Now the feckwits are blocking me in two at a time!
I'm going to need a longer wall and a bigger firing-squad:
Author Archive.
Observing Report 14-15th November 2013 (doing a runner)
Like I said, there was a run of clear frosty nights. I managed to blag a pass to spend another one of them in the shed. No visual observing this time, I fancied a shot at imaging an intriguing bunch of nebulae - NGC 1973/5/7. I could have done better with more subs, so I might well grab some more and process the thing again some time, but for now here's the result:
NGC 1973/5/7, 15th November 2013.
Subs: 25 light @ 300s, 50 darks or bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.
This trio of objects isn't called the "Running Man Nebula" without good reason!
Observing Report 12-13th November 2013 (Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1))
It's been a long time since I had a decent observing session - most nights that I've been up in the obsy recently have start well but clouded over before any imaging could begin. Not so last week, though, when there was a run of clear frosty nights, perfect for a bit of comet-chasing.
It's shaping up to be a good season for comets - there are now four of them rising in the East before dawn, promising to put on a decent show in the coming months. After a bit of visual comet-spotting I had a pop at imaging Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1), here are a couple of versions of a half-hour exposure guided on the comet:
Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1), 13th November 2013.
Subs: 1 light @ 1800s, no darks or bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.
Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1), 13th November 2013.
Subs: 1 light @ 1800s, no darks or bias frames, ISO800. Levels tweaked to show the tails.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.
There are some other pics still to process so I might post the results sometime soon if I think they're worth showing.
I'm hoping to bag some pics of the other three comets sometime during the next few evenings if the weather decides to play along. Suffice to say that I'm not holding my breath!
Bumps
Well, it's been a while. There's not been much to blog about - no epic days on the hill, no gear-testing, no firm plans for much in the way of outdoorsy-stuff.
Our bonfire party went well on Saturday. I would have taken pics but due to the lower-than-usual turnout of responsible adults I was stuck on firework-ignition and bonfire-stoking all night so the camera stayed unused. Our over-the-road neighbours donated a huge pile of privet from their garden-clearance, it lasted a good five hours and the fire-pit is still aglow two days later.
The cardiac rehab folk at Glenfield Hospital are on the ball - we've already been to an introductory lecture about CHD and I have a couple of appointments coming up: one to arrange a suitable physio regime (although they seem to think that my current levels of exercise and exertion are above and beyond what their usual patients are expected to achieve) and there's a follow-up with the cardiac consultant booked for the start of 2014. Indeed, they've been chasing me on the phone to make sure that I'm going to attend. It's a slick system, they're real pros and they treat me as a human being.
Sadly, the same can't be said of the staff of the Booking Centre staff Leicester Royal Infirmary where they're desperately avoiding having to fix my arse after they wrecked it back in January 2012, and where I'm just a number to be juggled to make their stats look acceptable, not a person who they've made virtually unfit for employment.
I saw a brilliant Functional Bowel Service Specialist Practitioner (SP) back on 20th June, she taught me how to exercise specific muscles and insisted on a follow-up appointment no more than two weeks later because if I wasn't doing the exercises correctly I'd be doing more harm than good. Before I left the consultation we'd arranged for the follow-up to be on the 4th of July, and she'd made the appropriate entry in her diary.
Just two days before I was due to go in, the Booking Centre staff phoned me to bump my appointment to 5th August, and lied to me about the reason why. My protestations and explanations of the medical need went unheeded, and when I explained the situation to the SP in August she was livid when she found that I'd been told that she'd not be on site on 4th July - she showed me her diary which clearly indicated that she'd been on duty on 4th July and that some lying sod at the Booking Centre had told her that I'd rearranged my appointment!
I left that consultation with the promise of an appointment with a colorectal consultant within the next month, and true to her word the SP managed to get me booked in - I received a letter, dated 15th August, detailing an appointment on 25th September...
but on 19th August the Booking Centre bumped that to 30th October...
and then on 15th October they bumped it again, to 26th November...
and today I received a letter, dated 7th November, telling me that they had cancelled that. Not bumped, cancelled. There was no explanation other than "due to unforseen [sic] circumstances..."
And they wonder why my blood-pressure is so high!
They can expect me to be in touch soon, and they'd better have a damned good explanation of what's going on. One more bump or fcuk-up and I'll be naming-and-shaming, first in front of the Trustees, and second, if necessary, here on my lowly blog. Oh, and probably on a few choice online forums too.
I tell you; come the revolution, the liars among the Booking Centre staff will be first against the wall.
Second against the wall will be the Macmillan Nurse who, despite having numerous options for sensible parking, insists on obstructing my driveway whenever she visits our neighbour:
A hearty breakfast
Well, the NHS does keep going on about us needing "5 A Day":
🙄
(Late) Observing Report 26th-27th August 2013 (Another Moon Mosaic)
It was going to be a night for software-testing, there having been a new release of APT that needed checking out. The skies were clear but the heat of the previous day was still making its escape from the planet via the air, which meant that the seeing was marginal for any sort of imaging, therefore I wasn't intending to take any images.
And then I remembered the medium-bandwidth Hydrogen-alpha (H-a) filter that I'd bought on the cheap. In theory it would cut out the worst of the shimmer. It had to be tried.
It worked, and it worked better than I would have expected. I grabbed 22 .avi files of the Moon, and after a bit of stacking jiggery-pokery I stuck the resultant .bmps into PS's photomerge. That spat out a reasonably-good mosaic image which I processed with RegiStax, and the following image was the result. I'm reasonably happy with it, but there's room for improvement next time out:
Moon (27/08/2013 @ 02:00 approx). 22 panes stitched with PS CS3.
Each pane is 200/2000 stacked frames. DMK mono CCD camera with H-a filter on the GSRC6M.
