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Hello Peter,
Nice pic! I took a remote image at 0941-0944 UT via itel New Mexico. I’ve uploaded it to the Member Pages section. The field is too narrow to squeeze M97 in, but M108 & the comet fitted inside OK. It’s also available at:
http://martinmobberley.co.uk/images/41p_20170322_0943.jpg
Martin
Hello James,
To be a continuation of Patrick’s Yearbook it would have to be called ‘Patrick Moore’s Yearbook of Astronomy’ and to be called that it would have to have written permission from Patrick’s solicitor. Following Patrick’s death 4 years ago it was not until March 2013 that his solicitor gave MacMillan permission to proceed with more ‘Patrick Moore’ Yearbooks. Clearly this newcomer is *A* proposed Yearbook but not *THE* Patrick Moore Yearbook! Without that name, and without John Mason editing the Yearbook (which would have been Patrick’s wish) this is an entirely different proposed publication. There are plenty of other Yearbooks around with a proven quality. The best selling of these is the Couper/Henbest Philip’s ‘Month-by-Month Stargazing’ which, at £5, is hard to beat in terms of value for money. Indeed, it has outsold Patrick’s Yearbook for many years. Another low-priced Yearbook is the Dunlop/Tirion Collins’ Guide to the Night Sky, again, well-established names with good sales….
Both of these publishers, especially Philip’s, have massive ‘clout’ when it comes to placing books in highstreet shops and online. They can print thousands of books and know that they will sell them all. Any newcomer, if it succeeds, will be a digital or print-on-demand publication and, being realistic here, will probably sell less than a hundred paper copies unless the
price is just a few quid. To be viable, a newcomer would have to be affordable and/or have a huge name associated with it, such as Brian Cox or Stephen Hawking.
A number of regular Patrick Yearbook contributors had already written their 2017 contributions for Patrick’s Yearbook. Myself, and Richard Baum…. and Dave Rothery had almost completed an article about Pluto & Charon. The BAA Comet Section recently put my 2017 Comet ramblings online. I cannot see any link at all between this proposed new publication and Patrick’s Yearbook.It’s just, potentially, yet another 2017 observing guide with no connection to the much loved Patrick/John Mason edited books.
On a related topic, I was amused to see a reference to Patrick in the latest edition of Amazon Prime’s Clarkson, Hammond & May ‘Grand Tour’ episode, streamed yesterday! Jeremy Clarkson attempted to carry out star recognition in Namibia to get them through the desert, to which Hammond quipped ‘we are trusting our lives to an Orangutan who thinks he’s Patrick Moore!’ Hilarious!
Regards,
MartinNick,
I was sorry to hear this news.
A few months ago I uploaded Marcus Brain’s 1981 Betamax recording of the Feb 1981 Sky at Night on which Roy was a guest. The link is below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67URilFX6ck
Martin
Hello Denis,
A nice idea….If only things in life, and publishing, were that simple; but they never are! John did endeavour to find another solution, such as a lower cost slimmed down version with MacMillan. He was also investigating other publishers, but clearly no viable solution emerged. In addition, any use of Patrick’s name on a product needs approval from his executors, so a ‘Patrick Moore Yearbook’ by anyone other than MacMillan would not be legal. The Yearbooks involved a *massive* amount of work from John as Editor and while I had completed my sections and others had almost finished theirs, much had not been written, because the plug was pulled in January (a couple of months before the usual deadline).
Outside the context of the proper paper book there is no way that everyone involved would be able to muster the enthusiasm to generate a pdf, which would look nothing like the classic Patrick Moore Yearbook. The main content and editing tasks alone would require many man-weeks of hard graft from John, for a pdf product that would be a very poor shadow of the old Yearbook…..and, no payment either.
I am happy to e-mail anyone the Word document and 24 jpeg figures for my Comets, Eclipses and Minor Planets sections for 2017….but they are just that…a Word document and jpegs……
Regards,
MartinHello David,
Sadly, MacMillan informed John earlier this year that they no longer wanted to publish the Yearbook. There had been worries about it continuing, ever since 2013, but John managed to keep it going. John and others (including myself) had written our 2017 contributions before the plug was pulled and John tried to save it, but to no avail…….The end of an era sadly……
Regards,
Martin
Hello Eric,
I’m not an expert on the relative merits of dish washing liquid I’m afraid!
