Ian King has very kindly sponsored the mini-WASP project by providing me with two sets of Baader 2″ narrowband filters at an extremely good price – thank you very much Ian! I now have the 2″ Baader narrowband H-alpha, H-beta, … Continue reading
Fellow astro-imager Tom How turned up bright and early this morning to help with the building of the concrete pier base. With a lot of help from Tom we managed to complete the task in just 3-hours, we both thought … Continue reading
The big Wickes order arrived this morning at 11:00 a.m. and I put the cement mixer together ready to build the concrete pier support with Tom How tomorrow (Saturday). The mini-WASP is really starting to take off now! Next will … Continue reading
Kieron of SCS Astro Limited (Somerset) has helped me out yet again – this time with an extremely good price on a pair of 52mm Hutech IDAS light pollution filters. Thank you very much Kieron 🙂 Why 52mm? Because the … Continue reading
Like something from a Douglas Adams novel, the hole takes on an existence of its own. The 20″ x 20″ hole is now 3 foot deep – one more foot to go. I hadn’t appreciated what a pain it is … Continue reading
I cut first turf in starting the mega mini-WASP project this afternoon. Beautiful hot sunny day, too hot for hard labour really but I thought I’d better get started with the obligatory hole in the ground before the ground turned … Continue reading
Our April Fool’s Day imaging object of the month is Abell 1656, the Coma Galaxy Cluster! Abell 1656 is a massive cluster of galaxies in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) and is over 2-degrees in diameter! Nearly everything you … Continue reading
A first for me – managed to capture the International Space Station crossing my southern horizon last night – Sunday March 6th 2011 at 6:57 p.m. – it is an amazing sight! This was a nice long 3-minute crossing (as … Continue reading
A very lively party at Sir Patrick’s last night, all the usual suspects present. This was a double celebration of the 700th Sky at Night, and Sir Patrick’s birthday (which was the day before). Sir Patrick had supposedly invited 70 … Continue reading
Our deep-sky objects for March 2011 are a pair of open clusters that sit nicely in the field of view of most imaging setups – these are M35 and close-by NGC 2158 in Gemini. M35 (also labelled NGC 2168) has … Continue reading
