Search Results for 'espin telescope'

[Jeremy Shears]

Hello Donald,

A very warm welcome to the BAA! I am sure you will enjoy your membership experience and with the enthusiasm you clearly have, you will find all sorts of opportunities to get involved in observing. 

It sounds like you are already well equipped with a telescope and binoculars. The BAA organises Back to Basics workshops, the next one being in North Wales, so not the most convenient location for you in Stonehaven. There are lots of observing sections where your observations would be most welcome. The first question to ask yourself is what do you enjoy observing? You mention you have done some variable star work in the past. This is clearly a field where your observations would be very valuable – and you have eminently suitable equipment to hand. One of the simplest places to start is observing binocular variables. The Variable Star Section’s web site has a page on Binocular Variables here: http://www.britastro.org/vss/chartcat_binoc.htm

The section also publishes a booklet on binocular observing, with instructions and which contains quite a few charts. This is available from Roger Pickard, the Section Director, or the BAA Office. There is a page for “absolute beginners” here: http://www.britastro.org/vss/absolute_beginners.htm 

The Section also publishes an “Observing Guide to variable Stars”, available from the BAA Office.

The VSS also has mentors who are happy to help people starting out: http://www.britastro.org/vss/Mentoring.htm 

Binoculars and small telescopes are also ideal for observing the brighter comets (drawings and magnitude estimates are always appreciated by the Comet Section) and deep sky objects (again send sketches and descriptions to the Deep Sky Section).

Living in Scotland (if I have the correct Stonehaven) means you are well placed to observe the aurora and noctilucent clouds – the season for the latter is upon us now. 

These are only a few ideas and I am sure others can provide info about further sections. And do contact the section directors. They’d be delighted to advise and to receive your observations. Whatever you do – keep asking! The BAA is here to help you further your interest in astronomy.

Go well!

Jeremy

[Donald Macmillan]

Hi everyone,

I’ve just recently joined the BAA ….  Some brief personal background first, if i may …  I’m 44 years of age now, and have been very interested in Astronomy since before i was 10.  i’ve really wanted to be a member of the BAA for many years now, but have always held myself back from joining, just feeling that my level of expertise would not be sufficient to justify becoming a member of such a historical and eminent society ….  Over the years i have been a member of the SPA a couple of times, which i have valued very much although i contributed very little towards in terms of observations.  I certainly did consider renewing my SPA membership recently but have decided instead to take ‘the plunge’ and realise my dream of being a BAA member, the special introductory offer did help persuade me somewhat though, i must admit!

Now i have joined I’d really like to get involved in a section or two perhaps, and i just hoped for some helpful advice to guide me in the right direction please.  My interests are fairly broad and general.  I know my way around the sky with the naked eye fairly well, but i am a much less experienced telescope/binocular observer.  I own a greatly underused ED80 f7.5 APO telescope, a pair of 8.5x 42 and 10x 50 binoculars, and a pair of 20x 80 binoculars also.  Over the years I have lacked confidence with my ED80, but now that I’ve joined the BAA i am very determined to build this confidence!  Given the equipment that i have stated above could anyone recommend appropriate sections please that I may consider joining, with a view to making (over time) reasonably serious observation contributions to?  I have some very limited variable star observing expeience (many years ago, naked eye observations only), and I am certainly willing and happy to challenge myself further in that direction ….  But i am very intersted to know and consider any other observing options that some of you may feel i may have with my scope and bins, and limited experience. 

Looking forward to perhaps hearing from some of you at your convenience …..

All the best from Stonehaven!

Donald

[Dominic Ford]

OK – Yes, I think it was those images I was thinking of. It was something I saw scroll past on twitter a couple of months ago, so I can’t go back and check!

I suppose the selling point of a Goto system for me is that I’m often giving people tours of the sky, and you’ve usually only got half an hour before they get bored/cold, so a Goto system lets me show far more objects in that time than if I was finding them manually. Perhaps I’m just slow at star hopping…

What really annoys me about Goto is not being able to declutch and yank the telescope around without losing alignment. I’m quite tempted by the SkyWatcher FreedomFind thing which solves that by putting encoders on both axes. But I think the cheapest FreedomFind mounts are about £950, and at that price it’s not exactly top of my wish list…

[Dominic Ford]

Callum,

That’s interesting to hear! I’d assumed the EQ3 was quite a popular wide-field imaging mount.

If I recall correctly, Ian Sharp uses an NEQ6 as a slightly-overkill DSLR-mount-with-autoguider, and a few people seem to use the HEQ5?

