Astronomy Log » General

Ian King Advanced Imaging Day

Daniel — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 20:46:51 +0000

On Saturday 13th November I headed on over to a small village outside of Rugby to attend an Advanced CCD Imaging Course run by Ian King. I did not know what to expect when it came to the venue, all I knew was that it was in a village hall. Well usually village halls conjure up visions of a dark, old and very cold hall where the local scout troop meets up. But I was very pleasantly surprised to find a 3 year old village hall with all the latest mod cons.

The day began at 10.30am with a short introduction about what was happening in the course and then we went straight into learning about monochrome imaging with John Evans.

After a short tea break, John Evans then talked more about how he processed his monochrome images and the equipment that he uses. John was actually buying Hasselblad lenses from eBay and attaching them to QSI CCD cameras in order to take wide field images with Hydrogen Alpha filters.

Ian King then gave a talk on the latest active and alternative optics and how amateur astronomers can use them. Lunch followed the talk – which was included in the price of £35 per head for the day.
Ian then gave another talk on motorized focusers. It covered all the various models that can be purchased and what telescopes the motorized focusers fit. He also gave use a live motorized focuser demonstration by using Focus Max in Maxim DL which was connected to refractor with a motorized focuser which was pointing at an artificial star.

Nik Szymanek then took over and gave us two 1 hour lectures. His first talk included a discussion of RGB and LRGB imaging and processing and how he uses FITS Liberator. Nik took us all the way through his image processing regime, which was very insightful and really opened up for us the kind of ‘black box’ of imaging techniques the top astro photographers in their field use.

Nik’s second talk included more about processing narrowband imaging. This included processing Ha, OIII and SII images, as well as the Hubble palette and Bi-Colour image processing. He also covered the usage of the program Neat Image and other noise control programs and methods in image processing.

John Evans closed the day at 5.30pm with a short talk practices best avoided, how to progress your imaging and he also took questions from the group.

The day ran from 10.30am until 5.30pm, included lunch and all tea and coffees etc. and all for just £35 per head. We thought it was amazingly good value as we both learnt so much during the day about image processing.

Ian King runs these CCD imaging courses every now and again, and it is worth checking his website for more information. He also runs a beginners imaging day, and that is something I have now also booked.

Saturn Talk by Carolin Crawford

Daniel — Sun, 16 May 2010 20:01:58 +0000

I went to my local Ely Astro Club on Friday night, at the Ely Museum. I had heard Carolin talk before a couple of times at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy and so I knew her talks are really good.

Tonight the talk was about everything to do with the planet Saturn. Carolin started by talking about the planet itself, and I had forgotten it was a gas giant, and that most of what we see is atmosphere, with the actual planet itself being a lot smaller.

The rings were the next thing to be discussed, and it was surprising that the rings are only about 100m in height. Carolin then thoroughly covered details of all of Saturn’s moons.

As usual the slides and images from Cassini were brilliant, altogether a great talk.

If you want to attend the Ely Astro Club in Cambridgeshire, the meeting is on every 2nd Friday of the month at the back of the Ely Museum – The Old Gaol, Market Street, Ely, CB7 4LS. For more details have a look at the clubs website here: http://sites.google.com/site/elyastroclub/

UFO Lands on my Lawn

Daniel — Sat, 01 May 2010 09:27:40 +0000

I awoke on Sunday morning to find an unusual object on my lawn. A lot of people mistake these items in the sky for UFO. Of course they are chinese flying lanterns.

It’s the first one I have ever seen close-up, let alone one at it’s end of life state. But I was impressed by how bio-degradeable they are.

They are made up of a paper bag with not a metal circle at the base, but it’s actually a wooden made circle and the crosshair struts which hold the lighted area are made of string. I think the base of the area that you light is also made of cork.

After an hour or so it started to rain, and then the whole thing just broke down into a soggy mess.

If you are interested in trying one out, you can buy chinese lanterns from all over the web including Firebox, Play.com and Amazon

Great Orion Nebula Image

Daniel — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:56:58 +0000

I tried guiding again the other night for the first time in ages. I went back to imaging with the LX200 and guiding with my cheap refractor. I took this image of the Orion Nebula for 2.5mins with my Canon 450D and Astronomik CLS filter attached directly to the Meade LX200 10″ scope.

The initial image did not look that good, but once I had adjusted the separate colour levels and the brightness and contrast the image got a lot bigger and came alive.

It’s definitely one of my best so far, but I am sure I could do even better in the future.

Orion Nebula and Pleiades Images

Daniel — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:16:32 +0000

Managed to get out last night at about 9.30pm until Midnight. With so many great sights in the sky at the moment in January it’s hard to know what to try and image first.

M1 Crab Nebula, M45 Pleiades, Mars, M42 Orion Nebula, Horsehead Nebula etc.

At the moment I love connecting my Canon 450D up to my £100 refractor guide scope. I just find it so easy to use and focus compare to the LX200. The worst thing on the LX200 is not seeing where you are when focusing. I like to see the drawtube on the refractor.

I ended up taking the pleiades and the orion nebula with the 70mm refractor.

How To Make a Wooden Camera Mount

Daniel — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:23:17 +0000

Since getting my guiding telescope on top of my Meade LX200, I have run out of space to put other items around the telescope.

When you first get an LX200 telescope, you think there are lots of screws to use to add extras, but they soon get all used.

I currently have the Meade finder on the left hand side of the scope, the guiding scope in the middle on a rail and rings, on the right I have my Telrad.

The Telrad was originally stuck to the tube with some sticky padding although I wish I had never done this, so instead I drilled some holes into the Telrad base and screwed this into the tube. Because of all these items on the top of the scope, I then required weights on the underneath of the scope.

