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Holland, Thursday March 1st: foggy, rainy but not really cold for the time of the year. It must be around 11-12 degrees. I openend the door of my shed and there she was: my brand new telescope. Almost 4 months old now but used in the field only once.. And that field observation was far from exciting. That evening I just could not concentrate. It happens. You prepare everything in detail, go to the field and then.....your mind keeps wandering off. I'm sure every amateur-astronomer knows where I'm talking about.
Back to my telescope: It's a custom-built telescope which has been designed exactly in accordance with my wishes. It is perfection. I call it art...like anything that is designed and built by a human mind. It came at a price though: It costed me almost EUR 6.000,- + it's construction took 7 months which can be primarely blamed on the construction of the mirror + high demand. But in return she's gonna show me the unexplored and faint regions of the universe.
Until this date, I haven't touched my equipment for weeks now. The scope in Bari is unemployed since two months now. I guess it was all a mix of extremely bad weather in Bari or Holland and personal occupations that required so much attention that I put my hobby on a low fire...as we call it in dutch. It's not the first time though... I had a hobby-dip before and that lasted more than 4 years!
But, now since weeks I've been drifting in calm and clear waters again and that's the perfect situation to regain my astronomy activities as before. The Bari observatory remains open after all as I have been able to come to terms with my employer securing an extended stay in Bari. Extended in my own perception means for at least the summer season ;) After that, we will see how things go.
What's my plan for the hobby?
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Joining the “Landelijke sterrenkijkdagen 2012”: 3 day lasting country-wide invitation for everyone to attend public activities set up by amateur-astronomers, their clubs and observatories to show the normal public the stars. I will attend 2 of the 3 days in Holland and help out to make this a success. The weather forecast looks bad but at least there is an extensive rain-program so no worries there;
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When I come back to Bari, I will have to overhaul my equipment overthere. Re-align the optics, clean the instruments and do some tests. I have to update the software, too.
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Oh! And check the mirrors of the BRI-scope. I guess the humid, salty air is a killer for the optical coatings. I might have to send them in for recoating during the winter 2012-2013;
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I see this one as important: PLAN VISUAL OBSERVATIONS. Yes....I missed the whole winter sky of 2011/12. It has so much to offer for visual observers like me. Plenty of celestial highlights and faint and subtle stuff in Orion, Gemini, Taurus, Auriga and Monoceros. Well...it will all be back next year so nothing is lost. I guess no gold Messier certificate this year though..
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Start some photographing again;
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Of course prepare myself for the Venus transit...
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Continue my efforts to secure a stable platform for (amateur)astronomy in my province;
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Plan monthly one-two days returns to NL on Moonless nights to accomodate visual observations;
So what's up for the coming months?
Spring! Everything comes to life again and the spring is also exciting for galaxy-observers like myself. We are slowly waving goodbye to the winter constellations and saying hello to the spring constellations. If you look to the East at 9 pm, you see that mainly Leo is occupying this area of space. The Leo-Virgo area is loaded with great, stunning objects which cannot be overlooked. It's home of the so called Virgo supercluster. A huge cluster containing thousands of galaxies. Pointing a telescope to that region under a dark sky garantuees hours of observing. Did I mention galaxies already....? Needless to say, this season is optimal for galaxy observers. If you are a die-hard and you stay up until the morning, you will be able to catch a glimpse of the summer sky with it's associated eye-candy!
So happy days......also in astronomy-world. Let's see how far we get. |
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Reduced hobby-activities.. |
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Written by Administrator
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Sunday, 08 January 2012 01:50 |
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Yes indeed, almost no activity what so ever...
The last few weeks, I have done virtually nothing with my hobby. While my average amount of monthly hours spent to the hobby is around 8 to 16 hours, december had none of it and january only 30 minutes.. I guess to much other things were going on which prevented me from making that clear evening all available for just astronomy.. It's even worse if I think about the fact I recently got my brand new telescope delivered in NL. I feel ashamed but….that's how it is. I have been busy in december with mainly work, friends and family and of course Christmas and NYE. For my new telescope, I prefer nights without the Moon. When there was no Moon, I had other obligations or the weather was bad. And when I found a free evening, the Moon was there to spoil the stars.
