How many stars can you see when you look in the region under the handle of The Plough/Big Dipper? Chances are only one shows up – this one – Cor Caroli in the constellation Canes Venatici. In this image North is to the right. Image processed by Noel Carboni who expertly removed a rather nasty lens flare caused by Cor Caroli – and photons grabbed by Greg Parker at the New Forest Observatory.
Today’s EPOD is my Mercury and Jupiter twilight shot taken on 17th April 2011. Thank you Jim for publishing this one 🙂
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 this would be a day job. So here is an image of the completed first task (second task is the deck build). There is an MDF template on the top holding the pier mounting bolts in position (yes there are 8 bolts!) and the aluminium supports on the side raise the concrete a full 12″ above ground level – so it should be a good 6″ above the decking floor. Thank you very much for all your help Tom – pretty sure I could not have completed it in a day on my own 🙂
Noel Carboni has just finished processing this wide-field deep-sky image from a few days back. This is the Whale & Hockey stick region in Coma Berenices and you can also see “The Mice” lower far left. Shows that I don’t have the best setup for galaxy work, so this time of the year is always a bit difficult for me. Managed to salvage this one by balancing the galaxies with the bunch of bright stars at the bottom – but I can’t always play this trick. The wide-field setup is really built for star fields and large nebulae, that season is due soon 🙂
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 be sorting out the decking base, and then another big order into Wickes for all the bits to build the rectangular deck. When I can see the end of the deck build is in sight I’ll place the order for the Pulsar Optical 2.2m dome.
Took a look at the web site just before going to bed (as you do) and saw that the New Forest Observatory today exceeded 200,000 visitors. WOW!!! Thank you all for your interest – please keep visiting and keep right up to date with the latest developments at the NFO – there’s LOTS going on here right now 🙂
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 camera rotator on the Sky 90 actually comes with a very handy 52mm filter thread. Unfortunately I don’t seem to be able to source narrowband filters in 52mm mounted diameter.
Noel has just finished processing the recent Leo Trio data and added in some very old Hyperstar 1 data (taken on an H9C!) from way back. Needless to say, Noel’s process is far better than my feeble effort and you can see it in all it’s glory here 🙂
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 to get the soil out of a deep narrow hole.
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 to stone. So here are some shots of the beginnings of the mini-WASP array – kind of sobering to think that these humble beginnings will (hopefully) end up producing one of the most powerful amateur imaging facilities on the planet 🙂 Had to move the washing line as this was sitting in precisely the place I need to put the concrete pier base. Having moved the line it was out with the spade and digging up the gravel ridden clay soil – so sticky, heavy and stony. I am aiming to put 4 foot of concrete into the ground with 1 foot of concrete above ground – cross-section is 20 x 20 inches. Once the hole is finished it will be a big order into Wickes for all the concrete, sand, concrete mixer, and the wooden decking. At least I’ve made a start 🙂
