Sunset 4th June 2007

New Observatory roof!

My old roof had gone a bit warped last year in the sun, so I spent the other day re-making a new roof. This time with anti-reflecting materials... i.e., some hardboard that was laminated white from Wicks ;-)
My old roof was just the painted perspex, and it used to let a lot of heat in. Now the temperature has dropped by about 15-20 degrees :-)
I got the work done just in time, the other week we had a whole day of rain and the roof worked super.

Below is a picture of the scope in action.

I like this roof, I can have a section open at a time, depending on what I'm doing, therefore it's much more snug.

The Cardoon's getting big!

Cassini; Blue Expanse & Titan “T28” Mosaic.

Cassini infrared image from above the planet’s northern latitudes. Nearly the full expanse of the main rings is visible here -- from the C ring to the outer edge of the A ring (in the upper left corner).

Credit CICLOPS

Cassini mosaic of images taken during the T28 flyby in April 2007.

Credit CICLOPS

GREGOR 1.5 m solar telescope on Tenerife,

Oops... just spotted this on another website, from May 22th 2007 Astronomy Picture of the day.

Click on the image to play the quicktime mov, get it to run in loop mode. Shows the structure/dynamics of the Sun's surface really well.

Credit http://obs.kis.uni-freiburg.de/tenerife.htm

Supermassive Black Holes Spin at the Limits of Relativity

Amazing stuff!!!

Credit Universe Today

HiRISE update: Possible cave entrance on Mars

This image is from the HiRISE spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. This is an intriguing picture, the HiRise camera can see into most of the darkest shadows on Mars, but is unable to penetrate this.

Credit HiRISE

Moon images 23rd May 2007

Theophilus

Two image mosaic, imaged in colour.
The seeing was poor.

Images from 24th May Moon session

Rima-Hyginus.

Albategnius & Klein

The Apollo 11 landing site, just up and to the left of the bright crater at the bottom right.

Old Apollo landing sites.

Here's something interesting... I found an old National Geographic Moon map in a bookshop today, dated February 1969. On the map it had some markings for Apollo landing sites.
There is a larger version here.

Moon 24th May 2007

Here's another Moon taken with my Canon Powershot, handheld at a 32mm EP.
(I must get around to buying one of those clamp things one of these days)

Here is a slightly larger version.

And here is a higher contrast version, processed with Registax and wavelets.

Beware; large file sizes.

The Moon - first quater - 23rd May 2007

A quick snap, just before the clouds came rolling in ;-)

Saturn and the Moon 22nd May 2007

Toucam mosaic.

Composite of two images, handheld at 32mm EP, using my Canon Powershot.

New Moon 18th May 2007

9 image mosaic, larger version here.






















Canon Powershot handeld on 32mm EP.

Tvashtar Eruption.

Amazing image of an erupting volcano on Jupiter's moon Io.

From Wohba

Venus 14th May 2007

James Webb Space Telescope.

JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

Can't wait for this!

Image credit

Venus 7th May 2007

Venus 5th May

Bye Bye Saturn

Scopes back... game on.

My scope mount is back and fixed from David Hinds. New RA motor, fixed under warranty... now that makes a change.

Took this image of Venus last night. Venus is a tricky planet to image... I'm finding out.
I don't think the scope was properly cooled down either. But it's nice to be out again. :-)


These are good, Re-processed Venera images by Don P. Mitchell. Space.com
Two Perverse Questions about Venus, from Don's Blog.

Saturn tilt 2006 to 2007

Here's a small animation showing the change in Saturn's ring from 2006 to 2007.

Click on image to view.

Good seeing... but.. ummm... no mount for the scope!

I can't believe some of the seeing that we've had here recently. And my mount is still bust. :-(

New website.

I've quit NTLworld and gone with AOL, therefore I've created a new website on Google web.
Astromick, the website.

It's not finished yet, but is a work in progress.

Cassini images of Saturn

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
From kokogiak Flickr collection.

This is big... in fact, it doesn't get any bigger!

Universe Scale.

We're at the bottom, here is the original graph... beware, it's big!

Here's a nice interactive version on the Nikon?? site.

This is smart... solar system bodies larger than 200 miles

kokogiak

Astronomy Sketch of the Day.

Drawings and sketches of an astronomical nature. Just found this.

I love this one:-

Venus and Moon tonight - 19th April 2007

My scope mount is still in the DHinds workshop undergoing repairs :-(, I've never seen so many clear nights since it's been in dry dock... still my point and shoot is still working... so here's the Moon & Venus.

Uranus rings 'were seen in 1700s'

From BBC website. What a great story.

Montes and Archimedes - re-processed.

This would be a good idea.

http://www.lpod.org/?p=1025

Tycho: from the big pan of 28th March 2007

Here is Tycho with an extra section on the right that wasn't used in the big pan.
3 image mosaic, using 2.5x TV Powermate. Slightly increased in size.
I love that stream of ejector that comes out from Tycho at the 4 O'Clock position.

I want this guys observatory!

From the Cloudy Nights Forum:-

Hadley Rille from March 2007

4x Imagemate image. Nearly the same sun angle when the crew from Apollo 15 landed.
Hadley mountain is top of image, half in shadow with rille below. They landed in the middle, between the rille and the mountain.
You can also make out St. George crater, just on the corner of the rille as it takes a right turn going South.

Apollo 15 image of the top part of the rille taken from lunar orbit.

Pan taken from red arrow indicator position above, showing the view looking down the rille with Hadley mountain to the right.

Mount problem.

Hmmm... this is annoying, I found out last night that my Celestron mount has a problem (good seeing as well).

It has what is known in the trade as a 'run away slew' fault.

I've done some extensive work trying to sort out the problem, with the help of Cloudy Nights Forums, but I think I'm going to have to send it off for repair.

So it could be a little while until I'm back in action.

Looks like I'll have to go through all my old backups and do some processing.

Look at the state of this! Contrail city.

I went into my garden this morning and snapped this. I didn't realise that Swindon was under so many flight paths.

Saturn & moons composite 2nd March 2007

Amazing stuff.

Space shuttle makes emergency landing at Tri-Cities Regional Airport

A REMARKABLE FEAT

Americans Defeat Russians in First Space Quidditch Match