The first time I found the Sun it was by chance, as it’s difficult when you can’t actually look at the Sun or use the viewfinder to locate the Sun.

There are a few different ways to locate the sun, but the reason I really wrote this post is to tell you about the new piece of kit I got for my Birthday for about £20, which now makes finding the Sun really easy.

I have a Sun location file which you can upload to your telescope which allows you to have the location of the Sun in your LX200 handset, you can find it on my downloads page.

I also read somewhere that you can locate the Sun when the reflection of the telescope tripod on the ground is at it’s smallest.

But I purchased the Astro Engineering AC466 item which turns your viewfinder into a solar viewfinder.

All it does is fit over the end of your viewfinder and it’s then tightened via a thumbscrew. It has a hole in one end and cross-hairs at the other end.

All you then need to do is then align the white spot, which is the Sun coming through the small hole onto the cross-hairs and the Sun is centered! Brilliant and easy for around £20.

The AC466 solar finder fits directly over the front of the standard 50mm finder of the type used on Meade®, Celestron, Sky Watcher and many other telescopes.

Ken took us through all of the planets in the solar system, plus comets and asteroids. He gave explanations about each object in the solar system and backed up each item with some great full colour images in his presentation.

I picked up a new useful facts such as:

• The word “Planet” means wanderer in Greek.
• The Sun is 109 times the diameter of the Earth.
• Venera 9 the Russian probe to Venus in 1975 only lasted 23 minutes once it landed due to the harsh surface environment.
• Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the Solar System which is on Mars.
• There are dark “spokes” in Saturn’s rings - something that I did not know.

There was no trip out to any of the IOA telescopes tonight, a bit of a shame as it was a clear night, but instead we were joined by Green Witch the astronomy retailers from near Cambridge.  They bought a few items with them including Philip’s astronomy book, some binoculars and a Skywatcher telescope and some eyepieces.  They also handed out flyer’s offering us 5% off anything we purchased.

Green Witch set up a Celestron NexStar 5 telescope outside and they gave us the chance to view Mercury and the Moon. Everybody rushed outside after the talk so there was a queue to view Mercury, which everybody wanted to see.

Whilst the NexStar was being re-aligned on Mercury (the scope seemed to drift a lot, and not track that well) it was strange to see how similar the menu options were on the Celestron to the Meade, as I have never used or really seen a Celestron NexStar before. After two cups of coffee it was time to go home.

“Take one giant leap for mankind in our astronaut flight suit costumes! These high-quality flight suits are replicas of those worn by the astronauts and NASA flight crews, and feature chest and waist harness buckles, padded neck collar ring, and matching custom embroidered NASA vector cap”.

They look really good and they fit ages 4-8 years old. They cost £34.99 from The Science Museum store.

Buy a Kids Astronaut Costume here.

Peter started by talking about the Sun, and gave a great talk on every aspect of the Sun, including information that sunspots appear in magnetic pairs. Also that charged particles from the Sun give rise to the Northern and Southern lights. It was also interesting to hear that a supernova 10 billion years ago produced gold.

Peter then discussed in depth about the various stages of the moon, and why First Quarter is called what it is, and he pointed out all the Apollo landing sites on the Moon.  Peter also showed images of interesting areas of the Moon to look at, including Schroter’s Valley, Rupes Recta fault line and the Hadley Rille.

Peter handed out paper moon maps as well as sheets in order to allow you to construct your own sun dial (diptisch dial). It was very interesting to find out that the equation of time varies heavily between summer and winter, indicating that the Earth rotates at different speeds through out the year.

After the talk was over and we had tea, we ventured out to the Institute of Astronomy’s outside Observatory building which houses the library. The library room holds a number of very old and interesting astronomy and cosmology books together with the latest astronomy journals and magazines.

Whilst in the library room we managed to see slides taken between 1945 and 1985 by the Schmidt telescope. 

The Schmidt instrument was built in 1952 by Grubb-Parsons of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and replaced an older telescope in the existing dome, which had been made by T. Cooke & Sons Ltd. of London & York at the time of the move of the Solar Physics Observatory from South Kensington to Cambridge.

