Astro London

Blog move

2006-03-11T20:08:00.000Z

Hi all,

This blog has been migrated to Word Press 2. You should automatically be redirected to the new server in a few seconds, if not then visit the new site.

Processed images from 06/03/2006

2006-03-09T00:28:00.000Z

I've processed the best AVIs from the observation session mentioned in the my previous post. It was interesting to note the notable improvement in quality in the third image. The first image taken without a 2x Barlow turned out rather "pasty" quite possibly as a result of over processing.

Imaging at the University of London observatory

2006-03-08T01:55:00.000Z

Update: 07/03/2006 - 15:50:00 UT

Following some further very useful feedback from several people and helpful tips on adjusting colours and level in Photoshop, I have managed to improve the image further.

Update: 07/03/2006 - 11:20:00 UT

Thanks to David Tyler and Joel Warren for their feedback and retouched images.

Original message:

I had the opportunity to use the 8" Fry Telescope at the University of London observatory last night. The Fry telescope is an 8-inch Cooke refractor which was made in 1862. Seeing conditions were very poor, the atmosphere are damp and there were a lot of cloud cover. During brief moments of clear sky I managed to capture six AVI movies using the Philip Toucam Pro II. I've only managed to process one of the images so far. I'll post the rest of the images here very shortly. In the mean time, your comments on the this image would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks to Theo, the observatory technician for being available to help us out and set up the telescope for all of us who attended last night.

Sheds and country mansions

2006-03-02T14:16:00.000Z

British rocket science is housed in the most oddest of places. Tucked away in the Surrey countryside, up a narrow lane miles from nowhere in particular is the Mullard Space Science Lab (MSSL)

Who would think, looking at that picture, that this is the home to some of the latest and advanced space science payloads? MSSL has been in this business for numerous years and has contributed to the advancement of astronomical discovery in many exciting ways. Most recently it sent up equipment onboard the Cassini mission to Saturn. As well as many notable successes there have been a few disastrous failures. Whilst on a recent trip to MSSL, we got a guided tour of the facilities and had a chance to check out the numerous achievements at MSSL. Amongst some of the latest work to be done at the lab is the develop of equipment onboard the Solar-B mission.

The scene above shows an engineering model of Solar-B. You can see the various connectors, wires, computational equipment and sensor systems, camera's etc. Doesn't look like much at first glance, but once all this high tech gadgetry is packaged up in to Solar-B and sent up in to space it will provide scientists with a unique new insights in to sun. Solar-B is the follow-up mission to the very successful Japan/UK/US Yohkoh mission. Using a combination of optical, EUV and X-ray instrumentation Solar-B will study the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and its corona to increase our understanding of the causes of solar variability. It will be launched later in 2006.

Pictured above are some pieces of dark history at MSSL. Back in 2002, Ariane Space launched its first new Ariane 5 heavy launch rocket. Unfortunately the maiden voyage ended in disaster and had to be aborted by ground controllers in mid-flight. Onboard was ESA's Cluster mission, large parts of which were built at MSSL. Salvaged from the marshes of French Guiana were some pieces of the debris and what you see pictured above is a segment of the Cluster probe that was recovered. Sitting next to it is one of MSSL enthusiastic PhD students who told us about the disastrous incident.

MSSL is a fascinating place to visit. Outside the main building you’ll find long sheds that look just like – well – sheds! From the outside you would never imagine that the lathes, drilling machines, work benches and other equipment was being put to use to build some of the most high-tech space equipment in the world. Elsewhere on site MSSL are developing new clean rooms – ultra clean environments in which they can assemble and construct some of the highly sensitive equipment that will eventually launch in to space. MSSL is an adjunct facility of University College London who have their main campus on Gower Street in central London.

Indian Space Research Institute Skylab

2006-02-20T00:11:00.000Z

The Hindustan Times today reported that the Indian Space Research Institute will be launching a new space laboratory next June-July for trials to develop new alloys and drugs. The 525Kg capsule will use the micro-gravity conditions of space to research the creation of light-weight and long lasting alloys. Further tests will be carried out to develop spacecraft and aircraft materials.

The next mission expected in two years will generate data to design a container for future manned space missions. The capsule will be injected in to orbit by India's own home grown Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The mission is intended to demonstrate the recovery of space capsules. It would also test systems like the reusable thermal protection, navigation, guidance and control, hypersonic aero-thermodynamics, management of communication blackout, deceleration and floatation system and recovery operations.

The Time Galleries at the Royal Greenwich Observatory

2006-02-15T11:32:00.000Z

On Monday 13th February, 2006, my wife and I attended the opening of the newly refurbished Time Gallery at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Visitors are treated to an upgraded experience comprising interactive projection displays, videos explaining the concept of longitude and latitude and a plethora of different time pieces and watches on display. Centre stage is Harrison's four famous clocks. Over forty years, Harrison worked on resolving the problem of longitude which he eventually resolved with his meticulously engineered mechanical clocks which lead to the ability to navigate safely and accurately at sea for the first time.

The event was attended by Lord Sterling, one of the trustees and the head of the Millenium Lottery Commission who both gave very enthusiastic speeches with regards to the opening of the new gallery. Also speaking at the event was Peter Snow, the well known TV presenter famous for his loud ties and enthusiastic leaps and dives around virtual TV sets showing statistical analysis of election results. Peter has been following the progress of the new galleries and the development of the new Greenwich Planetarium over the last twelve months or more.

It looked like they had upgraded the green laser at the meridian line. It appeared VERY bright and was clearly visible way out in to the distance. The green laser is meant to be visible out to about 15 miles. Also open to view was the new Horology Centre. We went along to it and watched a young engineer carefully dismantle a pendulum that had been calibrated so that the metal parts making up the various components of the pendulum shaft can expanded and contracted according to the barometric pressure and temperature in-order to keep accurate time.

In the basement gallery we received an in-depth and lengthy description of how the original valve clock worked that produced the famous 6 pips on BBC Radio. The machine on display was the original dating back many decades, with all values fully working. Watching those values glow and whir was mesmerizing and listening to the engineer who restored it to working order and understanding the inner workings was very exciting.

