Search Results for 'espin telescope'

[David Swan]

Nothing is better than ‘space-walk’ viewing of globulars, open clusters and bright nebulae through a long focal length, wide AFOV, eyepiece. I think both the ease of acquiring images nowadays (cost, expertise required) and also of sharing them has led to the perception that visual observing and freezing to death at the telescope is over. I don’t think that is the case, in terms of absolute numbers of people. I just think there are many more different types of activity going on – and it’s all good as far as I am concerned! I do a lot of visual observing, and keep a log, but I don’t broadcast it. (My sketches are terrible; Paul Abel’s are amazing.) David

[Peter Carson]

Hi All,
20 years ago I would have said astronomers were not genuine unless they got frozen at their telescopes and had light going into their eyes that had travelled across space for millions of years. Today I still call myself an astronomer even though like Nick and Andrew S my telescope can do its own thing while I’m doing something else. Sometimes the camera never comes off the scope for months at a times.
However I’m best satisfied when I’m out under a really dark sky with my binoculars and and a sun lounger. Perhaps all this technology is really a substitute for a good honest non light polluted night sky.
Peter

[Nick James]

Andrew,

They do not remain valid and they probably were not valid even when Wooley made them. I enjoy being under a dark sky and observing from dusk to dawn but where I live the sky is yellow and so I prefer to observe from indoors with a remote telescope (either my own one down the end of the garden) or one on a different continent. To claim that someone who spends a night under the stars is any more or less of an astronomer than someone who has set up and uses an automated telescope system is plainly rubbish. I would extend that to people who use remote telescopes and process and analyze their results.

Life moves on. We all have our own preferences as to how we do our astronomy and all are equally valid. We are amateurs after all so we can decide what we want to do.

Nick.

[Gary Poyner]

The OED says…”An expert in or student of astronomy”, so that makes you an astronomer.  I’m from the same mould as Andrew – I love looking through my telescope (not much of a view from Birmingham, but it’s all I have), but I also use remote telescopes with CCD’s to compliment my data.  The reduction is pretty boring though!  My point is that you have a love for astronomy as a science and a desire to make a contribution to it. Regardless of how you do either, you are an astronomer!

Whether Woolleys comments are valid today is debatable

Gary

[Dr Andrew Smith]

Clearly you are an astronomer the question is am I disqualified? I don’t image either I do spectroscopy and have never looked through my current telescope. I do also like being out under the night sky but I don’t have either good eyesight or dark skies.

I have discovered candidate new Be stars doing automated spectroscopy with a home built telescope and commercial spectrograph and camera – is that not enough to be am astronomer?

Regards Andrew

[Andrew Robertson]

Well his comments are certainly my take on amateur astronomy. I enjoy being under the stars and actually enjoy looking at the stars wether naked eye or through the telescope (I know that’s a rare thing in these days of imaging everything). And yes I hardly ever pack up observing whilst it’s stll dark and clear, would consider myself a lightweight otherwise – have to make the best of any clear window in this country.

Andrew Robertson

[Dr Andrew Smith]

I was looking at the latest I & I News No new series 29 and was rather surprised by the comment at the start by the director Bob Marriott

“Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley, a former Astronomer Royal, used to say that no-one could call himself an astronomer who had not seen the light of dawn after a hard night’s observing. He was also wary of electronics in his telescope domes, since it distanced an observer from direct contact with the cosmos. This was more than fifty years ago, when some professional telescopes were still being used visually as well as photographically. Nevertheless, with the current popularity of imaging and the preponderance of remotely operated instruments used by amateurs, Woolley’s comments remain valid.”

Do these comments still remain valid as asserted by Bob? Am I disqualified by being interested in automation and letting the equipment get on with the work while I do other things including sleep. 

Regards Andrew 

[Richard Miles]

I suspect that this could be much larger than depicted on the supplied map and that observers much further afield should try to observe this very bright star disappear momentarily (for up to 2 seconds). Asteroid occultations of ‘naked-eye’ stars visible from the UK are extremely rare and so, if clear, I recommend observers trying for this. Use optical aid, or better still video recording, together with as large an aperture telescope or other optical aid as is convenient. Naturally timing the disappearance and reappearance would be good, and do remember that the asteroid may actually be multiple (we do not know this however) and so watch out for the star to potentially disappear TWICE – you never know.

[Robin Leadbeater]

Thanks Paul,

That’s 6 to date I think, though apart from taking a quick spectrum of the very bright sn2017eaw, I have not really been looking this year so this is the first in 2017. It looks like I have quite a bit more professional competition now though. For example ePESSTO now seems to be submitting half a dozen confirmations a night when it has telescope time.

I was planning to try for another one last night in ngc3172 (at2017gla) but it was so close to the pole (+89.1 deg Dec) that I was literally going round in circles trying to get the mount to point at it ! 

Cheers

Robin

[Martin Mobberley]

This is very sad and shocking news Denis. Hard to take it in. Glyn would do anything to help anyone and seemed to have boundless energy for telescope and observatory construction projects. Frustrated by my experience with commercial gas-hypered film (and my own attempts at hypering) in the early 1990s I’d almost given up, but then Glyn offered to hyper all my Kodak 2415 reels for free with his own home-made facility. His stuff was far better than the commercial stuff…..and free! Just one example of his generosity……. Very hard to believe he has gone.