It is a `Classical Schmidt’ - the simplest and most efficient form of the ingenious wide-field camera invented in 1930 by Bernhard Schmidt of Hamburg Observatory. Light from the sky falls upon a 61 cm (24-inch) mirror with a spherical reflecting surface, at the bottom of the tube. It is reflected to a focus in the centre of the tube and half-way up it, 163 cm (64 inches) from the primary mirror. At the focus a photographic plate P 15 cm (6 inches) in diameter, which must be bent to fit a curved surface, records the star images in an area of sky 5 degrees in diameter. (The full Moon is half a degree in diameter.)

Below are some images I took with my mobile phone that were produced by the Schmidt Camera of Halley’s Comet in 1986 and another part of the cosmos.

Although the title of the book is astrophotography for the amateur, I did find this book to be quite in depth and it does include non-beginner topics such as exposure tables, and lots of mathematical equations. The book does not include many colour images, only in a section in the centre of the book.

Astrophotography for the amateur is broken down into four main sections; simple techniques, advanced techniques, photographic technology and digital imaging.

The first section takes you through photographing stars without a telescope, and how to shoot eclipses, the moon, comets and meteors.

The second section on advanced techniques takes you through performing prime focus photography, which is where you connect the camera directly to the telescope.  This section also discusses dealing with tracking, vibration, unsteady air, dew and more. This section finishes off detailing piggy backing your camera on your telescope, building and using a barn door tracker, using lenses, dealing with light pollution and how to get the best polar alignment.

The third section entitled photographic technology covers using traditional SLR cameras, there is no mention of digital cameras in this section.  This section does include everything you wanted to know about SLR cameras though, such as about film, various cameras and developing and processing your shots.

The final section is all about digital imaging, including file compression, how to manipulate colour, combining images, printing, smoothing, sharpening, working with histograms and all about CCD imaging.  The CCD section talks about how CCD works, aiming and focusing, exposures and focal lengths and more.

Astrophotography for the amateur also includes six appendices, such as exposure tables, plans for an electronic drive corrector and about photographic filters as well as an appendix on mathematical analysis of polar-axis misalignment.

So as you can tell there is a lot of content in this book, and it covers lots of areas of astrophotography and it packs in a lot of information. Overall a very good book on astrophotography, just a shame that DSLR cameras were not covered in any detail, perhaps in the next edition the SLR section will be changed to a DSLR section.

Buy Astrophotography for the Amateur Book

Tonights talk was entitled “Things that go bump in the night” by Brian Lister. Brian took us through the basics of the solar system with some very interesting images of various craters. This included the Mead crate on Venus which is 280km wide, as well we the 65km wide crater in Quebec and the 200km Hellas Basin crater on Mars. There were also images of the Abulfeda crater chains on the moon.

Brian also conducted a couple of experiments, one was to demonstrate how stars explode, by inflating and exploding a balloon in a cardboard box full of packing material. See the video of this below, the experiment did not quite work as expected, or as I expected anyway.

After the talk was over and we had our tea and biscuits we headed out to one of the telescopes on the Cambridge site to view Saturn.

We used the Northumberland Equatorial University Observatory which was built in 1838. “The Northumberland” is the only remaining large instrument from the early days of the University Observatory. For many years it was one of the world’s largest refracting telescopes.

The main structure was built by the engineers Ransomes of Ipswich, and the fine mechanical work by the London Instrument makers Troughton and Simms.

The polar axis frame and the telescope tube are made of Norwegian fir. The original Cauchoix lens is not used anymore and the optics are now up to date, with a 12 inch aperture visual achromatic doublet designed by Dr R.V. Willstrop of the Institute and it was constructed by the local firm A.E. Optics Ltd, installed to mark the 150th anniversary of the telescope.

The steel dome covering the telescope was made in 1932, which was a replacement for the original 96 year old wood structure. The telescope was last used in a regular Observatory research programme for the micrometrical measurement of double stars in the 1930s. Although the telescope is still used for visual observations by members of the University Astronomical Society and for public observing at the Institute of Astronomy during the winter months.  So it’s great to see it still being used after 150 years.

