My Astronomy

 

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My Telescopes

My Main Telescope - C14 and Paramount ME

My new Paramount MyT and 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Telescope

MyT Hand Controller

My Meade 12 inch SCT on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

My 4 inch Meade Refractor with Sky Watcher Guidescope and ZWO camera on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mount with Canon 40D

 

My Solar setup using a DSLR and Mylar Filter on my ETX90

DSLR attached to ETX90. LiveView image of 2015 partial eclipse on Canon 40D

Astronomy Blog Index
About the Site

 I try to log my observing and related activities in a regular blog - sometimes there will be a delay but I usually catch up. An index of all my blogs is on the main menu at the top of the page with daily, weekly or monthly views. My Twitter feed is below. I am also interested in photograping wildlife when I can and there is a menu option above to look at some of my images. I try to keep the news feeds from relevant astronomical sources up to date and you will need to scroll down to find these.

The Celestron 14 is mounted on a Paramount ME that I have been using for about 10 years now - you can see that it is mounted on a tripod so is a portable set up. I still manage to transport it on my own and set it all up even though I have just turned 70! It will run for hours centering galaxies in the 12 minute field even when tripod mounted.

 

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Monday
May192014

Monday 19th May 2014 - Comet McNaught Animation from 2010

Comet McNaught Animation – the comet moved as shown through Cepheus in the early hours of Thursday 13th May 2010. (Click image to run) A series of 45 second images were taken and 23 of these were used to form the animation. (I used every 5th image from the sequence). The time of the first frame was 01:12 U.T. and the 23rd frame was 02:39 U.T. so the comet moved the distance shown (towards the North East) in 87 minutes. The scale of the square image is 11.4 minutes of arc on each side, giving an estimated 4 minutes of arc of movement of the comet giving a speed of 2.7 arc seconds per minute. I had to stop because the sky was brightening as it was actually beginning to get light! (3.39 am BST).