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For this kind of money, if you don’t have to lug it up a mountain, what about a tracking equatorial mount like an HEQ5?
James
Yes, click on the three full stops at the end of the abbreviated list and all the names should appear. You’ve uploaded some cracking images; well done. Hopefully you’ve also submitted some of these to the relevant sections.
James
Ah, there is also a full copy of the index on the JBAA DVDs.
Again let me know if there is something specific you want to look up.
James
Bill,
In “The British Astronomical Association: The Second Fifty Years” publication (BAA Memoirs Volume 42 Part 2, 1990 December) on page 24, it says:
“… The Index to volumes 1-50 of the Journal was published in June [1963]. It had been compiled in 1940 by Mrs Reade who was then Librarian. Part of the Merlin bequest was used to finance its publication…”
Looking at the SHAs catalogue it looks like it is a separate publication, and not a memoir. The catalogue suggests there is a copy in the SHA library. I am going on Tuesday if there is something specific you want me to look up.
James
Thanks both.
Nottingham has a number of projects but these preferentially go to students between 3rd and 4th year it seems. So he is exploring other options too.
I’ve emailed him the Leiden link, thank you.
James
Uranus now has two images on the member pages (https://britastro.org/recent-images-by-category/157). Only Neptune, Pluto and Exoplanets have no members images.
James
Might there be hope for the yearbook?
http://www.starlight-nights.co.uk/subscriber-2017-yearbook-astronomy
James
Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt more like a circular from the historical section but that suited me down to the ground.
James
Looking at all the categories there is an excellent mix of images, with most categories containing plenty of examples of peoples work. The only categories without any observations yet are Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Exoplanets.
I once attempted to image both Uranus and Neptune one very still night, but they were so low and I think my SCT hadn’t cooled down sufficiently and so the resulting images were awful; Uranus was a yellow-green flared blob, and Neptune just looked like a swollen star with a blue hue. I am always amazed [and envious] when I see the images Damian Peach and others capture of these outer solar system giants. As for Pluto, it is on my bucket list of targets to try – again I love to see the time lapse images people take which shows a faint white object moving amongst the stars over the course of a few nights… I imagine how Clyde Tombaugh must have felt when he saw something similar on his blink comparator!
As for exoplanets, they are far beyond me.
James
Gary, I’ve just seen a photo featuring Miss Caroline Herschel in the History of The Royal Astronomical Society Volume 2, 1920-1980, page 229:
Regards
James
David,
As someone who is next to useless with Photoshop (I do all my image adjustments in Microsoft Paint (!), Faststone or Microsoft Powerpoint), I found your instructions most helpful, thank you. It still took me about an hour to get to grips with layers, but once I got the hang of it I was well away. Many thanks for this guide.
James
Finally managed to find the time (many hours) to get my head around PhotoShop (with help from David Basey) to make a composite image of my images showing the transit from Monday, as view from Nottingham. It was blowing a gale here and there was intermittant heavy cloud, but I was taking an image every 20 seconds during the transit so have managed to find a reasonable image about every 15 minutes which I’ve superimposed onto the first image where Mercury just starts to take a bite out of the Sun. I’ve had to crop the planet everso slightly as the background intensity of the Sun differed grealy between the images, so the planet too perfectly round I’m afaraid, but its position is as close I could get it using the whole face of the Sun to position each one; I suspect the slight wobble on the planets track is due to movement in my set up and camera in the gale, but I felt this was more realistic than making a false straight line which my data doesn’t support. I’ve nearly given up with the time lapse video as the cloud after the first five hours just makes stacking the frames nearly impossible, but if I can face wasting another 6 hours on it I will try again.
James
I’m working on a time lapse, but cloud and wind are working against me 🙂 Here is a link to a very rough and ready and low res time lapse of the first three hours of the transit:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1673286/Mercury%20transit%20the%20first%20three%20hours.avi
Skywatcher ED80, Baader solar film, Tal 2x Barlow, Canon 6D; one shot every 60 seconds for the first three hours, stacked into an AVI (on a loop) in PIPP.
James
P.S. I should add there are numerous dust bunnies which also look like they are trying to transit the sun 🙂 I’m not sure yet how to process these out as I can’t think how to take flats with solar film!
