Clouded out for the Geminids

Grrr....

More Outreach Activities

Its been a while since i last posted, but there have been a fair few successful outreach activities in the past few weeks.

September 29 saw an evening down in Chipping Sodbury, just north of Bristol. Although the weather was not looking optimistic, the clouds cleared and reasonable views of the Moon, Jupiter and M31 were had.

We had our open evenings at Bredon Cricket Club on the 13th and 20th of October. The 13th was again an evening of dodging round the clouds, but a few sights were seen. Ocotber 20th was clouded out completely, though - however we had Australian astronomer Bob Evans with us, so we were able to open up the clubhouse and Bob gave us a talk about Supernovae - did i mention that Bob has the world record for visual discoveries of supernovae (42). Photo shows, Bob, me (center), and Kevin Taylor (with his Light Bridge).

Last Saturday (24th Oct) - we had an astronomy evening at the WWT Slimbridge - again the weather did not look optimistic, but after the talk, the skies cleared a bit, and it was quite nice between the clouds - as the evening went on the cloud cover reduced. Again mostly the 'chocolate box' sights - the Moon, Jupiter, M31, M13, Albireo, and Mizar - could probably have found a few more things, but getting to grips with the EQ mount over the Dob takes a bit of getting used to.

So, will be nice to have a rest for a couple of weeks - though no doubt there are more things to do - BAA Journal Sky Notes and things for the Cotswold AS newsletter.

Clouded out for the Perseids

Clouded out on both 'maximum' nights for the Perseids. A real pity, but not perhaps really favourable this year with the bright Moon. Roll on October & November with the Orionids and Taurids...

Generally the weather has been poor this summer - can't really recall when last did any 'serious' observing :-(

Cardiff Astronomy Festival

A nice day out at the Cardiff Astronomy Festival last Saturday (25th July) hosted by the Cardiff Astronomical Society, at the Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

Three free talks, which sadly I was not able to attend due to manning the FAS stand.

There were a number of displays there - Telescope Planet had a big display of gear. Keiran McGrath brought alongs his SCS Astro gear. Paul Roche and the Faulkes team had an infrared camera that the kids found quite 'cool'. Martin Lunn had his Aurora Books along, and there were displays by Cardiff AS, Techniquest, and others that I don't completely recall...

However, I'm not sure it was quite the success of the previous festival held a couple of years back. Perhaps it was the time of year, and of course it was a rare sunny day.

Here are a few more pics:

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Last Saturday's CAS Meeting

A really interesting talk by Sam George about work he has been doing trying to detect extra-solar planets using low frequency radio astronomy by their auroral signatures.

Interesting to note that Jupiter's radio 'disk' is about 2.5 degrees, and should be observable from quite some distance off - so the same should apply to extra-solar planets round other stars.

Sadly the work did not provide any positive results - perhaps the frequencies being observed at were too high, or the levels were too low for detection - or both.

It sounds like a really interesting field of work. Sam having recently received his PhD is off to Calgary on a post-doc to do some more work on this - so will be interesting to get an update in a couple of years.

Cheltenham Science Festival - Engineering Apollo

Yesterday, an early start (for a Sunday morning), to see Chris Riley's talk - Engineering Apollo.

This was an excellent talk about the engineering behind the Apollo missions, and struck a real chord with me - remembering the events of nearly 40 years ago. I may have to dig out my copy of "The Dish" again...

A very bright sky after sunset last night too - but no NLC's apparently visible.

Cheltenham Science Festival - Star Party - Take 2

Last night saw our second star party evening at the Cheltenham Science Festival. Another really good turnout of people, and some difficult questions to answer !

Although early in the evening the weather looked promising, it actually turned out worse than the previous night. We were able to see the Moon through the cloud, but that was about it.

Much thanks to those that turned out this evening - Kevin Taylor (& Pauline) with 12" Dob, Peter Burgess with ETX, Tony Ireland with 5" Mak, Rob Davis (not sure what he had!), Steve Darnell - SGL member, with 16" Dob. And Rod Salisbury & Derek Maskell.

In the day I went to a couple of the lectures - one on Rutherford, which was very interesting, and on entitled Copernicus, but was really about the impact of arabic astronomy on western astronomy leading up the Copernicus. So not really not much about Copernicus himself. However, it was not a bad talk and Jim Al-Kalili (not sure thats spelt right) is always entertaining.

Cheltenham Science Festival - Star Party Last Night

Although the weather did not look promising, for those that toughed it out we were finally able to view the Moon & Saturn, and take in Albireo, and even M13.

A short talk to the assembled throng at 9:30 was followed by observing at 10:15 - the cloud thickened and thinned through the evening, but in the end it was quite a successful night.

Much thanks goes to Cotswold ASer's: Kevin Taylor (who brought his 12" Light Bridge), Peter Burgess (with his ETX), Paul Wheat (Binoculars and tripod), and Derek Maskell & Rod Salisbury.

