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North Birmingham treated to a fantastic auroral display this evening.
Photo is a 3 second hand held with iPhone.
Gary
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I have a weather Owl. It’s been mentioned on this forum before, so I won’t post a photo of it again. It remains more successful than the BBC/Met office forecasts.
Gary
Hi Peter,
I don’t have a dedicated meter, but I do have an iPhone app called Dark Sky Meter. Not sure how accurate it is, but the odd time I do take a reading, the results are between 18.8 and 19.2. I take them fairly infrequently, because to be honest I get depressed when I see the result.
I was hoping that one of the good things to come out of the Birmingham City Council debacle would be the dimming of street lights after midnight. It’s been rumoured that it might happen, but knowing the incompetence of all involved, they are probably still looking for the switch! I’m still waiting for that to happen.
Gary
Alan,
I guess as a purely visual observer, I get to use more nights than you do as an imager – but this year has certainly been a disappointment so far.
My weather records for 2024 show that I’ve observed with my 51cm on 28 nights this year (including last night-this morning), with only three of those nights being dusk-dawn. The rest have been clearings and holes. This time last year (May 5) the number was 39 with 11 dusk-dawn nights.
If the weather eroded my enthusiasm for astronomy, then I would have given up a long time ago. It’s hard being an amateur astronomer in this country, and it always has been. So no change there! For me the biggest threat to my enthusiasm is the brightness of the backgound sky, which has deteriorated greatly over the past few years. OK, I live in north Birmingham, and the skies have never been dark, but the introduction of LED lighting has pretty much killed off my fainter then mag 16 detections, whilst the the majority of the time sees me struggling to get to 15.5. As an observer of many faint CV’s, this is the demoralising aspect for me. I won’t give up though. Over the past few years I’ve slowly been altering my observing programme to compensate for the degrading sky quality.
If it comes to a choice between cloudy weather and sky quality, I’ll take the former every time!
I hope your skies start to improve.
Gary
I too am a little mystified by the photometry in the AAVSO database. I went back to the image after I saw it, and double checked I had ID’d the correct star – which I had.
I used the normal wide field image from the Slooh Chile 2 scope for both measures. The ‘Y’ is the AAVSO code for active. The image was measured with AIP4WIN.
Gary
Stewart,
I have two predictions…
MOMO (Multiwavelength Observations and Modelling of OJ287) 2026-2028
Mauri Valtonen – May 30, 2031
Disappointment looms for somebody!
Gary
Winchester weekends have never been streamed live or recorded in the past, so it’s unlikely you’ll get to experience this if you don’t attend – if it ever happens of course! Just maybe though, someone might record it on their phone and post here.
Gary
Why don’t we all try it in the bar on Saturday night? The tune is well know. Sounds like a choral hit to me, rather than a solo.
Gary
That’s very bad luck Mel. Hope you are making a speedy recovery, and can get back to observing VS as soon as possible.
Best wishes,
GaryObserving statistics for 2023.
Gary Poyner (Birmingham)
Didn’t beat my record year of clear skies of 2022, but having said that, not too bad from North Birmingham. The year was pretty evenly spread, with 54% of observable skies occuring in the first half of the year. The last three months of 2023 were pretty disappointing though, with December being awful.
2023 (2022 in parentheses)
Clear nights (less than 50% cloud) 29 (41)
Partially clear nights (50% or more cloud) 101 (103)
Totally cloudy nights 235 (221)
Total observable nights 130 (144) with 57 (74) of these nights having Moonlight interference. I made observations
on 123 nights.Total hours at the telescope 257h (303)
Best month May with 17 nights, 5 clear and 12 partially clear (August – 17)
Worst month December with 3 partially clear nights (November – 8)Weather predictions from various sources gave incorrect information on cloud cover for 71 nights during 2023 (77).
Total visual VS observations for 2023 is 11,043 (12,005). CCD single measures using remote telescopes COAST, SLOOH and the AAVSO MPO-61 are 3,301 (2,996).
Happy New Year
GaryHi Duncan,
Was this a manual entry or upload? It is a bit strange.
For the magnitude, did you enter 8.4 or [8.4?
Gary
I would go one step further, and award an Honorary (but not free) membership to anyone who reaches 50 years, regardless whether it’s been continuous or not. It’s still a lot of years! Alex P raises this point earlier in the thread.
Gary
At the end of the piece which contains Grant’s excellent image, there is a photo of a chap looking through a fully automated scope, in silhoutte against a background of the Summer sky, and the heading “You should be able to see the meteors with a naked eye – if the weather is good”.
Good ‘ole Beeb.
Gary
I too am approaching the 50 years membership, and if/when I reach it, I will feel very proud that I’ve achieved this milestone. And that’s it! I don’t really need the BAA to give me a free membership.
What would be nice though, is a small gold lapel BAA badge, given only to 50 year members, which will make us immediately recognisable at BAA meetings, allowing for cups of hot cocoa to be brought to us during the interval.
Gary
In VS observing (and Comets too), it’s normal to give the decimal of the day following the days date. So Jul 20.82 is July 20, 19h 45m UT.
The time is written down in hours and minutes at the telescope, then the spreadsheet works out the decimal of the day when the observations are typed up. To obtain the decimal of the day, my spreadsheet multiplies the hour by 60, adds the minutes, then divides by 1440. This has been normal practice in VS observing for many years – particularly CV’s (although some observers still do report in hours and minutes).
I tend to report everything in decimal of the day these days.
Gary
Thanks Ian,
OJ was guaranteed to fade once I put an alert out – sods law! I had it 14.7 visual this morning, and 14.6C a couple of hours earlier with SLOOH.
Keep at it if you can, as sometimes these flares can vary a bit.
Gary
The binary black hole OJ287 has been rising in brightness slowly since leaving solar conjunction in late Summer, and is currently at its brightest level since May 2020 at 14.29V (Oct 13).
What might happen next? Please monitor regularly if you are able, and submit your data to the VSS database at the earliest possible time.
OJ287 lies in Cancer at 08 54 48.88 +20 06 30.6 (2000.0) and there are charts on the BAAVSS website.
Gary
Hi David,
Yes, it’s nice to see this star active again. I’ve had it rsing from 12.7mv on Sep 15 to 11.8mv by Oct 8, with 0.5 mags of that in the last five days.
The VSS doesn’t have a chart for V426 Sge (also known as VEND47), but you can download one from the AAVSO web site and configure it to your type of telescope.
Gary
V1500 Cygni (Nova 1975) reached magnitude +1.7 at maximum on August 30th 1975, having been discovered the day before at magnitude 3.0. It faded very quickly after that – t3 = 3d (then the fastest Nova on record and still has, I believe, the largest amplitude of any known Nova ~19 magnitudes). I saw it myself, and the event put me on the VS path.
The brightest Nova ever recorded is V603 Aql – Nova Aql 1918, the ‘Victory Star’. This peaked at magnitude -1.4 in June of 1918, and you can still see it today in small telescopes, varying slightly around magnitude 12.0. I wouldn’t think there is anyone around now who witnessed this spectacular event though.
Gary
Certainly looks like it Ian. My efforts attached. Getting difficult now from home, as the observatory roof will soon be in the way. Hope to continue remotely.
Gary
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