Observing night

What a great night, not too cold or wet or cloudy, no real haar,Got back from BiG at 10pm, a run and ropework tonight, south african abseiling, but I digress. Set it up as before, way off with the polar scope as it turns out, but a two star alignment worked well, Vega and Deneb. […]

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A long time…

since last post. All down to a failure of a screw on a microswitch on Obby’s sliding roof. Alastair M saw it recently and suggested super gluing it on. A good tip its September, a good month for Hercules. Been out twice, calibrated from first principles and used the tripod and a battery. Worked really […]

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April 18th

7Y7A20097Y7A1999Well, we have had WEEKS of cloud and the grey gloom.

However, in that time, had a great bonfire, tidied up the garden, got some daffs from Allison G, now buried round the garden. Plan to clear around Sunshine terrace and plant a few honeysuckle azaleas, Rhodo luteum. May order more and some verbena, lilium regano from Glendoick or RHS, Dug up a laod of gorse and watched it disappear into the sky with a crackle.

Robert came and finished marble plinth work and tiled wall, looks great> Merc goes this week, back to Finance company, bunch of sharks and vultures, inspection tomorrow.

 

Skynet went live on the 11th April at 19.15hours- plugged the Paragon setup into the router, fitted it to Lounge wall, drilled through wall, fed cable back from outside into Lounge, having disconnected IEEE connector, reconnected plug to said cable with plastic BT tool for wires, then buried the armoured ethernet and connected up to PC in Obby, now all I have to do is get a decent camera for live picture cameras. Cant decide between SBIG or Atik. May have to make do with the Minitron for the moment.

Have had two good weekends away with Barmy, more next month, Cobbler or Ben Narnain. My fitness is rubbish at the moment, too heavy and eating too much.

Life feels good,sleeping better, catching up with the various kids regularly. Portugal in 5 weeks!!! Before then , sailing for a week, John and H and Gabi chez vous on Saturday.

Need to see my Dad, going down end of month to collect Lex and will see him then.

Tonight, a gap in the clouds, actually Moon very bright and clear, in conjunction with Jupiter. Took Baader diagonal off and put new adapter ( from FLO) with 0.85mm reducer onto canon and,

hey presto. Got some good photos of the Moon. LiveView and magnification makes a HUGE difference

Struggled a bit with the camera setting, not really au fait with all settings. However settled on centre average weighting, MF, ISO 400 and 125. Should be at f11 or f16 with aISo 100 and shutter speed of 100. God knows what I took but it was not that. Will need to programme Camera setting 3 for Moon, add in bracketing of +/- 1EV

Next night, back out after Barmy, put on CNC adapter from the States, fitted it with moonlight filter from Baader, took off diagonal and used mount to find Moon- way off! Next project is to realign Polarscope and then do three star alignment with synscan- not brave enough yet to use EQ MoD.

 

However, centred on Moon quickly and then snapped off some photos, very good, using bracketing, made a big difference. Had to move from C3 to Manual, must try and programme C3 for that.

Loaded them up onto site. Checked hercules, still hours away at midnight here, will prob be next month before can try for M13

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Early Spring 2016

  Well, what a start to March. Had a great time at Boston, Terry’s apartment and Sunday River, got back in one piece last weekend, then back to work the next day. Good week at work saw K in Aberdeen on friday, said she was a bit thin. Oh dear. In fact have had three […]

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Burns Night 2016

Burns Night again, 25th Jan 2016, a Monday evening Home from work at 5.30pm, watched a bit of Pointless then fell asleep. Woke and started to get tea ready for Beloved, the remains of the weekend food with Mal  and Stella, Stornaway Black pudding, spookily a question on pointless, also fillet steak beef Wellington, mash, […]

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15th Jan 2016

Its eventually stopped raining! End of the week as well, Elgin wasn’t too bad. Fillet steak for tea watched another episode of Homeland, then decided to go out to Obbo. Plus 3 degC to start, then opened roof. Switched on telescope, PSU working well, current next to zero, 13.7V. Humidity 55%. Went though usual calibration […]

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29th Dec

Well, another year nearly gone, I’ve not been very good at posting. where to start? Had a great week in Whistler, snow a bit slushy on the lower slopes. Good skiing, Martin W was very good, will catch up one day again. My one lesson paid off, knees intact still. 2016 and we have Serre […]

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Burns night 2015

25th of January for the uninitiated. last nights Burn’s night at BBTC was very good. Doug K was excellent as Tam, Colin M did an excellent Ode, good company, Alasdair M won a bottle of whisky and then promptly drunk the lot with friends-he guessed correctly when Doug would fall off the perch, around line […]

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The Second day of the New Year

Must be on a roll, two posts in two days. Got up at 6.30am, very dark, now watching the sleet bounce off the ground. listened to a mediocre DID by very mediocre RayWinstone while filling in my tax retrun. Dont know what is more depressing… Reviewed my lenses for the Canon, downloaded Nebulosity and EOS […]

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New Years day 2015

It is New Year’s day. No, I did not make this a resolution, that is to say, to start a blog. Rather, I have spent some hours in front of the screen browsing a lot of websites on Astronomy observatories, from  Poland Italy, England and yes even one in Auckinleck. It struck me I would […]

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