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DSLR attached to ETX90. LiveView image of 2015 partial eclipse on Canon 40D

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 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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Friday
Jul112014

Day 111 Friday 11th July 2014 Lots of 11's, IC 2944, Murcia to Manchester via France and more cloud when it got dark!

DateFriday, July 11, 2014 at 8:39AM

Day 111 in Spain (total) so far this year. I opened my laptop this morning and it said that it was 11:11 am on the 11th - so I had my elevenses! (Columbian Coffee)

I used T13 in Siding Spring to take a 10 minute image of IC 2944.

IC 2944 is also known as Caldwell 100.  

 

After a late afternoon round trip of about 250km to drop my daughter off at San Javier Airport I set up the equipment for the evening. I kept an eye on her plane and watched (intermittently) the entire trip from Spain to Manchester online - its amazing that you can have the aircraft transponder data routed directly to your laptop!

 

Shortly after take off from Murcia San Javier Airport


LS 864 flew directly over our old French house (La Brosse) in the village of La Boissiere in La Mayenne Department! Small world! It was however at 38000 feet!

Sunset from LS 864 en route - is that plane flying South??


 La Brosse 10000 sq m farm and barns

 

Almost back to Manchester about to turn and fly over Stockport to the runway.

 

 

It was a poor night for astronomy - mist and cloud were all around - even below me looking down from my mountain top location Cabrera and Turre began to disappear. The last session involved an adjustment of the mount to refine polar alignment. Tonight I homed the mount and slewed to Mars - I centred it and mapped the point then slewed to Saturn and mapped that also. I had to give up at that point. Cloud descended!

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