Martin

[Mr Michael Alan Frost]

Lee Macdonald and I have had some email discussion about this. We’d both heard the story. I think I may have heard it in a lecture to the SHA, but can’t remember any more details.

We think it might have been the mirror for the Isaac Newton telescope rather than the JKT.

Lee also points out that “the Royal Greenwich Observatory was not run by the Admiralty in the 1980s. The Admiralty relinquished it in the mid-1960s and by the mid-1980s the RGO was part of the Science and Engineering Research Council.” But ties and loyalty to the Admiralty might still have held.

Mike F

[Dominic Ford]

It’s noticeable how little ever seems to have been said about the incident, so everything is “anecdotal”.

The navy seems to have been understandably embarrassed by the incident — fighter jets aren’t supposed to get lost at sea.

The Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope was part of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, which was (until 1998) owned by the Royal Greenwich Observatory. For a long time, the Royal Greenwich Observatory was run by the Admiralty. I’m not sure whether that was still true in the 1980s — I think not — but the two organisations still had close ties.

So, the telescope may have effectively been navy property and I suspect the astronomers would have been disinclined to publicise their patron’s embarrassment.

A Telegraph article from 2007 (when the MoD archives were released) says the ship’s owners did indeed receive a £570k salvage payment from the Navy, which I’m guessing would have also included a confidentiality clause.

[Dominic Ford]

James,

The internet seems to think it was “anecdotally” the Jacobus Kaptyn Telescope.

Best wishes,

Dominic.

[Dawson]

I saw Alan Heath today, former Saturn Section Director, and amongst other things we talked about, he said he’d heard a story that a Harrier Jumpt Jet had made an emergency landing on a cargo ship in the 1980s as it was running out of fuel. The ship had flat cargo on deck. It tanspired the falt cargo was the mirror of one of the telescopes being shipped to the Canary Islands. 

I’ve since had a look online and there is a Wikipedia page on the incident, the “Alraigo incident“, but it doesn’t clarify what bit of a telescope it was, or to which telescope it belonged.

Does anyone know as I would be interested to find out, and I said I let Alan know in due course if I did find out.

James Dawson

Nottingham

[David Swan]

I would guess this is an attachment to facilitate afocal photography? The two eyepiece clamps are placed differently with respect to the camera screw to allow different set-ups.

[Dawson]

Someone on an amateur astronomy Facebook group has asked what this is, apparently it came with a second hand telescope. Does anyone have any ideas what it could have been used for?

Regards

James

Attachments:

1. 

   20604658_10213232456907424_5155878859381124127_n.jpg
   

[Richard Miles]

Hi Doug – Very pleased to hear that your library group is interested in getting involved in using telescopes on the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) network. There is a BAA Robotic Telescope Project that looks to encourage amateurs to pursue observing projects on remote scopes, so if you are seriously interested then there are lots of potential targets (comets and asteroids are usually very fruitful) – in some ways, the main difficulty is in deciding what is a worthwhile target to go after. Ask the Perton folk where their interests lie and let us know. We are currently setting up a small panel under the auspices of the BAA RTP to provide guidance of this kind.

Chat again soon,

Richard Miles

[Doug Bickley]

I’m a member of the Wolverhampton AS and also run the Perton Library Astronomy Group in Staffs with my colleague Steve Wootton.

We are new to variable star observing but have access to the Faukes network through the library group.  Has anyone any advice or comments other than that shown on the BAA website on VS projects that we could assist with using the capabilities of the LCGOT telescopes (we can use 2m, 1m, and 0.4m instruments).

[Dominic Ford]

James,

It basically comes down to weight, I think. Putting a big telescope on an equatorial mount isn’t possible from an engineering point of view. Mirrors that big deform under their own weight when you slew them, which you need to correct for with actuators under the surface. Alt-az is a nice coordinate system, because the deformation varies with altitude, but is independent of azimuth (if you built the telescope properly!).

Another nice feature of an alt-az arrangement is that you can direct the light off sideways to a Nasmyth platform to the side of the telescope. You can even engineer it so the Nasmyth platform never moves. That means you can make the detectors as heavy and unwieldy as you like, and it doesn’t matter. Moreover, you can have multiple Nasmyth platforms with different instruments on, switching between them simply by flipping a mirror which deflects the image off sideways. Most professional telescopes have at least two Nasmyth platforms.

As Andy S says, field rotation is a piece of cake compared to keeping many tonnes of metal aligned to optical precision!

Best wishes,

Dominic.

[Denis Buczynski]

I think I would rather look through the 20 inch Dobsonian telescope that you are stood by in your profile picture! I have the feeling that a view through a telescope should be unaldulterated, just photons from space entering the mark one eyeball. If you want to go to electronic imaging then use a ccd or cmos camera. I used to use an image intensifier on one of my photographic guide telescopes to try and make life easier, they worked OK but I would not have liked to spend the night hours looking into one. I assume the new devices are smoother and  the noise reduced. What is the difference between these devices and an electronic eyepiece, is it that they are cumulative?