Category Archives: Equipment

20" project

As mentioned in my previous post, I have the opportunity to buy a 20″ Dob from someone on the mainland. He transferred the optics to a permanently-mounted equatorial scope and now has the empty scope for sale. All being well, I am going to buy this from him and get a new mirror to fit it and the cost of the entire project should be less than ordering a brand-new, scratch-built custom scope. The original mirror was an f/3.7, so I am either going to have to get a 20″ f/3.7 mirror made, which will be slightly pricier than a standard f/4, or get an f/4 and alter the scope by adding longer truss poles, new secondary holder, changing the position of the attachment blocks, and so on, but by the time I’ve done all that, I may as well spend the extra couple of hundred quid on an f/3.7.
I’ll need a Paracorr as the coma will be bad with such a fast mirror, but I can live with that, it’ll be worth it to have large aperture! But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves – the one item of bad news is that I have to save up first. It’ll take me about three months to save for the scope and then at least 8 to save for a mirror so this won’t be up and running for the best part of a year yet, unless I get lucky in the wallet department. But…how exciting! I’ve wanted a large scope ever since I became a deep sky observer the best part of 20 years ago, so this will be an ambition come true.

I’m planning to spend the weekend putting the finishing touches to the shed. Then I need to put the castors on my 12″ scope’s base so I can roll it in and out then we’re in business!

There’s no sign of the weather clearing up. It’s typical unsettled English summer weather. I hope it clears up in August, so I can catch the Sagittarius and Ophiuchus summer goodies before they vanish into the twilight.

Oh, and I got my monitor back on Monday. Only it’s not my monitor, it’s a replacement, which is good as it’s a brand-new machine and unlikely to go wrong – I hope. At least PC World eventually got it sorted for me after first trying to fob me off with this ‘You have a contract with the manufacturer, not us’ crap – they need to read the Sale of Goods Act, especially this bit. Stuff less than a year old should not break, but it does occasionally and the retailer has a responsibility, under the Act, to refund, repair or replace the item and not give the customer the flick with some stupid excuse about ‘extended warranties’.
The sketches, I am pleased to say, look fine.

‘Observashed’

The new shed is now in place. We started putting it up yesterday and after six hours, a lot of swearing and a few ‘teddies chucked out of prams’ (patience is not one of my strong points; fortunately the neighbours appeared to be out and thus, hopefully, did not hear an ‘f-word-every-other-word’ rant at one stage in the proceedings!) it was just about finished with only a few finishing touches to be added. I did make a couple of cock ups but it seems largely straight, secure and solid so I don’t think it’ll blow down in a gale. It also appears to keep the rain out. There was a thundery downpour this morning and, apart from rain coming in the windows as I hadn’t installed them, it looked to be bone dry with the sole exception of one side which let in a few drops in at floor level. I’ll get some sealant and sort that out. The real test will come when the autumn and winter set in and we get howling gales and driving rain. I am going to leave it for a while before I put my scope in it to see how it fares, that’ll let me see what needs doing to keep any weather out. I went to a party last night and a friend told me that any flat pack assemble-it-yourself item comes with free swear words, the amount of which directly correlates to the nature of the item and the annoyance factor of putting it up; i.e. kitchen units come with 100 free swear words, a shed like mine comes with about 100,000 while a greenhouse comes with several million!
I put the windows in this afternoon, unlike the rest of the thing there were no annoying mini-crises to put up with!

I have not done any serious observing for a while, apart from a couple of mini-sessions with the refractor on a couple of evenings two weeks back. This is because the weather is so highly variable at the moment and evenings which start off clear are not staying that way. We are having a very unsettled summer, apart from a hot couple of weeks in late June/early July. I did manage to sketch a couple of Messiers, just to keep my hand in, while cloud-dodging.

M8, the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius. 3.5″ refractor at 36x

M27, the Dumbell Nebula in Vulpecula. 3.5″ refractor at 36x.

I have no idea what these sketches look like on most people’s monitors. My 20″ widescreen monitor went bang just over a week ago so I took it back to PC World (who did not want to know, despite the monitor being well under a year old, so I had to resort to playing the arsey customer which, to be honest, I hate doing. I’ve worked in retail myself – it sucks) and am waiting for the repaired monitor or a replacement. In the meantime I am using an elderly borrowed 17″ square matte flat screen job which isn’t that good for picture editing or viewing. The sketches look appalling on this one, I am hoping that they look a lot better elsewhere!

