Navigation
My Astronomy

 

 

Click here for main

Home Page

 including Dominic

Ford's excellent

monthly calendar

 

 

 


My New Book May 2018

 

ABOUT THE WEBSITE - CLICK HERE

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.

 

My Recent Tweets
« Day 36 List of Supernovae Discovered in 2014 | Main | Day 34 - another clear night with the Moon rising later. »
Tuesday
Mar182014

Day 35 The Moon Spica and Mars

DateTuesday, March 18, 2014 at 6:37AM

Another good hot day allowing me to have breakfast on the terrace but in the evening clouds moved in.

I am still working on the images from Monday (Day 33) so I spent some time doing that.

The four images below are of M40, M51, M63 and M81 - all taken with no filter and 30s exposure except for M81 which was 60 seconds. Clearly M40 does not look as though it should be in the Messier list. It looks remarkably like a double star - and that is exactly what it is. Messier was checking it I believe because Hevelius (Wikipedia Link) reported seeing a nebula there and although he could only see a double star he still included it as number 40 in his list. It is actually the double star Winnecke 4.

The Moon, Spica and Mars are close together in the sky tonight. Here are some details.

 

Author[Your Name Here] | Comments Off |