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Richard: the Elizabethans were well practised too and, with the advantage of an additional century of technological development, were able to do so on an industrial scale. Remember DDT? Remember the Camelford incident which is well described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_incident where not only were people left with aluminium deposits in their brain, lead from piping was also leached into drinking water? How about tetraethyl lead added to petrol?
Incidentally, and speaking as an ex-chemist, the dangers of Pb poisoning are almost universally misunderstood. Organic lead compounds, such as PbEt_4_ are really, really nasty. A few milligrams will kill you and quite rapidly too. Soluble inorganic lead compounds do pretty nasty things to the CNS. Insoluble lead compounds are arguably helpful — a coating of lead sulphate or carbonate on the inside of lead water pipes which is naturally produced in hard water districts prevents soluble lead compounds leaching out. Metallic lead is virtually harmless, unless injected en masse into the body at high velocity. Many people live for decades with several grams of Pb inside them, especially where the location of the bullet makes surgery to remove it a markedly higher risk than to just let it be.
I’m sure that you as another ex-chemist are well aware of the content of the previous paragraph.
Paul
Hi James,
I bidded up the price on some of these and dropped out at the last moment. Should improve the Society’s bank account a little.
In principle you may be able to measure it yourself if you can find another camera with a known QE curve. If you don’t have one to hand perhaps someone could lend you one. Unfortunately all my cameras are in La Palma.
Using the same optical system in front of the detectors and a source of identical brightness, measure the intensity of the spectrum and use one to calibrate the other.
Not saying it will be easy.
Denis: Your S&T collection sounds very interesting.
Perhaps I should explain my reason for wanting to build an extensive library, in addition to loving books and relevant journals. Many people here know that I have an observatory in La Palma. Within the next 15 months or so I will sell up my house in the UK and move to LP, taking my library with me(*). I also want my place to be a self-supporting research observatory, even after I eventually snuff it. Astro-tourism, on-site astronomy classes and visual observing sessions, and remote access to the telescopes will help fund things, as would renting the house to tourists in general. Part of a well-equipped observatory is an extensive library, both historical and immediately practical. BAA members and the BAA as an organization have helped me extend the library greatly in the last few years.
I already have a century or so of BAAH, JBAA, The Observatory, and decades of other journals such as MNRAS. Atlases range from C19 Proctor to the Millennium Star Atlas. A few hundreds of books are also present, from Sir John Herschel to vol. 11 of Annals of the Deep Sky which came out late last year. Around 100 books and a smattering of atlases are already in La Palma. I make sure that I top-out the airlines’ hold baggage allowance …
Paul
(*) Six boxes of journals were packed up and put into storage ready for shipping today alone. Perhaps 30 will be needed for the complete collection.
The latest missive from the Cambridge Astronomical Association arrived this morning. In the current edition of Capella, their newsletter, is a fascinating article about how the sky brightness varies with altitude. The naked eye limiting magnitude was a whole magnitude fainter at 120m above street level! The observations were made from a 35th-level apartment and from the street immediately below in a Bortle 7 and Bortle 8 sky respectively.
https://www.cambridgeastronomicalassociation.com/ for more about the CAA and access to their newsletters.
I’m also pleased not to be the only nutter. These are the editions I do have:
1 (1910)
3 (1921)
9 (1943)
12 (1954)
13 (1955)
14 (1959)
15 (1966)
16 (1973)
17 (1986)
18 (1989)
19 (1998)So more than half!
Thanks,
Paul<p class=”wp-dark-mode-bg-image”>I was wondering if the BAA held any copies of Alan Heath’s autobiography-“Memoirs of an Astronomer”? Neither Amazon, Waterstone’s,nor Summerfield Books (the specialist natural history booksellers) have it. Thanks, Rob Duffy.
I have a copy but not a duplicate.
It could be loaned out to anyone willing to promise to return it and to pay postage in each direction (or to travel to CB22).
Paul
<p class=”wp-dark-mode-bg-image”>Is there anything like JPL Horizons anywhere else?
Some of us have been discussing the provision of globally distrubuted backups on https://bsky.app/ where you may like to subscribe to #astronomy.
It’s not actually that difficult to store relatively static data like the abstract service. With my resources alone I could contribute a terabyte of storage and half a gigabit per second bandwidth. Dynamic data such as provided by the JPL and MPC sites are harder because of the need to install the requisite software.
I use cooling all the time, partly from habit but motly because my major interest is photometry where the thermal noise reduction is welcome if not essential. This is especially valuable for exoplanetary transits and precision photometry below, say, 17th magnitude.
<p class=”wp-dark-mode-bg-image”>Haha. (Apart from this) I haven’t seen much April Fool’s Day content across the media. Serious times, I guess. David
How would we know the difference from other days? There’s enough fake news swilling around as it is.
Your choice, but IMO it is difficult to have too much overkill.
If it is within your weight and financial budget go for something over-specified rather than anything less.
Paul
I am potentially interested, depending on price. The information below may help others to express an interest.
According to https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Atlas-Planetarischen-Nebel-Objekte-zwischen/dp/3949370153/ the German edition of the first volume is €69.90 with shipping to Spain of €5.77.
At today’s spot rate the sterling price would be £58.58.
Paul
JPL Horizons gives detailed ephemerides for essentially everything known in the Solar system. I use it for inner moons of the planets. For outer moons of JSUN and asteroids MPC is used.
<p class=”wp-dark-mode-bg-image”>Wonderful to see this photographic record before the jet age and commercialised eclipse tours. Travellers dressed in their finery during the long adventure, rather than in today’s casual wear.<br class=”wp-dark-mode-bg-image”>
I say chaps, how about playing quoits at the Winchester Weekend or the Christmas Meeting? 1900s dress code not obligatory.I have a croquet set somewhere …
Craig: that is pretty damn good!
To be honest, I thought you would have difficulty with a 100mm aperture, given that recommendations tend to start at 200mm, or 150mm at a pinch. You surprised me!
Your data looks entirely sufficient to make a scientifically valuable measurement. Don’t worry about the predicted time to be different from your measurement. That is the whole point of the exercise: to test the predictions. Please report it so others can learn from it.
I am impressed, and please keep measuring other transits with either or both of your telescopes.
Paul.
P.S. You should boast about this one in other astronomical fora such as SGL, CN and Bluesky.
Ah, I forgot about chromatic aberration. 🙁 Too much time spent with reflectors. That said, my Dilworth despite being similar to a classical Cassegrain though with spherical mirrors, has a series of achromatic transfer lenses. I have never noticed any chromatic aberration when imaging.
Again, the best way is to suck it and see. If the unfiltered images are not too bloated (and they may well not appear larger at all), set the photometry aperture perhaps just a little bit larger to compensate and measure the same field with the same exposure on the same night (i.e. consecutive images) filtered and unfiltered so that the sky conditions are as similar as possible. Use the version which gives you the better SNR.
As always: SNR and cadence is what is important; aesthetics doesn’t get a look in.
