Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Bill,
That is a truly eye-watering price! I wonder if anyone will pay it?
Seems ridiculously high, seeing as a vaguely similar book went to auction in 2022, in Oslo, with an estimated price of 800 to 1200 Euros.
Of course the actual sale price may have been much higher..Martin
I’ve been a member since 1969, so have been an Honorary member for four years now and have enjoyed all of those 54 years of membership. Becoming an Honorary member was very nice, simply because this has been a BAA tradition, and so many notable observers of the past were members for 50 years or more. I don’t like long-standing pleasant traditions to simply be cancelled. I would have felt a bit cheated if I’d been close to 50 years, only for that nice tradition to be scrapped. However, I do feel VERY guilty about not having to pay a sub anymore, especially given the age of the typical BAA member and the Association’s failure to attract younger members. At this rate we will have hardly any members in 30 years time! Although maybe the departed will all give their estates to the BAA, so we will end up as a VERY RICH association with less than 100 members?! So, I think this nice and harmless Honorary membership tradition should continue to be awarded, but the member should still pay the standard subscription. The big negative aspect of the Honorary system is the loss of BAA income. I have NEVER understood why Honorary members don’t have to pay anything. Most members who have been part of a society for 50 years continuously would surely be happy to continue paying the sub, unless they had fallen on hard times? So, basically, I agree with Denis B and Gary P on this. Keep the Honorary membership, but without the free subscription, which is harming BAA income.
Martin
Roger,
You may already know this….
Patrick and a Swedish amateur astronomer, Ulf Johansson, wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine in May 1966 proposing an amateur IAU (IUAA). The idea gained ground at the IAU meeting in Prague in 1967. Very quickly Patrick organised the IUAA with a few friends, including Leif J. Robinson, Vin Barocas and others. Patrick found 19 coordinators in 17 countries (USA and USSR had 2 coordinators). There were successful meetings at Bologna (1969), Malmo (1972), Hamilton (1975), Dublin (1978) and Brussels (1981). After that interest waned and the IUAA disappeared.Martin
Jack,
There is a chap on Astrobin who considered this same project. In the end he decided that an MX+ would just not cut it, so he bought an MEII see
https://www.astrobin.com/gqpdah/
Side-by-side is really the only sane solution! There are various ways to do this….via Bisque Versaplate accessories or Losmandy accessories.
The imminent MX Series 6 does have an increased payload, from 45kg to 56kg, but, even so, I think two SCTs of that size would warrant an ME.
Getting the OTAs in place and in balance sounds absolutely TERRIFYING to me!!
Martin
There is a character, an Antarctic scientist, with that single b spelling, in the Dr Who story ‘The Seeds of Doom’ (Jan-March 1976): a Derek Moberley. Sadly he meets a grisly end… killed by his colleague who has become infected by an Antarctic seed pod and turned into a ‘Krynoid’…….
Glad you enjoyed the refreshments Jeremy!
Some years ago BAA member Nigel Evans and his wife Alex dropped in on me after a visit to Jodrell Bank. They brought some cans of that beer along with them. I was not aware there was a brewery with my surname attached to it prior to that point! I was well aware of the nearby village though, as I had visited it in 1976 and posed by the signpost. There are not many Mobberley’s in the UK…less than a thousand according to census data, although there are various alternate spelling variants which increases the number and, worldwide, there are many more. The Mobberley name originated in Cheshire from that area. The original location in the Domesday Book, in 1086, was named Motburlege (meeting place in the clearing). Nowadays the vast majority of Mobberleys live in the Midlands, around Birmingham.
Great that there is an astronomy themed pub!Martin
I just took a snapshot of this object via itel Siding Spring.
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20230325_132331_3b8534ca4a00aed8
Many thanks for the link Denis. What a wonderful find!
Like many others I’ve owned Starlight Nights for decades and re-read it many times.
Seeing this is like hitching a ride in a time machine and going back to visit Peltier in person.Martin
Grant,
You may be thinking of a short piece I wrote in the May 2009 Astronomy Now, about Dave Tyler’s C14 dessicant arrangement? Dave made such a tube to slide into the focuser of his Classic C14. The tube was 64cm long and 5cm diameter, with the end drilled with 200 8mm holes. Silica Gel bags were stuffed into the end and a cap used so that the bags could not fall out. At the focuser end the tube was more than 50mm across to prevent it falling inside the SCT. I attach Dave Tyler’s photo of his system. Unfortunately this would NOT work with an EdgeHD design due to the corrector lens inside the drawtube.Martin
Attachments:
Mike, David,
They’ve just put a new video on youtube….They’ve moved all the telescopes from New Mexico to Utah!