However, there is some useful advice online (which you may have seen already).
Firstly, the ASO web page:
http://arksky.org/asoclean.htm
Secondly, there’s a very good Starizona video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loRrpM2MIdk
Also, there’s Ron Arbour’s approach using sellotape, as described in
the 2014 December Journal……only for the brave perhaps?!Regards,
MartinHello Gary,
There was a pic on the front of the FAS May 1981 issue showing Patrick shaking hands with a young Deborah Herschel in Hampshire in April 1981 (HAG NAW event). It was taken by Pete Seiden. Not a Caroline, but a Deborah….That’s the only pic I can think of……I can email you a webcam pic and then scan it if you think it’s of use for your talk?
Regards,
Martin
In terms of leaving the greatest impression at an early age on me it would have to be Patrick’s Observer’s Book of Astronomy, 1967 edition, acquired in January 1968. I had just turned 10, and a friend of mine had also turned 10. For his birthday my parents bought him the Observer’s book of Astronomy. When I saw the book and the wonderful illustrations by Leslie Ball, I just had to have one too! There were also pictures of huge amateur telescopes in there which I did not realise existed. At the age of 9 I’d thought the tiny Prinz refractors in Dixons were all you could ever get!
Here’s an interesting twist….at that time my parents lived on the base at RAF Marham, just 100 yards from where the failed abduction took place last week…. In fact, to visit my friend I had to cross the same main road which has been in the news this week!
Of course, it was an exciting time, with Apollo 8 at the end of 1968, and Apollo 11 landing on the Moon the next year. For me, an extra factor was that I was a big fan of Dr Who and Fireball XL5, so had all the Annuals to read……. Fictional books, but space fiction.
Prior to 1968, like Gary, I had the 1965 ‘Ladybird Book of the Night Sky’ by Mary Bruck, and still have it. Also, the 1964 Ladybird Book ‘Exploring Space’ (wonderful illustrations inside) and the 1967 Ladybird Book ‘How it Works – the Rocket’.
I think the book I most desired above all else when I first saw it (in 1969) was Kenneth Gatland’s The Pocket Encyclopedia of Spaceflight in Color: Manned Spacecraft. The cutaway illustrations of rockets and spacecraft were just brilliant!
Similarly, Patrick’s Atlas of the Universe that came out in 1970 was mind-blowing at the time. It was almost too heavy for a 12 year old to pick up without suffering a hernia, and the quality was incredible.
I can also recall the sheer joy of buying The Sky at Night Volume 4 in 1972 at Foyles in London, when everything was priced in guineas! You didn’t hand the book you wanted to the cashier….. Instead, you showed the unbelievably ancient shop assistant the book you would *like* to purchase ‘please’ and they went somewhere secret to see if they had it in stock! After about 15 minutes, just as you were wondering if they had passed away, they trudged back, at tortoise pace, with an identical copy….
The cashier then inspected your £5 note with considerable care and you had to countersign the receipt if I recall…….It was like visiting Flourish & Blotts in Diagon Alley….
Martin
Sky quality since 1pm BST has been dire, but I’ve uploaded an image sequence taken in the first half hour here:
http://martinmobberley.co.uk/images/Transit_of_Mercury_20160509_mpm.jpg
Martin
Clear for the first hour here in Suffolk, but cloudy now. Managed to get a few videos with the Lunt FS60 H-alpha scope, so plenty of processing to do. Seeing was appallingly bad, even for Suffolk!! A single frame just after second contact is, hopefully, attached to this post…… 3xBarlow + Skynyx 2-0. 1/20th sec.
Martin
I concede defeat to your slower seller Grant!
Yes, the appearance of titles on illegal sites even BEFORE they are published is particularly worrying, assuming they can actually be downloaded, along with a bucketload of malware! I suspect security is non-existent in some of the dodgy places these books are actually typeset….. Depressing!