I also aimed my 400mm Canon telephoto lens at the Moon the other evening – yes, you did read that right. The Moon. Not only that, it meant I was doing some astronomical imaging – the shame. ;-D
Here’s the result of that. I was quite pleased with it, especially as I was handholding the lens at 400 ISO and using a shutter speed of 1/320 sec at f/5.6. I sent a copy to my friend, the well-known author and astro-imager Robert Reeves, who sent me some feedback.
No, I am not going to become an imager, but I do like taking the odd shot now and then. It shows how desperate one can get to do something astronomical!

I have decided that I won’t mess around getting a 16″ Lightbridge. I do want a decent scope of 18 or 20 inches, so I will carry on saving and get a custom-built, quality Dob. One route, and one that I am currently investigating, is to buy an existing Dob chassis and get the optics to fit. I know someone who has a lovely one (a 20″) for sale, minus the optics. However, I’d need an f/3.7 mirror and secondary to fit it as buying a more common f/4 or f/5 would involve a bit of a rebuild, something I don’t want to get into. If I can’t easily get hold of an f/3.7 mirror for a reasonable price (i.e. comparable to that of an f/4) then I’ll probably revert back to Plan A, which is buy a custom-made dob.

From the notebooks 2 – Obscure Planetaries from Australia

Here are some more sketches from that 1997 trip Down Under. These are some of the more obscure planetary nebulae I observed on that trip. All of these sketches were made at the 1997 Queensland Astrofest at Lions Camp Duckadang, Linville, Queensland on 25/26th and 26/27th August 1997. The scope I used was a 20 inch Dobsonian.

Henize 2-111, Centaurus

Henize 2-141, Norma

Henize 2-207, Ara

Longmore 16, Scorpius

Menzel 1 (PK 322-2.1), Norma


Shapley 1 (PK 329+02.1), Norma

 

PK 322-5.1, Triangulum Australe

The observatory is still not up yet. That is because our weather has gone completely to pot and is now more like that of October than it is of mid-July. There are gale-force winds, low temperatures (17C/63F) and rain. Plenty of rain. This will please the miserable buggers who have moaned about the heat and lack of rain and who have now got their own way but I hate this crap and want summer back as soon as possible. Apart from anything else, there’s no observing to be had but even before the weather completely broke up we’d been stuck in a cycle of clear afternoons and cloudy nights for a couple of weeks.

I might have to rethink getting a big scope. I have not yet been able to find a permanent full-time job and the agency work has completely dried up, although I have some part-time seasonal work delivering tourist guides. I have an interview in two weeks’ time for a part-time data-entry job which offers just over £6000 ($9000) and if I get that, which won’t be enough on its own, I could at least combine it with the seasonal work. Unfortunately this seasonal job only lasts for the duration of the holiday season before dropping back to a few hours a week.
A 16″ Meade Lightbridge, at +/- £1800 is not beyond my financial reach on part-time/low wages but a custom-built scope at just over £3100 is, as things stand. Maybe I should just get a LB and then go for a custom-built David Lukehurst Dob when/if my work and financial situation improves? LB’s aren’t bad scopes with a bit of tweaking, although their mirror boxes are incredibly heavy for the size of the scope. Hopefully, though, by the time I have managed to put away £1.8K things might have improved.

Two massive boxes

…arrived this afternoon. They contain the 8ft x 6ft shed that will be the new home for my scopes. I got the Argos delivery blokes to dump the boxes on the patio, figuring it would be something of a mickey-take to ask them to take the boxes up to the top of the garden! So, over the weekend (although, that depends on what happens as my sister has invited herself and her kids down for the weekend which will no doubt chuck a spanner into these particular plans. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always a pleasure to see them but I would have liked to get this done), me and my aunt will have to – somehow – get these huge boxes up the garden so we can put the shed up. In the meantime, I have a slightly larger than 8ft by 6ft hole to dig one evening and blocks to put in.
I just hope this plan is successful…


Stuff

Hopefully the new observatory/shed will arrive on Wednesday afternoon. It means I have to leave work early as I’ve got to sign for the thing, but as I am doing delivery driving for the summer and can almost work to my own timetable it isn’t a problem. I’ll be able to dig out a 8 foot by 6 foot hole in the ground and lay the blocks one evening this week and then put the shed up this coming weekend.
I also need to buy some casters for the scope base so I can roll it out onto the grass when I want to observe. I have found some with 4-inch wheels that should do the trick. These are available online and cost about £25 plus postage so I’ll send off for them when I have a bit more cash. They will definitely make life easier, as will having the shed, because carrying the scope out of the house every time I want to observe is a pain in the neck, although I put up with it rather than not observe. Something else I need to do is buy a small electric greenhouse heater and attach it to a solar panel, to keep moisture away from the optics.
I’ll be posting photos as things progress.