The new planetarium is not open yet and won't be till 2007, however later this year the new space galleries are due to open. For anyone interested in the history of time, longitude and latitude the new Time Galleries are well worth a visit.

2006-02-09T10:23:00.000Z

I've been using an Astronomy book called Universe, 7th Edition for the last year and a half as reference material for the Astronomy course I am studying at University College London. It's taken a while to fully appreciate this book and it was only when I managed to complete a few home works that I realised what a superb book this really is. It's pitched at the under graduate student with a lot of excellent supporting material such as a CD ROM and hyper link references to extra resources on the publishers web site which directly relates to material in the book. The style of the book is very accessible and it makes subjects such as neutron star formation and stellar evolution quite easy to understand. The book covers a wide sperad of topics ranging from the basics of SI units, distance, time and angular measurements to the solar system, stars, galaxies, the interstellar medium and beyond. There is a fair degree of mathermatics in this books but nothing beyond basic high school algebra. If you're after a book to support your learning, this is a good one.

It's gonna be a bright sun shiney day

2006-02-08T00:42:00.000Z

"I can see clearly now the rain has come....." - Not the most favourite song, or sentiment for an Astronomer. Yes, as you can guess, weather has been pretty poor for a long time. The last partially clear nightI got in my neck of the woods was nearly one and half weeks ago. Tomorrow, so they say on the weather report, and possibly up to Friday it's meant to be sunny. Rejoice! Weather it'll remain clear during the night remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain, it's turning cold once again. Of course at this point those of you reading this on the east coast of the USA are both laughing and mummbling, "you don't have a clue what cold weather is, buddy," and to that I'd agree! We think it gets cold here in Britain when it hits -2 degree's C at night but wait till you hit parts of the north eastern sea board of the USA. Oooohhh, now there it gets a little more than chilly. Yikes.

Tonight's Astronomy Diploma class at UCL was pretty interesting. We briefly covered detached and semi-detached binaries, Roche lobes and material transference between binary stars. We also learned about quasars, active galactic nuclei, Seyfert galaxies, black holes and revised knowledge from previous lectures about differnet forms of radiation emission related to each object we studied, i.e. cyclotron and synchrotron radiation, thermal emission, compton radiation and reverse compton radiation.

There was an interest question which came up in class tonight. "Why do neutron stars have a magnetic field?" Unfortunately we didn't get a solid answer to that question, but my guess is that all stars have some amount of ionized gas surrounding them and in them. By it's nature ionized gas has an inherent magnetic field. Big stars have a very large surface area so the magnetic field is spread out and thus moderately weak. On the other hand, Neutron stars are very small object, typically the size of the planet Earth and even smaller, possibily the size of a moderate city on Earth. This creates a much more compact surface area forcing the magnetic fields in the ionized gases to be much more closely associated, thus greatly increasing the magnetic field which for Neutron stars can run in to billions of Gauss. That's my theory anyway, but I'd like to find out if that's indeed true or if I'm totally barking up the wrong tree.

TV Celebs

2006-02-05T22:47:00.000Z

Whilst at Astrofest last weekend, a certain Chris Lintott of Sky and Night fame walked past me several times. I thought I'd search around on Google for his Blog, if he had one at all. Not surprisingly he does have one, although it has only very recently come in to existance. There's a link to it from the Astroblogs section on the side bar.

The art of "seeing"

2006-02-04T21:47:00.000Z

Tonight I learned what it really means to have good "seeing". Astronomers use the term "seeing" to define the stability of atmospheric conditions which can be effected by moisture in the air, heat shimmer, and the transparency of the atmosphere. All these factors combine to either give you a crisp and sharp image through your eye piece on nights of good seeing or on bad nights of seeing a fuzzy, wobbly and shimmering image which never wants to settle or come to a sharp focus. For the last two years since I bought my Meade ETX105 telescope I've read a lot about seeing conditions and I've even thought that on a few nights I have had good seeing conditions. This was until tonight when I set up my telescope after many weeks of grey and overcast skies. I've never experienced such stunning seeing conditions! Usually with my telescope, the 105mm aperture normally allows me to use a 4x Barlow with at most a 20mm lens. Any more magnification and the image would become blurred and dim. Tonight however, I put the 20mm lens in and noticed that the image was particularly sharp and steady. This got me thinking and so I popped back indoor and pulled out the 15mm lens and placed it in to the 4x Barlow. To my utter surprise the image of Saturn I was looking at previously with the 20mm lens just jumped out at me as crisp as anything. Moments like this usually cause amateur astronomers the world over to start frothing at the side of their mouths and whispering quiet expletives of wonderment. I shall not reveal which of these I was doing at this point in time. I stayed at the eye piece for a good fifteen minutes and gazed at this immensely brilliant site of Saturn and congratulated my little ETX telescope for exceeding all expectations. I thought I'd push my luck and swap the lens out for a 12.4mm lens. This I knew was pushing the telescope beyond its acceptable maximum limit of magnification but I thought it was worth a look. Once again, rock steady; No shimmer and no blurring. I was amazed. Not only had I blown away the maximum practical limit of my telescope, but I had almost perfect seeing conditions and I could clearly make out the Cassini division and faint banding on the atmosphere of Saturn. There was even a hint of the typical creamish yellow colour one often sees in high quality photographs of Saturn. I've not really managed to observe such detail in the past. The best I've managed to achieve whilst visually observing Saturn is to make out the rings and observe a very bright and washed out planetary disk.

The Meade 105 telescope constantly surprises me and tonight I saw first hand how and why this small telescope can match and out perform other much bigger aperture telescopes. I've often read such claims about the Meade ETX series from other observers but until tonight I had never experienced this superiority myself. Nights of such good seeing are rare but when they do happen, boy is it good. Strangely enough, tonight wasn't the clearest of nights. There was broken cloud dotted around here and there which kept obscuring Saturn on many occasions. I'd be really interested to hear from others who might have had good seeing tonight, especially around the area of North West London at about 21:35 UT.