In February, I am on leave which means I should be able to free up some time up for observing.. These months are interesting anyway. Orion is still visible with it's numerous small and big nebulae as well as constellations as Taurus, Gemini etc which hide a lot of subtle but interesting objects. Later in the night, Leo and Virgo rise in the east delivering many stunning galaxies to see. So I really should get going again because thousands of objects are still waiting to be checked out.
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With good scopes come good eyepieces! |
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Written by Administrator
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With a good scope should come good eyepieces. It would not make sense to use a high-end telescope in combination with low-end eyepieces. After all, the superb quality of the mirror would be nullified by a cheap eyepiece. Furthermore, the telescope is a so called fast telescope. I.e. a telescope with a relative short F-ratio. My telescope is F/4.4 and that requires precision eye pieces - especially at low magniifications.
I am very happy with my 24<->8 and 3.5 mm Hyperion and HR planetary eyepieces. You get a lot of quality for reasonable prices. But for low magnifications on fast telescopes, they seem to be unsuitable giving you excessive coma and other abberrations. For my 16" I am using a TS WA 31mm eyepiece. A nice 72 degrees wide-angle eyepiece which is excellent for initial star hopping. But it is not optimized for my scopes. It gives me a lot of field curvature, coma up to 30 degrees from the outside and loads of astigmatism. This can only be solved with eyepieces that actively correct for this anomalies. And as a general rule: the better the eyepieces, the higher the price.
I was choosing between the Nagler 31mm Type 5 eyepiece and the Explore Scientific 30 mm. Both are 82 degrees field of view and have similar design. Nagler T5 is known for it's superb quality. No questions about that. But after looking at a lot of reviews and user experiences, I have chosen for the Explore Scientific. The differences between the two eyepieces are minimal - and in a lot of cases even not noticable. And then there's the price. The ES costs me EUR 350,- while the Nagler cost me EUR 550,-. Thie difference is too big for me because I will only use this eyepiece for about 20% of the time. Namely for observing large, faint nebulae or galaxies such as M51, M101 or M33. Furthermore, I don't think the 200 euro's extra can justify the subtle differences between the eyepieces.
I have ordered the ES eyepiece and I expect it's delivery next week. I am very curious and of course, in due time, I will write a review about it.
The Explore Scientific 30 mm eyepieces (picture courtesy of http://www.explorescientific.com) |
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Info about the new telescope |
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Written by Administrator
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Wednesday, 09 November 2011 00:49 |
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I have set up a dedicated page for my telescope where you can find detailed information about the telescope. When the first light is done, a detailed report will be placed there as well.
See menu on the left side click HERE |
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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 29 October 2011 14:48 |
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The autumn has set in but remarkably, the weather in W-Europe is quite good for the season. Both september and october have had their good share of sunny days and clear nights. In other words, enough nights to do observations for our W-European fellow astronomers. In Bari however, this is another story. Autumn means increased humidity and high but thin cloud layers. This, together with the high light pollution, makes it challenging to even engage into small band photography. So I'll have to wait for the odd nights that are dry and give me good transparency readings again. I therefore expect to go back to NL a bit more to compensate for these losses. However, NL activities will be restricted to visual observing only. At least, until summer 2012.
Last week, I had another night of high clouds and was on standby for work but was not called out. I noticed that I still had this SPC900 (web)cam with a IR block filter and have never used it. I originally bought it 3 or 4 years ago to make a start into astrophotography. This evening was not good voor DSO imaging due to the clouds but it was sufficient for planetary imaging. Jupiter was visible now and then. I set up the scope and I did a 1-star alignment which is sufficient for planetary guiding. It took me 20 minutes to wait for a suitable alignment star but once that was done, I was up and running. After that, some focus tests took place and then it was time to slew to Jupiter. While the scope was slewing my laptop was showing a live stream of the camera's output. And suddenly, there it was! A smudged live image of Jupiter. A big disk which clearly showed the equatorial cloud bands and some other subtile details. It was amazing to see what a relatively simple setup could achieve. After tuning the focuser, I got an nice, quite sharp video stream of the planet and decided to capture 3, 5 minutes movies. Quickly after that, the clouds became thicker and Jupiter was gone for that evening. But I had 3 movies to choose from. I choosed the best, extracted it's frames, stacked it, let the stacking app to do some calculations to get more details et voila. There it was: my first planetary image. And I am proud because it is another personal foot step made into astronomy..
Over the next months I will capture more planets to see how far I get with the optics I have. So stay tuned! |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 29 October 2011 14:50 |
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