Arrival in Bilbao and Drive to Cabrera Almeria

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A little choppy from Roskoff to Bilbao but I have experienced worse conditions - it did tend to throw you around the corridor as you walked around the boat.

I stayed in the cabin and watched the sea - mainly boring.

In the middle of the night I looked out of the cabin window and could see Orion standing vertically in the sky over the Bay of Biscay.

The arrival in Bilbao followed the traditional disembarkation chaos when cabins had to be left to allow cleaners to get in and access to car decks not yet available. As usual people got in their cars before they were told they could although it made no difference to their time of exit! One husband whose wife was sitting next to me waiting patiently to be called to Car Deck One was shouted at by her impatient husband standing by the lift "Are we getting off this bloody boat or not!!" She ignored him and he went off to the car deck.

I decided to avoid the chaos around Madrid and took the AP68 motorway and A23 down towards Valencia - a cool 32 Euros for that leg! I was going to go down the AP7 an excellent coastal motorway to Almeria but based on the AP68 experience(32 euros) went down the parallel free A7 instead. Pretty similar roads really but the AP7 is usually deserted whereas the A7 was quite busy - not at the level of the M6 at Birmingham on a Friday afternoon but relatively busy.

I arrived at the Cabrera Arch at 9.45 p.m. having spent 12 hours on a near 1000km drive.  It had been fairly wet all the way down and was cloudy in Cabrera.

Channel Crossing - Portsmouth to Roskoff

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We arrived in Roskoff by breakfast time - shown in the picture below from my seat in the restaurant.

and this was my breakfast

Leyland to Portsmouth

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A fairly insignificant drive down to Portsmouth - arriving hours early. The Terminal has to be one of the most ununteresting places to go in the world - except that they now have a Costa Coffee in the building.

I found it much more interesting to sit in the car.

The Moon was bright with a phase of 78.75% waxing so I took an i-phone shot of it.

I notice that the British get really stressed when waiting to go on a ferry or to leave it. No amount of worrying about getting on as soon as possible will make any difference whatsoever - people were clearly getting annoyed when people that had just arrived were getting on before them. Brittany Ferries even have a video now explaining that loading the boat is a very technical operation in that different sizes and weights determine location on the boat - as well as little things like ensuring that refrigerated trucks are parked near power sockets to keep their load cold! It is a good idea to ensure that the boat is not tipped over to the side and is balanced side to side and front to back!

Another i-phone snap minutes before I drove on to the Cap Finistere.

1 Day to go to departure

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Slight panic today as I had accidentally left the light on in the back of the fully packed truck and woke to a very flat battery! A little charging revived it. The light is fed directly from the battery not through the ignition. I see that there has been an outburst of recurrent Nova V745 SCO reported in AAVSO Alert Notice 496 at RA 17h 55m 22.27s DEC -33 14' 58.5" noted by Ron Stubbings in Victoria, Australia at mag 9.0 - reported to me via TAMAG electronic circular 2979.

The Alert Notice is here:

http://www.aavso.org/aavso-alert-notice-496

Getting Prepared for the Journey to Spain

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I am due to leave on the ship "Cap Finistere" from Portsmouth to Bilbao on Sunday (9th Feb 2014) at 1030 p.m. The ship stops for 90 minutes at Roskoff in Northern France on the way and I am due to arrive in Bilbao at 07:45 on Tuesday 11th Feb. As usual I am taking my trusty Mitsubishi Warrior L200 which is now absolutely packed with telescopes, mounts, cameras cables, computer equipment and all the other stuff that I need for a long stay in Spain.

As you can see the truck is absolutely full. The C14 OTA is on the back seat!

Listed below is the equipment and the configurations that I will be using this year:

Telescope Setup 1:

A: To use for Supernova searching by monochrome imaging of 100+ galaxies per clear night.

B: To take images of open clusters using B and V filters for determination of cluster distance and age.

Celestron C14 - this is the OTA that I purchased several years ago on Ebay. It is a very old model but the optics are still perfect. I saved a considerable amount by buying this old 'scope. I added Bob's Knobs to faciitate collimation and have 2 mirror locks and use an external focuser.

Finder 'Scope - I use the finder from my 4" Meade OTA on the C14. I also use a Telrad finder which is switchable between scopes  - I find this an excellent piece of kit. I must say I find it extremely difficult sometimes to set up the C14 if I have lost alignment between finder and main 'scope! It can be remarkably difficult to find even a bright star in the C14 with its high focal length. I am hoping that the Telrad will help with that. 

Paramount ME - the C14 will be mounted on the ME. This is a heavy piece of kit but I managed to get it from my dome into the truck singlehanded. I was very careful to avoid back injury!!

