Phil's Astronomy Amateur Page

I really don't know where the time goes. It's definitely true that either the more you're enjoying yourself or the older you are (that's me!), the faster the days seem to speed by.

Anyway, I'm back at work now after autumn half-term - Blackberry Week, we used to call it Up North - and getting back into the busy daily routine. I've even managed to get myself roped into running a bicycle maintenance club on a Tuesday after school, so that's going to be interesting. I don't think the boys are too interested in the maintenance but I'm hoping a project to design and build a power-assisted recumbent trike will prove interesting. Who knows, I might even use it to commute next summer...

Did you watch the Perseid meteors back in August? I have to say that they were as good-as if not better-than last year's show. The weather was pretty good here on 'the mountain', all things considered, though not as warm. I recall last year I was out there in shorts and a tee shirt...

I had the EOS with me but didn't bother too much about getting pictures, so I have nothing but the memories. Interestingly each of the three nights' vigils was heralded by a spectacular fireball heading south-west, which set me up nicely for a couple of hours on the sunlounger each night. It got a bit damp by eleven so covering myself up with the picnic mat was order of the evening and it did the job admirably, keeping me both cosy and dry. A dozen or so meteors later and it was a cup of hot Cadbury's then off to bed to warm my still-thawing body on a lovely warm wife!

It was probably about this time last year that I was looking forward to the Leonids and Orionids showers. Sadly, what a pathetic waste of time they turned out to be. Hyped-up and washed out. If there's anything guaranteed to put someone off astronomy it's an unfulfilled promise of a spectacular meteor show. This year's Orionids (mid October) were bleached out by a bright Moon - well, they would have been if it wasn't mainly cloudy!

Due in a couple of weeks, can I be bothered to keep an eye open for the Leonids, then? Despite last year's poor showing, no doubt I'll be watching out for the space debris from comet Tempel-Tuttle, ever hopeful. If anyone else out there is interested, 17th November is your D-Day. If you can drag yourself out of bed for 04:30hrs, from then until 10:30 (or dawn at least!) is reckoned to be the best 'window' of opportunity. Looking at my planisphere, 04:30hrs puts Leo (the radiant) in the south-east at about 40 degrees elevation, so lying with your feet in that direction and looking straight up is probably your best bet. Make sure you wrap up warm though :o)

You know what, I think I've persuaded myself to make the effort and watch out for these blighters. I'll be dog tired for work that day and I'll probably hate myself if nothing worthwhile comes of it but you know what? That's what astronomy is all about and the pleasure derived when the fireworks do go off, is immeasurable. Yep, let's do it!

With that I'm off to my bed. But not before I take one last look outside!

I mentioned a while back that I had a new job. Nothing in the IT Support arena which I've been doing since 1985, no. I'm a Design & Technology Technician at a local school and it's working out really well - not very well paid by comparison, but very fulfilling.

Anyway I was chatting with some of the teachers and it turned out they'd had a telescope 'gifted' them by one of the parents so I said I'd take a look at it as nobody seemed to have a clue how to set it up. It was up in the science lab, in pieces.
Actually, there were two telescopes, both of similar specifications - 115mm reflectors on manual equatorial mounts, one of which was wood, the other aluminium. Unfortunately only one had an eyepiece and that was a 7/8" Huygens item. Plus a very rubbishy plastic Barlow lens which I will treat with the disdain it deserves and ignore for ever more. That should have given the game away straight away.....Tasco. (I see you crossing yourself and looking for the garlic as I type the name...). Fortunately though, both 'scopes had removeable adaptors on the focusers which meant that standard 1.25" eyepieces could be used instead. Bravo to that, at least.


Anyway, preconceptions aside for a while, I 'played' with the jumble of components for a while and identified a couple of areas needing attention;

First, the equatorial head on one of the tripods was missing a bolt and washer to keep it all together. Because of the way it's constructed (badly?) I had to manufacture a shouldered washer, which was no problem as I look after 5 lathes (among other light engineering tools) in my department! As it happened, the finished item was a bit of overkill (as most of my constructions tend to be) but functional nevertheless.

The second issue that applied to both equatorial heads was that the polar alignment knob/bolt didn't seem long enough to be able to elevate the main axis to align with Polaris, so I replaced them both with suitably long (and with radiused ends) M8 items from Halfords. With locknuts on them and preset correctly, it should be less likely that small fingers would be able to fiddle...

Having mounted the tubes in the cradles and aimed them both out the window at some nearby buildings, results were optimistic. Having the same mirror-cell adjustment as my Bushnell, I decided to leave the collimation as set for now - a laser collimator would have been nice to have for setting up but I don't possess one. I didn't want to remove the mirrors to centre-mark them for checking with my Cheshire eyepiece, so fingers crossed the Chinese got it right when they made them...

