounds.

The pylons are up in the clouds.

It is always interesting to see a car take a right hand turn coming up the hill (HA Hill) into this road when the front of the car is suddenly 6 ft higher than the back....

I managed to take one image this afternoon using the Siding Spring Australian remote telescope T13. The target was the variable star V0645 Monoceros. The idea was to take two images about 2 hours apart to see the brightness difference but as soon as I got one image the observatory roof had to close because of the weather.

 I  solved the image in SkyX to be able to identify the magnitudes of nearby stars. Here is the solution

 

Here is a negative of the image showing some nearby stars - all much fainter than the variable which varies between magnitude 0.02 and 4.68.

Day 5 - R Corona Borealis - Identifying Galaxies in Andromeda - ARP 113 and Halton Arp.

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A short walk this morning with my camera. The image below shows my truck next to the Cabrera Arch with my current residence opposite (yellow dome and round window).

Although the day started well by 6pm clouds had moved in and no astronomy possible. Spent a lot of time on twitter and gained 10 more followers all interested in astronomy. I spent some time setting up my Canon 40D DSLR for when my telescope equipment is set up.

I was going to use the AAVSO VPhot software to solve and do some photometry on some of my historic images but it seems to have an error tonight. I diverted off on the AAVSO web site and was looking at the variable star R Corona Borealis. This star seems to have a "continuous" magnitude of around 6 but then fades rapidly at random intervals. It normally recovers fairly quickly. In 2007 it suddenly faded and has not recovered, still hovering around the mag 12.5 area. (I will image this when I can!) It is a supergiant star that is low in hydrogen - rich in carbon and it is thought that the light from the star is being dimmed from the "sooty" carbon being expelled. After a while radiation pressure pushes the sooty dust away and the star should return to normal brightness.

Unable to do any practical astronomy I looked back at an image I had taken of a group of galaxies in Andromeda and decided to work out what they all were.

They are all close to NGC 70. The image was taken with my usual setup and is a 30 second image taken on 18th October 2012. I have seen a reference somewhere to this group lying at 300 million Light Years distance but would need to check that. There are more galaxies in this group - the image goes to about mag 16 so they are in the 17 to 18 mag region so not detected by my 30s image! The group is known as ARP 113. Halton Arp died just weeks ago in December 2013 - read all about him in the Wikipedia Halton Arp page. Also look at the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies Wikipedia page.

 The details of the image are givien in the plate solution below obtained using SkyX software.

Having said that I used my usual setup  for this image I realise that as this was taken in 2012 - prior to my changing to a 0.8X focal reducer - it was in fact taken with the 0.63X reducer resulting in a 14.75 minute square image. For more detail on this group and NGC 70 in particular go to the Nasa/Ipac Extragalactic Database.

Day 4 Nova in Sagittarius - Previous Novae Videos

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The wind has decreased today with a clear sky. A warm day. I see in an electronic circular from Guy Hurst at the Astronomer that a potential mag 8.7 Nova has been discovered by Sigeru Furuyama of Japan  in Sgr using only a 200mm f/2.8 camera lens on 2014 Jan. 26.85UT. The declination is -22 degrees so I thought I might use a remote telescope at Siding Spring to try to spot the current situation but it is clouded out today!

This is a short video of another Nova in Sagittarius - from 2012

This is a video from SLOOH that describes a Nova that occurred in August 2013

 )

Clear in the evening but with a brilliant full Moon. Venus is at its brightest today (morning before dawn) but it is on the other side of the mountain for me so I cannot see it.

Day 3 Galaxies in Gemini imaged in December from Leyland Observatory

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Predicted 24 degrees today. La Pilica in the morning from the terrace

As the day progressed the wind got stronger and stronger. Even though the sky was fairly clear the wind was so strong I brought in the TAL in case it tipped over with the pressure of the wind on its scopecoat.

I decided to look back at some faint galaxies in Gemini that I had imaged in December and selected the two below.

 

 The first galaxy is a 30 second image of PGC 19111 taken on the 10th December 2013 at 19:38 U.T. using my standard setup of the Celestron C14 and SBIG ST9XE camera. [Although I have brought these to Spain (my back is feeling much better now) I am not yet in a suitable location to set this telescope up to start supernova hunting. I am in Cabrera for up to 3 months to try and find somewhere with the position that I need.] The galaxy is the pretty faint object in the centre.

 Here is the same image as a negative with image scale and directions

 The Principal Galaxy Catalogue gives a magnitude of 14.91 for this galaxy and dimensions 1.2 X 1.0 minutes.