See last but one video on their channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@itelescopewebinars
Martin
This is indeed sad and shocking news. Without a doubt one of the biggest & most pioneering BAA characters of the past half century. I remember an enjoyable visit to Ron’s observatory in 2004, along with Nick James, Ron Johnson, Maurice Gavin and Glyn Marsh. Horrible to realise that Ron A., Maurice and Glyn have all now departed. Some years ago James Fraser kindly sent me a pristine digital copy of Ron’s 1985 Sky at Night appearance. The link is below, but it does need the volume turning up to the max as Ron was quietly spoken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87J5FvvtHvE&t=1s
Martin
I’ve uploaded an image taken 1 hour ago to my community pages:
https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20210809_141707_eb50ae4fce13ebe3
Regards,
Martin
Hi,
I’m not sure if this message was intended for me, but as I received a copy as an e-mail, via the BAA (never had that before) I will try to reply. I don’t do outcalls or charge fees! I have never owned a Celestron VX8, but it is quite possible someone on this Forum may be able to help with advice. Maybe you could describe the problem you are having in detail? There are quite a few Celestron videos on youtube which will probably answer your queries. Have you tried watching this one…it looks very relevant….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQCQMx4Er6Q
Regards,
Martin
Hello Charles,
This is the standard failure mode of the Classic LX200 and these failures were very common during the 1990s and early 2000s. The problem is that the drive chain on both axes consisted of a ‘Scalextric’ toy car motor (worth about 50 pence in the 1990s) and some tiny plastic gears (plus encoder wheel) which were very fragile. Despite their fragility the first gear spins around at 14,000 rpm on full slew! Many LX200 users, including myself, suffered failures due to this fragile drive chain falling apart. My own LX200 failed on the second night of use on Dec 26th 1997!! Numerous other failures followed over the years until I dismantled it in 2003. When these telescopes were in mass-production the dealers stocked huge numbers of replacement motor/gearbox units. I think I paid for about half a dozen replacement units in the years of failure outside warranty. The dealers told me that they subcontracted a motorbike restoration enthusiast in Essex to do the repairs (!) because they did not have the time! I wrote a BAA paper 12 years ago about my final solution, but it involved a complete remounting of the tube and the subsequent system was only rigid enough for planetary imaging, not deep sky/comet imaging. There is no easy way to solve the problem now, but many people use AWR technology: http://www.awrtech.co.uk/ih/lx-upgr.htm
My BAA paper is here: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2009JBAA..119..183M/0000183.000.html
I have attached a photo of the Classic LX200 motor and gearbox. The whole unit is about the same size as a large matchbox!
Maybe other BAA members have found better solutions for fixing their old LX200s….?
Regards,
Martin
I took some pre-dawn images via T11 at New Mexico (0.51m CDK) a couple of hours ago. The ‘pretty pic’ unfiltered 120 sec image is here.
http://martinmobberley.co.uk/images/v1405cas_20210320_1143_mpm.jpg
I also took some much shorter V filtered images. The brightest pixels in the nova disc were 30% of the way to saturation in a 5 second V shot.
Using the AAVSO chart’s somewhat dimmer mag 9.0 and 9.1 stars gives a V mag of 7.70 at 11:45 UT this morning (Mar 20). JD = 2459293.98958.
Regards,
MartinI wrote about Howard standing down after almost 40 years of service on page 189 of the August 1998 Journal. He also dealt with reports of ‘Fireballs and other transient or unusual phenomena’! There was no obvious successor in Howard’s league (how could there be?) and so the BAA Council decided to disband the Section.
Martin
OK Dominic, many thanks for confirming it wasn’t me accidentally trying to hack your profile!
I will simply keep using Chrome for the BAA pages today and check with Edge again tomorrow.
I just succeeded in uploading an image so that all appears to work fine.
Martin
One oddity that has emerged since the upgrade….If I try to log in using Microsoft Edge I just get Dominic’s profile filling the page as if I am Dominic!!!! I can go no further….. HOWEVER, using Google Chrome I can log in as normal with no problem, as I have done to type this query………..
Martin
Grant,
As you say, Skywatcher and Orion Optics are probably the first choice people. I’m very happy with my 12″ f/5.3 Orion Optics Newt and the 12″ f/4 Skywatcher Quattro, though heavy, looks like an absolute bargain! Have you looked at the Teleskop Service pages? They show a few 12″ and 14″ tubed models. Their ONTC models have 3 mirror positions for moving the focus in and out if required. Focusers and other bits are customisable. Of course, given Brexit looming who knows how that might affect prices/delivery from Germany?! On the same page (at the bottom) they have the Boren-Simon PowerNewts (up to 12″) which are f/4 in length but have a 0.7x reducer to give f/2.8 across a 25mm diameter field. The TS page is here:
Martin
Hi David,
As you say, without more detail on the severity of the visual impairment, it’s impossible to know what might work, but clearly the more light the better…so, a large aperture telescope pointed at the Moon would surely stand the greatest chance of success….Alternatively >Are there any other facilities that a near-blind child might use to get a sense of the planets?< There is this chap, Nic Bonne at Portsmouth Uni, who may (Covid restrictions permitting) be able to offer advice…..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-hampshire-51559823
Martin
