Archive for October 2010

Decathlon gear-raid

Posted by on October 16th 2010 in Bargains, New tricks for an old dog, Shiny new kit
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Just got back from a raid on the Nottingham branch of Decathlon. As usual they have a range of bargains and we took advantage in order to kit-out the kids for the winter. I'd been keeping my hands in my pockets pretty well - up until the final minutes all I'd put in the basket was a pair of fleece gloves for a quid, a couple of dehydrated packet-meals at £4.99 a shot and a pair of socks for about the same.

But then I found these:

TSL 225 Rando snooshows

Yep, that's £69.00 reduced to £44.99

Bargain!

Sold!

FWIW, they had one pair left when we departed.

------ ooooo OOOOO ooooo -----

Additional pics:

Couldn’t have timed it better

Posted by on October 15th 2010 in Great Escapes, Weather
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We're off to Buttermere sometime next week for a couple of days of walking.

The Met Office is predicting snow.

The MWIS prediction is similar.

😎

Crunchy crystals

Posted by on October 12th 2010 in New tricks for an old dog

On Sunday I rediscovered something in the kitchen - a couple of tins of Carnation condensed milk that I'd stashed after turning them into caramel two months ago (using the regular boil-in-the-can for two hours method). As expected, the taste is as glorious as ever, but the inadvertent ageing has allowed the formation of large sugar crystals throughout the gloop which lends a curious crunchy texture to the stuff.

I had intended to use the caramel as a cake-filling, but there's no way that this can will last that long - I'm off to find a bigger spoon!

They Do It With (hyperbolic) Mirrors

Posted by on October 11th 2010 in Astrostuff, Shiny new kit, Thanks
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I wouldn't have bought this if it hadn't been on offer and if I hadn't managed to get a further significant discount.
It takes up less room on the mount than the big black 8-incher does and it doesn't catch the breeze so much, so it's a lot more stable.
Add to that the facts that it's lighter, more portable and gives a much bigger flat-field for imaging, and it was a no-brainer.

 

 

For those with an interest in such things, it's a GSO GSRC6M 6" f/9 Ritchey-Chrétien Astrograph as supplied by Teleskop Service (as opposed to the Astro-Tech version marketed by Astronomics). The Ritchey-Chrétien design is favoured by many professional observatories (including the Hubble Space Telescope) and by some high-end amateurs for many reasons (the absence of any refractive elements, the fixed primary mirror, the coma-free image capability etc.) but until recently they had been expensive beasts compared to other Cassegrain designs. I've wanted one for many years and when the chance to get one came along I grabbed it with both hands.

FWIW, here are some of the specs:

  • Design: True RC (Ritchey-Chrétien) with a hyperbolic primary and a hyperbolic secondary mirror. No glass corrector plates or lenses in the optical train
  • Aperture: 6" (152mm), Focal Length 1370mm, Focal Ratio f/9
  • Primary Mirror: BK7- surface quality 1/12 Lambda or better, 99% dielectric high-reflectivity coating
  • Secondary Mirror: BK7, 99% dielectric high-reflectivity coating. Robust collimatable cell. Complete obstruction = 77mm
  • Construction: Steel tube with alloy primary and secondary mirror cells. Total weight 5.4kg
  • Focuser: Axially-rotatable 1:10 dual-speed Crayford focuser for extremely smooth focusing with no image-shift, accepts 2" and 1.25" accessories

Just in case you were wondering, it is currently on offer discounted from 898 Eur to 499 Eur including tax... suffice to say that a polite request to TS resulted in a favourable deal at a much-reduced total cost and including a GSRCV50 50mm spacer placed between the focuser and the telescope. At this point I must thank Wolfi Ransburg of TS for the great deal - thanks, Wolfi!

Typically, we've had cloudy nights here ever since the thing arrived 🙁

Observing Report 29th-30th September 2010 (Much wetness)

Posted by on October 1st 2010 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Wednesday evening was unexpectedly clear after several days and nights of grotty weather, and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to get a look in so yet again I got set up after our weekly evening shopping trip. The seeing was reasonable and there wasn't a hint of a breeze but the humidity was high - it was a battle against the dew all night long. It's a good job that I'd been planning for such conditions - I'd recently acquired a set of anti-dew tapes and a controller-box and I'd made a decent power-pack. Again, the aim was to get some more views of Messier objects, image a few, and to return to Comet 103P/Hartley which is getting brighter and faster.

After a few hours I'd looked at 103P/Hartley and at a few Messiers, but many of them were difficult targets as they were drowned-out by the light of the rising Moon. Bearing in mind the condensation that kept forming on the scope's secondary mirror, I managed to get fairly good digital data for the comet and for M33 (The Triangulum Galaxy). The resultant (clickable) images are as follows:

103P/Hartley, currently in the constellation Cassiopeia.
The bright star to the left of the comet is Lambda Cassiopeiae.
Subs: 30 light @ 200s, darks, no flats, ISO200.
D50 and MPCC on the C8N, guided with PHD.

 M33 (aka NGC 598), a spiral galaxy in the constellation Triangulum.
Subs: 17 light @ 200s, darks, no flats, ISO200.
D50 and MPCC on the C8N, guided with PHD.

After that I did quite fancy a good look at the Moon but I was too knackered to carry on and it was beginning to get light so I ended the session and closed the roof. Packing away was a nightmare as everything was covered with condensation - not good when there's so much electrical stuff in use!
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