Archive for 2010

Observing Report 17th June 2010 (Daylight Moon bits)

Posted by on June 22nd 2010 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics

Observing the early phases of the Moon from my obsy is a bit of a lottery - due to the restricted western view the only way to get the scope pointing at the thin waxing crescent is when the Moon's high in the sky. At this time of the year, that means observing during the daylight a few hours before sunset, which in turn means that the seeing is always going to be a limiting factor.

Never let it be said that I'm one to shy away from a challenge - here are some images gleaned from webcam data grabbed at about 20:00...

(mouseover the pics for the annotated versions):

Neander (30 miles dia.), Rheita E (40 x 19 miles), Furnerius (76 miles dia.),
Rheita (42 miles dia.), Fraunhofer (35 miles dia.), Metius (53 miles dia.),
Brenner A (19 miles dia.), Young D (27 miles dia.), Fabricius (47 miles dia.),
Vallis Rheita (303 x 18 miles)

 Pitiscus (50 miles dia.), Vlacq (54 miles dia.), Hommel (76 miles dia.),
Rosenberger (58 miles dia.), Nearch (46 miles dia.)

Daniell (18 x 14 miles), Rima G Bond (91 x 2 miles), G Bond (19 miles dia.),
Luther (6 miles dia.), Posidonius (58 miles dia.), Chacornac (31 miles dia.)

Endymion (76 miles dia.), Keldysh (20 miles dia.), Hercules (42 miles dia.),
Atlas (53 miles dia.)

Piccolomini (53 miles dia.), Neander (30 miles dia.), Rothman (25 miles dia.),
Rheita (42 miles dia.), Stiborius (27 miles dia.)

Messala (75 miles dia.), Berosus (45 miles dia.), Bernoulli (29 miles dia.),
Geminus (52 miles dia.), Burckhardt (35 miles dia.), Cleomedes (76 miles dia.)

Madler (17 miles dia.), Theophilus (61 miles dia.), Cyrillus (59 miles dia.),
Beaumont (32 miles dia.), Catharina (61 miles dia.)

 

A Father’s Day Off

Posted by on June 20th 2010 in Celebrations, Just for fun, Thanks
Tags: ,

One happy Father, two generous kids, five well-chosen gifts.

The DVD just about completes my personal list of must-haves, and the kids loved every minute of it. Yet again, the scene with Rooney in the office handling two phone calls had me laughing so much that it hurt. Classic stuff.

I'm trying to conserve the consumables, but I never could resist a rusk.

The Horn of Africa

Posted by on June 19th 2010 in Just for fun, LMAO!

Source

It begs the question as to what the preferred instrument of torture will be if we get to host the 2018 World Cup.

In such times of austerity it'll have to be cheap.

I'm guessing that it'll be either the kazoo or the trusty comb-and-paper combo.

World Cup Discrimination

Posted by on June 10th 2010 in In the News

All the moaning about the "Anglicisation" of the already-English Mars Bar pales into insignificance next to the blatant discrimination being shown by the team of Brazilian match officials assigned to England's opener against the USA:

"In anticipation of the Manchester United forward's customary fruity invective, the referee and his assistants for the Group C match in Rustenburg have each undertaken a crash course in English swear words with a view to clamping down on foul and abusive language in the fixture."

Now I understand that both teams will be speaking roughly the same language, so there's a balance there, but this comment by assistant referee Roberto Braatz speaks volumes:

"We can't do this in 11 different languages, but at least we have to know the swear words in English."

Now that's clear discrimination. You should either do it in all 11 languages or in none of them, Roberto. You're a FIFA official, you should be totally impartial, you should know better.

Will the officials in all of the other matches be so inclined? Time will tell.

Source

Legs

Posted by on June 7th 2010 in In the garden, Pics

3 x 2

2 x 2

4 (Bob, just resting)

2 x 2

n x 8

Observing Report 2nd-3rd June 2010 Part 3a (M27 reprocessed)

Posted by on June 5th 2010 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics

Had another go at processing the M27 data, managed to drag out some more detail:

M27 (NGC6853) reprocessed.
Subs: 22 light @ 120s, 22 dark @ 120s and 20 flat @ 2s, all ISO200.
D50 and MPCC on the C8N, guided with PHD.