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That’s fine by me Mark. That cruise was a great part of BAA history. If only I’d been a bit older in 1973, but aged 15 I would’ve had to have gone as a stowaway!
MartinTen years ago, thanks to James Fraser, I uploaded the Monte Umbe ‘A Line to the Sun’ video in four parts to youtube.
A year earlier I’d uploaded Patrick’s infamous Nouadhibou performance, thanks to John McConnell (audio recording)
and the aforementioned Andrew Wells (photos). Those were the days!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcc-eB78uxk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cHkGkhQp6Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw5DtvJxHoY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6S44q7zBvc
Nouadhibou
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQmEsDEMxqw
Martin
Hello Sheridan,
Can the scope have an imaging camera attached? One way of checking rough polar alignment with an ME is to note the precise time (to, say, a few seconds GMT) when homing completes and the sidereal tracking starts. Then, immediately take an exposure of, say, 60 seconds. If there are plenty of stars on the image upload it to Astrometry.net and it will calculate the precise field centre. For an ME it should home at 0 dec and 2 hours past the meridian at the time you homed it. Of course this is somewhat dependent on nothing going wrong with the homing process (you get the bongs, so that is encouraging) and also the telescope being mounted parallel to the Versaplate…… It also assumes there are no trees or buildings from your site that are over 30 degrees high at an azimuth to the SSW…. Astrometry.net will instantly tell you if the field centre is far from zero degrees Dec. The sidereal time from the observatory at the time tracking started, minus two hours, should tie up with the R.A. calculated by Astrometry.net.
It’s a simple test that should give you a rough idea how far off the polar alignment of the mount might be.
Martin
The talks on Wednesday were really excellent and I’ve watched the recordings a couple of times, in addition to watching them live.
As Alex says the best live audio was from the handheld microphone, even during the Live Stream. For example Mike Maunder’s comments starting at 1h
59m 56s on the youtube video are crystal clear. A look at the video shows the microphone was at least a foot from Mike’s mouth yet the audio is excellent.
Like Alex there were times during the meeting that I too recalled Norman Collier’s hilarious comedy act, making fun of the dodgy microphones in the era of working men’s clubs….A clip of his act can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA2aAFjQqL4
Martin
Allan was such an entertaining character. The first time I heard him give a talk was at the BAA Lunar Section meeting in Morecambe in June 1984. I realised then that he was in a league of his own. One of my greatest memories is of a day I spent with Allan and Ken Goward at Oxford in August 2004. He had offered to help with our research into the Bury St Edmunds Athenaeum Observatory, at the Bodleian library, but he gave us a tour of everywhere! He arrived on his bicycle of course, photo attached. For lunch he took us to his local pub. At the bar he ordered “Your largest pot of tea my good man and three plates of your delicious Fish and Chips…” He was a fantastic character – a one-off.
Martin
Attachments:
Hello James,
Did Storm’s upstairs office really resemble a camera shop? Loads of metal camera cases in the background and some on the floor between him and the mystery man. The camera box with Canon Sure Shot looks like the box from the early ’80s. The newspaper under the box seems to have a headline that says
‘The Birthday Celebration’ and ‘COMEDY’ beneath that. Was it a flyer for a local theatre production perhaps?Martin
Hi Ken,
Many years ago I de-forked a 12″ LX200 SCT (1997 model). My solution was a bodge, but it did work, but was only stable enough for planetary imaging/visual work.
My solution was complicated by my desire to fit the system into an existing shed which was really too narrow for such a setup..
The main issue was the sheer weight of the 12″ tube (as heavy as a C14) and the lack of a dovetail…
I would NOT recommend my solution for long exposure imaging, but I did write it up for the Journal….https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2009JBAA..119..183M/0000183.000.html
Martin
PS, for some reason the link, as pasted, stops at ‘2009JBAA’ so the rest has to be typed in manually! But it was in JBAA volume 119,4, p183-187.
I have just created a Tiny URL instead…. https://tinyurl.com/yfh4xhdjStorm had a devoted mother who was an animal lover and quite a character. For many years he had been meaning to write a memoir about her life.
Sadly, I don’t think he got very far with that plan. She took over the running of a small zoo in the Portsmouth area and, on her watch, all the monkeys escaped! A few years ago Storm told me:‘My mother must be the only person who has had a police car and driver put at her disposal to chase monkeys around Portsmouth. I think I have found images of the very police car.’
Martin
The Software Bisque support Forums provide a mine of information for troubleshooting Paramount problems, sometimes even the Bisque brothers respond. You do have to register though, but it’s a formality (under My Account/Register). The support page is https://www.bisque.com/support/ but you won’t be able to see the forums until you are registered and logged in….
Martin
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
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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
