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Posted by Len Entwisle at 20:38 on 2012 May 14
As Helen suggests – Try Ironing Seat or Ironing Perch in a search on Amazon UK .Very occasionally the Lidl or the Aldi supermarket chains have them on offer as specials at super low prices.
Posted by Helen Thomas at 12:44 on 2012 May 14
Have you considered an adjustable ironing chair? They are sold in France by the Redoute catalogue for about £40 euros and appear to be the same thing.
Posted by Steve Holmes2 at 17:05 on 2012 May 11
Those who were following this saga when the programme was aired the first time round (Feb 2011) might like to know that the revised repeat suddenly popped up on BBC4 last night (10th May). It is further repeated this Saturday (12th May, BBC4, 11:40pm), so don’t miss it – see if you can spot the updates! I shan’t spoil your fun by listing those I noticed, but the new version makes very interesting viewing.
Posted by Len Entwisle at 15:14 on 2012 May 06
Try here for starters Transit 2012 Webcast .I’m sure there will be others to pick up on nearer the event.I’ll be watching the weather forecast to see if I head for the Yorkshire Coast or up to the top of the Pennines with a clear take off in the right direction for sunrise. Watched the event from Paphos (Cyprus) last time so this one will be a bonus!
Posted by Peter Taylor at 14:29 on 2012 May 01
Hi All, Thanks for all your info, did as Nick suggested works just fine.peter
Posted by Nick James at 20:05 on 2012 Apr 30
Peter,Is there any reason why you want to download the complete UCAC-3 catalogue? As Graham says Astrometrica will download the stars that it needs from VizieR when you reduce an image. This is a lot more efficient that downloading the whole catalogue although it does mean that you need to be online when you are reducing images. Just select VizieR on the settings->Catalogs tab and select an appropriate VizieR server on the Internet tab (I use CDS, Strasbourg).Nick.
Posted by Graham Relf at 11:21 on 2012 Apr 30
This has prompted me to update the catalogues page on the Computing Section site, to give more links to useful current sources.
Posted by Callum Potter at 10:00 on 2012 Apr 30
I downloaded UCAC3 from http://atlante.teobaldopower.org/catalogos/ But I use it only with XEphem, so can’t comment on its use with Astrometrica. I think it is the full catalogue, though.Callum
Posted by Graham Relf at 07:38 on 2012 Apr 30
Using Google I found, as I expected, that it is available from le Centre des Donnees at Strasbourg. See http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?cat=I%2F315& The huge number of files (over 2Gbytes total) can be downloaded via the FTP tab on that page. However Googling also led to something which suggests that Astrometrica simply gets small amounts of data as required by HTTP requests to Vizier (also part of the Strasbourg site) so it should not be necessary to download the full data set.
Posted by Callum Potter at 16:33 on 2012 Apr 26
Thanks Nick – look forward to the paper appearing.C.
Posted by Nick James at 23:09 on 2012 Apr 23
Callum,There will be a paper on this in the JBAA soon but here is a short summary.The video system consists of a Watec 902H2 Ultimate camera with a 3.8mm, f/0.8 lens in a waterproof, heated CCTV housing. The camera has a field of view of 96×72 deg and is aimed at a point around 45 deg elevation in the SE. Composite video from the camera is digitised by a Hauppage PVR250 hardware MPEG2 encoder card and stored on disk at a rate of around 3GB/hr. The video is analyzed in non real-time by a separate software process which looks for candidate meteor events. This software extracts segments of video around the times of the candidate events for further investigation. The video is standard CCIR TV format, i.e. 720×576 pixels, interlaced, at 50 fields (25 frames) per second.Nick.
Posted by Callum Potter at 10:21 on 2012 Apr 23
Some nice meteor captures there Nick.Could you tell us a bit more about your video camera system?Thanks, Callum
Posted by Paul A Brierley at 06:46 on 2012 Apr 21
The lack of suitable guide stars can be a problem with a small telescope. And this was the reason for using my 9×50 finder. With my QHY5. I don’t have any trouble finding a suitable guide star. And the guiding is very accurate. I was guiding at 2.5 seconds last week-end. And imaging at 1200mm with 300 second subs.
Posted by Grant Privett at 22:29 on 2012 Apr 18
Just in case it helps. I use a Starlight Lodestar on a £50 second hand 114mm f5 reflector as the guider. I found I can frequently use a 0.5s exposure and get good tracking. Tts guiding an f4.4 250mm aperture Newtonian mounted on an EQ6 Pro. Occasionally I have to turn up the RA agressiveness, but not always.The Lodestar is a winner. Tempted to upgrade to a Superstar for those occasions where stars are few and far between.
Posted by Paul A Brierley at 20:19 on 2012 Apr 18
You shouldn’t have any problems with guiding using PHD. I guide my 1200mm 10" F4.8 Newtonian, using a 9×50 finder.Just keep everything set at default and see how you get on.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:43 on 2012 Apr 15
OK, Gary’s interview is now on BBC iPlayer at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qb7drThe segment on light pollution starts at 6 min 30 sec.
Posted by Dave Adshead at 19:56 on 2012 Apr 14
I use the Lodestar on an OAG fitted to a Tak FSQ106ED. PHD allows you to set the guide camera’s exposure duration. I normally set 2 seconds, this can be altered depending on the magnitude of the guide star. PHD is free and I find it easy to use.Dave
Posted by Nick Atkinson at 19:14 on 2012 Apr 14
Thank you both for your helpfull replies. I will try PHD and see how I get on. The other point I did not raise was the sensitivities of the loadstar, this will be dependant om the apature of the objective. I have two options1) The F9 152 mm triplet with the off axis guider mounted on the filter wheel 2) I have upgraded to the Baader vario finder, brilliant by the way, and using the extension tube is instantly converted to a guide scope. This gives a very wide field of view. This has a 60 mm objective and is very fast with a 25o mm focal lenth. In your opinions how deep can I go using this guider
