Gallery · 25. September 2016
Three hours before twenty guests arrive at a dinner party at a Corsican winery, one should not agree to clean and collimate the host's dusty, dilapidated 8 inch Newtonian, in order to show twenty curious guests some exciting celestial objects.
Gallery · 14. September 2016
An extensive study published in 1996 in Astronomy and Astrophysics concluded that the entire mass of IC 1396 is around 12,000 solar masses.
Gallery · 10. September 2016
NGC 7000 is an emission nebula, meaning that its gaseous hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur are strongly irradiated by ultraviolet light from a nearby star.
Gallery · 08. August 2016
It is located near Bad Münstereifel in North Rhine-Westphalia. Inaugurated in 1972, it was the largest steerable dish in the world until the collapsed Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia was rebuilt in 2002 with a 100 x 110 meter dish.
Gallery · 05. July 2016
A direct drive mount (DDM) requires excellent ballance on both axes. There is no clutch or break on the declination and polar axis. A ring of permanent magnets produces torque against a ring of electromagnets in order to rotate and lock the axes.
Gallery · 15. May 2016
A sunspot group that resembled a flattened smiley face was located in the southern hemisphere one week ago, during the Mercury transit. Amazingly, a new group in the northern hemisphere looks similar, at least superficially, with pattern recognition in high gear :-)
Gallery · 10. May 2016
Several trial runs the last few days indicated that a roll of filter material (black polymer) I have had since the 1999 solar eclipse, was not suitable for high-resolution solar photography. The Thousand Oaks Optical Type 2+ filter, on the other hand, is very well suited for high-resolution solar photography. Unfortunately, my filter was only 90 millimetre diameter, made for the Meade ETX-90. I had to reduce the telescope's aperture from 120 mm to 90 mm. Nevertheless, the resolution decrease...
Gallery · 08. May 2016
It seems like a dance: the telescope slewing between two coordinates on the sky. A two-minute video of the observatory.
Gallery · 22. April 2016
Selsey, West Sussex: The house of Patrick Moore and a collection of memorabilia at The Sir Patrick Moore Pavilion of the Selsey Cricket Club.
Gallery · 26. March 2016
A standard D series saddle from ADM Accessories enables mounting auxiliary telescopes piggyback on the 62 cm telescope.