Not seem too many people use an EQ3, but then I guess it limits your options if you want something you can also put a telescope on. And I have no idea how stable it is…

Dominic.

[Nick James]

Stan,

The key point is that any filter must go over the front end, or objective, of the telescope. It is not safe to use filters at the backend, i.e. near the eyepiece.

I have a C6 and observe the sun using a full-aperture filter made from Baader Solar film. You can buy this film from a number of UK suppliers and make it into a filter that fits over the objective of your telescope. I made a suitable filter using cardboard and tape as shown in the picture below. Make sure that this fits snugly over the objective so that there is no danger of it coming off when you are looking through the scope.

Let me know if you need any more info.

Nick.

[Stan wright]

HI All,

i have just bought my first telescope (celestron 150) i would like to observe the eclipse in march can someone explain what filter/s i will need to do this safely  

regards 

stan wright (Newbee)

 

 

 

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[Mike Foylan]

Hi Guys
Really excellent work and excellent images, thanks for posting. Clouded out here unfortunately at the time. Just wondering if there was a rotation period reported for 2004 BL86?
I checked the Minor Planet Ephemeris Service for this object and it reported that its apparent motion across the sky was in the order of 159 arcsec/min around closest flyby. A quick calculation for my own telescope system with a pixel scale of 2.17 arcsec/pixel indicates that a maximum exposure time of 0.8 seconds was allowable before trailing would occur of the asteroid target! I think this would indeed be a big challenge to obtain good SNR values and even more so for a rotation curve! I am guessing that those in possession of higher end tracking mounts can somehow program the mount to follow the asteroid instead of sidereal rate.

Best wishes and clear skies
Mike

[Nick James]

Well done Tony on picking this up.

I was out last night at the opening of of Crayford Astro’s new observatory at Sutton-at-Hone near Dartford, Kent. About 70-80 people were there and many had a good view of the comet in various binoculars and telescopes only a mile or so from the M25.

It was very claggy in Chelmsford before I left but I took the risk of leaving a DSLR and telescope taking images in the garden when I went out. By the time I got back it had clouded over completely so I didn’t get a chance to point my main scope at the comet but the DSLR/Megrez did get some images. This stack just about shows the faint tail and disconnection event.

As always, the latest images submitted to the BAA are here.

[M C Butcher]

For 2014 I was able to image on a total of only 10 ocasions (5 day and 5 night). This is well down on previous years. The most common reasons for not imaging were, as usual, too cloudy or too windy. As it is frequently very windy it is safer not to have a permanent set up and therefore gaps in the cloud must be long enough to set up my telescope in order to achieve imaging. This temporary arrangement does not provide a steady platform to image in winds over about 10 mph, even on the leeward side of my house. However, here light pollution is not a major problem.

Martin Butcher

Inner Hebrides

[Mike Foylan]

Examples of some of the brighter galaxies from Halton Arp’s “Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies” that Cherryvalley Observatory could image within its capabilities using an 8-inch SCT.

flic.kr/s/aHsjpwCNrR

Best wishes & clear skies

Mike

[Jeremy Shears]

Hello Cam,

good to hear from you. I am afraid that I do not have experience of that telescope, but perhaps somebody else does.

Personally I have always found small refractors to be good for wide field imaging, given their compactness, no need for collimation and ability to use relatively small mounts. I recall from your previous postings that you have used an ED80, which was giving you excellent results. 

Anyway, I hope to see some further results from you with whatever telecope you use.

Go well!
Jeremy

[Hazel McGee]

Hello Robin

Congratulations on a very interesting observation, particularly the Doppler variations.

As well as Sky and Telescope of course, Stewart Moore had an article about Huggins last month in our very own Journal:

http://www.britastro.org/huggins

Best wishes
   Hazel

[Denis Buczynski]

Kevin Hills has also mad a video of this event, he writes:
I managed to get 160 frames, 45 seconds each with a 0.4m Ritchey-Chretien telescope and SBIG 1001E in Moorook, Australia. At the dropbox link below you will find an animation made in Maxim DL, but beware, the file is large (18mb zipped, 167mb raw) so will take a while to load. Maybe there is a way to reduce the file size, but it’s my first animation…

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53940961/CK13A010%20and%20NGC362.zip

[Denis Buczynski]

David Herald of Australia has writen to the following message:
I have made a video of C/2013 A1 passing NGC362. The video is made from a series of 63 CCD images. The exposure was 3-secs for each image, with images being taken at 3-minute intervals from 13:50 to 17:00UT. The telescope was a 40cm SCT. Image size is about 12′ x 20′, with north to the top.

