Supernova in M51

The Supernova SN 2011 dh was discovered in M51 on 31st May by French amateur astronomer A. Riou and also by the Palomar Transient Factory. This image was taken on 3rd June 2011 and is 10 X 30 second exposures taken under poor seeng conditions from Leyland. Another one missed!

Galaxy Run

120 galaxy images last night - I couldn't believe how milky the sky appeared after Spain - I think it was a combination of light pollution and light cloud or general murk that resulted in poor but visible galaxy images. I started out to check the pointing accuracy with M53 as my first target slewing directly from the homed position on start up. Here is the result:

Morning observations

See the pdf file here for the observations on 13th March 2011

More Almeria Birds

This is the Black Redstart - there are quite a number of these in the mountains near Cabrera

 

A Rock Bunting is shown below. This is the only one that I spotted during the winter of 2010 to 2011 in Cabrera. 

This Goldfinch is one of a flock of about 20 to 30 that keep their distance and don't let me get near enough to get a good photograph.

31st January 2011 - A clear night again!

Following a week of cloud and rain, clear skies seem to have returned once more. The sky to the East and South were brilliant with stars and I was tempted to try some DSLR photography with the Sony Alpha camera mounted on the 12" Meade OTA driven by the CGEM mount. I first used a 50mm standard lens and then changed to a zoom lens set to 300mm focal length. I used my small laptop PC with the "Wilkinson" interface and DSLR shutter software to set exposure times. This was the first attempt at Orion with a 10 second exposure using the 18mm lens.

I then managed to get a 5 minute exposure of M42 with the 300mm lens

 followed by a 10 minute exposure

and then tried for the "Flame Nebula" adjacent to Alnitak in the belt of Orion.

and then a 5 minute exposure of the Pleiades

Cabrera - Red Legged Partridge

A lone Red Legged Partridge sitting on a rock enjoying the view - not exceptionally worried by my presence. A couple of days before I disturbed about a dozen of these at the side of the road  on the walk back down from the bee hives up on the mountain - they soon vanished before I could take a photograph.

Sierra Cabrera Larks

There are many Larks in the region - but I find distinguishing one type from another quite difficult.  I believe them to be either the Crested Lark or the Thekla Lark.

Brilliant Venus

Having been clouded out the night before, I ventured out at 0530 UT to glance at the sky. The sky was completely clear with the “searchlight” of Venus shining at magnitude -4.4 in the South East just above the stars  Beta 1 Scorpii called AcrabGraffius (Mag 2.5)  and  Delta Scorpii (mag 2.29)

The Great Bear, Ursa Major, was directly overhead with a brilliant Arcturus in Bootes at Magnitude -0.05  being identified  by the Mizar/Alkaid  “pointers”  in its tail. 

Continuing the curved Mizar/Alkaid/Arcturus pointers round to the South brought me to Saturn in Virgo  at Mag 0.7 -  less than 10 degrees from first magnitude Spica and about 20 degrees from reaching the Meridian.

Two artificial satellites passed over in the first minute that I was outside and a meteor flashed downwards towards the North West.

Guilt set in that I had missed an observing opportunity but that by the time I set up my telescope the sun would be approaching the horizon.

Galaxy Images from last night's run

NGC 2403

NGC 2366

NGC 2336

NGC 2276

NGC 598

IC 1666

PGC 5165

Orchestrate file development based on the RC3 Catalogue.

A cloudy night with no observing possible so far at least. I have been working on a list of galaxies to image based on the RC3 galaxy catalog.