This image shows a view of the Earth from over the North Pole.

Apparently the number of objects orbiting the planet is increasing by two hundred per year on average.

The vast majority of these objects in orbit are satellites, which remain in orbit around the Earth once their lifespan is complete.

These computer-generated images have been released by the European Space Agency.  The images show the incredible impact of travelling to the stars, as the planet has more and more dead metal floating around us.

Does this mean that we may before long see satellites collide? Or more satellites having to be shot down if the satellite breaks down, as happened previously.

The binoculars being reviewed are from Telescope Planet and they are their own make, and are 15×70 (15x zoom with a 70mm lens diameter). They have a nice feel to them as they have a rubberised coating, which I am told is good for grip and reduces the formation of dew.

These binoculars are good for all types of viewing but really excel at astronomy, due to their 15x magnification and 70mm lens. It’s strange to think that even some telescopes have this size lens diameter.

The binoculars come in their own soft case and come with a binocular strap and cleaning cloth, as well as all eyepiece covers.

These 15×70 binoculars are not light, and I did find myself only being able to hold them for a few minutes before my arms got tired and I started to view star trails with my arms shaking.  I found the best way to hold these long binoculars was by holding the end of the binoculars with both hands, instead of up near the eyepiece and focuser.

The good thing is that they have a standard Universal Bush built into them beneath a protective screw on cover. I would thoroughly recommend purchasing a binocular L bracket (around £10) and putting them on a tripod to get the most out of these, perhaps something I should look at purchasing next.

I could then imagine myself just sitting in the garden on a chair with the binoculars on my tripod gazing up at the stars all night long when I did not want to setup my LX200 outdoors.

The binoculars come with a standard dioptre adjustment, and they allow you to change the distance between the eyepieces to match your pupil distance.

The focus adjuster was quite stiff and did appear to spring back a little, but it did keep focus and with a bit more use it should become easier to use.

Views of the moon were brilliant with a very fine crisp detail being provided of the lunar surface. I also managed to track satellites in the sky with these binoculars and I even managed to witness a shooting star through them, something that was not visible with the naked eye.

Overall, a very nice pair of binoculars with good magnification and viewing, and some really crisp views of the nights sky. They also have long eye relief (77m at 1,000m or 231ft at 1,000yds)

The only disadvantage is that they are a little heavy to hold, but these would excel when mounted on a tripod using an L type bracket.

Astronomy Binocular Specifications

• Model: TP 15 x 70 Astronomy Binoculars 
• Lens: 70mm
• Magnification: 15x
• Weight: 1.3kg
• Supplier: Telescope Planet
• Price (at 19th April 2008): £79

Buy these 15 x 70 Astronomy Binoculars from Telescope Planet.

Mother and baby boy came home from the hospital on Tuesday. Although he sleeps most of the time, I’m sure his eyes are getting ready for viewing the nights sky.

When I purchased my LX200 I did not purchase the official Meade power supply, but instead used a power supply which I already had.

For anybody that is looking for a general purpose (PSU) Power Supply Unit for their telescope then I can recommend this PSU currently being sold at Maplin, by the way mine is very similar to this one below which also came from Maplin and works really well.

Worldwide AC/DC Mains Adaptor ( Worldwide AC/DC PSU )

This PSU comes with 8 popular power supply tips and the benefits of this is that it also has attachments making it usable abroad, in case you take your telescope on holiday!

“The lead connecting the power supply to your appliance is 1.6 metres in length and mains cable from the power supply 1.7m. The mains cable is terminated in a moulded-on 2-pin European mains plug which can be fitted with any of the UK, USA and Australasian supplied mains plugs.

Dimensions: 133mm (L) x 68mm (W) x 37mm (H)

The high output current together with the range of popular power tips supplied means this power supply is suited to a multitude of uses. The power tips can be inserted either way around to provide a centre-positive or centre-negative polarity. Specifications:Input voltage:100-240Va”

Buy the Power Supply from Maplin here.

It’s always worth checking the Maplin website from time to time as they occasionally run special offers on this or similar power supply units.