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Observing Report 26th-27th May 2013 (The Great Eye)

Posted by on June 4th 2013 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
Tags: ,

It had been a while since I'd pointed the scope at the Moon.

These pics show my favourite phase - 2-3 days past full - when the terminator runs down the eastern limb and highlights a string of craters and maria.

Here's Mare Crisium - the Sea of Crises - looking like a huge lidless eye staring into the void:

 

Mare Crisium (27/05/2013).
DMK mono camera @ prime-focus on the 6" R-C.

 

And here's a poor effort at a clickable mosaic of the whole shebang:

 

Moon (27/05/2013).
28 panes stitched with iMerge. Each pane is 500/2000 stacked frames.
DMK mono CCD camera @ prime-focus on the GSRC6M.
The seeing was bad so the detail isn't as good as usual.

It isn’t a bird, it isn’t a plane…

Posted by on May 27th 2013 in Astrostuff, My vids
Tags:

I caught this thing on video while out shooting the Moon with my telescope this morning.

This clip is a 10fps cut from a 1-minute video, originally 60fps.
No post-processing apart from the addition of frame times and numbers in VirtualDub.

Telescope: 6" f/9 RC Astrograph - 152mm Aperture / 1370mm Focal Length.
Camera: DMK 21AU04.AS (Sony ICX098BL CCD chip 640 x 480 pixels @ 5.6 µm x 5.6 µm).
Calculated FOV: 6.7 x 9.0 arcmin.
FOV centre: Alt: 17 deg, Az: 178 deg, RA: 18h, Dec: -21 deg

I'm trying to work out if it's a satellite, a rock or just space-junk.

If I figure it out, I'll let you know.

Goin’ Daan Saaf

Posted by on May 25th 2013 in Great Escapes

See you later

🙂

 

You shall go to the ball

Posted by on May 24th 2013 in Just for fun

This is a Public Service Announcement...

Don't confuse these two currently-advertised campaigns:

 

 

Phew, that’s a relief!

Posted by on May 23rd 2013 in Just for fun
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I tell you, those boffins at Tesco think of everything!

 

 

And to think that, until I saw the label, I'd been worried sick about having to drive home while holding the stuff in cupped hands.

😉

Maths Test

Posted by on May 21st 2013 in Just for fun, My vids, Video (YouTube, Vimeo etc.)

Good with numbers? Try this for size:

Given that the video's angular field of view was 18' x 14' and that the original frame-rate was 60fps, estimate the speed of the photo-bombing bird and its distance from the camera.

Assume that the flight was parallel to the plane of the camera's sensor and that the bird's speed was constant during the fly-past.

You'll need to suss the size of the bird yourself, and that depends on what species of bird you reckon it was. The best-guesses (according to incoming emails) include Falcon, Gull and Pigeon.

Show your calculations.

 

Bird photo-bombing Sunday's sunspot shoot.
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