The teacher with whom I'd been liaising, seemed keen to be able to get the 'scopes up and running for a forthcoming parents evening where (and this is the really interesting bit from my perspective) a nascent Astronomy Club, an off-shoot of the existing Science Club, could spread its newborn wings. I agreed they'd both be ready and available if it meant lending a couple of my own eyepieces, and over the next couple of days I made sure everything was working correctly.

Sadly as is often the case, come the big night (well, we already knew that morning really) it was cloudy and miserable so the inaugural sky-watch didn't happen.

Having lost the momentum of that event, I now need to work closely with a very busy teacher, to see what we can do in the coming weeks. Needless to say I'm keen to help out in any way I can and get this show up and running.
Word seems to have got about in the science department, that I'm the 'telescope expert' which is an onerous title for anyone to live up to, especially when linked to manually-operated Tasco reflectors (!) but I'll meet the challenge with enthusiasm and try to instill that in anyone who is interested in taking up the hobby.

One more point of interest - the school may well be introducing an Astronomy GCSE next year, so I foresee a lot of potential interest in an Astronomy club. Now, how to get rid of the terrible light pollution round here... And we could do with a half-decent refractor... I wonder what's in the school kitty?

I mentioned the other day, that I'm so 'cream crackered' after early starts and busy days, that I often fall asleep watching TV before 10pm. Sad, I know.... being the wrong side of 50 probably doesn't help either.

What I didn't mention was that I tend to wake up in the wee small hours - generally between 2 and 4 am, normally because I'm feeling a bit chilly or possibly because a particularly loud program has just come on the TV and disrupted my slumbers!
It's about then that I decide "Well, off to bed for a couple of hours, then..." so proceed to turn off the TV and put out the lights. However the last thing I do without fail, is take a look out the front door to see what's in the sky.

Very often it's just cloudy up there, but the last couple of days it's been very clear and the sky has been peppered with beautiful bright stars and there, in prime position south-south-east, is my favourite constellation, Orion.
To be fair, the whole quadrant of sky is beautiful, possibly the best of the year in my opinion, but the Celestial Hunter takes pride of place and I can hardly wait until January before he's in that position at a more human hour - like about 22:00hrs - when I can get the camera out and try to image M42, the nebula in his 'sword'.

Down at Orion's left foot is Sirius (Canis Major), brightest star in the northern hemisphere and high to his left are Castor and Pollux (Gemini).

High to Orion's right are the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters plus mum and dad and a load of relatives too - around a hundred stars in all in a hazy open cluster) and in between them and Orion, the Hyades, a smaller cluster right next to Aldebaran, Taurus's eye.

About 30 degrees above Orion is Auriga and to the right, Perseus. Keep going another a bit further and you're in Cassiopeia and just below, Andromeda where the spiral galaxy M31 just beckons you to show some interest.

If you have the good fortune not to suffer light pollution, you'll see that these constellations (with the exception of Orion and Taurus) are all pretty much strung out along the Milky Way. Sadly it's not a sight I've enjoyed since I was a kid. No, I tell a lie - Back in 1981 in rural Gloucestershire, following a wedding reception in the village hall, a group of friends and I walked back to our digs across fields, by torchlight. That was a fantastic experience and the Milky Way was there in its glory.

28 years later though, and I doubt even Dumbleton skies are free of the curse of the streetlight.
I do, when I get the chance, though, take a ride up to Box Hill (Headley, in fact) just south of Dorking, where Ewell AS hold their viewing sessions once a month. In fact it was as a member of said club that I was introduced to this site, but circumstances prevented me from attending more than 3 or 4 meetings and that was the end of my liaison with Ewell. Which was a shame really, because they are a good bunch and being a solo astronomer isn't always the best way to go - you can always learn - or teach - something new.... I really ought to make the effort and get over there again.

If you're interested in visiting or joining a club locally, why not check out my astronomy clubs guide? At the moment it's limited to UK but I will be expanding it to Canada/USA when I summon up the energy to take on such a huge task!

And next time you wake up in the night, don't just turn over and doze off again - have a look outside - you may be pleasantly surprised by what you can see :o)

It's been a month or so since I last blogged and my personal circumstances have changed for the better, I'm pleased to say!
'How so?' you may ask.

Well a couple of weeks ago I started a new job. After nearly 9 months unemployed, I'm finally back in the land of the gainfully employed, and really happy about it too. The bizarre thing about it is that after spending 24 years in PC support, I've completely changed my career and am now in the public sector, a Design Technology Technician at a local school. And it's great! It's like having a hobby and getting paid for it! OK, it gets a bit repetitive and tedious sometimes when I'm putting together dozens and dozens of sets of course hardware and there's obviously pressure to 'get it right' but there's no stress! Trouble is I'm knackered by the time I get home so haven't really spent much time in the garden with the telescope.

