Paul's Place

Changes Ahead

2010-03-28T14:10:00.004+01:00

This blog has been here since April 2007, when I gave up wasting time on the East Antrim Astronomical Society and moved on to a much better club, the Irish Astronomical Association.

However, it has run its course and I haven't done much with it over the last year or so as I've been concentrating on other projects.

These are the development of the IAA's website here....

http://irishastro.org

And the development of my own photographic website here...

http://niphotography.co.uk

This site will remain here for the time being, but will not be updated further and may be redeveloped in the future.

Many thanks to all who have visited and supported the site over the last three years.

Paul.

China

2009-07-28T20:51:00.002+01:00

Just a holding post this, but we spent two weeks in July in China. A truly fascinating place!

Here's just one shot taken 8 mins after the Total Solar Eclipse...

Much, much too busy!

2009-06-30T21:00:00.007+01:00

Which is why I haven't updated this blog since March!

Here's a few samplers of what I've been doing since we lost Venus to the twilight over three months ago!

We visited Selsey on the South Coast of England where quite by accident I stumbled across a Peacock. Being in no hurry I realised that if I waited a while it would surely perform for me, and I was right!

I also caught the ISS shortly after Space Shuttle Discovery undocked - Discovery is the leading, fainter streak...

April brought a variety of snaps. Here's Asteroid #1 - Ceres - showing itself as a 7th magnitude object in Leo...

And an excellent morning conjunction of Venus and the Moon...

At the IAA, Professor Mike Redfern celebrated the IYA in the "Galileo" outfit...

And I thought it would be fun to image a rainbow through a 600mm refractor...

May, of course, is Bluebell time. A trip to Portglenone Forest delivered the goods!

With the new solar panels fitted, the ISS passes are now the brightest ever, and I'm quite certain that this pass on 12th May was brighter than Venus, making the ISS the second brightest object in the night sky...

May was time of great storms too - here's one passing Larne over the North Channel...

And the first beginnings of what is turning out to be a classic NLC season - this first apparition spotted on 29th May...

June started with some amazing Cirrus Cloud formations...

And a very unusual Sundog in a Cirrus Cloud...

But June 2009 will be best remembered for some of the best Noctilucent Cloud displays ever seen...

17th June

18th June

19th June

26th June

Then on the morning of 26th June I caught a local "special" phenomenon - Sunrise from behind Ailsa Craig...

The Movie version is available here...

Sunrise from Behind Ailsa Craig

Venus again this evening!

2009-03-14T22:37:00.002Z

She's looking so good - note the slight shift in the orientation...

Venus again

2009-03-14T12:56:00.002Z

Here's Venus on 12th March getting bigger and thinner in the run up to Inferior Conjunction on 27th. Unusually, Venus is passing the Sun so far to the North that it should still be visible as both a morning and evening object both at conjunction and a few days either side! Very much worth keeping an eye out for.

More Venus, Comet Lulin passes M44

2009-03-08T11:16:00.003Z

Here's Venus getting bigger and thinner...

And here's Comet Lulin passing M44 - now dimming but still putting up a good fight against the moonlight...

Twins and Comet Lulin

2009-03-03T21:07:00.003Z

Got some clear sky Sunday evening, so took a look at the Moon and Venus, then on Monday evening I caught Lulin on a widefield shot...

But first, here's the three brightest objects in the sky caught in a single shot...

Then the Moon...

And looking remarkably similar, Venus...

And here's the Guest of Honour...

Looking forward to Venus getting bigger and thinner as March moves on!

Venus

2009-02-26T10:05:00.002Z

Venus was clear in the evening sky last night. Unfortunately my predicament precluded setting up a mount so I managed with a small telescope on camera tripod, a webcam and a netbook - no tracking but once it was set up I could get 30 seconds of exposures worth as Venus crossed the frame, and the brightness of the planet is such that the individual exposures were 1/1000th second so movement wasn't a factor there. Of more consequence was the fact that Venus was bouncing around in the turbulent air which made precise focus difficult to achieve. So here's the result...

Comet Lulin again

2009-02-25T09:55:00.002Z

Despite the terrible weather, I managed to grab a shot of Lulin in between the clouds late on Sunday evening. Unfortunately having sustained a back injury there was no prospect of getting a telescope out, just a quick widefield with a 50mm lens. Lulin is clearly seen to have a tail and is racing towards Saturn in the upper part of the frame - it passed within 2 deg of Saturn on Tuesday morning and is now en route to a close encounter with Regulus!

Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin

2009-02-20T12:21:00.002Z

We have a new comet in the sky! C/2007 N3 Lulin is currently making its way across the sky from Libra, now into Virgo and will shortly pass into Leo. It is a diffuse Comet with an obvious tail - telescopic views show a reverse tail too. Unfortunately it is not particularly well placed for observation from my location, and in any case having put my back out (ouch!) carrying 'scopes up to the garden is out of the question, however I did manage to capture this shot with a camera on static tripod....

A Trip to England - and Astrofest 2009!

2009-02-15T13:59:00.002Z

Despite the snow and subsequent floods, my trip across the water was faultless - planes all on time, roads in SE England were almost deserted by their usual standards and all were well salted so a pleasure to drive on.

Astrofest 2009 was held in Kensington as usual this year. I managed to get along to the Saturday PM session where I saw four talks covering such diverse subjects as The Universe - or indeed the possibility of there being many Universes, Sunspots, NASA's route back to the Moon and a great talk by Dr Allan Chapman regarding the little known fact that an Englishman, Thomas Harriot, was observing the Sun, Moon and planets with a telescope some months before Galileo!

