Astronomy

Too hazy now to see anything now but the fog/mist from last night did eventually clear enough for me to get out again earlier this evening and have a look at Jupiter, even had the family out there to have a look, which is a bit of a double edged sword.  Maybe they did it as a prompt to get me to do something with the rocky paving slabs where I do my observing?  My youngest was the first to point out that Jupiter looked blue at the top and red at the bottom, which was something that was mentioned in the Jodcast, but I hadn’t noticed whilst I was looking at it!  All the eyepieces resolved Jupiter + 4 moons, would have liked to look for more but it started to get quite low and plants and trelliswork were starting to become an issue!  Bit surprised that the image of Jupiter was quite so fuzzy, couldn’t get a good look at it with the 9mm + Barlow, difficult to keep it in the field and the vibration from people stomping around was a little problematical.  I was told that the Meade x2 Barlow is quality kit and that the eyepieces that came with the ‘scope are at best average and ought to be replaced.  Certainly looks like the case for planetary work.  Not the next thing on the shopping list though; looking at the NexRemote kit from Celestron which includes cables and software to enable control of the SLT from a PC, also looks like it should allow me to hook up my GPS to it as well but not too sure how?  I will probably get it this week but it’s not easy to justify the expenditure when I’ve been able to do so little with it over the past months.

...to be honest I didn’t see a lot.  A couple of reasons for this, largely due to the area of sky visible from the point where I set up the ‘scope, just not a lot of sky to look at and could also be due to being a bit sloppy with the alignment.  Aligned the ‘scope using Vega and Altair and then went on to Kochab in Ursa Minor which is the faintest star I remember using in the alignment process but worked fine.  If there was a problem with the alignment process then it will be because I did not centre the stars used accurately enough and this could have been the problem when there was nothing to see when I sent the ‘scope to look at Neptune and Uranus.  Didn’t find anything in the eyepiece when I tried to look at the Pegasus Cluster, M13, either.  Started to wonder about the alignment at this point and tried to get it to go back to Vega but not having used the ‘scope for so long I couldn’t remember what to do!  There is a button marked ‘Star’ on the handset which would seem to be the logical way to go but this just accesses the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory (SAO) catalogue and whilst I did find the ‘List’ function later I ended up trotting off to SAO numbers on the web.  I have fess up yet again to being something of a slacker, so this was not too distracting to me, I often come inside, and trash my night vision, for the purposes of having a cigarette or checking for something on Starry Night.  I found the number for Vega, it’s 067174 for anyone interested, and set it off to find it.  Vega was just in the field with the 9mm eyepiece so clearly the alignment was far from spot on.  Sent it off to Polaris but nothing in the field looked like the binary I was expecting?  Came back inside to look for something on Starry Night that might be worth a look and plumped for the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, and selected it on the handset from the Messier catalogue.  It slewed around and gave me a fine view of my downstairs bathroom window.  I took this as a cue to call it a night and it looks like it was a good decision as it’s now quite misty.

I now have a laptop and will be looking into the Celestron software for controlling the ‘scope and see what it can do for me.

Was thinking about staying up until about 5.30 to have a look at the Moon and Saturn, they should be fairly close together this morning according to The Jodcast but the mist seems to have put an end to that plan.  I will consult Starry Night and see if I can plan something for later today.

It’s Friday night and the night and the sky is clear, some mistake surely?! Should really be out there and not blogging about it I guess, but just had to pop into Huntingdon, about 8 miles from my home and was reminded how lucky I am to have such a, relatively, good location.  I looked up whilst at Tesco in Huntingdon and thought that I had already lost the opportunity as I could barely see anything apart from straight up but as soon as I was back home the visibility was back to being exceptionally good.  Huntingdon is not a large town, I would guess about 40000 population, but it would seem that even such a relatively small town generates significant light pollution, or maybe that was just down to Tesco?

Metcheck say there should be some high cloud around but no evidence of it yet, but better not push my look and go and get on with it.  They also say it should be good tomorrow with even less high cloud.  I have a little problem inasmuch as I haven’t been listening to the podcast that I usually do and so don’t have any details of what’s going on in the sky at the moment.  Think a quick trip to The Jodcast’s website and then get things going.

Holiday came and went and as I sit here writing this all I can see in the sky, when the rain permits, is lightening, which has been the case a couple of times this week.

The only significant astronomy related activity I undertook during the whole of my two weeks holiday was to sign up for a further OU course, at an increased cost of £140, up about 27% on the cost of the course I took last year.  The course is S197, How the Universe Works, which is a pretty grandiose title for another little 10 point course bearing in mind that I would need 360 to come away with some sort of a degree.  A quick look at the course material reveals some interesting content, sub-atomic physics, in low key sort of way I’m hoping, the early universe according to Big Bang Theory and chapters on the Sun, unification theories and the future of the Universe.  I’m hoping to have my first proper look at it over the weekend as, yet again, the forecast suggests there’s not going to much else going on.