Search Results for 'Join'

[Carolyn Kennett]

Hi all, 

I want to thank everyone who got involved last month and sent me your image of the Moon and Venus. You may recall we are having a final attempt this month. Exactly the same as before except we would like you to image the Moon with Venus on Tuesday evening at 9.30pm (local time). 

Once all this attempt is over, we will work on the calculations from all the attempts and I will let you know how we have got on

thank you once again for your help. 

here is more details from last times request about what we are doing.

I am involved in a Heritage Lottery funded project where we have been celebrating the types of historical measurements astronomers used in the past. Part of this has been a parallax project where we have been asking people each month to take an image of the crescent moon and Venus. From this, we are going to use parallax (peoples locations around the globe and the orientation of the crescent to Venus) and measure the distance to the moon, much in the way the Transit of Venus was used to measure an astronomical unit. I know a few of you took part last month and I thank you for all your excellent images. We are asking people to take part again this month for a second attempt.

So if you would like to join in and it is safe for you to do so, can you take an image of the crescent moon and Venus on Saturday night at 8pm local time on your cameras and send it to us either here or my email carolyn@hird.net or @mayescreative on social media.

I will need to know your location of where the image was taken from, but a general location is fine eg Bristol.

more information can be found out about the project here

http://www.mayescreative.com/measure-to-the-moon.html

[David Swan]

It has passed on! This comet is no more! It has ceased to be …and joined the choir invisible. THIS IS AN EX-COMET. (Well not quite.)

10 x 20s, not great transparency, 2020-04-08T20:50:20.164 /UT of midpoint of exposure.

[Carolyn Kennett]

I am involved in a Heritage Lottery funded project where we have been celebrating the types of historical measurements astronomers used in the past. Part of this has been a parallax project where we have been asking people each month to take an image of the crescent moon and Venus. From this, we are going to use parallax (peoples locations around the globe and the orientation of the crescent to Venus) and measure the distance to the moon, much in the way the Transit of Venus was used to measure an astronomical unit. I know a few of you took part last month and I thank you for all your excellent images. We are asking people to take part again this month for a second attempt.

So if you would like to join in and it is safe for you to do so, can you take an image of the crescent moon and Venus on Saturday night at 8pm local time on your cameras and send it to us either here or my email carolyn@hird.net or @mayescreative on social media.

I will need to know your location of where the image was taken from, but a general location is fine eg Bristol.

more information can be found out about the project here

http://www.mayescreative.com/measure-to-the-moon.html

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   measure-the-moon-image_orig.jpg
   

[John Cook]

Thanks for those pictures, that was the first BAA meeting that I attended, shortly after joining. I very much enjoyed it.

[Neil Morrison]

Deeply sorry to learn of Heathers death.  I am sure that every on in the BAA who  knew her and Nigel  will  join with me in sending their deepest Sympathy’s to Nigel.

[Bill Barton]

My (very incomplete) knowledge of Elizabeth in the Liverpool Astronomical Society is that she joined on 1884 January 21 and that she published two papers in the LAS Journal:-

1, Solar Section Report, vol. 4, p. 2 (1885 October)

2, Auroræ and Sun-spots, vol. 7, p. 52 (1888 December)

She may well have made other contributions.

Elizabeth is noted as having a 6½ inch aperture Calver reflector, a 3½ inch aperture Wray refractor and a 3 inch aperture refractor by an unknown maker and various spectroscopes in vol. 2, no. 6 (1896 June) p. 97 of the Journal of the Astronomical Society of Wales. On page 120 of vol. 1, no. 4 (1898 November) of the Cambrian Natural Observer she is noted as an ‘Associate Member’ of the Astronomical Society of Wales.

Volume 5, p. 28 (1897) of our Memoirs lists her observations of variable stars during the summer and autumn of 1895, a field not usually associated with her name.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

“go to the website and register your observatory as a future participant mentioning in the ‘Comments’ box that you are an amateur astronomer and that you are joining the BAA Exoplanet Division’s initiative to support the ExoClock Project.”

Been there, done that.

Clear skies are erratic in these parts.  It was (mostly) clear last night but with ferociously high katabatic winds so no observing was done. In those conditions the seeing is typically 15-20 arcsec and the scope flaps around on a similar scale, ruining tracking, even though it is inside a dome.

[Richard Miles]

I would like to echo Roger’s message by encouraging would-be observers to go to the website and register your observatory as a future participant mentioning in the ‘Comments’ box that you are an amateur astronomer and that you are joining the BAA Exoplanet Division’s initiative to support the ExoClock Project.

We just need some clear skies now – Haven’t seen a properly clear night since last November!

[Colin Briden]

Here in York I monitored (using BRAMS 49.970MHz) forward scatter radio echoes for the Ursids 191223 and for several hours either side on the adjoining days. The IMO Calendar had predicted a visual maximum at 191223 0300. The attached events chart seems to support this timing for the radio results as well: rates increased to a peak at around that time, rising beyond what might perhaps be expected from the normal diurnal curve. Hourly rate averaged over 24h was 22.

The histogram of amplitudes shows a detected range of 20dB. The results seem to show some depletion at the fainter end of the scale but whether this is instrumental or even related to the Ursids I don’t know. Forward scatter results cannot distinguish between shower meteors and sporadics, unfortunately….!