The images show some fluctuation in brightness due to thin cirrus cloud and fog.

The brightest star in the image (at bottom left) is about mag 8. Almost all stars are fainter than magnitude 12.0, with the faintest well-defined stars being about magnitude 16.

The video may be viewed at:
http://youtu.be/LBBkgGK6-D8

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[Denis Buczynski]

The discovery of a new comet on 2014 Aug 17.7 (designated C/2014Q2) by the Austrailian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy in Queensland using his own back garden equipment( C8 telescope with a f2.1 reducer, Vixen Sphinx mount and a QHY9 ccd camera)is an impressive feat. More so when considers the competion from large professional survey teams which is so intense. This discovery is not a one off lucky chance either. This is Terry’s 4th discovery in recent years. It is the result of many years of technique and computer programming development(his own software). No doubt he will discover more comets as he only 48 years old. So the days of comet discoveries by amateurs is far from over. In recent years we have seen comets discovered by Borisov,Elinen, Breunjes,Rinner, Jacques and Lovejoy.Perhaps we could also include Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok who discovered C/2012S1 ISON. With the correct techniques, discoveries can still be made.However none of these recent discoveries have been made visually, perhaps(bar lucky circumstances)those days may be over.The prospect of a a visual discovery by means of a systematic nightly search is small. One other aspect of this discovery was the cooperative effort by other amateur astronomers around the world to obtain confirmatory and positional data on this new comet. When one looks at M.P.E.C. 2014-Q10 Issued 2014 Aug. 19, 19:42 UT the first positional data recorded are all by amateur stations thus: Observer details: I39 Observatorio Cruz del Sur, San Justo. Observer A. Chapman. 0.20-m f/4 reflector + CCD. Q80 Birkdale. Observer T. Lovejoy. 0.20-m f/2.1 Schmidt-Cassegrain + CCD. W95 Observatorio Panameno, San Pedro de Atacama. Observer A. Maury. Measurer J. Fabrega. W96 CAO, San Pedro de Atacama (since 2013). Observers A. Maury, J.-F. Soulier. Measurer J.-F. Soulier. 0.4-m f/8 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD. Y00 SONEAR Observatory, Oliveira. Observers C. Jacques, E. Pimentel, J. Barros. Measurer C. Jacques. 0.28-m f/2.2 astrograph + CCD. As soon as the discovery notice was placed on NEOCP these amateur stations were working hard to obtain the data which confimed the discovery and allowed an inital orbit to be computed by MPC. The drama of the night was relayed to me in an email to the BAA COmet discussion group by Tony Angel (a BAA observer in Spain) “I saw most of it the event unfold on the Comet Watch Facebook page. At about 0200 hours this morning Cristovao Jacques posted a notice from the MPC asking Terry if it was his. I checked the coordinates and noted that it would not be visible for me. A friend of mine Andres Chapman in Argentina posted that he would be able to observe the location and coordinated his observations with Terry which he did at 0835 UT, then Cristovao Jacques came through with his observations eight hours ago. Quite a nail biting experience.” So we have reason we rejoice that amateurs are still able to discover comets by their own efforts and innovation and that there is a very strong cooperative spirit amongst their compatriots abroad. well done Terry and all involved. Denis Buczynski secretary Comet Section BAA

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[David Perkin]

Thanks, Martin and Graham, for useful and interesting advice.

I have been trying to photograph the night sky (with film SLR and a homemade webcam setup) for several years, with varying success. I have already got a copy of “An Introduction to DSLR Photography”, which is where I got my original interest in the Canon EOS1000D: the example pictures looked good value for money. I was unaware that the internal IR filters were so strong at the Balmar Alpha (H alpha) line – surely it’s in the visible part of the spectrum. I will certainly get an appropriate T-adaptor.

I think I have a much better sky at this location than previously so it is worth my while setting up to expose for as long as practicable for diffuse objects, to reduce the effect of readout noise, but 30s to 2 minutes should be good enough to start with.

I do wish to attach the camera to my GEM mount either on its own or piggybacked on the telescope – the specialist Camera GEMs seem to be over the top in terms of expense. If I get a new mount for a new telescope, then the existing mount may become dedicated to the camera – if I can find a way of attaching it, that is. There doesn’t seem to be a suitable mounting ring with a camera screw for my tube.

Thanks again,

David Perkin.

