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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

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About the Site

 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.

 

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« NGC 2455 Open Cluster in Puppis | Main | Astronomy Magazines and Clouds »
Tuesday
Feb032015

What is in the sky tonight.

This is the view looking south tonight at 10 p.m. local time from the latitude of my location in Lancashire.

Chart courtesy of Software Bisque

The panoramic horizon is of my view in Spain last year  - unfortunately not what I see now in a town in Lancashire! Gemini is in the south with Castor and Pollux approaching the meridian line. Castor will be the first to get to the meridian at 22:51 followed by Pollux at 23:02. At 10 p.m. Castor is at an altitude of 67 degrees and Pollux at 63 degrees.

The constelltion of Gemini is shown in a closer view below.

Courrtesy of Software Bisque

 NGC 2331 is an open cluster in Gemini with a diameter of 19 minutes or arc. Uncle Rod from Possum Swamp observed this in 2009 at Chiefland Astronomy Village in Florida but didn't seem to think much of it! Several descriptions of it are given in the Deep Sky Observer's Companion.