So, this means there is no space left for my DSLR camera, a bit of a pain if I want to do some normal widefield photography using my camera lenses. To get around this I decided to build a camera mount that would slot into the finder slot on the guiding telescope, which I was not using.

To do this I got myself a small piece of (1.5″ x 2″) wood which was about 2.5″ long.

I began by using a chisel to take out a line of wood where the finder mount would slide on, you could also do this with a screwdriver. The wood block will stay in place by using the screw on the finder mount on the telescope.

I then used the current metal camera mount I had and screwed this to the block of wood, between the metal camera mount and the piece of wood I did also add two rubber washers.

And that’s it, a simple way to add your camera onto your guiding scope.

Damian Peach No Show at FAS 2009

Daniel — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 15:52:36 +0000

Hi, Just returned from a day at the Cambridge Federation of Astronomical Societies Annual Convention. It was quite a nice and quiet day at the Cambridge campus. I arrived just after the Dr Hayley Gomez talk, to be told on the door that Damian Peach was ill and would not be presenting.

It was really strange, as I was thinking what would I do if he did not show up, on my way to Cambridge in the car. Would I just ask for my £8 back and go home and do something else? Because I had only turned out to see Damian, but I stayed anyway and had a quick look around the stalls and luckily Jerry from Loughton AS stood in and gave a good old fashioned slide presentation instead.

After lunch, Chris Lintott spoke on Galaxy Zoo, the same talk he gave at Herstmonceux, but luckily I did not attend that talk. After that I then came home without waiting for Martin Ree’s talk.

I hope that the FAS still publish Damian Peach’s talk on the web as I would still like to read it, but I was gutted he did not show up along with several other people.

Jessops Camera Voucher Codes

Daniel — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:07:30 +0000

I don’t usually publicise this sort of thing, but I have found some discount voucher codes for Jessops cameras online:

Use code CAMERAS8 – 8% off all compact digital cameras – Ends midnight 9th Oct

Use code NIKD300 – £30 off the Nikon D300 body – Ends midnight 2nd Oct

Use code NIKD300S – £50 off the Nikon D300S body – Ends midnight 2nd Oct

You can use these discount codes at Jessops now!

Herstmonceux Astronomy Festival 2009

Daniel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:05:10 +0000

This was my first visit to Herstmonceux on the south coast near Hastings. I had heard so much about it and remember seeing the adverts for it last year, but I was still unsure if I wanted to drive for two and a half hours to get to the site, but I’m glad I made the visit.

After coming off of the M25 you are then driving a long a lot of tree covered single carriageway roads which have a lot of twists and turns, but once I had arrived I made out the numerous observatory domes immediately with the campsite right in front of the science centre.

Luckily the weather was quite good, a little windy, but the telescopes on the Pulsar Optical tradestand did give visitors a view of the sun and the daytime moon.

The astronomy festival includes several tradestands from Ian King Imaging, Pulsar Optical, Telescope House and BBC Sky at Night Magazine as well as others. In a separate large tent was a collection of local astronomy societies as well as the SPA, which this year I actually joined for £12 for an annual membership which gets you a quarterly magazine, periodic newsletters and 5% discounts from astronomy retailers. They also provided me with a copy of the latest magazine, a pen and a red light pen once I joined.

The Herstmonceux site has 6 observatory domes, all were being used for various purposes during the day. One of the domes was being used for a very interesting exhibition of the history of the site underneath one of the telescopes. Another dome was the location for the talks during the day, again sitting underneath one of the telescopes. A third was open to viewing, the others were closed on the Saturday but open at other times during the weekend.

Other amenities at the site included a beer tent, with a very nice Harvey’s bitter. There was also a canteen and lots of activities around the science centre. Herstmonceux does seem a perfect place for a school trip with a shop at the entrance and lots of science related activities in the centre.

I arrived at about the time Chris Lintott was speaking on Galaxy Zoo, but I did buy 3 lecture tickets for the afternoon, priced at £2 each. All three talks were very good, including:

Stuart Clark – “What’s Wrong with the Sun”
Ian Ridpath – “Exploring the Moon”
Nik Szymanek – “Imaging the Deep Sky”

One thing I must say though, is Nik please amend your talk, as I have now seen that same talk three times! Twice in Cambridge I think, and I did see your talk at the Bedford Astroblast, but at that you did do a slightly different talk.

I know it is difficult to gauge your audience at these events, but I would personally appreciate a slightly more technical talk on how to take the images like yours, instead of just going through the images you have taken and your Tenerife trips.

At the end of the day there was a raffle prize draw and then extra activities during the evening session, but I instead decided to leave at about 6.30pm, but before I left I decided to walk down to the castle in order to get a few pictures of the very impressive castle and moat.

View all the photographs from Herstmonceux

Bought AE Pro Pier

Daniel — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:33:58 +0000

Last week I bidded on an Astro Engineering Pro Pier on eBay, luckily at the last minute I won the auction. I do find that these kinds of pier don’t appear that regularly on the 2nd hand market, as most people are using them, so I’m glad I got it.

The only problem was that the pier was 200 miles away in Chester. So on Sunday I made the journey over to Chester in 3hrs, really easy when you have a Sat Nav!

Gosh those piers are heavy, it took two of us to put it on the backseat of the car and my wife had to help me get it out of the car when I got back.

There was a slight bit of rust on the bottom, so I am considering getting some smooth Hammerite and painting it.

I also purchased a 2nd hand Meade Ultra Wedge a while ago so now I have the set up. The next thing is to look for a shed and start that observatory project, as I’m fed up with the weight of the LX200 10″ and the time it takes me to set up.

So I shall be posting regularly and keeping you up to date on my observatory project.