Martin
Thanks Gary,
The graphic in question was actually Figure 5.10a from my book ‘Cataclysmic Cosmic Events and How to Observe Them’, probably the world’s slowest selling book! Figure 5.11 was the BAA lightcurve produced by yourself. I just looked back at our 2007 e-mails and in fact there was another similar diagram in circulation at that time. We both asked OJ 287 expert Dr Mauri Valtonen if the image was his, and he said it was drawn by Sky & Telescope. I think we both asked S&T for permission to use it, but never received a reply! So, in the end, I drew the diagram in question myself, based on Mauri’s data…. The OJ 287 disc is actually a blurred image of mine, of M81, tinted blue!
Martin
Hello James,
The original 2015 arc of astrometric observations for this object was only made over three days, so the orbit was extremely uncertain, with a range of close approach distances possible. Of course, the press will always hype the closest scenario to the max! In recent weeks the orbit has been refined and the closest approach is a LOT further away now, more like 3 million miles! The MPC table (scroll down to March 7) gives 0.027 AU and the NASA page (this page has two tables, recent and upcoming, which change daily and only go back a few days after the event) gives 0.033 AU. The two pages can be found at:
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/CloseApp.html
The MPC table lists LOADS of much closer approaches as you can see! In fact, two comets pass a similar distance from the Earth at the end of the month.
Regards,
Martin
Last year I uploaded the ‘Kettering Connection’ audio track to my youtube ‘channel’. I was contacted by Bob Christy from the Zarya website which has a lot of archive Kettering stuff on its pages. Bob can be contacted by the envelope icon on that page. As a keen Kettering/Artificial Satellites man who remembers that era I’d be surprised if he didn’t have some of Howard Miles old circulars…….
The Zarya website is here:
http://www.zarya.info/index.php
Click on the envelope top right to send a message…..
Martin
David gave a very interesting talk in May 1999 to the Association.
There’s a copy online on the NASA ADS server starting here:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/seri/JBAA./0109//0000339.000.html
Martin
Hi Andy,
Back in 2003 I faced the same issue with my C14/Paramount/SBIG ST9XE system, some 35 metres from the indoors PC I wanted to use. The Paramount was controlled via a serial port in those days, and the JMI focuser was just voltage controlled. I simply extended the wires by 100 feet! However, the camera was USB 1.1 so that was the real problem…. I solved it by purchasing a USB extender manufactured by Icron and marketed by Scene Double. This consists of two boxes, named REX and LEX. LEX sits indoors by the PC and REX sits on the telescope plinth. The LEX box is powered, the REX is not. They are joined by a single Cat 5 cable under the lawn. There are 4 USB ports on the outdoor Icron REX so 4 USB inputs can be used, although I usually use just one. Of course, USB 1.1 is very slow these days, but, the system still works, after 12 years outdoors and with the outdoor REX box a bit rusty now! Icron still make these units and Scene-Double still sell them. They are not cheap, BUT, when something has worked flawlessly for 12 years, in all weathers, that’s pretty good. The current webpage can be found here, with USB 2 and 3 systems now:
http://www.scene-double.co.uk/USB-extenders/
Of course, you are just talking about a distance more than 5m, whereas my system is 35m, so you may not need such an expensive overkill solution, but, that’s the system that has proved reliable for me.
Martin
That’s a splendid recording Jimmy, especially from a tape that’s 41 years old!
Your link is almost correct, the 3rd character from the end, before q for Quebec, should be a capital I for India, not a lower case l for Lima. I’ve resorted to the phonetic alphabet because the font on the forum makes both letters appear identical!!
I enjoyed listening to that recording…..it’s like travelling back in time.
Martin
Thanks Jimmy,
I’ve been working on a 1984 BAA Lunar Section Meeting audio recording of a Patrick talk for the past few days, but the sound is so poor I will have to add subtitles……could take a few weeks work to grapple with that one and bring it to life!
Martin
I’ve just uploaded another BAA talk by Patrick which may be of interest. This is an audio recording from November 1994 when Richard McKim invited Patrick to recall his 60 years of BAA membership. Some interesting and hilarious recollections in this talk, despite it only being 14 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4jsDpkh8E
Martin
Just noticed that the URLs in the previous message seem to have acquired an extra prefix of https://0.0.0.45/!x-usc: which has made them totally useless! So, the prefix either needs to be removed or just go to the original Monte Umbe link and, from my Youtube ‘channel’ select another video! Hope this is clearer than mud………
Martin
