Fecking, Feckity Feck!

Buggrit … You wait years for a partial solar eclipse to be visible from Norwich, get all your camera gear and tripod into the orifice, check with the weather-folk that it's going to be clear and sunny all week and what happens?

It's fucking cloudy; that's what happens. The eclipse is now at its most intense and all we get is clouds and a little gloominess.

 That's the partial eclipse, just about in the centre of the photo.

Arse …

Astronomy In England

Some of you may have noticed (though most of you probably have not) that I've not posted any astrophotography shots since February (here's one).

Well, there's a reason for that and that reason is this:
I live in England.

Friday night is Observatory Night.
It has been cloudy, foggy or pissing down with rain every single Friday since February.
It's been raining here solidly for two weeks now.
It is the stinkiest pisser of an alleged spring on record.

Shakespeare, probably our greatest Englishman and one who - staging his plays in an open air theatre - would have had occasion to glance up at the English sky from time to time, wrote "For the rain it raineth every day."

Bill Bryson, who, for reasons best known to himself, has settled down just across the river from me, says that looking up at the sky here is "like living in Tupperware."

Except it's a lot wetter.

 This year the rain it raineth every bloody Friday night, and in particular it raineth on the heads of astronomers, forcing us to sit, night after night in the lecture theatre, drinking endless cups of bad coffee and talking rubbish.
Last night I glumly took these photographs before grumbling my way indoors, brewing up a stinking brown mess in the kitchen and then moaning about the weather to the soundtrack of the clickety clack of a bunch of miserable old codgers in the "telescope mirror grinding room" (which contains … er … a pool table) and wondering if there will ever be another clear Friday night.

The past week and a half has seen our Spring Star Party, where a whole bunch of us (though luckily not me) had a thoroughly dispiriting  time sitting, shivering in soaking, freezing tents in the middle of nowhere up in North Norfolk being lashed with gales and torrential rain.
Last night, as I helped them unpack their dripping wet gear from the van they seemed remarkably chipper about it all. Over here, it seems, astronomy is not so much about looking at the stars, it's more about hope … the hope that one day before we die we might get the chance to actually see something in the sky other than water.


Welcome to astronomy in England.

The Joy Of Astronomy At Minus Eight In The Snow

Minus eight again last night, and slightly hazy, but I managed to get this image of Orion from a series of eight, ten second exposures (while Mike was setting up the telescope) stacked the hard way in Photoshop when I got home, to prove to myself that it was possible with just a bog standard camera and a crappy, fixed tripod (much as I dream of a proper equatorial tracking mount, that sort of thing is only likely to happen when pigs start nesting in the trees).

Do click on the photo to blow it up (though only if you're remotely interested in pictures of stars). I'm kinda chuffed I got some colour in the nebula. First time ever. Woot!

A Night Off

At last! A clear night after a long week of dense clouds and snow.

Out at the observatory last night, setting up Mike's ten-incher for the first time.

Here's Mike and Pete (who's selling the scope to him) looking at Jupiter while I was trying to snap Orion with my camera and feeling decidedly inadequate in the lens stakes.

There are really only two poses for men with big telescopes … Mike adopts the family-friendly one.
The domes in the background (and a couple more off to the right) house the observatory's main scopes, while members set their own kit up outside.

A temperature of minus eight degrees (without the wind chill) proves no deterrent to the truly insane astrogeek. Having to lay in the snow to align the polarscope is a bit much, though.

Somewhere under the snow is a series of concrete pads for member's scopes, complete with power, but finding a socket last night was quite beyond anyone who didn't bring a snow plough so Mike resorted to manual guidance.
In these temperatures it doesn't take long for the smooth, grey tube of the telescope to become patterned with ice and Mike's finderscope iced over pretty early, as would we have done had we not resorted to the warmth of the clubhouse and the tea hut from time to time.
Still, we got some great views and we'll be out there again tonight, freezing off our non-essential parts.

Have a warm weekend, one and all.

Just So Mum Stops Nagging …

The Moon and Venus over Norwich Cathedral as I left work this evening.

If anyone's still looking in, I'll be back once my current work-frenzy is over and I'll start to pop in on your blogs again soon.

In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Moonlighting

Determined to get my head around the last mystery of my Canon EOS60D (how to properly focus for astrophotography) I headed out yesterday evening into the wilds and soon found myself standing in a field somewhere north of Hemblington (try finding THAT on a map) in the teeth of a freezing gale.

You'd think it'd be easy … switch the lens to manual focus and simply turn the focusing ring around to infinity.
HA!
Lots of blobby blurs.

Apparently the trick is to use Live View (the screen thingie rather than the viewfinder).
First up, get a nice bright star in the centre of the screen.
Once you've done that, use the digital zoom (don't touch the lens as dslr zooms are not parfocal - zoom in and out and you have to refocus) to get the image as large as possible on screen.
Then focus manually to infinity and gradually bring the focusing ring back closer. Weirdly, stars come into focus about two-thirds of the way out.
Next up, realise you've forgotten to plug in the remote shutter gizmo and repeat the process all over again, grumbling and cursing as you go.
You want to start at around ISO 1600 and have the lens as wide open as possible to gather lots of light. Set the camera to BULB and try a few test shots.
It takes a little while to get it right and I need a lot more practice. The Moon is way too bright at the moment to get decent photos of the Milky Way arching across the heavens so I'm going to have to wait for a clear, moonless night to try it properly.

As it was, I gave up, found a nice tree branch and snapped the Moon with the Pleiades off to the left and Jupiter to the right. Just a straight 15 second exposure at ISO 400 and f5.6 (something you don't even need a dslr for - most point and click cameras will manage those settings with ease - including yours, Mum). You'll have to click on the pic to enlarge it if you want to see the faint blue nebulosity of the Pleiades, though for some reason Blogger won't let it blow up more than a third the size I posted.

Through my binoculars (Nikon ActionEX 10x50 … Woot!) I could see Jupiter's four main moons strung out in a line, which is a wonderful sight. It's so much easier to go out with binoculars than to drag out the telescope and all its associated gallimaufry, especially in a freezing gale. As it was I was so busy looking at stuff that I stayed out way too long and had to bring several body parts home in bags to reattach when they thawed out.

Anyhoo … enough of that. It's amazing how boring I can be talking about taking a picture. And indeed a whole lot of other subjects, too.