Here's Dr Chapman delivering his talk...

Dr Chapman is an inspirational speaker with a wonderful style of delivery and a mastery of the history of astronomy - if you ever get the chance, go and see him!

New URL

2009-02-11T20:49:00.000Z

Well, here we are, off the Blogspot host and onto my own URL!

IYA 2009

2009-01-25T14:48:00.010Z

Well, I am in the process of reorganising my web presence. The problems are twofold - Lycos, who have hosted my "pevans.me.uk" domain since 2004, are pulling out of webhosting. Secondly, I have found that these days a .me.uk domain will tend to be heavily filtered by the corporates so it's not so useful. I am therefore moving my web presence to:-

Northern Ireland Photography

The Astronomy side of things will get its own site:-

Northern Ireland Astronomy

Both have holding pages on them now. I am also looking at moving this blog away from blogspot hosting as that too is on the wrong side of too many filters.

So, thus far I have give two talks as part of IYA2009 - one to the Ballee Presbyterian Church Mens' Fellowship on Monday 5th January entitled "How far can you see?" which was an introduction to astronomy and which was followed by an observing session using my 10" Dobsonian telescope where we viewed M42,43, Orion's Belt, M45 and the 8-day Moon.

On Wednesday 7th January I talked to the IAA, Northern Ireland's biggest and best Astronomy Society. The talk was entitled "Astrophotography - The Fundamentals" and was a "prequel" to Dave Grennan's excellent talk in November, starting with some photographic basics and showing how different types of astrophotography can be accomplished with quite lowly equipment then adding greater layers of complexity to achive better results. Here's me delivering the talk - thanks to my friend Peter Paice for the photo...

The slides are here...

Astrophotography - the Fundamentals

The talk was very well received and indeed I've already been asked to deliver it to a different audience.

Despite the weather, it has been possible to do some actual astronomy - I had a good night where I took a scoot through the Messier objects in Gemini and Auriga. Here they are...

M35 with NGC2158 adjacent

M36

M37

M38 with NGC1907

Venus is now showing an excellent phase as it moves closer to Earth and thus appears larger, but less of it is illuminated by The Sun. Here she is on 13th January...

The second IAA lecture of the month featured Professor Francis Keenan. This was a light-hearted look at “The Science in Science Fiction” and covered propulsion systems, ray-guns and all the other aspects of sci-fi that the movie makers get wrong! Here's Prof Keenan demontrating the use of a Light-Sabre...

The Forum which friends John C McConnell FRAS, Martin McKenna and myself set up just six months ago has gone from strength to strength - indeed it is now the busiest and best Astronomy based Forum in Ireland which is quite some achievement and far more than we ever expected.

The Forum is always happy to give a warm welcome to new members, and unlike some other places, all are welcome!

Astronomy, Photography and Weather Forum

It is a far better place than the IFAS Forum which I have now stopped using. Whilst there are many excellent people there I found the Chairman's manners left a bit to be desired so I'll not bother going there any more.

And that, so far, is January!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T16:18:00.001Z

And not just any New Year - 2009 has been designated by the IAU as the International Year of Astronomy!

October Review

2008-10-31T08:35:00.004Z

Actually let's start with the end of September - my birthday - and to surprise me Jude took me away to somewhere I'd never been before - the Isle of Man!

This was an extraordinary place to visit, starting with the journey there which involved flying from George Best Airport in Belfast to Ronaldsway near the southern end of the Island - in an aircraft equipped with about 12 seats and two propellors!

Here's some snaps from the island...

Sunset from Port Erin

Lady Isabella, the world's biggest Water Wheel

Jurby's Bookshop - where do you start?

Snaefell, highest point on the Island

In terms of Astronomy, October was an interesting time - the IAA held excellent talks as always including an inspiring talk about his adventures in the USA by our own Past President Dr Andy McCrea...

Observations include M15, a better looking Globular Cluster than M13 to my eye, though of course 47 Tucanae is the champ - southern hemisphere only I'm afraid!

Other observations included an early morning Orion...

A colour enhanced Moon...

And a rising Leo with Saturn below...

We also had some excellent sunsets of the "volcanic" variety - here's me at Lough Neagh...

At last, clear skies!

2008-09-25T19:46:00.003+01:00

Well, we've had a couple of very good nights recently! Let's start with last night - Weds 24th Sept...

Started with M13...

Moved on to M57 - close inspection reveals that I have caught the central star...

Then found that M27 is not a short hop from M57 - my mount had to go through almost 360 degrees to get there....

Furthermore, the hazing over and dewing up of my scope were bringing matters to a close by the time I got to M92 in Hercules...

M92 is a first for me - a great little cluster!

Weekend in Sussex

2008-09-18T09:18:00.010+01:00

We were able to spend a much too short weekend in Sussex which enabled me to visit a few places while Jude was on a course. So here's a whistle-stop tour of Sussex....

The Jack & Jill Windmills - this is Jill...

The Blackberry Season in full swing...

The Seven Sisters viewed from Cuckmere Haven...

The Big Sky, Brighton Beach...

The Harvest Moon made it's presence known low in Saturday evening's sky - this is actually a day before the Full Moon...

And an excellent pair of Sundogs taken from Woking in Surrey...

So that was an excellent trip!

IAA Lecture - More about Hubble, and much more!

