My Astronomy

 

 

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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

Astronomy Blog Index
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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Saturday
Mar012014

Day 18 Centaurus A video, Webcam set up.

Not a good day today - cloudy and very breezy up here at about 1200 ft. above the sea. Have  looked at New Mexico, Sierra Nevada and Siding Spring Telescopes today - all clouded out! On Day 15 I talked about my remote image of Centaurus A repeated here

Browsing through the huge NASA video database I came across this video about Chandra X-Ray observations of the galaxy released just a few days ago. It shows a spectacular jet from the black hole at the centre.

 

I set up the webcam today focusing it on the mountains - still have a problem with the USB hub - can't get it to work. It worked every time in the Leyland dome - can't see the problem. I realised I was using the wrong mains socket - some Spanish sockets have an earth and some don't. The telescope and cameras were plugged into one with no earth - I could feel a tingle on the tripod legs that made me realise. Plugged into an earthed socket now - no tingle!

I now have 3 usb cables running outside for the telescope, the Canon 40D and the webcam. They all work - but should do through 1 cable and the hub!

 The evening was cloudy so again no observing.