Saturdays CAS meeting

A nice meeting in the 'new' hall. A very good turnout for Bob Mizon's talk about Comets and an update on the CfDS.
Nugget of the week from Bob - the root of the word "disaster" is from the Greek. Dis being bad and aster being star - so disaster is bad star! 'Not a lot of people know that'.

Cotswold AS AGM

Well last Saturday was the Cotswold AS AGM - like most AGMs not entirely enthralling. Elected as Coordinator for another (final!) year.

After the AGM Mark Gibbons gave a brief presentation about astrometry.net
It sounds like magic, but it could really work.
Of course it is not 'Real Astronomy' ...

Comet Lulin on March 1

Well finally got round to processing my comet lulin image. Stack of 10x8s exposures with a Canon 300d on a fixed tripod, and 50mm lens. Well you can see its an extended object, and it does have a greenish tinge. Not much more to say about it, though.

Another astronomy evening washout

Last night was the first of a series of Astronomy Evenings at Cheltenham College. Kicking off the series I gave a short talk about the things I have seen over the many years I have been interested in Astronomy. I was quite surprised by the number of bright 'new' comets in the list.
However, poor weather again prevented any observing. Cleared slightly later on in the night, but not really good for anything serious, so I went to bed instead.

Sunday 1st March - A clear night for once!

But unfortunately I was not able to do much observing. This was really the best night for a long time, but I had to prepare for my talk tonight. I did get out for a while to observe Comet Lulin, with binos and the Borg - a nice little comet ! Also took in the favourites - M45, M42, and Saturn. Was pleased to see some indication of the rings with the Borg at low power (17mm Hyperion, magnification of about 30x). This Hyperion eyepiece is really nice, and is now my favourite for viewing with the Borg 76ED.

Also managed a few shots of Lulin with the Canon. The comet is visible in the raw frames, but will need to do some processing... not sure when I will get the time to do that.

Saturday evening, astronomy night at Slimbridge

Aside from the weather which really made any visual observing impossible, the astronomy evening at WWT Slimbridge went really well, with a big crowd. Some disappointment not be able to see anything, but Martin gave a very nice talk about basic observing, and I followed up with some Sky Notes.

There were actually some stars visible through clear patches in the sky, but the sky never really cleared enough to be worth getting the telescopes out. However, the crescent moon burned through from time to time, and some stars were visible enough to give some people an idea of what was where with the laser pointer.

Clouded out again

Another 'clouded out' observing evening last night. Not a very good run of nights so far in 2009. Medium term forecast suggests Sunday may be promising - will need to keep fingers, etc. crossed.

Saturday Night - Comet Lulin

Saturday night was a very frustrating one. Popping out and in all the evening, hoping the clouds would part sufficiently to be able to see Comet Lulin. Eventually around 11:15 there was a clear enough patch to see Saturn, and then using binoculars, and dropping down and left, the comet was quite obvious. Not the best view, but a successful observation. Hoping for a few more clear gaps over the next few days. Maybe will try for a pic...

Last nights observing evening + Horizon

Well last nights observing evening was not literally a wash-out, but 10/10ths cloud cover meant the evening was scrubbed.

However, this did mean it was possible to catch Horizon on BBC 2. Although presented by Brian Cox, this was a pretty interesting programme about nuclear fusion, current experiments and the future commercialisation. Worth a watch on iPlayer if you missed it.

Observing evening tonight

Weather looking iffy for tonights observing evening. Forecast looks to be cloudy with chance of rain.

Last saturdays Cotswold AS meeting

Was a good one. A nice talk by Nick Hewitt about Planetary Nebulae. Nice to see him covering the later stages of stellar evolution that leads up to planetary nebulae creation, and its amazing how short lived PNe are. An interesting project, perhaps, to search out some proto-planetaries too - possibly a bit faint for visual work.

Sadly no contributions for the second half of the meeting. I will have to prep something for the next meeting....

Xephem

Whilst not going to Astrofest, I finally managed to get X-Windows on Cygwin to run (was caused by a port conflict on port 6000 which is the X-server default port), and then was able to compile and run the free version of XEphem. One apparently minor problem with linking the exe, the -lXp.dll gave a 'could not be found' error message. Couldn't find any helpful hints googling, or on the XEphem yahoo group, so I removed the lib and then it seemed to link o.k. And seems to run o.k.
Taking a while to get back into the way of using Xwindows and Twm - but so far is looking good. Next job, to start and develop some plots for comet Lulin.

Astrofest 2009 - did not attend

Sadly I chickened out of the drive down to London for Astrofest last weekend. Many thanks to John and Dave who helped out with the FAS stand. Well it probably saved me a lot of money, and there will always be 2010!

Astrofest tomorrow ?

Astrofest tomorrow - not sure if I will make it or not, the roads have been dire with the snow and ice. Though maybe if there is a bit of a thaw, and if it doesn't get too cold overnight, may be able to drive down. Supposed to be on the FAS Stand all day, but expect will get some time to mosey around.