Thursday 21st October 2010 - A very brief Supernova Search

Although the night (of the 20th October) started well ,clouds rolled in and kept interrupting imaging of galaxies near the zenith - an attempt to  repeat a good night of imaging on Saturday 16th October, using the same sequence of galaxies as a first check on the new field of view of 17.2 arc minutes square  The first galaxy imaged was NGC 7250 from the series "Sky only 1a". The "Sky only" reference is to the way that The Sky Data wizard was set up to sequence the galaxies selected in a particular area of the sky as defined by the galaxies shown on the actual screen of the laptop. Galaxies are selected only by their visibility on the screen and not by using filters. Only 24 galaxies were imaged before clouds prevented further imaging.

Astronomy Centre in Portugal - COAA

I spent a week in October at COAA in the Algarve, Portugal

Equipment Upgrade to Celestron 14

After looking for some time I finally managed to acquire a larger aperture telescope (from eBay) to support my supernova searching. It is a 30ish year old orange Celestron C14  Optical Tube Assembly. It is in excellent condition optically and like all C14s, extremely solid.

The orange tubed C14 OTA

The first thing I did was to acquire a pair of Ironwood Observatories "flop stoppers" from Oceanside Photo and Telescope in Southern California. These prevent mirror flop that had also been a problem with the Meade 12" which I had solved in a similar but not identical way.  They can be quickly released to permit primary mirror focusing if required but I clamp them to prevent mirror movement and focus using the external focuser to prevent image shift.

From the T-Point model I established it indicated that the polar alignment was not correct. Instead of following the usual adjustments to the axes indicated by T-Point in terms of "tic" movement required on the ME I decided to use the tried and tested "Drift" method of alignment using CCD images with superimposed cross hairs. I spent a few hours of trial and error adjustment of each axis to minimise drift of the selected stars until a star was split by the cross hairs without drifting for at least 15 minutes on my 9.3 minute square image. The method is well described in this Sky and Telescope article.

The Planet Uranus

I accidentally rediscovered the planet Uranus in the early hours of this morning.  Having recently acquired a 14 inch OTA to replace its 12 inch predecessor and being used to pointing and clicking to go to any object I realised how difficult it was to find anything at all with the 14" and a non-aligned finder! Having failed to get any known bright stars in the 26 mm eyepiece I tried to locate Jupiter which was shining like a beacon in the eastern sky. Still no luck - I could not find it! I slowly "panned" back and forth in what I thought was its vicinity by sighting down the tube and spotted a definite disk in the viewfinder. Too faint for Jupiter but it struck me that this must be Uranus. I checked the chart and there it was - not far from Jupiter. I centred it, changed to a  9 mm cross hair eyepiece and "synched" it to "The Sky" software and made it the first mapping point in a new T-Point model. I now asked the telescope to slew to Jupiter and there it was at the bottom of the eyepiece field. I centred it and synched it and aligned the finder to the OTA. From now on everything became much simpler and after half a dozen slews to bright stars and mapping them I was getting fairly well centred objects in the 9 mm eyepiece. With a focal length of 3910 mm that corresponds to a magnification of X434. Replacing the eyepiece with the SBIG camera put objects into the field of view with each slew.

Heron under attack at Martin Mere

This heron came under repeated attack from the black headed gulls at Martin Mere today. Every time a gull dive-bombed the heron it simply ducked as you can see below.

   

  

A pheasant family were strolling around the edge of the mere

   

 Note that the last 3 images were taken through the double glazed window in the hide! The Green Sandpiper below was also imaged through the double glazed window.

A large number of lapwings were present.

 

Marsh Harriers, Sedge Warbler and Speckled Wood Butterfly at Leighton Moss

MARSH HARRIER - from the Lower Hide at Leighton Moss (greatly magnified - it was a long way away!!)

SEDGE WARBLER - in the reeds en-route to the Lower Hide at Leighton Moss

SPECKLED WOOD BUTTERFLY - Near the same location as above - many of these could be seen today.

 Greylag Goose from the Lower Hide at Leighton Moss

DRAGONFLY - on the causeway.

 MARSH HARRIER - being chased by two irate Black Headed Gulls. The Harrier was seen to snatch a young gull today.

There are thousands of Black Headed Gulls nesting at Leighton Moss. This angry gull chased a passing Heron away from its nest area.

A pair of Marsh Harriers were seen throughout the day in the distance. This photo of the male was taken from the public hide at Leighton Moss.

 The male and female Marsh Harriers were imaged from the same hide in this shot. 

Can you see the Marsh Harrier perched on a tree in this shot?

The female Marsh Harrier gets a little closer.

One Marsh Harrier perched - the other flies past!

HOUSE MARTIN - on a wire at Leighton Moss

 

Martin Mere Ron Barker Hide

A fairly quiet day in terms of bird numbers for Martin Mere.

OYSTER CATCHER

Swallow

 

Buzzard, Reed Warblers and Heron at Slimbridge

A Buzzard was imaged to the east of Holden Tower near the WWII concrete bunker. Many Reed Warblers were active and a lone Heron were observed.

  Buzzard from Holden Tower

Reed WarblerReed WarblerHeron from Kingfisher Hide

Slimbridge Saturday 22nd May 2010

 A little egret was imaged from a hide adjacent to "The Rushies"

Venus and Mercury from Spain