2008-09-18T09:18:00.009+01:00

The IAA lecture on Weds 17th September featured Dr Bob Fosbury of the European Space Agency who delivered a gripping lecture entitled entitled "Astronomy today and the role played by the Hubble Space Telescope"

Dr Fosbury is head of the section in the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of ESA's collaboration with NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) project at ST-ECF. Based at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) near Munich in Germany, Fosbury joined this initiative in 1985, more than 5 years before launch. During the latter part of this period, Bob served on NASA's Ad Hoc Science Working Group and ESA's Study Science Team as they developed the instrument concepts for the James Webb Space Telescope, the next generation space observatory.

Dr Fosbury covered the achievements of Hubble, explained a lot about ground based projects in Chile, the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope as well as the October mission to upgrade Hubble to give us at least another five years astronomy.

Here's a still frame from the NASA simulation video for that mission...

And here's Dr Fosbury taking questions...

This was an excellent lecture and again, the IAA Council are to be congratulated for putting together such a complete programme of talks and events.

It really is light-years ahead of the other Astronomy group in Northern Ireland which has resorted to changing its name in a laughable attempt to disguise their tarnished reputation.

Excellent IAA Season Opener!

2008-09-06T11:52:00.003+01:00

Wednesday 3rd September saw the first meeting of the Irish Astronomical Association this season, and what a talk it turned out to be!

Firstly, as usual, Dr Andy McCrea gave us a tour of the sky in September and of course the highlight of that is the Milky Way!

Dr McCrea used a couple of my recent images in his presentation as we have had a couple of clear nights this week - the first in a long time.

The Summer Triangle with the Milky Way running through it

The North America Nebula with Deneb to the right.

The main talk was delivered by Dr John Mason and concerned the future of the Hubble Space Telescope following next month's Space Shuttle servicing mission which will repair and upgrade the telescope to give it five or more years of life.

Here's IAA President Pat O'Neill introducing Dr Mason...

And here's Dr Mason taking questions...

A most enjoyable and informative lecture and the start of what looks to be an excellent season - thanks are due as always to the IAA Council for putting together another top quality programme!

Yorkshire & The Lakes

2008-08-31T12:39:00.007+01:00

We had an excellent though somewhat wet trip across to Yorkshire for a few rounds of golf followed by a couple of days in the Lake District.

Here's just a few snaps of the excellent scenery on offer...

Rainbow over Flamborough Head

Bridlington Boats

Gull in Bridlington Harbour

Looking Down Honister Pass

Waterfall near Buttermere

Grey Squirrels can drive as fast as they like!

Waterfall near Honister Pass

Some cheekily named Cumbrian Ales

A great trip - the best advice would be to stay away from the tourist traps of Windermere, Ambleside and Keswick and seek out the unspoilt areas away from these places.

Lenticular Display over Larne

2008-08-11T18:26:00.002+01:00

I caught this impressive display over Larne close to sunset on Saturday....

Solar Day

2008-08-09T19:53:00.004+01:00

Today was the IAA's Solar Day at Carnfunnock Country Park.

I got off to an early start by photographing some Iridescent Clouds around the Sun in the early afternoon...

Then off to Carnfunnock to meet the lads - excellent craic and a bit of outreach - the weather even played ball and I got to see a detached prominence through one of the many Solar telescopes in use - I really must get one myself!

The setup...

My only Solar shot...

20,000!

2008-08-09T19:46:00.003+01:00

Since I started this blog in April 2007 over 20,000 people have visited.

I'd like to thank each and every one of you for visiting - I hope you have enjoyed reading my words and looking at my pictures. A very special thanks is due to those who have commented - please keep doing so and please more of you join in.

Here's to the next 10,000!

Cheers,

Paul.

Partial Solar Eclipse

2008-08-02T09:21:00.004+01:00

On 1st August 2008 parts of the Earth experienced a Total Solar Eclipse - probably nature's greatest spectacle. Unfortunately the path of totality started in Northern Canada, extended across the Arctic then down into Siberia, Mongolia and finishing at sunset in China. Here in Northern Ireland we experienced a Partial Eclipse with just 19% of the Sun's disk being covered - this equating to 30% of its diameter at maximum eclipse. The weather prospects weren't so good, but in the end we did very well.

Being at work I set my ETX70 and camera up outside - both were filtered with Baader film. Here's the setup....

Looking the other way shows the weather problem - we started out with 80% cloud cover which increased to 100% before the eclipse was over....

At 0923 BST a dent appeared in the Sun - the Moon had arrived!

Things progressed further....

By this time we were dipping in and out of the clouds...

Shortly after maximum eclipse I took a shot through the telescope - hence laterally reversed...

I sent this to the BBC and was very pleased that they used it on the weather forecast that evening - Here's Cecilia Daly...

So all in all a successful morning. Many of my colleagues observed the eclipse through my 'scope and for many it was the first time they'd seen anything through a 'scope, so it was a bit of an outreach session.

Here's to 22nd July 2009 in China!

An Exciting New Forum

2008-07-15T20:17:00.003+01:00

Two good friends and myself have decided to start a new forum on the web. The purpose is to provide one place to share information, views and banter around the subjects of Astronomy, Photography and Weather

The team is as follows:-

John C McConnell FRAS is one of Northern Ireland's top astronomers - he was Chairman of the East Antrim Astronomical Society for 8 years and is a particular authority on lunar, solar and planetary observation. He has been honoured by the IAU by having Asteroid 9929 McConnell named after him.

Martin McKenna is a noted observer with a particular interest in Comets. Martin was IFAS Astronomer of the Year in 2005 and in 2006 joined the exclusive club by having Asteroid 42531 McKenna named in his honour.