That said, this weekend I decided it was about time that I used the sheet of Baader AstroSolar film that I bought from Astronomia in Dorking some weeks back. As my kids were visiting I got my son, Alex, to do the work whilst I supervised. At the end of an hour or so, we had a functional Solar filter fitted to the business-end of my 10" scope and were ready to test it. Sadly (and not unexpectedly if I'm honest) the Sun decided to hide behind clouds for most of the weekend.
Nevertheless on one of the less-overcast moments when there was but a haze of cloud, we managed to focus on our local star and get a picture with the EOS. Nothing spectacular, you understand, because there aren't (and haven't been for some time) any sunspots to look at, this being the rock-bottom of the 11 year cycle...

Anyone who's used Baader film will know that what you see is grey in colour but by putting a Deep Yellow filter on the eyepiece, the image was much prettier!


Hmmm... Nice and yellow but a bit boring. Let's hope that we get some clear skies and sunspots then the images should be a little more interesting!

If you want to see how we went about constructing the filter and applying it to my 'scope, please check out the projects section on my main site, www.simpleamateurastronomy.com/projects.htm
(Sorry, I can't get the hyperlink to work on this blogsite :o(

The tunnel I'm talking about, being a tad metaphorical, is the camera lens and over the last couple of evenings I've been revisiting astro imaging with digital cameras. Having recently aquired an Olypus E1 I thought it was time I actually read the instruction book and took it through its paces! (I'm an 'engineer' - engineers don't read instruction books....)

Some years back, I've lost count...OK, about 8, I played around with a Olympus OM20 SLR film camera with which I experimented with direct viewing through telephoto lenses, screwing it onto variable telescope lenses and using it in prime focus mode. (Using the camera as the telescope eyepiece). To be honest my enthusiasm was cooled quite quickly due to the limitations - not seeing the results until the film had been developed mainly - and I regrettably let it slip.

With a digital camera able to recall the results immediately, my enthusiasm was reignited, motivated mainly by the Perseids meteors. Why I didn't seriously look into it earlier, I don't know - too lazy, too busy doing other stuff... I don't know. For goodness sake, I had access to my wife's Canon EOS 300 so there was no excuse really. To cut a long story short, I missed photographing the Perseids and was annoyed at that, given that over the course of three days I saw so many beautiful displays, so the next targets will be the Orionids in October... And I WILL have a camera ready.

So what are the main difficulties imaging the night sky? Well, cameras work by letting light fall onto a light-reactive sensor, be that a film or a semiconductor chip. The obvious difficulty with the night sky is that there isn't much light and what there is, you don't necessarily want to see (neighbours' bathroom lights, security lights, street lights etc.) . Consequently you may need to work around problems, gathering as much of the RIGHT light that you can. Of course, the best thing to do is get yourself out into the countryside if possible. But that's not always possible.

So here was I in my back garden with lights going on and off all around me, the sky glowing orange from the north west to the eastern horizons, trying to aquaint myself with the settings on two different cameras.

First, the Canon. I'll be honest, the trickiest thing is setting up the camera the way you want it. I couldn't find the instruction book...

First I found that the EOS won't do Manual mode unless the focuser is also set to manual - makes sense, I suppose, but an automatic override would be nice, instead of it just not working at all. I focussed on Jupiter - note that twisting the focus ring all the way round, takes it too far (can you go past infinity?? Obviously...) so rely on getting the sharpest image here, that you can, then don't touch the ring again!

I set the ISO to 1600 and the exposure to 10" (seconds) and aimed the 50mm lens at the Plough. (What was the aperture? I have no idea, I couldn't work it out.... I know that when the chipped adaptor ring is used, it defaults to F2 - I'll have to follow this question up...)

Anyway, I was moderately surprised by the result - a bit orange and grainy (noise) but at least I had the whole asterism in shot.
I then put the lens cap on and did another 10 second exposure. Why? Ah, the magic of digital photography. Read on, this is important.