Today was the second day of the European Astrofest. I attended the whole event from the moment doors opened to the very last lecture presentation of the day. Talks were given by Robert Walsh from the University of Central Lancashire on understanding the Sun - a decade with SOHO, David Hughs from University of Sheffield talking about probing comets - Deep Impact and beyond, Nik Szymanek demonstrating some excellent image processing techniques using Adobe Photoshop, MaximDL, The NASA Fits plug-in for Photoshop and a number of other excellent freeware packages. Other talks were given by John Zarnecki from the Open University about the Titan and Cassini-Huygens mission, a superb talk on globular clusters and their evolution by Gerry Gilmore from the Institute of Astronomy - University of Cambridge and a fascinating talk on Black holes and wormholes by Jim Al-Khalili of University of Surrey.

At the show I picked up a superb 5mW green laser pointer from BCF, a really nicely made Hartman mask from Venturescopes and a camera adapter and eye piece projection piece again from BCF. The Starry Night stand was always very popular and they had the latest version of Starry Night Pro Plus on display with live demos being given to anyone and everyone. The Campaign for Dark Skies was out in force and ran an excellent raffle which managed to make over £600 for a good cause. I had a long and very informative chat with the guys from Starlight Xpress and did a compare and contrast with their CCD camera's and the SBIG series. I've still not decided which one is the better CCD camera but one thing I do know is that the Sony CCD chip used in the Starlight Xpress series of CCD camera's has about one tenth of the dark current of the SBIG Kodak CCD which apparently removes the requirement of taking a dark frame. Very interesting and also VERY expensive equipment! Starlight Express also had their active optics attachment on display which I noticed many members of the public incorrectly referred to as adaptive optics. Of course, actice and adaptive optics are two totally different things aimed at correcting different aspects of CCD imaging. Screen shot demonstrations of the active optics relay at work showing before-and-after examples were truly impressive. Finally, the British Astronomical Association and the Society for Popular Astronomy were both manning busy stands. I hope they both managed to sign of up plenty of new members. As I was leaving the exhibition I noticed a stand from UK-SEDS which managed to lure me to their stall with the offer of a free t-shirt if I signed up to join their "cause". What I discovered was that SEDS is the world's largest space enthusiast organisation for both school and university students. Anyone who is interested can become a member of UKSEDS, young or old, student or non-student. The organisation was founded in the US in 1980 by students at MIT and Princeton University and is continuing to grow, currently having more than 60 branches worldwide. UKSEDS was formed in 1988 and is one of the fastest growing national SEDS groups. Their five main aims are to promote the exploration of space, and the research and development of space-related technologies. Provide a forum through which students can become involved in the international space community. Motivate students to excel in space-related fields.
Share in the advancing knowledge and growing benefits to be reaped from space and improve space-related education through both academic work and hands-on projects. Yes I did join UKSEDs and yes I did get my t-shirt and a UKSEDs pen as well! Very nice chaps and I wish them success and hope to participate in their UK wide events.

Over-all, this was a thoroughly excellent European Astrofest for 2005. I look forward to next year’s event - hopefully at a bigger venue. The town hall in Kensington High Street is starting to get rather cramped. Wembley Conference Centre could make an excellent alternative as it's very easy to reach by public transport, has ample parking space and it very large.

The clouds have cleared, I think I'll get in another half an hour of observing and see if Saturn is still centred in my 12.4mm lens.

London Planetarium closure - the end of an era

2006-02-02T00:20:00.000Z

To be more accurate, the planetarium building is not closing - it's just being filled with different type of stars. Those star are the wax variety that are spilling over in to the planetarium from next door. Madamme Tussards, world famous for it's wax models of super stars, sports men and women, world leaders and people from many other walks of life are officially moving in. What is probably Europe’s most expensive tourist attraction is explodes like a super nova and swept away the London Planetarium with its shock wave and forever changed a historic landmark of London and cherished astronomical facility for countless people. Celebrity stardom has officially taken over from the stars shown on the London Planetariums dome - an era has truly come to an end.

I hate to be negative at a time like this, but I have to admit that even before its closure, the London Planetarium was - in my personal opinion - a sad and sorry excuse for a modern planetarium. This feeling was further solidified after recently visiting the Birla Planetarium in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. Shows there are not only an hour long, but they're captivating, the seating is extremely comfortable and the speakers are engaging. The exhibits around the building are excellent and the Birla planetarium run a healthy public education and outreach program, organise astronomy classes for students both young and old and hold regular city observation sessions. These are qualities that were sadly lacking from the London Planetarium for many, many years as the emphasis moved away from education and entertainment to shifting as many bodies through the doors, shortening the length of the shows and therefore maximising profit at the expense of quality and value for money. Another prime example of what a planetarium should be is the amazing New York Rose Center for Earth and Space, home to the Hayden Planetarium. The facility in New York is ultra modern, a gem to behold, houses visually stunning and engaging exhibits, tactile displays and children’s activity areas, detailed information for those with more advanced knowledge, dark room video walls and excellent shows inside the planetarium using state of the art project equipment. I shall not even begin to talk about the education programmes they have going at the Hayden Planetarium or I could fill out another ten screens with text.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the brand new planetarium at the Royal Greenwich Observatory which is due to open next year. The new facility is currently under construction along with a whole slew of new refurbishments and upgrades throughout the rest of the historic Royal Greenwich Observatory site. Hopefully it shall take over the mantle of being the leading inspiration in the London region for attracting the public and fascinating a whole new generation of children in to astronomy. Good luck to them - all is not lost!

Saturn opposition - almost

2006-02-02T00:03:00.000Z

The actual day of Saturn's opposition this year, 27th January 2006, was clouded out in my neighbourhood so I had to wait till the 28th. Seeing was really awful, and I mean down right uselessly awful. The wind didn't help either but I managed to capture a few AVIs. After processing them all, these two images were the best I could come up with. Significantly worse than most of the other images I've taken of Saturn. These images were taken as AVI movies using a Philips Toucam Pro II and later processed in Registax. Enjoy!

