Saturday 3rd July, 2010

Oddments

Posted by at 12:10 am in Blog on Site.

I thought I'd share a few bits that I found on the interwebnet yesterday:

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. Forget the subject matter and consider the underlying principle. This should be mandatory reading for the clueless.

A brilliant disclaimer. Scroll down to and read the red text.

CRKT Eat'N Tool. Only $6.99 for a spork, bottle opener, screwdriver/pry tip, metric wrenches and carabiner multi-tool. Looks like a bargain cool gadget but check out the shipping costs... a shade under $30 to have one 1.5oz item shipped to the UK? No thanks.

Friday 25th June, 2010

The longest day at Croft Hill

Posted by at 11:23 pm in Celebrations, Great Escapes, Pics.
Tags: ,

To mark the longest day and the nth anniversary of our engagement we spent a few hours at the Croft Hill SSSI.

It's an odd place - the trig-column on the top of the hill is only 128m above sea level, the surrounding land is undeniably flat, and literally within a stone's throw of the top is Croft Quarry, claimed to be the largest man-made hole in Europe. Have a click on this pic and you might see what I mean:

 

Panorama from the top of Croft Hill

 

Just in case you didn't get a feel for the scale of the place from that, here are two more pics that should clarify the matter:

 

The hill


The hole

 

Impressive, eh?

Of course, it's not all about humps and hollows. There's plenty of flora and fauna to see, and a few other odd things too. Photographer and fellow blogger Colin Griffiths visits regularly and he takes some cracking pics of the place.

32 pics, click any of the above to view the lot.

Observing Report 24th-25th June 2010 (Tidy obsy, scruffy Jupiter)

Posted by at 2:16 pm in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics.
Tags: ,

I managed to get out to the obsy last night, mainly to get the place tidied up and to oust the spiders that had invaded during the spring. The skies weren't really good enough for any deep-sky observing, as there was a persistent high-level moonlit haze that was ruining the contrast and which would have washed-out any images taken with the D50. Nevertheless it was a calm warm night so I stayed up to see Jupiter rise above the eastern horizon into a brightening blue dawn sky.

Not being one to pass up an opportunity, I decided to have a crack at imaging it with the mono DMK camera and some RGB filters even though the seeing wasn't really good enough.

Anyway, the resulting image from the first set of data is below:

 

 

 

 

I've got more data to process, some of which has Europa in the frame as well as Jupiter and Io. If the processing works out OK I'll let you know.

Tuesday 22nd June, 2010

Observing Report 17th June 2010 (Daylight Moon bits)

Posted by at 1:07 pm in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.)

 

Sunday 20th June, 2010

A Father’s Day Off

Posted by at 11:56 pm 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.

Saturday 19th June, 2010

The Horn of Africa

Posted by at 2:43 pm 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.
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