Clearly my image is not picking up any detail of the galaxy only the bright core. Hopefully Spanish dark skies will help to bring out more

of the fainter parts of galaxies.

The second galaxy is NGC 2289 but the field contains a number of other interesting galaxies.

As you can there are a number of nearby galaxies. There is a mixture of elliptical and spiral galaxies in this little group. The plate solution identifies these

A negative image identifying the galaxies and nearby stars is below

 The bright star at the top is 10th magnitide to give a reference.

The plate solution data is given below

The image is just over 12 minutes square and the image scale is 1.44 arcseconds per pixel as a result of reducing the focal length by 0.8X giving a larger field on the C14. The reducer is also a field flattener so the stars are pretty round to the edges. The image is not quite North aligned but pretty close.

NGC 2289 has a magnitude of 13.5 and dimensions 1.1 X 0.6 arcminutes(Spiral Galaxy)

NGC 2290 has a magnitude of 13.3 and dimensions 1.2 X 0.7 arcminutes(Spiral Galaxy)

NGC 2288 has a magnitude of 14.4 and dimensions 0.4 X 0.2 arcminutes(Elliptical Galaxy)

NGC 2291 has a magnitude of 13.2 and dimensions 1.0 X 0.8 arcminutes(Spiral Galaxy)

NGC 2294 has a magnitude of 13.9 and dimensions 0.8 X 0.4 arcminutes(Elliptical Galaxy)

Day 2 in Cabrera - 2014 Yearbook of Astronomy - Evening Moon from the Terrace - Ursa Major over La Pilica.

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More settling in and organising today - a less cloudy day today - clearing completely by the time it got dark.

I brought a large number of astronomy books with me to catch up on and use for reference. I had bought myself the 2014 hardback Patrick Moore Astronomy Yearbook for Christmas and sat out on the terrace with an Ethiopian Coffee to start reading it.

It has a number of interesting articles about Patrick from his friends. I had spent a day with Patrick some years ago and found the articles to reflect my views of him - a very generous man who gave away much of his wealth without a second thought and much of his time - always replying to every query and request personally without hesitation. He did have very strong views in certain directions that not everyone agreed with. He sent me  one of his famous postcards typed on his vintage typewriter that he used for his books that I am pleased to have. He used postcards in the same way that people use email.

The evening view fom the terrace is below with the Moon very bright.

A perfectly full Moon(well 98.55%) - very good through my Swarovski 80mm birdwatching telescope - and easy to see because of the current low altitude of the Moon (33 degrees from Almeria) - the 45 degree eyepiece makes it difficult to observe high objects.

The constellation of Ursa Major was rising from behind a local hill called La Pilica shown below.

Looked at the Double Cluster again through the TAL and was "rewarded" with a bright satellite going through the field of the cluster. Pinprick bright stars  in the cluster through the TAL - a very good telescope - not bad for £40 on EBay a few months ago!! In my opinion the best telescope for a beginner - but don't expect too many on EBay for £40!

There are always bargains there if you keep your eyes open. My C14 was bought in the same way - but not for £40 I might add!! It is much warmer outside tonight - no coat or hat needed. I have been using my new Head Torch - extremely useful because you wave your hand at it to switch it on or off. I did find however that if you wave your head past the telescope to turn away for example - it has the same effect!

First day in the Cabrera Mountains- Snapping the moon - Using the TAL1 for visual observations of the Pleiades etc.

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Unloading the truck and settling in today plus a trip to Mojacar to the Mercadona Supermarket and the cash machine. My usual Barclays Bank cash machine had vanished - along with the bank - don't know what happened there! Fortunately a Spanish Bank was next door and their cash machine happily dispensed some Euros to me. Also to the SuperTurre supermarket in Turre and the HSH English Shop(Home Sweet Home)  in Turre to buy a toaster.

The day was quite warm with a hot sun but a light cloud covering. In the evening I set up my TAL telescope on the terrace.(see view from terrace above - that is the Med in the centre of the image)

This image shows the Meditteranean sea a little more clearly

The terrace overlooks orange and lemon trees

The Moon was near full and I took some handheld shots through the TAL and with a 300mm lens with my Sony Alpha 350 DSLR.

I used the TAL to observe the Pleiades, Mizar and Alcor and the Double Cluster in Perseus. Orion is brilliant in the sky - it is amazing how many stars I can see compared to Leyland even with a very bright Moon.

If you think the trip down here is not worth it just compare the weather situation in Leyland and Almeria shown below!