Tripod - I am taking my Meade Giant Equatorial Tripod to mount the ME and C14. This is a very heavy piece of kit and a very awkward shape to move but again I managed to get this into the truck on my own.

Focuser - I will be using a TCF-Si focuser that is very easily controlled from my laptop using CCDsoft.

Camera - I will be using my SBIG ST9XE to image galaxies as part of my Supernova Search.

Telescope Setup 2:

To use for colour imaging of deep sky objects using a modified DSLR

Telescope - Meade 4" Refractor. I purchased this from Telescope House in Farringdon London many years ago - it was lying on the floor in a corner and I managed to get a good deal on it.

Guide 'Scope - I have a Telrad which is sufficient for my requirements with this scope.

Mount - I use a Celestron CGEM (original) which is a good value mount that I have previously taken to Spain and have used it with a 12" Meade SCT successfully.

Camera - a piggy backed modified Canon 40D with a variety of lens options. I have just obtained an inexpensive 300mm lens (f/5.6) with a X2 Teleconverter that I will use for the first time on this trip.

Telescope Setup 3:

For visual observing of brighter deep sky objects and double stars

My third telescope is a TAL1  4 1/2 inch reflector that I use for visual observing and for demonstration purposes. An excellent 'scope that has a Telrad finder mounting option.

Telescope Setup 4:

To use for visual lunar observations.

This is an ETX 90 telescope from Meade that is very good for Moon work and Solar Eclipses. 

I also intend to carry on the work I am doing to image objects with remote telescopes - in particular using telescopes in New Mexico and at Siding Spring in Australia.

I am also taking my equipment for wildlife photography - particularly birds - and hope to improve my skills in taking wildlife images.

Strumpshaw Fen

As part of my tour of Norfolk I visited Strumphaw Fen close to the Norfolk Broads today. (fantastically sunny day). Birds spotted included a Kingfisher, Heron, Black Swan, too many Black Headed Gulls, one Great Crested Grebe on the River Yare which runs alongside the Marsh,  Egyptian Geese, Common Terns, about a dozen sightings of Marsh Harriers, a Bittern, and two Hobbies. The hides visited were the reception hide (Kingfisher, Black Swan, Hobby, Marsh Harrier.), Fen Hide (Bittern, Hobby, Marsh Harriers) and the Tower Hide (Marsh Harriers and Terns.)

Other birds included:

Mallards,Shovelers, Greylag Geese, Coots, Moorhens,Shelducks, Mute Swans, Little Egrets, Gadwall,

Messier 3

M3 imaged using the T20 Telescope in New Mexico. 5 minute exposure - processed in IRIS

Russian ex-cosmonaut professor visits Lancashire

Some years ago the visiting academic was a specialist cosmonaut aboard the Meer Space Station, prior to which he was involved in the design of the space vehicle.   He recently made a special trip to the UK to use the  VLT (Very Low Telescope)  at the Dean Kos observatory at the top of Mount Euxton in Lancashire.  Professor Yakov from Meerkovo had heard that the EMI (See Note 1 for technical details) for the telescope and mount had been optimised so that low altitude observations could be made directly by specialist observers such as himself , so that space telescopes were no longer necessary.  Polar Alignment was accurate giving only a very small pointing error,  or in Professor Yakov’s own words,  polar alignment was “simples” and also that “collimation is very easy in this meerkatadioptric telescope”.  The eyepiece and finder - scope were easily accessible, eliminating the need for a Light Amplified Diffraction Detector of Electromagnetic Radiation (LADDER)

(NOTE 1: EMI = Eyepiece/ Meerkat Interface)

 

Ross Wilkinson and Len Adam

Apologies to Dean Kos

April 1st 2013

Comet /2011 Panstarrs

Frustrated by the fact that Panstarrs is behind a 100ft Oak tree in my garden I spent some time checking my plantarium software for its position. I notice that there are a number of other comets close to C/2011 L4 (Panstarrs). In fact there are two other Pannstarrs - these are C/2012 S4 (Panstarrs) and C/2012 V1 (Panstarrs). However V1 is approx magnitude 15 and S4 is approx magnitude 19! Bearing in mind that L4 is about magnitude 6 there is a difference of 13 magnitudes between it and S4 and as a difference of 5 magnitudes is a brightness difference of 100 that makes S4 unbelievably fainter! (A difference of 10 mags is 10000 X fainter, a 15 mag difference is 1 million times fainter -I will leave you to do the exact Maths (see my article in the Journal recently and spreadsheet if you want to work out the exact value if you are new to this). There are also other comets in the vicinity. In the chart below I have marked magnitudes on some of these.

Supernovae in Ursa Major 2012