I'm started to realise the limits of the ETX105 for photography. The lure of larger a larger telescope is tempting, but I ask ya.... where the heck would it fit in to the living room? Exactly.... DOH!

Observing session: 28/01/2006

2006-01-29T00:42:00.000Z

Tonight marked the first observing session in the UK after returning from my recent holiday to India. The night was cold (-2 degrees Celcius) and crisp with a slight breeze blowing. I started setting up at 10pm. I took it really slowly compared to my usual rushed set up procedure. I correctly aligned the finder scope, reset the autostar and retrained the drivers. Goto's were extremely accurate leading to a very enjoyable night of observing.

I kicked off with a new pair of 12x60 SkyMaster binoculars made by Celestron. I bought these binoculars today from David Hinds Ltd in Tring which is just north west of London near the town of Aylesbury and Wendover. The binoculars performed very well giving sharp and bright images. There was no hint of chromatic aberration, unlike my old pair of binoculars. The 5.7 degree FOV on these binoculars allowed me to view a wide area of sky. The Pleiades were comfortably within the FOV and Saturn's rings were clearly visible. I did a sweep of the sky around Auriga and Cassiopeia to pick out the rich star fields. I definitely need a deck chair or some kind of recliner otherwise it gets very painful on the neck and back when staring so high up in the sky.

After about half an hours worth of observing through the binoculars I moved on to the telescope. My first target was Saturn which I managed to image using the Philips ToUcam Pro which I currently have on loan. I captured five AVI movies between 23:30 and 23:57. I have to process them later on. Saturn is placed very close to the beehive Cluster at the moment and with a wide angle lens it's a great sight to behold Saturn and the star cluster side by side. I used the 32mm Plossl I have to view this beauty. I next slewed over to Mars which is looking very small these days compared to how large it was in the latter quarter of last year. I didn't spend too much time looking at Mars, moving swiftly on to the Pleiades. Through the 32mm eye piece the nebulosity normally associated with the Pleiades was not visible. I screwed in the Orion Ultrablock filter I have and immediately noticed an improvement in the image. The filter cut out much of the light pollution and I could then pick out faint glows of nebulosity became easily discernible, especially when using averted vision.

I picked up the binoculars again and tried to steady my hands by resting my elbows on a low table and pointed the binoculars up to the Pleiades. The table considerably steadied the shakes and I managed to observe the Pleiades for a solid ten minutes and appreciate the rich field of stars in and around the young cluster. Close by was the constellation of Auriga which had a surprise up its sleeve for me tonight. No sooner had I looked away from the Pleiades, a brilliant meteorite burned up straight through the center of Auriga at 00:22. It has been a long while since I have seen a meteor, or shooting star. What a lovely way to end an observing session.

Sunrise Animation

2006-01-26T10:33:00.000Z

I've had some time to convert the 176 photos taken on my wife's Canon 350D SLR camera of sunrise over Tiger Hill in Darjeeling, India and convert them in a crude Flash 7 animation. The Flash file is over 5Mb (compressed) in size so modem users beware. Broadband users should be able to load the animation without too much trouble.

The problem with the animation is that my tripod was being knocked around by people quite a lot. This lead to the sequence jumping around a lot at the initial stage before my expressions of "grrrr, knock my camera again and I'll kick your ass" started to have an effect on people around the tripod. Half way through I realised I needed to zoom right in to capture an appreciable sunrise so don't be too befuddled by that. You'll also notice some reflection creaping in to the sequence about half way through as someone said he was feeling cold so I had to close the window in front of the camera which was open up to that point.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this animation.

Sunrise at Tiger Hill - Darjeeling - India

2006-01-21T19:25:00.000Z

Whilst in Darjeeling, North Bengal which is located in the north east sector of India, I watched sunrise. I managed to take some photos of the event and I thought I'd share some of them with you all. On the second photo you can see that I've marked out the constellations which were visible. Although I have marked Pluto on the photo, it is purely a guess as it is not actually visible in the photograph. I used Starry Night Pro to work out the constellations and whilst doing so it told me that Pluto should have been located roughly where the red circle is. Perhaps my exposure wasn't long enough to pick up the light from Pluto or more likely the faint day glow was already too bright for pluto to show.

Star gazing from a Hill Station

2006-01-07T12:05:00.000Z

Hello all!
I've been having a fantastic time travelling around the Kanchendzonga mountain foot hills in the north east of India. As some of you might know, the Kanchanzonga mountain is the worlds third highest moutain topping more than 28000ft. So far I've been to Gangtok and Pelling in Sikkim, Lava, Kalimpong, Lolegoun and Darjeeling in North Bengal. I've lugged my Meade ETX105 around with me all over the place and I have to admit the sky from this part of the world is AMAZING! There is almost zero light pollution around here and the shimmer of the milkyway is CLEARLY visible. I can actually see the Great Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. I'm amazed at the rich star fields which are visible from around these parts and the altitude is providing some great atmospheric transparency. For the first time ever I've managed to observe constellations such as Vela and Carina. Unfortunately I left my SLR camera adapter at home so am unable to carry out any decent eye piece photography but I've made some first feeble attempts at wide field piggy back photography which has worked out so so. I later discovered I was setting the Autostar to 2005 instead of 2006 which was causing the dodgy tracking and star field drift. Hoping to set up the 'scope again in Jaldapara wild life sanctuary, North Bengal.

Today (8/1/2006) my wife and I went up to Tiger Hill to view sunrise. The dawn colours were glorious and we were lucky to get a grand stand front row view. The actual moment of the sun rising over the mountains, lighting up Kanchendzonga and Everest lasted for a mere ten seconds or so after a wait of almost two hours. Yes we did get up at four o'clock to make the 14Km trek up to Tiger Hill. The Hill is approx. 8000ft high.

Bad start to holiday

2005-12-27T15:59:00.000Z

Well today was the day I was meant to jet off to India for my trekking/astronomy holiday. Unfortunately the flight has been postponed to tomorrow morning. What a major bother. No alternative flights available at such short notice. Damn shoddy show by Air India. I think this calls for some kind of compensation!