[Martin Mobberley]

Hello David,

There is a book in the BAA shop entitled ‘Introduction to DSLR Astrophotography’ which may well be worth you acquiring, see: http://britastro.org/product/881
I have no experience with spectroscopy, but I would suspect the difference between the cameras cited would be very subtle. The Canon 60Da is optimised for astronomy as it has extended red sensititivity, but it costs about £750. The Canon data is here:
http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_SLR/EOS_60Da/

H-alpha regions will need far shorter exposure times with this camera, but if used for terrestrial subjects any red objects will come out far redder than their visual appearance. The normal cameras you mention both have 30 second and Bulb exposures so clearly can be used for astronomy.

Not sure what you mean by steered and unsteered? If you have a small equatorial mount, and there are some quite nifty ones around, such as the Vixen Polarie:
http://www.vixenoptics.com/mounts/polarie.html
…then you can take wide field shots with standard lenses that are several minutes in duration, quite easily.

However, for prime focus telescope work you need either a great equatorial mount or some form of guiding/autoguiding…. Without somehow guiding the exposure your shots will be limited to somewhere between 15 seconds and 2 minutes on the celestial equator, depending on whether your drive is poor or excellent, and what focal length you are working at. You can stack multiple short exposures using software such as Registax or Deep Sky Stacker. There are numerous handy videos on Youtube explaining how to use this type of software. For an astronomical telescope with a drive you need a camera to drawtube
adapter that will fit a Canon EOS bayonet mount, such as this:
http://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/Canon_EOS_T_Ring.html

You may have a 1.25 or 2 inch telescope drawtube so you also need a compatible T adaptor to mate with the T-ring. For prime focus photography one problem often encountered with old Newtonian telescopes is not being able to rack the camera in close enough to achieve focus, but if you have achieved focus with a film SLR then you should not have a problem. As for eyepiece projection, well, this is usually used for lunar and planetary work, although most 21st century imagers use Barlows and Powermates for this purpose. For high resolution planetary imaging most imagers would not use a DSLR at all, but a high frame rate USB/Firewire camera that can shoot at up to 100 frames per second to give thousands of frames that can be aligned and stacked in Registax or Autostackert. An example of such a camera is the ASI 120MC, such as sold here (colour and mono versions are available):

http://www.365astronomy.com/zwo-asi120mc-colour-13-cmos-usb20-camera-with-autoguider-port-p-3536.html

There is also a BAA Observers workshop on September 20 which may be of interest if you are thinking about planetary imaging, although I’m not sure if DSLRs will be included:

http://britastro.org/meeting_render/3542

But I would definitely consider buying the aforementioned BAA book.

Other forum readers who have more experience with DSLRs may be able to give better advice about the specific Canon  cameras you have mentioned.

Martin

[Terry Byatt]

A sad loss indeed. I remember Dudley from the early 1970’s at his shop/workshop in Finchley Road, Golders Green, North London. He sold me my first “proper” telescope a 21cm (no, let’s call it by it’s real name…. 8.5 inch!) reflector on a Mark111 mount. I still have the instrument but have now cuccumb to using Chinese made, pretending to be American, Meade and Celestron telescopes. Dudley always gave good advice and did not encourage you to buy what he believed was beyond your sensible budget.

The massive 8 inch Cooke refractor referred to above was indeed bought by a rich arab and set up next to his floodlit  swimming pool just to show and impress his guests with views of the Moon! I seem to recall that Dudley came across the telescope when it was in a poor state being stored in a dusty shed. All the brass work had been painted over matt black! Although thankfully the optics were in perfect condition. Dudley and his team spent many hours refurbishing it to its former glory. I wonder where it is now.

 

[Nick James]

Mike,

Very nice image and that is one hell of a telescope but it certainly burns through the points! I’m planning to have a go at this object during the Webb Society meeting in a few weeks time.

Nick

[Mike Harlow]

This is my latest image of the variable nebula NGC6729 in Corona Australis.  I used the newly installed 0.7m (27 inch) telescope at Siding Spring, Australia which is part of the iTelescope.net network (http://www.itelescope.net/) to get my most detailed image yet.

I only started to image this nebula in early 2013 when I began using remote telescopes.  But even over this short time the nebula has changed appearance significantly (see links below).  All my recent images of the six known variable nebulae are held on the Orwell Astronomical Society web site.  Images up to the end of 2013 are at: http://www.oasi.org.uk/Obsvns/20140101_VN/20140101_VN.shtml and all those from the start of 2014 are on the web site forum: http://forum.oasi.org.uk/viewforum.php?f=6&sid=985263be0bcc7b2ed8ba05a7a8c773a5

Mike Harlow.

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