After today, the 28th, the sunsets start to get earlier. In a few weeks the sky will be darker and I can get outside at a more reasonable time. The late hours of darkness, between 0030 and 0300, are as much a pain as the fact it does not get quite properly dark – dark enough for bright objects but not for faint ones.

My old Windows XP laptop, which died not long back, has been resurrected by a friend who is an electrician and a computer repairer. The thing had originally been wrecked by malware but I managed to get rid of it, reformat the drive and restore it, only for the power supply to give out. I bought a Windows 7 desktop and, while it’s a good machine, it couldn’t run my website creating software and a few other things due to Windows 7’s totally crap non-compatability with some older software (another way of screwing money from people, no doubt), meaning I had to go out and buy new, not very good, software which is not as flexible and with an ftp. client which has an irritating habit of uploading the entire site everytime I do an update, instead of just the updated file, despite me selecting the ‘upload only modified files’ option. Now the XP machine is working again, I am going to rebuild my website.

On an unrelated note, here’s a gem I saw on the net following our (England’s) dismal, pathetic and gutless exit from the football World Cup after an abject campaign ended in humiliation at the hands of Germany: “The Met Office has issued a weather warning as a shower of shit is heading this way from South Africa“. Harsh but fair, I think. Gave me a laugh anyway, which is just as well after yesterday’s disappointments! 🙂

Comet, etc

England v Algeria in the World Cup is on ITV1 and the match is so good, I am typing this. Yes, it is terrible and England are embarrassingly woeful. It’s a pity that assistant coach David Beckham can’t go on, even in his nicely cut suit he’d play better than this lot. In fact my grandmother would do better than Rooney et al, and she’s been dead for nine years.

I did manage to get out and observe Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught the other night, I set my alarm for 0200 and was actually able to get out of bed to do so. I can’t usually get up early to go observing, but as this comet is only around for a short while, I made myself get up. I had to walk up the footpath in front of the house to get clear of the trees blocking the view of Perseus (which is why I used my 8×42 binoculars and not a telescope) which the comet is currently passing through. It took me a while to see it as the sky was not that dark (it is June at 50 degrees north, after all), there was a lot of murk in the sky and, hence, a lot of skyglow. The comet was faint and round and I could not see the tail.

My car passed its MOT with no problems today, although yesterday I noticed a judder in the clutch. However this type of electronically-controlled manual gearbox called a ‘Sensodrive’ is known for clutch judder, so I am hoping it is not a problem. Anyway, the car not needing anything done to it means I can begin saving for the 18″ Dob I want to get. I have two months worth of work starting on the 24th, although it won’t be anywhere near enough to save up all the nearly £3000 needed, it’ll be a start. Providing work keeps coming I should be able to save the money in 6-7 months.
I had been doing a separate blog for the Herschel 400 project, but I have decided to bin it and just put the posts here, after all I am duplicating 99% of the stuff and that’s pretty pointless, so I am just going to keep it all on this one.

New ‘observatory’ coming soon!

My aunt is letting me use the top section of the garden for a small observatory. This ‘observatory’ is actually going to be a shed, in which I’ll store my scopes, a small table for charts, a folding chair, a basket for my dog to curl up in as she always accompanies me when I observe, and a few other bits and pieces. Whenever I want to observe, I can then just wheel my 12″ scope out, rather than do what I do now which is carry the scope from my room, though the house and up the garden, which takes at least ten minutes and, given the weight and sheer bloody awkwardness of both the tube and the base, is a bit of a pain to do every time. I just put up with it as I want to observe, so I have to do the lifting and carrying but it really was a nuisance and as I am now getting knee pain a lot I needed to find an alternative way of doing things. I had bought a sack truck (hand trolley to my US friends) from B&Q to move the OTA with, but the tyres have gone flat, due to no inner tube and the inevitable punctures, so it’s now no use as it causes too much jolting.

