Just in case you missed the heads-up from those nice peeps over at Alpkit - they're having a clear-out of their Filo down jackets, the clearance price is just £50. Grab 'em now while stocks last!
So, which colour do you fancy?
Chris will be Chilli, and I'll be getting a Rocket. So, nothing new there, then. 🙄
At about 21:30 the light clouds parted and the stars were bright against a really dark backdrop, so I took advantage of this unpredicted opportunity and set up to get some more experience of webcamming Saturn with the scope. As expected, the seeing was rubbish again (too much air-turbulence caused by rising warm air mixing with the colder stuff higher up), so the images in the acquired .avi files weren't holding shape or focus. To get some idea of the seeing, here's a 15-second snip from one of the .avi files, in .mp4 format:
Anyway, I ended up with 9000+ frames to play with. I plugged the files into K3CCDTools to do a quality analysis, then exported the best 10% + about another 100 that the quality sorter ignored to a folder, manually sorted the best 360 of these in vdub and then stacked 'em in Registax, which didn't crash at all this time! The result's not brilliant, but it's better than previous efforts:
After what seems to be weeks of cloudy sky, last night started reasonably clear, so I nabbed the chance to see what can be done with a webcam attached to the scope.
The webcam of choice is the Philips SPC900NC, which is recommended by every man and his dog because the sensor is a CCD instead of a CMOS, and because it's fairly easy to modify for raw image and/or long-exposure capture (I might get around to modding mine sometime, but for now I'll keep it as is until I get the hang of this imaging malarkey). It's also recommended because it's cheap (currently <£30 from Amazon, even cheaper if you shop around).
It's been removed from the original housing and temporarily rehoused in a cheap plastic box, primarily to allow a T-thread adapter to be fitted in place of the supplied lens. Removing the lens means that the IR-cut capability is removed as well, which has a detrimental effect on image quality, so I'll be sourcing a suitable filter soon. For now, though, it's a case of going with what's available.
The webcam was attached to the Baader Hyperion Zoom eyepiece using a 50mm extension tube to give the required image size on the chip. Setting the BHZ to 12mm gave the best image, but the seeing was absolutely rubbish, nothing was staying in focus and the image was boiling and hopping about all over the field of view.
Still, anything's better than nothing, I needed some practice and some material to work with, so I rattled off a few .avi captures until I'd amassed just over 9,000 frames, then took some dark-frame captures to aid in the stacking process. Shortly afterwards, I had to stop as the skies clouded over again, so I didn't get to look at anything else interesting.
After packing up, I plugged the dark-frame and the best 5% of the .avis into the K3CCDTools stacker and a while later, after much mucking about with settings, parameters, buttons, knobs, dials, gauges and other such software options, it spat out an image not unlike this:
which was crudely Photoshopped (over-exposed, too much gain, many other faults too) to give this:
I'll play about with the acquired .avis later to see if I can drag a better image out of the data.
Alpfolk - happy smiley people. We likes them, don't we, my Preciouss? Oh yes, we does
We parted company so that I could retrieve Chris and Ella, then we went over to the Gear Show Case area where Ella was disgruntled when she didn't nab any of the freebies being chucked into the audience. Undeterred, after the presentation she went and remonstrated with the freebie-chucker and was invited back to a later showing. Next to the Gear Show Case was the Gibbon Slacklining display stand, and the gymnastic side of Ella's persona just couldn't resist having a go at negotiating the tautliner straps. She did well but couldn't manage to emulate the jumping antics of the resident expert. Indeed, we were to return to this place a few more times during the day, but by the time we had decided to shell out on a set, their stock had all gone. Never mind, we'll get one somehow.
