50Mbps ISP upgrade.

I've just upgraded my ISP package to the Virgin 50Mbps. Seems to work OK.
The slinky black box is the cable modem, with the wireless N (300Mbps) router at the back and my 1Gbps switch sitting on top. The 1Gbps switch links to the PC in my observatory and allows me to Dameware and connect super fast from my study.

OT: Avebury Stones

We went to Avebury yesterday (just down the road for us) to take some pictures of the stones, here's a couple of them. The Moon's in one of them so it's not too off topic ;-)
Canon EOS 50D and 17-200mm lens.

Tycho 27th Dec 2009

Taken with 3 x TV Barlow and Baader IR filter, with SKYnyx 2-0m camera.
The seeing was average.

Mars 27th dec 2009

Went out last night to image Mars and managed to capture some stuff, although the seeing and conditions weren't up to much. There seems to be a lot of dew recently.

I went out on the 24th as well but had to stop because everything was totally dewed over. The scope, mount, filters and camera. It was getting a bit dangerous and I was scared that the computer might blow up!.

This image was taken with LRGB and 5 x Powermate with an extension tube, Mars is still really small :-(

Merry Christmas and happy new year readers & followers.

Thanks for looking.

Old Mars from 2007

Still sorting through some of my old Mars data and re-processing... to keep my hand in :-)

The night of the planets.

It's cold... but clear!!
Haven't been out for ages, so I thought I'd try and bag a few planets.
Boy I tell you what, Neptune is faint, had to pull out all the stops to image that. With the camera running at full gain & aperture, and that was at prime focus.
Coming a bit closer was Uranus, which I could a least image with a 2.5x Powermate and RGB filters.
And then we have Jupiter with a nice Callisto transit right in the middle ;-) Taken with LRGB filters, 5x Powermate & at prime focus. Very low on the horizon.

I was hoping to get a really good Mars image tonight, but this is all I could manage, and now it's started to snow! Grrr.

Boulder rolling in the Alpine Valley.

An amazing set of boulder tracks from the LROC in the Alpine Valley area of the Moon.

And the start of the Alpine Valley:-

Credit LROC

Funny........ 42.

Live Webcast From McMoon's

Watch this USTREAM video. These people are doing a fantastic job at recovering Lunar Orbiter images from tapes that are over 40 years old in an abandoned McDonald's restaurant.

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project Overview from SpaceRef on Vimeo.

Credit Moonviews

Mars movie from 2005

The seeing was better in the good old days!
I've been looking through some of my old videos and came across this small piece, that was taken with my 'point and shoot camera' at the eyepiece of the scope!
I don't even remember doing this, I must have been experimenting.

I've cropped the frame down from 640 x 480, but the size of the disk is about the same as the original.

27th Oct. 2005.

BTW: I only started imaging in Sept. 2005 ;-)

Horsehead & Flame nebula in IR.

This image, the first to be released publicly from VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope, shows the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion.
Slightly tweaked by me in CS4.

Credit ESO

The CFHT Legacy Survey Deep Field image.

Wow! if you thought the HST deep field image was amazing... look at this baby!
From the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep Field #1. Using the "Megacam", a giant 36-CCD camera mounted at prime focus on the 3.6 meter telescope on top of Mauna Kea.

Half a million galaxies!

Terapix Data Centre. (It's just like my server room at work)

Here is the larger version at half resolution of the original Megacam image, beware it's 10Mb.

Credit TERAPIX & CFHT

New Study Adds to Finding of Ancient Life Signs in Mars Meteorite.

They've been looking at that rock again:-

Looks good, doesn't it?

Here's the PDF:-
Origins of magnetite nanocrystals in Martian meteorite ALH84001

Hubble's Deepest View of Universe Unveils Never-Before-Seen Galaxies

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made the deepest image of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light.

Credit NASA
... and some nice music to go with it by Tyler Rix.

Langrenus to Petavius 3rd Dec 2009

Long Plato shadows.

From the 25th Nov 2009 session.

Mars 5th Dec 2009

It's early (in the morning), it's clear (in between the clouds)... and it's Mars!

5 x TV Powermate, RGB, SKYnyx 2-0M, C9.25.

The transparency along with the seeing was not very good, with gusty winds.

Below; enlarged 150% and colour tweaked.
You can just make out Elysium Mons the white smudge on the right close to the terminator.

Below is a CalSky ref.

5 minutes after taking this image, it started to rain... that's unusual!!