Brian’s Blog - Mostly Harmless... » Astronomy

One Good Turn….

Brian — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:57:16 +0000

After a plaintive cry for help in the local media, yesterday I visited Keith just along the road from me. He had been having problems with his wireless broadband connection and I’d offered to help solve them.
Turned out to be down to a Netgear configuration programme being used instead of the Zero Configuration thing in XP so it was soon solved and a reliable connection to the router is now in place… well, at least I haven’t heard of any problems with his system so far!
During the fix we had a general chat and while I was rambling on about my interests, I happened to mention astronomy and the local observatory – it turns out Keith is quite good friends with Sir Patrick Moore.
Anyhow, on to the point of the post! Later yesterday, after a very pleasant Bank Holiday walk around Cowes, we got back home to find a book on the doorstep and not just any old book either, it was The Data Book of Astronomy by Patrick Moore!
So there it is, I fixed Keith’s PC as a favour and he (well I have to assume it was him as there was no note with it) has given me a very useful book for my growing astronomy library. Thanks Keith…

IOW Star Party – I promised pictures…

Brian — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:59:57 +0000

These three fantastic pictures were taken from Brighstone during the recent Isle of Wight Star Party – they show what can be acheived if we can manage to keep our beautifully dark skies.
Click a pic (and keep clicking for the Hi-Res versions)
Details of the equipment used and the various exposure information is included with each picture
All three pictures are © Richie Jarvis – http://www.deepsky.org.uk, please visit Richie’s site for many more incredible images.
Many thanks for allowing me to use these Richie, and I hope you, dear reader, are as amazed by them as I am.

IOW Star Party – the aftermath…

Brian — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:28:19 +0000

Had a great long weekend out at Brighstone at the IOW Star Party. Loads of good friends, brilliantly (?) dark skies and wonderful viewing – I even won a prize in the raffle – now it’s time to sleep!
Got to bed at about 2am Fri, 4am Saturday and 3am this morning (still on GMT) I’m knackered but still buzzing.
I hope to add a few pictures of events and some of the images captured over the 4 days but that’ll have to wait for a while – stay tuned…. ZZZZzzzzzz…

Webcam

Brian — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:56:28 +0000

Over on the right of my homepage you can hopefully see the output from a streaming webcam.

For now, I am experimenting with it connected to a telescope to get in close to a bird feeder in the garden. Eventually I hope to use the thing for astronomy but before making any permanent mods to the camera I thought I’d lash something up with “gaffer” tape.

Please bear with me if the camera goes off line, the tape has probably broken! – one day it’ll have its own page I think.

Sign Up… Switch Off!

Brian — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:14:41 +0000

On Saturday 28 March 2009 at 8.30pm, people, businesses and iconic buildings around the world will switch off their lights for an hour – World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour.

The WWF want a billion people around the world to sign up and switch off their lights for one hour.

If they achieve their billion people it will send a powerful message – suggest all readers sign up now.

Remember this song?

Brian — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:38:41 +0000

I thought it was only right to mention this as it’s International Year of Astronomy:

OK, so some of the quoted numbers aren’t quite right but it sums things up pretty well I think….

2009 – International Year of Astronomy

Brian — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:30:34 +0000

Vectis Astronomical Society have set the first three dates for our public celebration of 2009 – International Year of Astronomy.

Sunday, 25th January – 7.30 p.m. to 11 p.m (ish)
Observing the night sky
Pointer Inn, Newchurch, PO36 0NN

Thursday, 5th February – 8 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.
Storytellers “Starry Telling”
Quay Arts Centre, Newport, PO30 5BD

Saturday, 7th March – 7.30 to 10.30 p.m (ish)
Observing the night sky
Brading Roman Villa, Brading, PO36 0EN

Events are free of charge unless otherwise stated.

VAS will provide telescopes and binoculars and a few experienced members to (hopefully!) answer any questions.

Of course, the Observing nights will be entirely dependent on the weather, so cross your fingers and if you do come along, please wrap up warm.

Astronomical Lidl Offers!

Brian — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:50:12 +0000

Once again, Lidl seem to have come up trumps with a couple of great astronomy offers:

Refractor Telescope Kit with Tripod

Professional telescope on durable, adjustable aluminium tripod
Magnification: 35x – 175x
Lens diameter (mm): 70
Focal length (mm): 700
3 high-quality oculars with 20, 12 and 4mm focal lengths
Includes PC astronomy software, lunar map, star compass, 1.5x erecting lens and instruction manual
5 year manufacturer’s warranty
Price per item £58.70
While Stocks last!

Binoculars

Magnification: 10x
Objective lens diameter (mm): 50
Diopter adjustment
Exceptionally clear view due to BaK-4 prisms and fully coated lenses
Robust rubber-coated metal casing
With fold down rubber eye-caps for spectacle wearers
Includes neck strap, hardwearing nylon pouch, dust caps and cleaning cloth
5 year manufacturer’s warranty
Price per item £12.70
While Stocks last!

Both items are made by Bresser which is part of the rather better known Meade company. I own both the telescope and binoculars and can give both a seal of approval with the small proviso that the Telescope is designed with beginners in mind – it’s easy to set up and will get you into basic astronomy. It isn’t suited to astrophotography and doesn’t have any tracking facilities or “goto” help.

All that said, the binoculars are a great buy as they are probably as good as anything costing up to about £60-70 and the telescope is better than anything else for less than about £100….. both are highly recommended.

Both items are available from 15/12/2008 but if last year is anything to go by, you’ll have to be quick – both are “While Stocks last!”.

Sky Quality

Brian — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:48:47 +0000

The Isle of Wight is reported to have some of the best skies for astronomy in the UK; in order to prove and quantify this, the local Astronomical Society recently purchased a Sky Quality Meter (SQM) (shown below) and we are slowly lending it out to members so they can take reading from various places on the Island.

We are hoping to use the information to create a database of readings which can be used now to quantify the current position and, in the future, to highlight changes. Of course the data we record will only really be useful if we can find a really easy way to present it. I recently mentioned the Geograph project which allows anyone to upload pictures of an area and then uses maps to navigate the collection, some variation on this theme would be ideal for sky quality information and not just for the Isle of Wight, the system will easily cope with the whole of the UK and possibly even the rest of the world!

Of course the ideal result would probably be a layer on the Google Earth project - this is already in place for the Geograph photos so should be possible for this too. I have plenty to investigate as the Geograph software is Open Source and Google Earth has publicly accessible application links (API).

If you have any ideas about how this project could proceed, I’d be very pleased to hear from you – who knows, we may even reduce the Sky Quality by getting our names up in lights

Riding with Robots on the High Frontier

Brian — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:19:36 +0000

Riding with Robots on the High Frontier is a website with the tagline “Saddle up for a trip with the robotic spacecraft now exploring the wild black yonder!”.

It updates daily with superb photographs and animations from various exploration spacecraft.

Well worth a visit!

The Chasms of Cerberus
Sent by: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter | From: Mars
Released: Aug, 2008 | Credit: NASA/JPL/UA | Image source