Tentative steps
Pro-Gibbon
Levitation
Then it was time for the Outdoors' Blogger Meet at the pub, where old acquaintances were renewed and new faces were matched up to names that had been, up until then, just virtual friends (I won't bore you with the full cast list). Sadly I missed Sally's killer butt, but hey, there's always next year. There were some deep and meaningful conversations to be had, with plenty of blox thrown in for good measure, and a good time was had by all. Andy tried to get some podcast material from me, but I had to decline. I'm not one for fame and fortune, you see... I'm the shy, retiring type. I did, however, condescend to appear in a group-photo of our bunch of happy campers, but alas the photographic skills of the bloke that I harassed into taking the pic left something to be desired. He has my thanks anyway, though, as this is the only group-shot we have so far:
Movers and Shakers... just like the cameraman
Of course, I was well down my second pint of dishwater (Cumberland Ale is excellent in it's natural habitat, but it doesn't travel well and it rebels at the evil concept of being served in tacky plastic plant-pots) when it was time for Ella to do her fly-over on the zipwire, so the pics are a bit wobbly, but nowhere near as wobbly as my legs would have been if I had dared to do the zipwire myself!
Cleared for launch
In-flight entertainment
We took in a few more stands to push the e-petition a bit further before going outside for lunch, then it was back to the show. Ella had a go on the bike at the Tourism Ireland stand, but she was never going to get far without that missing front wheel, and lifting the rear wheel was a tad unfair too...
Unicycling
After the mandatory visit to the Buff stand, where Ella got a cool Blue Fire, we nipped across the aisle to bag her some red sunglasses to complete the rebel adolescent biker look. Hall 3 and the rest of Hall 2 were toured quite quickly, there being little of interest to us there (we're not into water-borne activities or touring the world) so we repaired to Hall 1 where Ella chatted up some of the Royal Marines. I seized this opportunity to nip back to the pub to catch up on events, and soon it was time for the E-Petition meet-up in Hall 3, where the John Hee Steering Committee did a sterling job of drawing up a plan of action for the post-OSOS08 wildcamping-legalisation campaign. Chasrle popped in to join us, and I'm pleased to report that he looks nothing like his OM avatar. Then it was back to Hall 1 and a session of buying more bits and bobs (now don't laugh, but I bought a travel hair-dryer... it's for removing condensation from the scope optics, not for my lank locks and bristles. Honest!). Ella had been back to the Gear Show Case and had fluttered her eyelids and sweet-talked the freebie-chucker into throwing her a T-shirt and a hat. He got a hug from her as his reward. We met up with Duncan again and went to watch the fallers... sorry, that should be climbers... in their attempts to (occasionally) defy gravity and complete the testing route to the suspended car. Meanwhile, Ella had been queueing patiently for a go on the not-ice climbing wall, and watching her ascend the synthetic verglass I reckon she'd got the right idea. Looks like that's yet another set of kit to spend money on in future years, eh? 🙁
Front-pointing
Planting the pick
And that was it. After losing Ella yet again (don't go there!) and bagging a pressie for Annabelle (who was spending the day with Grandma) we made our way home, collected said pocket-BG, and sat in expectation of a relaxing wind-down evening and a tasty meal. But it was not to be... Our chosen Nepalese restaurant had cooked a fine selection of dishes for us, but had entrusted delivery of them to a bloke who couldn't discriminate between arse and elbow... several polite but firm phone-calls to the restaurant confirmed that the vittles had been despatched on time, but they arrived nearly two hours late (hmm... the restaurant is only five minutes away by car, 15 by foot) and the food was, well, tepid, despite claims that it was still hot. Duncan will vouch for the fact that I was just a little put out by this. Next time I will be serving my own dehydrated meals, or we'll invade their establishment and eat on the premises. After shooting the breeze until the small hours, we got some shut-eye before I had to ferry Duncan back to BHX for his return flight. Suffice to say that it stopped raining soon after he boarded the plane, and when his "I'm back home now" text arrived, the sun came back out. So, by way of a summary, we had a great time with good company, we made a few new friends, and we ended up richer for the experience, despite being poorer for the purchases. Top stuff!
