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I have the electronic subscription for two main reasons:
a) I am a cheapskate and it’s cheaper;
b) I already have far too many chewed trees in each of two houses. Doesn’t stop me collecting more, unfortunately …
I read both JBAA (and similar publications) formats about equally often and likewise in depth. There is something immensely comfortable about having a physical artefact, especially one which is much safer to read when lying in a hot bath or a sauna. That said, the portability and physical storage space of a digital version has a lot going for it.
Horses for courses.
I would love to have the C11, so I am in that minority.
Unfortunately I can not justify buying one but I can ask around.
For what it’s worth, I have heard from a couple of sources that if you want to buy a Meade OTA it can be cheaper to buy one fork-mounted and then throw away the mount than it is to buy one not so encumbered. That is a pretty damning assessment of the quality of a Meade fork mount as it implies its value is negative!
Takeaway message: if your kit is fork mounted, try advertising the OTA and offer to throw in the mount at a small increment in price.
As always, YMMV.
Since you haven’t found much in VSX have you considered looking for new CVs? Patrol lowish galactic latitudes and the SMC/LMC regions, perhaps, and see what shows up. Most will be Miras, semiregulars or eclipsers but you can ignore the red ones by checking with GAIA B/G/R photometry. It’s a shame the variability flag isn’t set in EDR3 or we could try to characterize newcomers.
Might be an interesting sideline. Certainly a golden opportunity to learn about how to handle big data — something amateurs are beginning to catch up with the professionals for many of whom it is now routine.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
In a further ATel a claim is made that IceCube picked up a neutrino from this object. If true, and significant doubt has been cast on the claim, it would be the first ever detection of a nova by a neutrino telescope.
https://astronomerstelegram.org/?read=15067 and 15073 for more.
Let me take a look at the ones I’ve observed from La Palma. Not sure whether by “southern hemisphere” you mean negative declination or so far south they can not readily be observed from the UK. Some equatorial stars are visible from both Chile and the UK.
… Checking … OK:
Not observed any ER or UGSS very far south, sorry.
HL CMa is a UGZ/IW so might be ok but not ideal for you. Very nice bright guide star near by, as is a white dwarf worth observing. The declination is -17 degrees.
BW Scl — a UGZZ+GZ/GWLIB Declination is -39 degrees.
There are doubtless thousands if not hundreds more. The previous advice to consult VSX is strongly recommended. Those two are just a couple I’ve observed.
How do you propose to observe them? Both Magellanic Clouds are full of variables of all kinds, so if you fancy more of a challenge …
Yes, I saw that on the recording.
The volcano appears not to be getting any worse, nor better, but is undoubtedly changing. The latest sign is the appearance of elemental sulphur on the surface around the top of the cone. If you read Spanish, or know how to use a web translation service, this link contains a good picture and an explanation: https://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/lapalmaahora/aparicion-depositos-azufre-elemental-apuntan-cambio-claro-dinamica-volcan_1_8464747.html
There are (at least) two ways round the text file attachment issue. The obvious is to put your text into a doc/docx/pptx file. The recipient can then convert it back to text with a simple cut and paste.
The other is to rename the file because the uploader works on the extension not the contents. See here for an example.
I had not heard that a 4″ Unistellar can make useful observations of exoplanets but knew that a 6″ reflector most certainly can. It is good that I am now better informed.
As noted, much smaller apertures, a Mark-1 eyeball and some way of taking records is all that is essential.
Eric: I strongly agree with you emphasis on scientific value. The BAA has had a strong ethos of scientific research for its entire existence.
In my view we should be investing more heavily in spectroscopy. We’ve been doing photometry very productively for well over a century now. Precision astrometry is a more recent phenomenon but now well established. Spectroscopy remains a field sadly neglected by most amateurs, though some impressive work is being performed by BAA members. I say this as someone who is not (yet) a spectroscopist.
I recognize that La Palma isn’t an ideal site right now but the eruption will be over long before any kind of decision is made.
Kevin Hills runs a robotic observatory with a 0.5m Newtonian astrograph on my land. He has used it to do some very good science.
Between his dome and mine is a concrete pad with power and ethernet supplied to it. A few years ago a European university ran a robotic observatory from there.
Here is a view from above:
https://www.google.es/maps/@28.6418055,-17.8679749,125m/data=!3m1!1e3
or search for “Tacande Observatory”.
Just saying …
No significant problems reported so far by the evacuees living there (SWMBO and I returned to the UK on 2021-09-22) other than perhaps 5cm of ashfall, the vast majority of which will not have settled on the dome. Everything inside is wrapped up well each time we leave because even 3 months of regular calima dust is tiresome to clean off the optics. The quakes have been far too small to damage anything.
The original vent is 3.1km due south. A subsequent one is about 500m closer to us. Both are the far side of a substantial ridge which protects us. Of course, if another vent opens up on the north side …
Our plan is to return in February. Kevin and I will doubtless have a much better idea then.
(added in edit) See https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20211017_203048_828e0db6c3bb0b61 for a recent image of the volcano and observatory. Inside the latest The Astronomer magazine is one taken a very few minutes after the start of the eruption.
See http://www.astropalma.com/equipment.html
Shows it much better than I can describe it.
My 120mm refractor / autoguider is mounted on top of the 400mm Dilworth, all inside a dome. As long as I am observing reasonably close to the meridian the scopes are aligned along the slit, not across it. Observing extremely close to the zenith results in the 120mm being hidden behind the slit shutter.