I've packed away my Meade ETX105 and various camera adapters and T-Rings so that I can hook up my wife's Canon 350D to the telescope. I'll also be using a web cam to capture some AVIs of various objects. Can't wait to get out to India. Unfortunately due to the flight delay all my plans for my wedding anniversary have been scuppered. Drat.

I was a bit surprised when I double check my flight tickets that I'm allowed to take 35Kg onboard instead of the usual measly 25Kg which is usually the limit on other air lines. I guess Air India jolly well know the profusion of gifts and tonnes of personal effects us Indian's always travel with! HAHA!

I've read that it's a pleasant 25C during the day in Kolkata at the moment and qutie chilly at night, dropping close to zero. When in Gantok, the capital city of the state of Sikkim, the nights will be even colder but seeing conditions up at 7000ft should be very good. Fingers crossed!

Bring on tomorrow morning! Here I come clear skies! Happy new year to all reading this blog entry and expect more updates in 2006.

Glorious Saturn rises in the east

2005-12-18T23:05:00.000Z

Ah, my favourite planet is back. Saturn is rising earlier. From my back garden I'm getting a clear and unobstructed line of site to the ringed giant. I spent a good three hours imaging Saturn on 17th December 2005. Temperatures had dipped to almost -2C in the local area so it was back to looking like an Inuit again!

Click on each image to view it at the proper size.

Tonight I tested out my IR filter for the first time, though I must admit on Saturn it made little difference compared to images without the IR filter. I've read that a yellow #11 Meade filter will do much to to bring out the mid equitorial belt on Saturn. I'll have to try that out next time.

I had a rather peculiar experience when it came to processing the AVI files in Registax. I was using the Philips ToUcam Pro II 840K for the first time (thanks Robin!). It comes with a rather nice video capture application called VRecord. The default colour space/codec setting in in this software is set to I420. It appears Registax 3 doesn't like AVI files captured using the I420 codec. When I tried to process a 1350 frame AVI file it had only managed to stack 78% of the frames after six hours! I decided to capture an AVI indoors of the sofa and use the IYUV codec which is selectable in VRecord. Registax appeared to like this file very much. Therefore, I used VirtualDub to convert all the AVI files IYUV AVI files. I later received an email from the author of Registax who recommended I use the "Save old format AVI" in VirtualDub. I haven't tried this out yet but I'll give it a go later.

Seeing cinditions were pretty average to poor tonight, even though it was cold and cloud free. I had trouble getting a sharp focus. I'm going to have to make a Hartman mask very soon and use that to see if I can improve the accuracy of my focusing.

Satellite image of oil depot explosion

2005-12-11T11:36:00.000Z

Hot of the press! There was a massive series of explosions at a major oil depot in Hemel Hempstead, near London early in the morning at around 6am on 11/12/2005. Police report that the incident appears to be an accident though they're keeping an open mind about it. I managed find this satellite image courtesy of the UK Met Office on which you can clearly see the dark smoke trail from the explosion.

Clear skies - It happens sometimes

2005-12-11T02:28:00.000Z

Well then! I spent a solid six hours observing tonight. Must be a personal record. Seeing was fairly decent although things started fogging up towards the end of the observing session.

I got my first Saturn images (302Kb PNG) of the season. Seeing was awful for the first two images as Saturn had just peeped over the roof of my neighbours house. The final image was much better as Saturn rose and cleared the heat vapour from the properties.

Mars seems to be receding very fast. I'm not picking up as much detail as I used to a few weeks ago. I tried to grab some images by stacking my 2x and 4x Barlows which ended up making the images of Mars worse. Obviously too much mag for my small 'scope. Next time I get a clear night I'll try the 4x just by itself. The moon (160Kb JPG) was out in full glory tonight. Since it was placed very high up, seeing was really decent. I managed to grab a nice montage of the moon which included one close up using the 2x Barlow.

I entertained a few friends who were on MSN and Yahoo chat by streaming real time images of the moon via video chat. They were all impressed. It's great seeing and hearing the reaction of people who've never seen the moon up so close.

Patrick Moore sing along

2005-12-10T16:43:00.000Z

Hero worshipping, idolising, admiring, call it what you will, but sometimes you can take it a little too far, don't you think? A prime example is this song about Sir Patrick Moore (approx 1.7Mb MP3). Quite a funny little number. There's also an animated version of the song. Whilst we're talking about Sir Patrick Moore, I just had to share this MP3 (1.3Mb) with you all. It features Patrick Moore speaking to the The Doctor on the telephone. Hillarious!

I'm sure there's more out there on the web. If anyone has come across more strange ode's to famous astronomers, please let me know.

Deal of the century or dud of the week?

2005-12-09T22:56:00.000Z

I'm always on the look out for a bargain, especially when it comes to astronomy related equipment for as any British "mug" interested in astronomy will know, here in this green and pleasant land, prices for toys to feed our hobby are quite literally astronomical when compared to other countries, especially the USA. Inevitably we all end up as mugs by paying over the top prices resulting in each and every one of us feeling mugged! Therefore, enough of this mugging mania! Here's a bargain for you. LIDL, that bastion of cheap food, that super market chain any respectful Waitrose regular would not be seen dead at, has just put up this portable 12V/7A power pack. These little boxes of energy are invaluable to us astronomers as they can be used to power our 'scopes and other related equipment. Be careful to make sure the voltage and amp rating is compatible with your equipment or you may end up frying something you paid a lot of money for. If you're not sure, try posting a comment in helpful chat forums where you’ll find many-a-spod ready, willing and able to furnish you with the most detailed information would care to know about. Be warned, because of the way LIDL manage links on their web site, the above link to the power pack may not work after a few days of this blog entry. If the page doesn’t work, here’s a picture of said power pack to help you find it in-store the next time you pluck up the courage to sneak in to LIDL with your hoody on (so that no one you know recognises you) ;-)

Practical mobile power supply for 12V equipment
With 12V/7Ah rechargeable accumulator battery
Power supply options:
- Integrated 12V cigarette lighter socket
- Power socket
- 3, 4.5, 6, 9 and 12 V jacks
LED battery status indicator
Size (cm): 20 x 8 x 17.5
3 Year manufacturer’s warranty

Sky At Night Magazine Forums

2005-12-09T15:38:00.000Z

It appears that Sky At Night Magazine have launched their own brand spanking new chat forum. So far it's quite sparse on posts and the number of topics is small but that's probably because it launched this week. It'll be interesting to see how this develops and how many familar names we'll see posting in there.

