And today?

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Greg Parker

And so far today it has been raining since before I even got up – it is now 2:30 p.m.

Great.

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The Great British weather

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Greg Parker

It’s not looking good is it?  Last winter I didn’t get a single image in 6 months due to the never-ending rain and cloud.  Looks like we are getting a repeat again this year.  If it is ANOTHER 6-months with no imaging I think I’ll give this nonsense up.

 

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You have got to love “them”

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Greg Parker

O.K. so the day has finally arrived and “they” are now replacing the Sodium street lights around here with white light LED lamps.

Isn’t it absolutely marvelous how “they” can get their act together AND spend a huge pile of our cash on something that nobody either wants or needs around here.

And yet – replacing the noisy Aluminium phone lines which are slugging Broadband speeds by a factor of 5 due to the error corrections needing to be applied – appears nowhere in “their” plans.

You gotta love this 3rd world country we live in.

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CCDInspector results of Hyperstar III collimation

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Greg Parker

A few posts below I gave a procedure on collimating your imaging camera to a Hyperstar III.  On reflection I thought that this could be considered as so much “hot air” without results to prove the procedure actually works.  So a few nights ago I fired up the Hyperstar III and ran through the collimation procedure with a nicely flattened M25C OSC CCD.  I flattened the M25C chip using the procedure described on the Starlight Xpress web site.  The results of around 45-minutes of collimation adjustments are given below, and the results speak for themselves 🙂

A larger view of the results can be seen here:

CCDInspector_results_HSIII_NFO
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Second light for the mini-WASP array

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Greg Parker

Here is second light for the 3 x Sky 90 mini-WASP parallel imaging array.  This is open cluster NGC7789 near Caph in Cassiopeia.

The image is 18 x 15-minute subs or a total data time of 4 and a half hours with only 1 and a half hours of actual imaging time.

NGC7789 mini-WASP array
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First light for the 3 x Sky 90 mini-WASP imaging array

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Greg Parker

On the evening of the 27th October 2014 I spent the first two hours of darkness aligning the 3 Sky 90s to look at the same region of sky, and then focus training Sky 90(2) and Sky 90(3).

After the initial set up (a little more still needs to be done to get the chips on cameras 2 & 3 nicely flat) I managed to get some imaging done.

Due to its position in the sky, the Tarazed region was looking pretty good so I grabbed 15 x 15-minute subs on Tarazed and Barnard’s “E”.  Below is the result.  75-minutes of real imaging time or 3 hours and 45-minutes of effective imaging time.

Tarazed and Barnard's "E"
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Giant Sunspot AR12192 taken on 21/10/2014

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Greg Parker

The missus kindly held up a piece of A4 paper this lunch time outside in a howling gale so I could project an image of the Sun onto it.

An 80mm refractor with a 5X Barlow was used.  Yes the image is upside-down just as it came out of the refractor 🙂

AR12192
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The California nebula – work in progress

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Greg Parker

On the evening of the 19th October I got a couple of clear hours before it clouded over.  Enough time to set up the Hyperstar and get an hour (4 x 15-minute subs) on the California nebula.  I had forgotten just how fast the Hyperstar is – a total of 1-hour’s exposure time only, but that is equal to five hours on a Sky 90 at f#4.5 I suppose.  Still, the Hyperstar is FAST 🙂

California nebula 19/10/2014
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Altair and Barnard’s E – EPOD number 62 today

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Greg Parker

Got today’s EPOD http://epod.usra.edu/ with the huge wide field of Altair and Barnard’s “E”.

Thank you Jim for continuing to publish our work 🙂

 

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More jam tomorrow – I’m getting a bit sick of this rubbish now

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Greg Parker

You have GOT to laugh at our present pathetic Tory government here in the UK – well either laugh or cry buckets – it’s up to you.
I have just this minute seen on the TV a promise of putting “hit squads” in to sort out failing schools in the south – IF they are voted in at the next election.
This is to go along with giving us an “in-out” EU referendum – IF they are voted in at the next election.
And this also goes with building at least 100,000 new homes – IF they are voted in at the next election.
I’m sure there’s at least another half dozen promises – IF they are voted in at the next election.


OK I think we’ve got the message guys. You think we’ve all just got off the boat and you are pretty damn sure you are going to do dismally at the next election (so are we by the way).


Why not cut through the crap and just come clean??  If you want to impress the hell out of us – AND stand a chance at the next election – rather than just talking about it, and promising us jam tomorrow, why not get on with the bloody job?

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