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I met Dame K several times and she was a great character with an amazingly varied set of interests and many fascinating stories. She really hit it off with Patrick and they were very similar characters. Listening to a conversation between the two of them was great fun.
I visited her Coniston observatory but it was chucking it down at the time so it was rather hard to judge the potential sky conditions…
Nick.
Hi Sheridan,
One of the things that you quickly have to gain as an author is a thick skin. Bad reviews are par for the course and, if you think that the criticism is unwarranted, the appropriate action is to send a letter of rebuttal and hope to get it published. I would welcome the return of fiery debate in the letters column of the JBAA as authors (often Patrick) slugged it out with reviewers. Perhaps the modern equivalent is this forum.
In this case I have not read the book and so cannot comment directly but David is one of our best imagers and he is well placed to provide a review. I certainly think that some of his criticism is valid (Graham’s views on the non-use of calibration frames in particular) so there are questions to answer. Let’s have the debate!
Nick.
Quite a few nice Perseids last night. Despite some drifting cloud and a bright Moon I caught 86 Perseids out of a total of 123 meteors on the two cameras. The attached pic shows a nice mag -2.8 Perseid at 00:33:33. You can browse through the other confirmed meteors here.
The current forecast for here tonight looks reasonable too so keep an eye on the live page.
It could have been the lion that was spotted a few years ago but which was never traced. The police deployed many resources including the helicopter to find that.
Anyway, much clearer tonight so some real meteors showing up in the images.
Paul,
Thanks for the visual report. It was also seen from Portsmouth and another NEMETODE camera at the South Downs Planetarium which is operated by John Mason and Russ Slater. William Stewart and Alex Pratt analyzed the SDP data and we have produced a ground track that show that the concrete cows in Milton Keynes should have had a very good view as it went overhead. The original orbit was cometary with e=0.91, i=80, q=0.97au.
Nick.
Gary, Can you download one of the MP4 movies and then just play it in Windows Media Player on your Win 8 machine. The coding of these videos is nothing special and they should play on any modern system, even Windows 8. If still no joy with WMP then contact me offline and we can try to investigate further.
Alex,
I’ve just downloaded the MP4 of Lyn’s talk and it plays OK for me (Windows Media Player under Win 7/64). The downloaded filesize is 65,875,977 bytes. It is possible that it is stuck in a cache somewhere so that your repeated attempts to download it keep giving you the same result. Hopefully time will fix this if you are patient!
Nick.
The meeting videos are nearly done and they should be up on the site early this coming week. I’ll post an announcement here when they are up.
If anyone has any good photos or video clips from Saturday and would be willing to (potentially) have them included in the meeting video please send them to me on ndj@nickdjames.com.
It would be good to see a few thumbnails posted here too. I’ll start the ball rolling with the attached.
Nick.
Alex,
The audio and slides are loaded on my PC so the recording should be up on the site in the next few weeks or so. All the talks were very good but Allan’s stood out as he put Patrick’s life in the context of other astronomy popularisers of the past. He also did a good job of putting some of Patrick’s taller stories in context. Patrick was in a good company since apparently Galileo and Newton did the same thing…
Nick.
Those were the days when comets were real comets not the puny little fuzzballs that we have to put up with now!
Here’s a direct link to the Youtube Vid that Bill mentions. Nice NLC. I haven’t seen any myself so far this year.
Nick.
Mike,
Very nice image and that is one hell of a telescope but it certainly burns through the points! I’m planning to have a go at this object during the Webb Society meeting in a few weeks time.
Nick
Hi Cameron,
Very nice image. I observe from a light polluted site too and it can be a challenge but modern imaging equipment can do a lot even from very bright sites. Feel free to post some more images on this forum when you’re ready and if you have any questions please ask.
Nick.
Gary,
Here’s an image from tonight. I assume the SN is the brightish thing around 3 arcsec SE of the core but it is difficult to separate it from the core and I don’t have any comparison pics to check.
Nick.
Alex,
There’s a good summary of the prospects for this shower by Rob McNaught here. This is an updated version of the presentation given at the recent The Astronomer meeting. David Asher also has a very good summary on his page here.
There are some images of the parent comet (a real pygmy) in the BAA comet archive here.
Nick.
That is sad news. Dud was certainly a great character and great entertainment. His Fullerscopes telescopes really looked the part too. I had a 12-inch Newtonian on a MkIV mount for many years and it did a pretty good job although some of the mechanical engineering was novel. That was never Fullerscopes’ strong point. I also used the 18″ f/7 at Charterhouse, Somerset when I was a lad. It looked very impressive in the 1975 Handbook photo shown below and was even more impressive close up although it was a brute to use and I think Jeremy Shears had broken it before I got there…
Nick.