Iris problems resolved

2005-12-09T00:09:00.000Z

Today was a bad astronomy day. I set up my 'scope at about 9pm and let it cool down. After half an hour Saturn had risen high enough to view from my back garden. I must admit I did a very lazy alignment which resulted in usless goto performance. The problem with Iris was still bugging me. It wouldn't recognise the Meade LPI. In the end fog rolled in and got the better of me and sent be retreating indoors. I decided to inspect the Iris web site and refer to an article called use of the web cam. There it was, staring at me in red font colour; the answer to all my problems. For others who are having the same problem as I am, as in Iris not recognising that the LPI is connected, you should take note of the following paragraph from the Iris documentation:

Note: if your webcam is not recognized by Iris, it may be possible that you have a problem of video channel definition. By default Iris uses channel 0 and that cannot be to modify from the program. It is however possible to change theis default parameter in the following way: (1) leave the Iris program (2) edit the file IRIS.INI which is located in the Windows directory (it is a text file), (3) change the value of the WebCamDriver parameter using a value from 1 to 10 (4) save the modification you have performed and leave the text editor (5) run Iris and test again (6) start again at step 1 if problem persists.

Capisca?

So now that problem is resolves, I'll hopefully get a fog free clear evening some time soon to do some proper imaging.

I noticed some limitation of the Meade ETX tonight. Coupled with the 4x Powermate and 20mm eye piece brings me very close to the sensible magnification limit of my little telescope. That's 294x mag approx. Warm air turbulance rising from the roofs of the houses which I had to see over was probably a contributing factor to the bad seeing tonight.

Bluetooth your 'scope

2005-12-08T17:01:00.000Z

I've always wanted to be able to control my telescope remotely. There are a number of options that have recently hit the shelf. The latest one comes from the makers of the Starry Night astronomy software. It's the Starry Night BlueStar Telescope Adapter- which retails in the USA for $149.95. This is a bluetooth product which attached to various computer driven telescopes made by Orion, Celestron, Meade and others. You plug it in to the RS232 port of your 'scope and then pair it with your bluetooth enabled laptop or desktop computer. The product claims to have a range of up to 9-10 meter depending on conditions. I wonder how well it would stand up to cold climates. The unit operates on 2 AA batteries and also has a USB pass through socket thus eliminating the need to buy a serial to USB converter cable. This is great for more modern PCs which often don't have serial ports. I have not used the BlueStar Telescope Adapter yet but it certainly looks promising. I'd be interested to hear from people who have used it. Post your comments people!

Registax problems resolved

2005-12-07T01:27:00.000Z

After receiving some very useful advice from David Tyler and James Jefferson about my problems with Registax, I managed to reprocess my AVIs from 19/11/2005 and bring out more details in surface features of Mars. It seems like one of my AVI files are problematic. Everytime I tried to process it I got an alignment lock error from Registax. In the end I processed another AVI file which I had saved and everything went smoothly. With the image to on the right, I set the quality threshold to 50%, as opposed to 80% on the image to the left. I also selected a sharp starting frame for the image on the right and made small gamma adjustments in Registax to augment the clarity of the dark areas slightly. Anyway, here's are my results.

Skype Beta nightmares

2005-12-05T00:08:00.000Z

What a nightmare! I installed Skype 2 beta today. Ever since I installed it none of my AVI capture software works. IRIS fails to recognise my LPI and K3CCDTools also thinks there are no USB video capture devices attached to my PC. Even after un-installed Skype 2 beta nothing works. I searched the web for information but nothing I found helped. Strangly enough, Autostar Suite is able to recognise the Meade LPI without any problem but that's no use to me as it cannot capture AVI files. Just when I was about to give up and assume I had to reinstall Windows, I came across a brilliant software package called Virtual Dub. This software has been around for long time but I only just came across it. It has a no-nonsense installation procedure. You just download the ZIP, unZIP everything and that's it! No set up program, nothing installed in your Windows registry. Just run the EXE and off you go. The great thing is this software recognises my Meade LPI and allows me to capture AVI files. I'm back in action and able to continue my planetary imaging.

I had about one hours worth of observing today at about 17:00 before the clouds moved in at about 18:00. I got to test out the Astro Engineering 4x Powermate. The optical quality of the image it produced seemed to me to be right up there. Mars appears crisp and clear and I couldn't notice any loss of light intensity compared to my 2x Meade Barlow. I wasted a whole load of time trying to get the AVI capture software to work due to the problems mentioned above and ended up not being able to do any imaging tonight. Seeing wasn't so hot tonight so it wasn't such a loss. I'm looking forward to stacking the 4x Powermate and the 2x Barlow on the next clear night to see what type of image I can capture. Logic tells me that this level of magnification could very well exceed the sensible limit of what my 105mm telescope is capable of. I'll just have to try it out and see what happens.

4 x Powermate and IR Filter

2005-12-02T11:16:00.000Z

I guess I've left it a little late to get my IR Filter but I guess it's better late than never. The filter arrived yesterday and today my Astro Engineering 4x Powermate arrived through the post. What a hefty chunk of lens that is! Nice. Looking forward to some clear skies soon so I can try it out on Saturn.

I've been toying with the idea of buying the new Aluminium hard case from Meade for my ETX105. Since I'll be taking the 'scope abroad more often it might be worth it. Who would have though a portable 'scope would have cost so much with additional extra purchases later on! It's all a scam! *mwah-ha* Reminds me of one of Bill Bryson's books where he's about to embark on a trek across the Appalachian trail in North America. He goes to visit a trekking store to buy his rucksack and is floored by all the optional extra's he would have expect to come with the bag but instead came are separate purchases amounting to four times the cost of the bag itself! Shockingly similar parallels to my telescope.

