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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Friday
Jun062014

The Moon on D-Day and my telescopes on 6th June this year.

On D Day 6th June 1944 it was important for the airborne landings that the were illuminated by non-artificial light to maintain secrecy and so a date was chosen on which the Moon was full. The 5th was the original choice but bad weather delayed the assault until the next day.  I used the SkyX to illustrate the situation at midnight on the 5th/6th June 1944.

Back in 2014 a dull, cool and cloudy start to the day but it soon brightened and warmed up. Althought not fully organised yet I want to start to set up the Paramount Tripod today. It gets extremely windy up here - especially in the winter months. As I am here until the end of November I need to make sure that the tripod and mount are securely tied down. For that purpose I have brought with me some securing straps.

This is one set of four that I have brought with me.

 

I started to set up the telescope equipment as shown in the following images