I don't have an asteroid named after me, but I fill in as the Camera and Technology expert of the trio. I am a past Treasurer of the EAAS and was proud to serve on the Committee under John McConnell. These days I'm a keen member of the Irish Astronomical Association.

In just 6 days we have 26 keen and knowledgeable members joined up - an excellent start, so if you'd like to come and join in to share knowledge and information with us, or indeed if you just fancy a bit of good old fashioned Irish craic, here's where are:-

Astronomy, Photography and Weather Forum

I look forward to seeing you there!

Kylie at The Odyssey

2008-07-15T20:08:00.006+01:00

This was a superb concert - actually more of a well choreographed dance production. Kylie spent over 2 hours belting out the old and the new - it's astonishing just how many hits she's had since "I should be so lucky" 20 years ago - which was one of the two encores. With 8 costume changes, a range of styles and the very best in light and sound shows this was one magnificent show, but the bit that stood out was that when a member of the audience was taken ill Kylie interrupted herself to call the stewards and we could see that she was keeping an eye on the situation whilst keeping the show going - a true professional!

Pictures here...

Excellent NLC Display

2008-06-21T12:31:00.004+01:00

On Thursday night we had an excellent display of Noctilucent Clouds visible from across Northern Ireland. This was a fairly low display only 10-12 degrees above the horizon but was notable for its brightness - indeed it was probably the brightest display I've ever seen. It covered some 60 degrees of the horizon and appeared quite suddenly out of the twilight - it doesn't get properly dark here from the middle of May until the end of July.

Here's the photos...

What's in a name?

2008-06-10T20:38:00.001+01:00

One of the more amusing snippets of local news that I heard recently concerns the East Antrim Astronomical Society (EAAS). Apparently they want to change the name to the Northern Ireland Astronomical Society (NIAS).

This is long overdue in my view as the club has not been the same since 5 of the 6 Committee members jumped ship over a six-month period between Nov 2006 and May 2007, so the continued use of the name of the excellent society that John McConnell FRAS chaired for eight years is a bit like Ringo Starr hiring three session musicians and going on tour as "The Beatles".

Or maybe it's for the same reason that "Windscale" became "Sellafield" years ago, prompting one wag to suggest that perhaps they should change the term "lethal radiation" to "magic moonbeams" while they're at it!

What's in a name indeed? Nobody's being fooled. Or are they?

Excellent Evening at the Planetarium

2008-06-07T10:33:00.004+01:00

As part of their 40th anniversary celebrations Armagh Planetarium had a very special guest for the day - Space Shuttle, Mir and Space Station Astronaut Dr Michael Foale. Dr Foale explained how he grew up in Lincolnshire - his father was an RAF pilot and crucially, his mother was a US citizen. After Cambridge University where he took a degree and a doctorate, Dr Foale went to work for NASA and started applying for the Astronaut Corps. He got in at the third go in 1987 and flew on STS-45 in 1992 and five other shuttle missions, then went on to spend four months on the Russian Mir space staion followed by a six month stint on the International Space Station as Commander of the Eighth crew.

Dr Foale entertained us with his stories and films of life in zero gravity, showed us footage of the launches of both Shuttle and Soyuz craft from inside the capsules and outlined his view of the future of space exploration post-shuttle.

This was a fantastic talk with something for everyone!

Here's my snaps.....

Michael Foale with Planetarium Director Dr Tom Mason

The Audience

Dr Foale was very happy to pose for photos - very much appreciated!

First Dawn of June

2008-06-01T13:45:00.004+01:00

I awoke this morning at 0400, possibly in the hope of seeing some NLCs. This was way too late, the sky was light with sunrise only 45 mins away, but the dawn was particularly beautiful with the 10% illuminated Crescent Moon in attendance, so the camera had to come out!

Busy May!

2008-06-01T12:37:00.006+01:00

May was such a busy time - first off we spent an excellent week in Venice, a new place for both of us though we went with friends Phil and Carol who had been before so knew their way around, which just as well as we'd probably never have found our apartment with out them!

Having heard that Venice was an expensive city, the more so with the current strength of the Euro, we were pleased to find the local off licence which was very cheap indeed - prices here are in Euros per Litre and bringing your own bottle is appreciated!

We saw all the sights, drank Bellini cocktails at €15 a go in Harry's Bar, drank wine and beer in St Mark's Square and even went for a very short ride in Gondola just across the Grand Canal - this costs 50 cents as opposed to the €100+ for the longer trip.

A gallery of the photos from this trip can be found here:-

Venice Gallery

Also here is a five shot panoramic view of the Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge.

No sooner were we back from Venice than we were off again, this time to England to attend the wedding of our friends Peter and Sally's daughter Sarah. This was held in the magnificent location of Lympne Castle in Kent which commands splendid views over Romney Marsh and all the way to the Dungeness Nuclear Power station whose location clearly underlines the strategy of building these stations as far from anywhere as possible, presumably in case they blow up!

The Noctilucent Cloud season should be starting soon - I have one somewhat uncertain sighting from 14th May though we are expecting much better sightings - the low level of sunspot activity appears to be related to good NLC conditions as seen in the past two years.

A new project

2008-05-02T18:11:00.003+01:00

It has been apparent to me for some time that there may well be a need for a local beginners' Astronomy Club in the Larne area. The IAA is of course an excellent Association and one which I am very proud to be a member of, but for many local people that I have been talking to, it is too far for them to attend the regular meetings in Belfast although the twice yearly visits to Carnfunnock do generate a lot of interest and are much appreciated.