Mars hand sketch at ULO

2005-11-22T00:53:00.000Z

Boy oh boy, the fog and mist are really bad tonight. It’s still cold in London; about 1C tonight. I got off work a little early and headed up to the University of London observatory in Mill Hill. It was still clear when I got there so I got to use the 8" Fry Telescope. It's a 19th century refractor and amazing to use. It has a clock drive, lots of brass and great optics. I got to look at Mars using a 40" Plossl and a 2x Barlow. Seeing was really nasty due to the moisture in the air though in moments of steadiness I managed to glance at surface features on Mars and make my first ever hand sketch. It was a little rough and the hand writing was shaky because of the cold but I did the best I could. I do believe I sketched Sertis Major. I hope you all like this sketch. Click on it for a larger version.

After Mars I observed Gamma Andromedae. Gamma Andromedae, Almach, is one of the finest binary systems in the heavens, best seen in small telescopes or even binoculars: a triple system in which its brightest components (visual magnitudes 2.3 and 5.5) form a lovely colour contrast of yellow and blue.

The blue companion also has its own orbiting companion, which orbits the blue primary every 61.1 years. This companion is also blue (visual magnitude 6.3). The Fry was unable to resolve these two components but the brightest components were vivid and easily resolved. Seeing added significant scintillation of light but it was good enough given the conditions tonight.

London Planetarium and CCD imaging

2005-11-19T22:39:00.000Z

Today was definitely a high gear Astronomy day. Instead of my usual Saturday morning lay in bed I got up at 7am so I could get ready and head down to central London for a special SPA event at the London Planetarium. The show kicked off at 10am prompt and was given by Robin Scagell. It was an excellent show concentrating on Mars. Some super CCD images taken by various well known imagers in the UK were shown. Robin took us through how Mars moves across the sky over different periods of time throughout the year. A young lady called Emily Baldwin from UCL, who's also an SPA member, took over the talk for a short while. She showed us some excellent images from Spirit and Opportunity. At the end of the show we were invited to stay and watch the normal show which the public see. The show has improved significantly since I last came to the Planetarium about a year ago when they were just getting familiar with the new software and projector they had then just installed.

Immediately after the Planetarium show I rushed up to Northampton to attend a special BAA event about CCD astrophotography. Thanks for the lift Robin and thanks also to Bob for the lift back down to Harrow. Much appreciated guys! We managed to get to the event during their half interval just in time for lunch giving us some time to mingle and chat to other BAA members who were present. The afternoon kicked off with two great talks about astro-photography using various telescopes and photography techniques. In between talks I managed to get a good demonstration of how to use various bits of imaging software, namely Iris and Registax 3 thanks to David Arditti and Robin Scagell.

Using the new imaging knowledge acquired at today's BAA event I set up my telescope after I got back home. Once again it was a very cold night, about -4C. Some notable mist which later developed in to a full blown fog was present so before it hazed over too much I managed to set up the 'scope and get a pretty decent polar alignment. Using an idea given to me by Robin today, I first inserted my 2x Barlow in to the diagonal, then inserted the an extender tube in to the Barlow. On top of all this I inserted the Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI). This set up produced a scaled up image of Mars and for the first time I was able to pick out features on the surface of Mars from the live raw video feed. Dark areas were definitely noticeable. The misty conditions made it hard to focus very well so I proceeded with haste as best as I could. Using Iris I captured two AVI files; the first 120 seconds and the second 240 seconds in duration, set to capture two frames a second. Setting a higher frame rate caused Iris to drop many of the frames. I think this a LPI specific limitation as I recall seeing the Philips Toucam Pro at today's BAA event being able to capture at a steady 15 fps. Anyway, the captures were both completed and next I fired up Registax. Following the procedure Robin had shown me earlier today I managed to process and stack the AVI files. I was most impressed with the results I managed to get. I think the misty conditions caused a slight halo to appear around Mars which resulted in Registax producing an odd arc around Mars. These images are vastly superior to the ones I have been taking over the last few days. Given a clearer night with better seeing, I think I should be able to improve even more on the images you can see below. Huge thanks go out to Robin and David for helping me out today and being kind enough to demonstrate Iris and Registax to me.

Jupiter images

2005-11-19T00:10:00.000Z

Before I got home from work today the frost was on the ground! It's -2C in Harrow tonight so I decided to stay indoors. Canadian's are probably reading this and yelling, "Sissy!". HAHA. Anyway, to keep my millions of blog readers *sarcasm* happy for today, here's a Jupiter image I took a few months ago. This represents my first ever effort at CCD imaging. Before this image I hadn't even touched an astronomical CCD camera. I was quite pleased with the results at the time. I wasn't expecting Jupiter to show so much detail after processing, especially considering the 105mm my 'scope offers. Enjoy.

Second attempt at imaging Mars

2005-11-18T00:08:00.000Z

Tonight is very cold. The temperature dipped just bellow 0 degrees Celsius here in Harrow. Seeing wasn't too great tonight, and it shows in my image. I took several images tonight but this one was the only semi-decent one to come out.

The telescope was playing up tonight. It produced a lot of "creep after beep" which annoyed me to no end. I decided to reset Autostar and re-calibrate and re-train the drives. This took around 40 minutes to achieve. The creep refused to disappear even after three re-trains so I took the telescope out of Polar mode back in to Alt/Az and re-ran the training. This time it cleared the creep and the motors became much more responsive to commands from the hand controller. I decided to do a moderately accurate polar alignment using the Kachab star method. I stopped short of using the drift method to align the telescope mainly due to almost every part of me being half frozen. I hadn't anticipated it would take almost 50 minutes to get set up tonight. In the end I managed to get a really decent alignment and the image of Mars stayed pretty much within the central area of the LPI's field of view for a long time without drifting out.

I integrated for much longer tonight, but it didn't do much good to the image quality. I played around with the edge enhancement in Autostar Suite and adjusted the number of evaluation frames it took before applying processing effects. I also increased the quality threshold of each from 50% to 60%. I found it quite hard to achieve a sharp focus on Mars tonight and the seeing conditions didn't really help matters.

