Astronomy Log

After purchasing my Meade DSI Pro from eBay (see this post about it), I was itching to give it a go. As the moon was out, it seemed the perfect object to use in order to ‘cut my teeth’ on the DSI Pro, especially as I do not have any CCD filters to use yet in order to get colour images.

I was quite amazed at the quality of the images of the moon, and somewhat better than a Philips SPC900 web cam. I did not have the LX200 telescope driven by the Autosuite program, I just used the Autosuite imaging program on it’s own, with the moon preset selected.

Not too bad for my first use, I have since read the PDF manuals, but I think it is really practice makes perfect with the DSI Pro. I think I may also need a f3.3 focal reducer as the f6 focal reducer I have does not quite cut it. I also need the Meade CCD filters, although I think I will try it with normal 1.25″ colour filters first and see what I get.

This version of the Mars Observer’s Guide was published in 2003.  It is one of the pocket sized Philip’s books which retails at under £10.

Mars Observer’s Guide contains a lot of full colour pictures and diagrams all of which are very high quality images. The book begins by looking at the main features of Mars, Martian geology and the seasons of Mars.

There is then a chapter on telescope equipment that can be used to view Mars. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of refractors, reflectors and catadioptrics.  The rest of the chapter then takes a look at eyepieces, filters and mounts.

There is a small section about the photography of Mars and CCD imaging. A larger section is dedicated to sketching Mars, with lots of help and advice on drawing Mars.

The following three chapters cover what’s happening at Mars in 2003, 2005 and 2007-08, such as highlights of the year, and apparition timetables.  Obviously this book is re-published every few years in order to bring it up to date, so make sure you purchase the latest copy so you have information on Mars to last you the next few years.

At the end of the book there is information about the history of Mars and the influential observers of Mars.  There is then information on all of the space missions to Mars including satellites and Mars landers.

Overall the Mars Observer’s Guide is a useful pocket guide which includes a great deal of useful information about the red planet for education and observers.

The Mars Observers Guide Book can be purchased from Amazon

Since purchasing a Solar filter and mask, together with a lot of information about Mercury being recently published, I wanted to know when the next transits of the Sun occur, so I can view them. Well it turns out the first one is not until 2012.

As seen from Earth, only transits of the inner planets Mercury and Venus are possible. Planetary transits are far more rare than eclipses of the Sun by the Moon. On the average, there are 13 transits of Mercury each century.

So for reference here are the dates for the next transits of Mercury and Venus:

Transits of Mercury Dates

 * distance (arc-seconds) between the centers of the Sun and Mercury

Transits of Venus Dates

I was looking forward to this time of year and having Saturn back in view.  I started my astronomy hobby in May, and at that point I did get some views of Saturn through my Bresser 130N telescope, but was not really able to image it with a manual scope.

The evening was not great for seeing and I did image Saturn too early on in the evening, when it was low in the sky, which then gives you atmospheric turbulence.

The images were taken using the Philips SPC900 web cam, I can’t remember the exact webcam settings, but it worked out I took nearly 2,000 frames or more to put into Registax 4.

Although the images are not award winners, not too bad for my first real images of Saturn, hopefully these will get better throughout the year and even better when I get used to imaging with the Meade DSI.

Apologies to anyone who visited in the last hour (between 2.30pm - 3.30pm) and got a blank white page. 

I moved the astronomy blog from a shared hosting account to a new web server.  Hopefully everything should be fully working as usual, if not, then there may be the odd bug to iron out.

I know this may be a bit late, but as soon I knew about the Asteroid TU24 passing the earth, I went into Starry Night Pro to try and find the asteroid, but it was not in the program, so I went to Meade Autostar Suite and again I could not find the TU24 asteroid in the library.

So whilst searching around the internet I found a way to add the TU24 co-ordinates to Stellarium, so you can locate the asteroid.

Otherwise if you don’t want to install Stellarium (which is free!), take a look at this star map of where to look in the sky, click on it to see the enlarged version.

This map will show you the position of TU24 during the days of 29th and 30th January 2008, and so should help you find out where to look in the sky, if we get a chance to see it, with all this cloud and rain about at the moment.

