New Forest Observatory ®

Norman Lockyer observatory – what a great place!  Even without the Astronomy Fair, you really should pay it a visit if you’re ever passing that part of the country.

David Strange – thank you for sorting out accommodation (and Car Parking!) and making it all so easy for me.

The marquee held all the wallet-busting bits and pieces and was a great place to meet fellow enthusiasts as well as the commercial guys selling all the goodies.  Hi guys!!  Wasn’t it a great day 🙂

We were very lucky this year, the weather was perfect, in fact it was almost a touch too warm if such a thing can ever happen in the U.K.

The talk went well with a packed lecture theatre (quite a lot more people than ever turn up to one of my Monday morning 9:00 a.m. lectures).  And afterwards I drew the raffle numbers.  I pulled out the first number and said it was mine as I wanted the telescope – but I got caught out.  What was even more embarrassing was that the second number I pulled out WAS mine and the prize was an extremely nice set of eyepieces and filters in a beautiful case courtesy of First Light Optics.  Well – as I don’t use eyepieces anymore it went back into the draw to another attendee’s great pleasure.

This was a great day, and would make a great day out for all the family.  It’s in a nice part of Devon, so even if the rest of the family don’t want to see the observatory you can just drop them off on Sidmouth promenade a mile away – and spend the time up at the observatory in peace and quiet.

If you were thinking of going this year and couldn’t make it – book it for next year, you won’t be disappointed.

Don’t forget that the Astronomy fair at the Norman Lockyer observatory is this Saturday 8th August 2009 all day including 4 lectures, two in the morning and two in the afternoon.  I shall be giving a lecture from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. discussing deep-sky imaging at the New Forest Observatory, and including a little on other extreme forms of photography.  Hope to see you there this weekend, you’ll also be able to purchase signed First Editions of Star Vistas at a nice knock-down price, but be quick if you want one as I’m only bringing along 6 copies.  I’ll also have 6 copies of “Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images” for sale at the same time, same place.

Against all expectations it was sufficiently clear last night (a few banks of cloud passed over) to get some imaging done and see whether the “object” was real – or an artefact.  Result – a very comet-like lens flare 🙁  Now I reckon this is a Canon custom made lens flare – it is so comet-like – good one Canon – certainly had me going there!!!

I was doing some ultra wide field imaging last night in the region of Deneb and picked up a bright diffuse object mid way between the Pelican’s head and Deneb.  Has anybody seen any reference to this mentioned anywhere??  I have a number of very good images of the region (not mine!) and there’s nothing to be seen where this thing is.  Doesn’t look like it is going to be clear tonight to have another go and check it out 🙁

Always a possibility it’s a lens flare – but it doesn’t look like any flares I’ve seen before – having said that – this is the first time I’ve used this particular rig, so it could be a flare.  That’s why I need some clear skies to get out and try out some more imaging.

And here is a short clip from last night’s ITV Meridian News programme:

Here is a clip from the ITV Meridian feature from May 2009:

The footage taken at the New Forest Observatory actually went out on tonight’s Meridian News.  Apologies for the duff information given below.  My piece was preceeded by Sir Patrick – I didn’t know my book (Star Vistas) Foreword author was going to be on beforehand, and no doubt he didn’t know I was going to be on afterwards either 🙂

Well the nights are getting longer again, so hopefully this will be the last non-deep-sky image for a while 🙂  I took the “Ultra” units up to a photographic studio in Oxford today and we had some fun popping water-filled balloons.  Check out this result:

As part of the 40th Anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon, Meridian News will be presenting a number of short features during next week.  It is expected that some filming carried out at the New Forest Observatory will be shown at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday 15th July.  You’ll see a piggy-backed Canon 40D with a 100-400mm zoom and 2X teleconverter taking pictures of the Full Moon.  We were very lucky during filming on Tuesday 7th June that the clouds parted for around 15-minutes allowing some shots of the full Moon.  I did think we were going to do a repeat of that Patrick Moore Sky at Night episode where he was at some guy’s house with a huge reflector, and the poor chap was swinging the scope all around the sky trying to capture something between the gaps in the clouds.  He was unfortunately totally unsuccessful.