Dawson

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Viewing 20 posts - 141 through 160 (of 171 total)
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  • in reply to: BAA Newsletter #577961
    Dawson
    Participant

    Great, thank you.

    James

    in reply to: BAA Newsletter #577957
    Dawson
    Participant

    Richard McKim is kindly going to copy one and post it to me.

    James

    in reply to: Images Likes #577953
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: History of the BAA #577927
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: History of the BAA #577926
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: Summer placements for undergraduate #577915
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: Members Pages #577812
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: Astronomy Yearbook 2017 #577777
    Dawson
    Participant

    Might there be hope for the yearbook?

    http://www.starlight-nights.co.uk/subscriber-2017-yearbook-astronomy

    James

    in reply to: I&I News Series No. 27 #577755
    Dawson
    Participant

    Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It felt more like a circular from the historical section but that suited me down to the ground. 

    James

    in reply to: Members Pages #577751
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: Great new Will Hay video! #577634
    Dawson
    Participant

    Fascinating video, thanks for sharing Martin.

    James

    in reply to: Caroline Herschel #577499
    Dawson
    Participant

    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:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Royal-Astronomical-Society-1920-80/dp/0632017929/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475323431&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=history+of+the+royal+astronomcial+society

    Regards

    James

    in reply to: 10″ Newtonian looking for new home – free #577485
    Dawson
    Participant

    This has now found a new home.

    James

    in reply to: I have a new job #577442
    Dawson
    Participant

    Congratulations. Do we get mates rates?

    🙂

    James

    in reply to: TRANSIT OF MERCURY #577384
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: Transit of Mercury #577383
    Dawson
    Participant

    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

    in reply to: Transit of Mercury #577357
    Dawson
    Participant

    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!

    in reply to: Welsh star trail #577319
    Dawson
    Participant

    Try again:

    in reply to: Nominations for Council #577298
    Dawson
    Participant

    Thanks Callum. Food for thought.

    James

    in reply to: Infrared; friend or foe? #577297
    Dawson
    Participant

    Thank you all.

    I was attempting to image Jupiter the other night with my new camera and whilst the seeing was excellent, the results I got the next day were awful. I’ve just realised the window in the camera is just glasss and not an IR blocking filter. Doh!

    James

Viewing 20 posts - 141 through 160 (of 171 total)