I have therefore set up a blog parallel to this one called "Larne Astronomy" to discuss whether a local club pitched at the beginner - low intermediate level would generate sufficient interest to reach "critical mass".

Please comment on the blog - anonymous comments are allowed although all are moderated - local opinion is particularly encouraged.

Extraordinary Weather

2008-04-24T21:41:00.003+01:00

These last two days have seen some extraordinary weather, starting with yesterday's Sun Halo...

Then today we had a downpour so sudden that a couple of my colleagues went out for a walk in the sunshine and came back soaked! I'm told that in Larne we had Hail and Thunderstorms - I missed that but caught this magnificent Anvil on the way home...

Then I arrrived home to this Rainbow...

This developed into this magnificent storm off the coast...

Then further rainbow activity...

And they tell me there's more to come!

Our Nearest Neighbour

2008-04-16T17:14:00.005+01:00

The Moon of course. This lunation has been very favourable in that the Moon has been high in the sky due to the steepness of the Ecliptic in April. As well as that I have been experimenting with a new camera, the Meade LPI (Lunar & Planetary Imager). This is really just a webcam but the clever part is the Meade Envisage software which uses RAM to perform the stacking and optimisation process in real time. Normally it is necessary to use vast amounts of disk space and perform time consuming post-processing to get the results that Envisage delivers immediately on the screen.

So firstly, here's the setup...

This was daytime, so here's the resulting daytime mosaic made up of four images stitched together...

Later that evening the Open Cluster M44 - the Beehive - emerged from behind the Moon follwing its occultation - here the Moon is necessarily overexposed to show M44 - the difference in brightness is about 12 magnitudes...

On the 14th the Moon was a little bigger. Note particularly the crater Clavius being very prominent near the South Pole. Here's a mosaic...

I had a go at some closeup work with a 3x Barlow lens on the front of the camera. Here's a closer view of Clavius...

Archimedes...

Eratosthenes with a bit of Copernicus to the left...

Tycho...

Ptolemaeus

And here's a South Pole mosaic from 13th...

RAS NAM Public Lectures

2008-04-07T22:17:00.010+01:00

Last week was a big event in Belfast - Queens University hosted the National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomy Society. As part of the event there were three public lectures. I attended all three.

Tuesday evening saw a deeply thought provoking lecture by Professor Mark Bailey, Director of Armagh Observatory on the subject "Tunguska 2008: 100 Years of the NEO Impact Hazard"

The press release...

2008 is the one-hundredth anniversary of the most recent significant extraterrestrial body known to have run into the Earth: the famous 30 June 1908 Tunguska Event, which devastated some 2000 square kilometres of forest in a remote part of Siberia. Since then, advances in astronomy have confirmed that the phenomenon of impacts is a key driver of planetary evolution, ranging from the cause of the largest craters and mare (or "seas") on the Moon, to the evolution of life on Earth. This has led to our modern understanding that impacts by relatively small astronomical bodies (comets, asteroids and fragments thereof) have the potential to produce occasionally catastrophic environmental changes on Earth. The objects, which range in size from typically a few tens of metres across to many kilometres in diameter, orbit the Sun in elliptical orbits that cross those of the planets and are sometimes the closest extraterrestrial objects accessible to direct observations or to visits by spacecraft. Those that cross or come close to the Earth's orbit are called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), and it is these that have the potential to collide with our Earth. This talk will review our growing understanding of the resulting extraterrestrial impact hazard and especially its implications for various aspects of civilization and for our wider understanding of mankind's and Earth's place in the Universe.

Professor Bailey was ably introduced by Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of QUB who was obviously enjoying being the host of this marvellous gathering...

Apologies for the picture quality - I only had the compact camera which lacks the lowlight performance and flash range - for the other meetings I used the DSLR which did much better!

Wednesday evening saw Lars Lindberg Christensen of the European Space Agency talk on "Adventure with the Hubble Space Telescope"

This was a joint IAA/RAS lecture and was also our normal IAA meeting, as such Dr Andy McCrea kicked off with his usual look at the night skies in April...

Here's the press release...

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most successful scientific projects of all time, both in terms of its scientific output and in terms of its almost iconic public appeal. Hubble's enormous impact derives from its ability to exploit a unique scientific niche where no other instruments can really compete at the moment - consistently delivering super-sharp images and clean, uncontaminated spectra, also in the elusive infrared and ultraviolet. This has opened up new scientific territory and resulted in many paradigm-breaking discoveries. Hubble's exquisite image quality has enabled astronomers to gain entirely new insights into the workings of a huge range of different astronomical objects and provided the visual overview of underlying astrophysical processes taking place planets, stars and galaxies.
On top of all this astronomers are lucky scientists. Their telescopes do not only produce results of great scientific value, but also of eye-catching beauty and artistic potential. This talk aims to also show how Hubble has built a bridge between science and art.

Here's Lars and IAA President Pat O'Neill having a chat before the lecture...

And afterwards...

Thursday's lecture was little lighter in content - Professor Francis Keenan of QUB talked on "The Science of Science Fiction in TV and Films".

Science-fiction films and TV shows are extremely popular, with many of the top-grossing movies of all-time being science-fiction, while Star Trek (and its various spinoffs) is one of the most-watched TV series. As a result, for many people their main exposure to scientific ideas and concepts is via the medium of science-fiction films and TV. In this presentation, the accuracy (or otherwise!) of the science in science-fiction films and television programmes is discussed, and illustrated using clips from films and TV shows including Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Aliens.

