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I think you will find that laser ranging sites like Herstmonceux do not issue NOTAMs every night they work. I believe they operate by always having staff with the system and making sure the sky is clear of aircraftby visual inspection while the laser is active.
Their laser is a tad brighter than those most people use at star parties.
No reason at all you cannot do photometry this way. Keep the exposure short, position the target at the field centre and use a comparison star close to it and if the flat fielding and dark subtraction is okay you will get good results.
Of course DSLRs are a bit noisy, so combined with the use of a short xposure it can mean a lot of exposures are needed.
In Wiltshire, not far from Salisbury Plain, there were some tasteful high altitude wisps of cloud before the penumbral stages, but by the time the eclipse was underway they had mainly melted away leaving a clear, if not very transparent, sky.
As the night went on and the temperature dropped to 3C some mist started to form, but this was mainly near watercourses. Pretty nearly ideal conditions.
A dark eclipse with an orange tinge. If my blood looked that colour, I would see a doctor quick!
I didnt think any colour was apparent until the umbral phases. Is that the general perception or is my colour vision poor?
I thought you meant databases there for a moment!
Yep, I have used one, but the master must be Bob Mizon surely.
Isnt Dirk Maggs the guy who did the Radio adaption of Douglas Adams “Long Dark Teatime of the Soul” and the Pratchett/Gaiman “Good Omens”? Both are quite fun.
Just remember its entertainment, not art or history.
Saw the forecast had a gap in the clouds forecast near Yeovil, so I drove there from Salisbury and it seemed to be about the same as at home – awful. So, as I was an hour from a friends house in Exeter I went on to there. Was down to 0.5 mile visibility in Monkton and some street lights were on in Exeter as I arrived. Gaps appeared as I sat in a traffic jam at eclipse maximum (aaargh). So I parked in the Co-Op car park, took some snaps and then went on to my friends home where we sat on his doorstep eating toast, drinking coffee and watching the eclipse through gaps in the cloud. Very civilised.
Turned out that it cleared at home! So I could have saved myself driving the 170 mile round trip.
Managed one decent image with the handheld compact camera from the Co-Op though…
Hi there,
Sorry to take so long to post.
I had one of these for a review a while ago. Appeared in Astronomy Now I think. My memory of the equipment was that the tube was luggable, would go nicely on an HEQ5 and yielded good clean images. I liked it – though the focuser was only just adequate – and quite heavy. It made a very affordable alternative to the hideously overpriced ED or triplet refractors that are unable to bring all the light to focus at one point, giving it an edge in creating luminance images.
I think the PDS needs to be used with something like a Baader coma corrector when combined with a large CCD sensor, but there was minimal coma seen when imaging with a Starlight H18.
Obviously, the secondary mirror supports generate diffraction spikes around bright stars, but brought up in the pre-SCT era I have no problem with that.
I rather fancy a 300PDS. Would be okay on my EQ6 Pro. 🙂