I think I need to get a 3x Barlow or even a 5 x Power Mate. I’ve seen people with smaller apertures than my 105mm telescope achieve much larger and sharper images when using higher powered Barlow lenses. Perhaps that will be my Christmas present to myself this year?

Before packing up I managed to observe the Orion Nebula for a few moments before the cold finally got the better of me, sending of retreating back in to the warmth of the house.

Imaging Mars for the first time

2005-11-16T22:25:00.000Z

I received my five meter “active” USB2 cable today which enabled me to hook up my Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI) to the telescope and then retreat back in to the warmth of the house and tinker with image capture using Meade’s Autostar Suite software. The cable performed very well with no loss of data.

Tonight’s target was Mars. This was my first attempt at imaging Mars so I was quite excited. I set up the ETX105 in polar mode, though the accuracy was some what rough and ready, resulting in the image drifting out of the field of the view within about three minutes. However, this was enough to allow me to integrate for a good duration of time and capture some images. All images were captured and stacked in Meade’s Autostar Suite and later processed in Photoshop. I have captured some more images as FITS files and I intend to process them in Registax 3, however I haven’t had any recent experience using the software so I’ll have to RTFM and work out how to use it :-)

Here are the results of my efforts from tonight. The third image was taken with a red filter attached to the LPI.

I guess these images are OK for a first attempt but I'm not overly thrilled with them. I may try and achieve a sharper focus next time and use Registax to bring out more detail from the image.

WOLAS Meeting

2005-11-14T23:42:00.000Z

I attended a superb meeting of the West of London Astronomy Society (WOLAS) tonight. Proceedings kicked off at roughly 8pm at the St. John Ambulance Centre in North Harrow - a venue which the society has recently started using. It's a great location and the venue is very nice and spacious. Today we had Dr. John Murray, a research lecturer from the Open University, who is part of the Mars Express team, talking to us about his research on Mars. He is a Volcanologist and has been analysing the data returned from Mars Express and doing some very interesting work and analysis on surface structures, volcanism on Mars and the evidence of water on and below the Martian surface. He took us through many interesting slides showing comparative features on Mars and Earth and pointing out major differences or similarities between surface features on both planets. The evening finished off with the societies observing competition which had some really fine entries from JJ and others showing pictures of Mars taken on their telescopes.

I am looking forward to receiving my 5 meter USB2 cable through the post tomorrow. I should be able to use it to hook up to my telescope without having to sit outside in the cold. The length of the cable will allow me to perch myself on the dining room table and control the imaging device remotely from indoors. Ah, nice and warm.

I'm going to try and get a few nights in at the University of London observatory this week and next week. They have some really superb equipment there and whilst I'm still a student of Astronomy at UCL I hope to take good advantage of the facilities before my course ends next summer. They have a spread of telescopes to use from a 24" refractor to a 24" reflector, a Meade LX200, Celestron 14" reflector and a plethora of other great gadgets and 'scopes.

Observing session: 12th Nov. 2005

2005-11-13T14:04:00.000Z

Winter months usually bring the most exquisite vistas for UK astronomers to gaze upon through their telescopes and binoculars. It also brings cold, dew and frozen conditions here in the UK. Last night was no exception.

I had set my Meade ETX105 out in the garden at about 4pm to give it a few hours of cool down time so that it would be at thermal equilibrium by the time I was ready to start observing.

7.30pm, I step outside. Oh yes, it’s cold! First task for the evening was to take out the clothes rack on which I normally dry my washed clothes. However tonight it was going to be used for something totally different. The rack serves as a perfect platform on which I can balance my torch. The torch is pointed directly at the infrared sensor under the flood light in my neighbour’s garden. This fools it in to thinking that it's day time and allows me to move freely around without lighting up the neighbourhood. Oddly enough, the warehouse that about 1Km behind my house has all it’s security flood lights turned off tonight. I’m not complaining!

I take the cover off my telescope and set it up for initial alignment, a task I've done so many times that it only takes a few short minutes to complete the procedure. All set up now and ready for a night of observing. I notice some wispy thin cloud but I can see right through it. Over to the west is a large clearing and no further cloud beyond it.

I've decided to dedicate the whole evening to Mars. Seeing conditions are steady and the view I'm seeing through the Meade 9.7mm eye piece augmented with a 2x Meade Barlow is steady and clear. There is no "jelly fishing" synonymous with turbulent atmospheric conditions and poor "seeing". The disk of Mars is crisp and steady and I can pick our very faint dark regions on the surface. To bring out the detail I slip out the eyepiece and attach a Meade red filter. This helps bring out the details in the dark regions of the Martian surface. The telescope is tracking very well tonight and there's hardly any wind which helps reduce vibrations when looking through the eye piece. I pull up the stool and allow my eyes to become dark adapted and keep peering through the eye piece at Mars.

After some time I pop indoors and find my binoculars. The stars fields in the constellation of Cassiopeia and Cygnus are incredibly rich. The 10 x 50 binoculars I use bring out the faint stars in these regions of space which are normally invisible to the naked eye from this part of the world, largely due to the intense light pollution and also the low magnitude of the stars themselves. An annoying problem with my binoculars is that I see double images through them. I think this was causes by the optics being knocked out of alignment when I dropped the telescopes a few months ago. I wonder if this can be repaired at low cost or if it’s better buying a brand new pair of binoculars?

It's now at least two hours in to the observing session and the whole telescope is dripping wet. Dew has settled on everything and even my clothes are damp. The temperature outside is close to zero degrees Celsius and the bite of the freezing cold air is very noticeable on my face. I decide not to take out my laptop computer for fear of it shorting out in the dew laden conditions outdoors. I had intended to do some CCD photography of Mars tonight but this will have to wait until another day. I've just ordered a 5 meter USB2 cable for the CCD imager. This will hopefully allow me to sit indoors and track objects in the warmth whilst the telescope does all the hard work outside in the cold. The cable should arrive on Monday. I'm in no doubt that the rest of the week will be cloud and rainy. Murphy's Law!