Professor Keenan was introduced by Dr Don Pollacco of QUB who has recently dicovered another 10 exoplanets with his SuperWASP cameras...

Here's Prof Keenan...

As part of the lecture Professor Keenan demostrated the use of a Light Sabre...

and showed how laser beams don't show up in space as they need something to reflect off - in this case an aerosol spray...

And that was it! I thoroughly enjoyed the public lectures and I'm told the event was a great success!

Sunspots

2008-03-30T19:02:00.002+01:00

It has been such a long time since I hav photographed sunspots that I had almost forgotten how to do it. However there are now three active regions on the Sun and in an unusual coincidence it was possible to see the Sun unobscured by clouds for a large part of the day!

I attempted both afocal coupling and prime focus photographs with different cameras and different 'scopes. The afocal shots were suprisingly good but of course prime focus yielded the better results.

Here's AR987, 988 and 989...

And here's a passing atmospheric...

And here's me taking the shots...

Widefields

2008-03-30T18:57:00.002+01:00

Firstly, here's a couple of widefield shots taken on Friday 28th March, a clear night but with winds up to 50mph thee was no point in setting up a 'scope!

Leo, with M44 to the right, Coma Berenices to the upper left...

Ursa Major at the top, Arcturus the the lower left, Leo in the lower right...

IAA Lecture

2008-03-30T18:34:00.006+01:00

I attended a talk at the IAA by the renowned Prof Ian Robson. Title: "Active Galactic Nuclei and Supermassive Black Holes", which turned out to be a fascinating talk on some of the most amazing and energetic objects in the universe. MOst enjoyable!

As this season of talks draws to close I am reminded that it is a year since I changed from one astronomy society to the other - there are currently only two here in Northern Ireland. Certainly for me the change has turned out to be very much for the better with twice as many lectures, generally of a higher standard and a much more convival atmosphere with the emphasis being on the astronomy, not infighting, and even the subscription is cheaper, so although I was sad to leave the other society after three years of membership, two of which as a senior member of the Committee, it was the right thing to do. And not just to save £2!

Also though, I feel there is a gap in the market for a club which brings youngsters in at the bottom end starting with the basics of what to get, what to see with their new purchases and where to go for advice. I am thinking about how this gap is best addressed. Watch this space!

Moon in Colour

2008-03-18T20:39:00.003Z

I have recently taken a few shots of the Moon which is now so high and bright that any deep sky observing is limited to the very brightest objects. I have found that by amplifying the colour components of the picture it is possible to demonstrate that the Moon is not in fact uniformly grey, but displays pastel shades of colour. These are real and represent different minerals - the blues are Titanium and the rusty reds are Iron....

Wild winds

2008-03-18T20:35:00.003Z

We had winds gusting up to 90mph here - one casualty was the Eucalyptus tree in our garden....

Spaceships overhead

2008-03-18T20:21:00.003Z

We've done well here - Firstly the ISS came past at 0547 on the morning of 11th March swiftly followed by the ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) at 0549. Shortly afterwards, at 0631, Shuttle Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre and docked with the ISS two days later.

Here's 15 seconds of the ISS and ATV - much fainter. Note that each craft covers some 70 miles during the 15 seconds of these exposures!

Atmospherics have started.

2008-03-18T20:05:00.003Z

Yes, it's Spring! In Northern Ireland that means Rainbows, Sundogs and the rest. Here's a Double Rainbow around Midday, hence quite low, and a bright Sundog, both taken from Larne...

Comet Holmes - close to The End?

2008-03-18T19:54:00.003Z

This picture from the 8th March is the last I've seen of Comet 17P/Holmes. Seen here passing the California Nebula (NGC 1499), Holmes has now faded to the extent that numerous stacked frames are necessary to reveal it. Some say they can still see it naked eye, but I can't.

Thought Provoking IAA Lecture

2008-03-18T19:44:00.003Z

The last IAA was almost a fortnight ago now and was delivered in classic style by Seanie Morris who I have corresponded with on the IFAS Forum, but hadn't previously met, so it was good to put that right!

Seanie talked on the subject "Cosmic Dust: Is that all we are?". This talk covered the subject, which some would consider controversial, with an excellent combination of facts, evidence and sensitivity and a lively discussion ensued afterwards. I was particularly interested in the theory that cosmic dust allied to the sunspot cycle give rise to Noctilucent Clouds which are of particular interest to me.

Here's Seanie taking questions...

Some more of those Sussex photos

2008-03-02T18:10:00.004Z

I took so many it's taking an age to get through them all!

Brighton Seafront

Brighton Seafront at Twilight

Temptation!

No Bumping Please!

Brighton West Pier - Burnt to a cinder!

The Lanes

And there's still a few more to come!

Some More from Sussex

2008-02-29T19:24:00.005Z

Here's a couple more from my weekend in Sussex.....

Boats on Seaford Beach

Brighton Pier a bit before sunset

Brighton Pier a while after sunset

Speed

Speed 2

Seven Sisters

A couple of talks

2008-02-24T15:20:00.006Z

Last Tuesday, 19th February I was honoured to talk to the youth sections of the British Computer Society and the Institution of Engineering & Technology in Belfast. I spoke for an hour on "IT's Impact on Amateur Astronomy" including practical demonstrations of driving a GoTo telescope from a PC, imaging with a webcam and image processing.

The audience seemed to appreciate it as I was asked a good few questions afterwards!

Here's the promotional poster....