When you take exposures of more than a second or so, you tend to get 'noise' building up on the image. It looks like little red dots scattered all over, sometimes you'll get a haze in one corner. Sometimes you'll see some blue dots and occasionally, some green too.
What you are doing with the cap on, is creating a blank image with the same imperfections. These imperfections should be for the most part, virtually identical to the imperfections on your picture. What you will then do when you get indoors after your session, is upload the pictures then edit them.
You'll probably open Paint Shop Pro or some photo editing software like that, then choose an image and a corresponding dark-field image. By a clever bit of manipulation using the Image/Arithmetic/Subtract function, you can effectively deduct the imperfections from your required picture, leaving a very much improved image. Simples :o)

Good question. The answer is probably a tentative 'yes', but not because there's necessarily any less to look at now than at other times in the year - it's probably because it gets dark so late in the summer, that people just can't afford to stay up that long to enjoy it. Given that in winter it gets dark really early, which is fab, it's so darned cold by comparison, that really only leaves spring and autumn for your 'average' viewer; Still handy for kids who need to get to bed at a sensible time and for older people whose blood freezes easily if they stand still too long.
And I'm slowly but inexorably sliding into that second category...

The reason it crossed my mind is that this afternoon I popped down to my 'local' astronomy shop, Astronomia in Dorking, for some Baader film for making a Solar filter. The plan, after so many years, is to do a little bit of Solar viewing and I can't afford a Coronado PST, as much as I'd like one. Making a blocking filter for my little Bushnell is the cheapest way I can accomplish this. (It still costs £18 for an A4 sheet, though, which they didn't have in stock...)

I have to say that Astronomia is a very nicely laid out shop with various 'scopes set up in the windows and on the floor - good job, very attractive, but I don't suppose at 16:30hrs on a Tuesday there's ever going to be a queue to get in the door.

Anyway, I was passing the time with the guy, Matt, who commented that things weren't very busy since the Solar Eclipse-followers had been in June/July for kit to take to China with them. (This was in response to my question on the subject, I have to say). Which is a shame really.

If he'd said that things were pretty good, I'd probably have inquired as to what people were actually buying (and I'll explain why, another day). Do they want reflectors, refractors, catadioptrics or just binoculars? The answer was going to be academic so the question was left unasked.

I spotted a flyer that had apparently been left this morning by a lady from the local WEA Astronomy Group (Workers Educational Association?) advertising astronomy meetings around midday, locally. I took a note of her number just out of interest - it may be worth popping down to see what it's all about... I'm always on the lookout for people who might benefit from information on my website, philanthropist that I am.

I gave Matt my contact details: webmaster@simpleamateurastronomy.com - well, I hadn't mentioned that I was publishing my own website as well as this blog and thought I'd let him work it out - so that he could contact me when the Baader film came in.

In the meantime I have plenty to do, including catching that elusive image of Jupiter with the Bushnell and a cheap webcam, just to prove it can be done, really! Trouble is the laptop charger has gone to meet its maker and I don't have a backup. I do however have a spare desktop PC but do I really want to cart it all outside right now, for a few minutes 'work'? Do I cocoa....

That's the trouble, you see. Sometimes the effort involved in getting your gear together, outweighs the impulse to go outside and observe, and that's bad. And that's also why big telescopes aren't always a good thing for beginners, or should I say those who don't have permanent observatories set up: With all that weight to hump around, it's too easy not to bother.

I know, being the owner of a 10" reflector on an HEQ5 mount... That's why it's nice to have a little 'scope around to drag out quickly if the urge grabs you.

So what's on telly, then?

It really was a lovely night last night, so I pulled the laptop out, hooked up the webcam and having first zeroed-in on Jupiter with a normal eyepiece, replaced it with the cam.

Anyone who's ever tried imaging with a webcam will know what a pig it can be to actually find the target on the screen. The trick is to set the camera source to 30 frames per second (far too slow for such a bright object but necessary to find it in the first place) with high brightness then move the 'scope ever so slightly, in a spiral. Hopefully you should then be able to pick up the bright blur that is the target (you can bet it won't be in focus!).

Another problem you may encounter when imaging with a webcam (or ordinary camera, even) is that the focuser may not have enough adjustment outwards, so a special spacer may be necessary.
Guess what? Once I'd found Jupiter, I couldn't get the focuser in far enough to get a sharp image.

I overcame that in a slightly unorthodox way, by removing the clamping ring from the top of the drawtube. That gave me the extra 5 mm or so that I needed and Voila!

Go back into Source, change the frame rate to 100fps, lower the brightness to halfway and I could now see distinct stripes on the planet.

The next step would normally be to set the camera recording for 10 seconds or so, to create a series of stills, the best of which would be 'stacked' using Registax, to compile a half-decent final .jpg image. As I say, that would normally be the next step but my laptop went dead. Flat battery. But I had the mains adaptor plugged in, right? (Light's on, it should be charging...)

So just as I was about to capture some images, my equipment let me down, not for the first time either. Pack it all up, off to bed.

Getting in the house again, I put the laptop on charge once more.
"POP!"
Then nothing. Oh, please give me a break - that's something else to fix now.

But not now - tomorrow, maybe....