1. Install Stellarium

2. Locate the file called ssystem.ini, in Microsoft Windows this is located in the folder C:\Program Files\Stellarium\data. Open the file in a text file editor, such as Notepad, and at the end of the file add the following lines of code:

[2007 TU24]
name = 2007 TU24
parent = Sun
radius = 0.124
oblateness = 0.0
albedo = 0.113
lighting = true
sidereal_period = 1040.25
halo = true
color = 1.0,1.0,1.0
tex_halo = star16×16.png
tex_map = nomap.png
coord_func = comet_orbit
orbit_Epoch = 2454200.5
orbit_MeanAnomaly = 265.6255185
orbit_SemiMajorAxis = 2.00968916
orbit_Eccentricity = 0.528994467
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 333.5938528
orbit_AscendingNode = 127.1794738
orbit_Inclination = 5.8015979

3. Save the file

4. Start Stellarium, use the search facility (magnifying glass) and enter 2007 TU24. The asteroid will then appear in the program.

5. Stellarium with then tell you the current RA and Dec positions of TU24 in the upper left hand corner once you have locked onto the asteroid. So you could then enter and save these positions into Autostar under User Objects, in order to give you a starting point to locate the asteroid, then just Sync on it, once your telescope finds it.

It appears my February issue of The Sky at Night magazine is a bit late, as it has not arrived yet. So far a week overdue. I have only had 4 issues so far in my subscription and they usually appear on time.

I have now emailed the magazine team and also left a message on the magazine forum, where a couple of other people are also missing their issues.

I did also have to email the helpline previously when my free Sir Patrick Moore autobiography book that was offered with my subscription never turned up after four months, but about a week later the book arrived.

Delivery Update

After emailing skyatnight@servicehelpline.co.uk I have managed to get a response after about 24 hours, telling me that my subscription is up-to-date, and all issues have been sent out.  Apparently a replacement copy has been sent out and this should take 7-10 days to arrive.

8th February 2008

My magazine finally turned up today, and as I ended up logging two queries I have received two copies. The funny thing is that the next copy is out on 19th February, which is only only 11 days away.

I had been looking out for a Meade DSI for a while, although I did not want to pay the full retail price, that meant looking for a second hand model, either on eBay or AstroBuySell.

I ended up buying my DSI Pro from eBay, and there was a bit of confusion between what model it was that I was actually buying. The seller said it was bought from Green Witch about 3 months ago, which led me to think it would be a DSI II. Although it wasn’t! It was a DSI Pro version 1, although I suppose at around £150 it was probably a good buy.

It turned up quickly and was missing the parfocal ring, but after a few emails, the seller found the parfocal ring and posted it on.

To begin with the DSI looks really complicated to use and it’s another computer software program that I need to learn how to use.

I first thing I did after installing the Autostar Suite, is that I printed out the manuals, as they only come on the main CD as PDF documents.

So far I have read the manuals and watched the online Meade videos, but I think it would have been good if Meade had included some kind of “How To” PDF or video as opposed to telling you how each menu works or what each button does.

I did not get the CCD filters in the sale, so now I am on the lookout for some Meade CCD RGB filters.

These amazing images were among many sent back to Earth by Spirit, Nasa’s Mars explorer vehicle which landed there four years ago.

The images have been featured in the UK newspapers this week and are very interesting, but surely they are just rocks which have formed on the red planet into a human type form which we recognise as a female form sitting down with the outline of an arm and a leg.

Each of the 50 sights are given their own chapter in this book with these chapters then divided into sections based upon the field of view, and thus what you need to use to see each sight. This includes the naked eye, binoculars, small and large telescopes.

Each of the fifty sights is given several pages each, and each sight is well described together with tips on how to see the sight.

Such sights covered are solar and lunar eclipses, the Pleiades, Andromeda galaxy, Jupiter, Great Orion Nebula, Venus and The Milky Way.

‘The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How To See Them’ is great little book, and will give beginner astronomers a great insight in what you can see and what to look out for during the astronomical year.

Most of the images in the book are in black and white except for a few colour glossy pages that can be found in the middle of the book.

The book also contains five small appendices covering a list of total solar eclipse dates up to 2024, major meteor showers throughout the year, total and partial lunar eclipses, the brightest stars and the transit dates of Mercury and Venus.

Overall ‘The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How To See Them’ is a useful beginners book but it would have been nice if each sight could have been presented with a colour photograph.

The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How To See Them can be purchased at Amazon