The slides from the presentation are here...
IT's Impact on Amateur Astronomy

The BCS writeup is here...

The following day I attended another excellent lecture at the IAA. Prof Chris Dainty from the National University of Ireland at Galway talked to us on the possibility of Adaptive Optics coming down in cost sufficently to be within the reach of the amateur. This was a fascinating and entertaining talk by one of the world's experts in the field.

Here's Prof Dainty taking questions...

As a footnote, there was a Total Lunar Eclipse in the early hours of Thursday morning. Whilst I did see a bit of it through a thin part of the high-speed clouds but it was only a fleeting glimpse and photography was out of the question! So roll on 2010!

A trip across the water

2008-02-24T15:09:00.005Z

We spent a long weekend in England which gave me the opportunity to put my new camera through its paces....

The day culminated in this fabulous Etruscan Sunset seen from the beach in Brighton...

A great trip!

0 - 10,000 in under a year!

2008-02-14T23:30:00.003Z

Many thanks to all 10,000+ visitors to this blog since I set it up back in April 2007. You keep on coming and I'll keep putting up the snaps.

Here's the sunset over Lough Neagh last night, Weds 13th February. It looks as if you could almost walk across!

IAA, ISS and a New Moon!

2008-02-10T12:02:00.001Z

Firstly there was last Wednesday's IAA talk. This was given by Dr Aaron Golden from the National University of Ireland in Galway. Dr Golden gave a magnificent talk which was both informative and entertaining covering the subject of Brown Dwarfs with particular emphasis on their radio emissions around 1 metre wavelengths in which respect they have a similarity to pulsars. The talk was right up to date in that the latest experiments are being conducted in India right now with results due in the coming weeks.

Here's Dr Golden taking questions....

On Thursday the Space Shuttle Atlantis eventually took off to the International Space Station arriving Saturday afternoon - I watched the docking process live on NASA TV. I then set up my 10" Dobsonian telescope and DSLR, took some shots of the 2-day old Moon with earthshine while I waited for the ISS/Atlantis to come over.

Here's the setup....

Here's the Moon shots....

When the ISS/Atlantis flew over I set the camera to continuous drive then tried to follow the Space Station with the finderscope. Over 100 pictures were taken, some of them had the Station in them and of those only two were any good!

In terms of size and distance this is approximately equivalent to photographing Tower Bridge from the top of the Eiffel Tower!

Holmes still visible, Wild Weather

2008-02-03T18:21:00.001Z

Well, during a clear spell last week I set up my Equatorial Mount, put my new camera on top of it with a 135mm f2.8 lens fitted and took this photo of Comet 17P/Holmes. It is still enormous but has faded very much since I last caught it nearly three weeks earlier. Still, there's always the possibility of a second outburst as happened in 1892.

Apart ftom the occasional clear spell much of the recent weather has been quite wild involving snow, sleet, massive downpours and gale force winds. Here's a couple of shots taken at Lough Neagh last Thursday - remember this is an inland lake, not the Atlantic coast!

Add in freezing temperatures and it looks like this "Global Warming" isn't all it's cracked up to be!

IAA and Comet Holmes

2008-01-27T19:50:00.001Z

Firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting of the IAA last Wednesday. The meeting was well attended with 70+ members present. Dr Andy McCrea kicked off with a tour around the January skies - there's plenty going on up there, it's just that we can't see it at the moment due to the dire weather!

This was followed by the main event - Dr Paul Callanan from University College Cork delivered a most informative and entertaining talk entitled "Photons from the Invisible". This concerned the use of three different types of astronomy - Optical, X-Ray and Infra-Red - to provide evidence for the existence of Black Holes.

Here's Dr Callanan taking questions from the audience...

Secondly, I have created a YouTube video of my Comet Holmes observations...

Enjoy!

Mars & Five Messiers

2008-01-16T08:23:00.001Z

This widefield shot covering parts of the constellations of Taurus, Auriga and Gemini not only contains Mars, it contains no less than five Messier objects!

Can you spot them all?

Holmes Again & Asteroid #1

2008-01-11T21:30:00.001Z

Comet Holmes still isn't finished! This shot taken on 10th January 2008 shows Holmes, Algol and M34....

This is the largest Asteroid in the Solar System - Ceres. It lies in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter and appears as a very dim star in the constellation of Cetus the Whale.

Traffic Jam

2008-01-09T13:18:00.000Z

This was taken last year just up the road from my house - one of those special traffic jams we get here in Northern Ireland!

Surprise snowstorm

2008-01-09T11:39:00.001Z

Well we've had all the weather so far this year, and that's just nine days so far! The sky was beautifully clear last night but there was no astrophotography possible as a) I am still full of the lurgy, and b) we were being battered by winds of up to 90mph! The forecast was for a sunny day, and that's been mostly true so far except for 30mins this morning when the sky turned deep grey and a short but very intense snowstorm ensued, then just as quickly as it had started, the sun came out and it went away! Here's the view from the front door....

Happy New Year!

2008-01-05T10:18:00.001Z

Well 2007 has been and gone and 2008 is here! So far it has been accompanied by a bad case of the lurgy in our household - the coughing and spluttering started at a low level on Xmas Day and stepped up a gear on New Year's Day. At least we managed our family visit to England.

In the sky, Comet Holmes is still there though he is a shadow of his former self, much dimmed - indeed I couldn't see it with the naked eye whn I got my first clear sky of the year yesterday evening, but a quick photo revealed all - this is a widefield shot with Mirphak to the left, Algol below and M34 above and to the right.