This is where the observatory is going to be put. The bricks at the back of the picture are going to form the base.

I plan to fit wheels, such as appliance wheels (of the sort used to move fridges and washing machines, etc), or buy a garden trolley and convert it into a scope dolly, to the base which will definitely make life easier. But I have to ensure I buy wheels, or a trolley, with some sort of brakes on or it’ll be moving all over the place when I am observing – no use whatsoever!
I am also going to need some sort of dew control, such as a lightbulb or low watt heater, which I can run off a car battery charged by a solar panel. I have had one mirror’s coatings wrecked by condensation and mould, which will cost me around £135 to get resilvered and I don’t want a repeat of that!
The top of the garden is a bit too close to the neighbours for my liking (a couple of houses; we live across a footpath from them) and one house has a couple of kids who climb the trees and can overlook the garden, and I don’t like that, but the observatory won’t be directly beneath that tree. However, the hedge, and fence beyond that, plus the oak trees in the neighbours’ gardens, are high enough that there’ll be no significant light tresspass from any houses, even in winter because the hedge is a mixture of evergreen and native plants. The top of the garden also has good views of the south and south east, plus I can catch stuff rising in the east (over the house but you can’t have everything – and the garden’s huge, so the house is actually not much of a hindrance and the light trespass from it won’t be as significant as it is now, when I observe from the patio). There is a large tree obscuring part of the south east sky but the harsh winter this year killed it and it is due to be cut down at some point, when we can find an alternative place to hang the bird feeders and fix one end of the washing line.
Potential theft is a concern but I will make the shed as thief-proof as humanly possible and I am not going to keep anything of any value in there, beyond the telescopes – eyepieces, etc, will be stored in the house. I currently use a cheap scope and, frankly, it and the others are not worth the effort of pinching them. Besides, any would-be thieves will have to carry an insanely heavy instrument a long way down a large garden and get past three dogs who do not tolerate strangers or intruders.
The shed is ordered and should turn up early next month and we can get it put together while the weather is good.

The Observing Vest

While at TSP, I came across a product that is so good that I can’t believe that no one has invented it before – the Hooded Observing Vest. This is a large vest, so it fits over outer clothing and has pockets for eyepieces, torch, pens, pencils, filters and other bits ‘n’ pieces necessary for an observing session. Best of all, it has an oversized monk’s hood that can be used in the same way as a black-out cloth to put over your head to block out stray light when observing faint galaxies or nebulae. This can gain you a full magnitude and beats a towel or t-shirt as it’s attached to you so you don’t have to keep searching for it in the dark. The product only has one down side and that is, if you take it off to put another layer on, it can be awkward to put back on again, but that’s a minor detail.

Alvin Huey was wearing one of these on the Monday evening and I was like ‘what on earth’s that?’ and he invited me to try it. I was impressed at the convenience of it and, as soon as one became available, via Jimi Lowrey, I bought it for the bargain sum of $60 and used it for the rest of my time at TSP.

These vests are made by Dragan and Anja Nikin and for more about them, here’s the blurb on Dragan’s website, where you can order one. I am not one for hype or overt advertising, but these vests really are pretty brilliant.

Home Again

After an uneventful flight (during which I watched Avatar, an excellent film and better than I expected) and bus trip home from Heathrow to Portsmouth, then a ferry ride to the Island, I arrived home on Thursday afternoon. I am pleased to say that my astro-purchases also made it home in one piece. I had been concerned for my new Telrad dew shield, as that’s made of brittle plastic but, thanks to a small cake tin and clean underware acting as makeshift bubble wrap, that also made it home intact. It’s now been united with my Telrad and it will certainly make life easier on those humid, dewy nights.

I have hundreds of photos to sort out, process and upload and I’ll put some here and also on my Flickr page. I can’t do much at the moment as I have got a massive infection of my upper arm (again) and it hurts to sit up or do anything for too long but, hopefully, I’ll be able to get them done by the start of the new week. I am just grateful this infection didn’t happen last week.

I have come home to nice warm weather and clear skies but the moon’s now in the way so there’ll be no observing, although with this infection I can’t do much anyway. Annoying, really, as I’m looking forward to trying out my new purchases such as the dew shield and the twist-lock adapter.