Colin

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   191223-Ursids-amplitude-distribution.JPG
   

[Matthew Janes]

I only recently joined the BAA a few months ago and this was the first meeting that I have attended. Have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, all speakers were excellent. Looking forward to attending more events when I can make it up to London. Thanks to all involved in the organisation of the day.

[Bob Dryden]

Excellent meeting.

Missed last years stream so I was looking forward to this one and wasn’t disappointed.

At the end of the first lecture I even twitched my arms as I went to join in with the applause before I stopped myself when I realised I wasn’t actually there.

Very good news that all the BAA meetings will be streamed.

Well done to every one involved.

[Alan White]

I was unable to join my fellow club members at our CPAC transit get together, work got in the way.
But I was lucky enough to sneak a scope out and get a look, sadly missing first and second contact due to an unfortunate timing of a work phone call.
Observed and enjoyed, then had a go with my phone hand held and struggled as always.
But I did get something, which was better than normal.

[Eric Watkins]

 Derek,

a nice capture.  I’ve just acquired similar equipment with the help of William Stewart and I’m in the process of setting it up. I  Just need  to get a nice focus, and settings but the weather is against me at the moment.

Hope to join the team any night now

Eric

[Derek Robson]

The beams look like they are not parallel between zero and 1st order. But I thought that’s the way the physics worked – the light is diffracted through an angle relative to the incident light.  I’ve done a series of repeatability tests by firing LASERs at roof tops and aerials (in the dead of night) and will be looking at the spread of the distances from the zero order. But this is on dots, not the beams.  I’m looking at the target as the source of the LASER light coming back to the sensor. Some images on the wide angle lens show the beams at angles. But we know even parallel roads will join together in the distance (perspective).  I’m measuring the position of the diffracted dot relative to the zero order dot. That should show if there is any non linearity in the wavelength range I guess.  Another problem is, the diffraction gratings are plastic, so they are not rigid, and can bend, causing curved spectra (curvature along the wavelength axis). But despite that variation, I hope that will be insignificant and not interfere significantly, or at all, with identifying elements. 

[Tim Haymes]

Observers who may be hoping to see a graze in 2020, will find the predictions in the download area under Lunar Section. https://britastro.org/downloads/17673   Here i have prepared the information for each event on page 42-43 of the BAAH 2020. The grazes listed are in prediction order and star name. The zip files can be downloaded to your computer, and unzipped to reveal thee files.  An explanation is given on the downloads page.  

On a related topic, the UKoccultations Yahoo Group i set up in 2013, has been moved to https://groups.io/g/UKoccultations  The reason is that the Yahoo Groups host is not being supported now.  You are welcome to join the new group.

Please report any graze attempts or even results, to the Lunar Section or the discussion group.

Wishing you good observing – and thank you to the Lunar section Web Manager for assistance.

Tim
(Lunar Section Graze Coordinator)

[Robin Leadbeater]

I am not a member of the “12a Collaboration” but there must be some of the VSS Section who are on here. If not, I am sure an email to Dr Matt Darnley at LJMU would bring you up to speed if you want to join the collaboration.

Cheers

Robin

[Peter Meadows]

I thought I recognised the comet photo in the Mirror article – it is Comet West 1975 VI from 1976 – see the following link

https://enacademic.com/pictures/enwiki/67/C_1975_V1_%28West%29_1976-03-09_6h_UTC.jpg

I was new to astronomy back then but heard about this comet but failed to see it in the pre-dawn sky – I then joined ‘The Astronomer’ to make sure I didn’t miss any other bright comets!

[Martin Lewis]

Can I draw members attention to a joint BAA/SPA workshop next June on Advanced Planetary Imaging which David Arditti and I are organising. For more information go to; https://britastro.org/node/19008

Hope to see some of you there,

Regards,

Martin Lewis

[Richard Miles]

(3200) Phaeton is one of those asteroid-comet transition objects, so is particularly interesting. I see the article you refer to was the subject of a presentation by Teddy Kareta at the AAS Division of Planetary Sciences meeting last October. I have been corresponding with Teddy on another topic in recent months and am hoping to be a joint author on his latest paper.

Concerning Phaeton, Alex Pratt has recently drawn our attention to a successful occultation campaign to measure its shape. A couple of weeks ago the object underwent a stellar occultation as seen from the USA and we now know that its silhouette measures 5.7 x 4.7 km. See:

http://iota.jhuapl.edu/20190729PhaethonAug09.ppt

It is also on a target list of objects to be visited by the DESTINY+ space probe due to launch in 2022.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Have you downloaded the complete GCVS?  If so a preliminary selection based on a minimum Dec, a plausible range of RA and a type of EA, EB, … will give you an initial range of candidates.

What do you consider high-cadence? Minutes, seconds or milliseconds?

My 0.4m telescope (located only about 100km from El Teide) could manage a very few millimags precision (unfiltered CCD, so approximately Gaia G band) down to mag 11.5 with a cadence of around a minute as demonstrated with an observation of an exoplanet transit.

In fact, why don’t you try for an exoplanet transit?  Not only do you get your differential timing data, you also add to our knowedge of exoplanets.  The minimum may be wide but the ingress and egress events are short-lived and it’s generally possible to observe both in a single session.

Would you like me to join in perhaps, weather permitting?  It’s been unusually cloudy in these parts of late.  I also need to get the new camera commissioned first but I hope that doesn’t take too long.