Astronomy

Think I’m going to keep a diary on here to check my attempts to do some observing so I can look back and see if I’m just a slacker or if the weather really is conspiring against me.  Lunch time yesterday looked good, raining by three.  Too much high and mid level cloud to do any solar observing at the moment but going to keep watching through the day.

Got a mount for my little compact digital which I hope to put to use sometime soon.

Starstuff, to me at least, is a weekly podcast; it originates as an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News Radio show presented by Stuart Gary and is described on their website thus; ‘StarStuff is ABC NewsRadio's flagship Astronomy, Cosmology, Space and Science program.’  I believe that it’s been going for about nine years and is a good mix of news and interviews with people in the fields.  From what was said in the last podcast it would seem that Stuart Gary is presenter, interviewer, researcher and producer and he does a good job putting out a pretty densely packed 25 minute show on what, if he is indeed fulfilling all these rolls, must be a moderate budget.  It is a great shame therefore that ABC is pulling this budget and next week’s Starstuff will be the last.  I understand that it’s not part of ABC’s remit to offer output to me as just a podcast listener in the UK but I thought that astronomy had a higher profile in Oz than over here with the many telescopes located down there, the Deep Space Net post at Tidbinbilla and current talk of trying to get a launch facility located down there but it would seem not and ABC is ready to cut it’s ‘Flagship’ progam.  A great shame and hopefully Stuart Gary will pick up his marbles and set up elsewhere with a similar show, if he does then I wish him every success, regardless of whether he podcasts or not.

…slips by and the telescope remains unused.  I’m certainly not going to portray myself as the epitome of dedication to astronomy, I only get Friday and Saturday nights were I have the possibility of doing some observing, and I’m not suggesting that I’ve been out there every minute of these nights waiting for the slightest break in the cloud or for it to stop raining or the wind to get down to manageable proportions.  I get tired; I enjoy American sport, which tends to happen overnight, and there must have been other things which have meant that I haven’t been out there every one of these weekends over the last few months but there must have been eight weekends, sixteen nights, where I have been looking to do some observing only to be thwarted by the weather.  Of these times there have only been a couple of nights that have looked good early evening only for the weather to deteriorate later on.  I can’t blame the fact that there is maybe just three to four hours of good observing per night at these latitudes, at this time of year for keeping the ‘scope stowed away, there just hasn’t been anything to look at if your preference is for astronomy and not meteorology.  These frustrations have been building for a while now and I thought that if I can’t get out and do any observing then I will bide my time doing another OU course which might scratch my astronomy itch but when I looked at their current prospectus I found that there is now nothing doing over the summer, the courses that I’m interested in do not start before September.

I think I may have to change my approach a little to ensure I get to look at something, and that something may be the Sun.  I don’t have a good place to set up the ‘scope to give me a good view to the east so might not get a view until 9-10 a.m. and hopefully things won’t have warmed up sufficiently to for the atmosphere to spoil the seeing.  Thinking about getting a Baader Microstage, or similar, to mount my little compact digital camera at the eyepiece so I can photograph, in some fashion, what I can see as I was unsure if I was actually seeing detail on the Sun the last time I observed it.

Oh well, there’s always next weekend.