TSP Day 5 – Jets and Quasars

It was a quiet day spent around and about on Friday. As mentioned in my previous post, I went to Indian Lodge State Park and did some birding (and, I hope, I got some decent photos; I’d brought my 400mm Canon telephoto to the US as it’s my birding lens and produces excellent results) and in the afternoon, I visited fellow Brit’s Keith and Jan Venables for their 4.30pm Happy Hour which is now a TSP institution. Up to 15 people gather at their bunkhouse for beer (or wine), pretzels and chat. I can’t always make it, but it’s a very civilised way to spend an hour on a TSP afternoon, chatting, drinking and talking astronomy.

I had made a promise to myself not to spend much money this year but guess what? Yep, entirely predictably I broke that promise and exceeded my self-imposed budget by at least $200. But, as I told myself, that prevents me being royally ripped off when I come to change US dollars back into Her Britannic Maj’s British Pounds. If I had spent them on things I want here in the States, then I am not going to be shafted at the airport or the travel agent back home.
I did buy an Arcturus Telrad dew shield from Camera Concepts – I’d been looking for one for ages in the UK and not found a decent one at a non-scandalous price until TSP, plus I bagged an Antares 2-inch to 1.25 inch eyepiece adapter which, instead of having a screw to hold the eyepiece securely, twists closed. It’s much more secure and there’s no annoying little screw to fall out and get lost, so it will be an improvement on the one I currently use.
I also bought The Night Sky Observers’ Guide Volume Three – The Southern Skies from Bob Kepple, one of the authors, plus the Digitised Sky Survey on CD Rom for $45. Both were bargains and the book was $34 which is much better than the outrageous prices charged in the UK – Amazon UK wanted a ridiculous 70 quid for a copy! I obviously won’t get much of an opportunity to use it in back in the UK, but I wanted it to join my Volumes 1 and 2 and I will be taking it on my next trip to the Southern Hemisphere, whenever that will be. As for the DSS I nearly bought a copy for a hundred quid from someone at the IW Star Party earlier this year but decided against it due to the price. I also bought a Lumicon 2-inch UHC filter – I already have 1.25 inch filters but now I also have 2-inch eyepieces in my collection and using 1.25 filters with these is a pain and the filters inevitably get dropped, with the risk of loss or damage. I can also screw the 2-inch filter into the Antares adapter, which means I don’t have to swap the filter between eyepieces when viewing nebulae.
I am hoping I get the dew shield home in once piece as it’s made of a fairly brittle plastic and it won’t take much to crack or snap it. I have borrowed a round cake tin and wrapped the dew shield up in socks and – clean! – underwear and placed it in the tin. It doesn’t move around so hopefully the combination of underwear and socks acting as bubble-wrap and the metal cake tin will prevent an annoying breakage.

I also bought Turn Left At Orion – I don’t need it, it’s a beginner’s book and I am not a beginner and haven’t been a beginner since the early 1990’s, but I wanted it for my collection and, besides, Dan and Brother Guy were signing copies. Plus, I also bought Brother Guy’s autobiography Brother Astronomer to read on the plane home. I am interested to see how he reconciles his Catholic beliefs with science, especially as I am an ex-Roman Catholic myself. I say ‘ex’ as I was brought up in the Church but I am a non-believer – I believe in science and not any mythical omnipotent being. I didn’t tell Brother Guy that though, when he was signing my book, that would have been rude and I would hate to cause offence!

Friday night, I was invited back up to Jimi’s 48 inch for some more deepest of deep sky observing so, once the talk (a hilarious account of the making of Turn Left At Orion by Brother Guy Consolmagno – who is a Jesuit priest and also a professional astronomer at the Vatican Observatory – and Dan Davis; Brother Guy, especially, would have been a great stand up comedian) and the Great Texas Giveaway were done – as usual I won the square root of bugger all! – we headed up the hill to Jimi’s place.
By the time we arrived, it was dark and the skies looked very promising indeed but, unfortunately, this state of affairs did not last long as fog and clouds built up. The humidity was already up to 63% and by the end of the session it had got up to 78%, just like observing from home!
We didn’t do much, but we did see Hickson 50, an optical jet in IC1182 (the jet has a designation in Larry Mitchell’s MAC catalogue, MAC 1605-1747B, as it does look like a tiny galaxy) and an uncharted lensed quasar in Lynx. As the clouds and fog were becoming a serious PITA, we called it a night and headed back to the house for a sandwich, beer and astronomy talk. I again crashed on Jimi’s sofa and later in the morning, Alvin and I headed back to the Ranch.