And I'm pleased to see that since I started this blog back in April 2007, over 6000 of you have visited. So I'll keep writing and you guys keep reading!

Wishing all of you a Happy New Year and All the Best for 2008.

Not much blogging?

2007-12-19T08:21:00.001Z

I haven't blogged much recently, not because there's nothing going on but because there has been plenty going on!

A trip to Florida, though I still haven't seen a Shuttle Launch, Comet Holmes, three more excellent IAA meetings and some good, bad and indifferent weather in the run-up to Xmas.

I shall collect together some favourite photos from the last few weeks - here's one of the Magic Kingdom!

Colours of Autumn

2007-11-11T14:11:00.001Z

Here's some recent shots showing the colours of autumn both in the sky and in the countryside!

Comet 17P/Holmes expands

2007-11-04T08:43:00.001Z

Comet Holmes keeps getting bigger! Here's a stack from 2nd Nov which I've inverted for clarity - definite elements of a tail are visible in this one....

This is the same frame - I've done as much as I can here to keep detail at all levels - this is a huge dynamic range compressed into a jpeg....

And here's a close-up...

This widefield shot taken on 3rd Nov shows just how big the comet has become...

IAA meeting - Excellent as always!

2007-11-04T08:17:00.001Z

This fortnight's meeting kicked off with a departure from the script. Professor Alan Fitzsimmons gave us a short presentation on Comet 17P/Holmes and showed us the latest photographs taken with his telescope - this being the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma! Alan explained to us that in the previous few days Comet Holmes would appear to have ejected aprroximately 1% of its mass in an outburst that lifted it from magnitude 17 to 2.2 - a factor of a million times! The ejecta is currently expanding away from the nucleus at around 1300mph!

Here is Professor Fitzsimmons (right) with IAA President Pat O'Neill and Alan's photo of Comet Holmes in the background.

The main presentation was by Dr Andy McCrea MBE who was President of the IAA for nine years in total and is also MD of North Down Telescopes. Andy's talk was entitled "Andy's Amazing American Astronomical Adventures" and covered his recent trip to California and Nevada which started out as a non-Astronomical holiday but inevitably included visits to the famous observatories at Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar as well as Scope City and the Meade factory at Irvine.

Andy also took the opportunity to witness the Aurigid meteor shower, unfortunately not visible from Ireland.

All in all this was an entertaining and informative lecture well up to the usual high standard.

More pictures of Comet Holmes and News item

2007-10-31T07:57:00.001Z

These two taken through my 6" Newtonian 'scope on 29th October....

And a report from the BBC here...

Good to see top Northern Ireland Astronomer Professor Alan Fitzsimmons on the observation team!

Comet 17P/ Holmes through the 'scope

2007-10-28T19:52:00.001Z

Well this is impressive!

Quite the most amazing comet I've ever seen!

Comet 17P/ Holmes

2007-10-28T12:35:00.001Z

Just as Comet LONEOS has sunk below the horizon we get another big surprise! Comet 17P/ Holmes has experienced a major outburst rising from magnitude 17 to 2.2 over a period of a few days. This is of the order of a million-fold increase in brightness - it is a clear naked eye object in the constellation of Perseus.

I took this picture, believed to be the first from Ireland on Wednesday evening in a very hazy sky...

Here's a shot from later Wednesday eveing when there were more clear patches in the sky...

I have other photos but none yet through the 'scope - hopefully I will have an opportunity tonight!

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

2007-10-18T23:01:00.001+01:00

This is a wider view taken through a Minolta "Beercan" lens, the famous 70-210mm constant f4 lens. The processing with Deep Sky Stacker isn't quite right yet but I am getting better at it :-)

IAA - Another brilliant talk!

2007-10-18T22:48:00.001+01:00

This fortnight's IAA talk was given by Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of QUB who is part of the team which has built the world's largest digital camera weighing in at over 1.3 Gigapixels! It's the Pan-STARRS project. This is the camera attached to a telescope on top of Mauna Kea Mountain in Hawaii and will, when it's finished, be capable of locating and imaging Solar System Objects down to 140m in diameter and will form part of the early warning system which will tell us about Near Earth Objects which may hit the Earth.

Alan's talk was delivered in a lively, enthusiastic and very informative style which had me gripped from start to finish.

Here's Professor Fitzsimmons taking questions...

Comet LONEOS again!

2007-10-18T22:34:00.001+01:00

It's brighter still, but getting lower all the time - now just below and to the right of Arcturus caught here with a definite tail...

Comet C/2007 F1 LONEOS

2007-10-14T09:38:00.002+01:00

This Comet is brightening and is moving towards Arcturus where it approaches within 4 degrees next weekend (19th/20th October). It is now expected to peak at magnitude 4 - ie faint naked-eye visibility in early November though it will be closer to the Sun and hence in a brighter sky by that time.

Here is a shot I took on 9th October - the Comet is to the upper left while the star cluster Melotte 111 is to the lower right. The Comet's magnitude is estimated at 7.0 here...

Colours of Autumn

2007-10-11T19:48:00.002+01:00

Well without doubt the colourful season is upon us, at least a couple of weeks early this year!

Here's two scenes from the Glens of Antrim.

Firstly the Ess-na-Crub Waterfall in Glenariff Forest Park...

Secondly a long view of Glenarm Forest...

A new Comet!

2007-10-10T21:50:00.001+01:00

We have a new comet in the sky - Comet C/2007 F1 LONEOS is visible in Coma Berenices in both eveing and morning light, though it is close to the Sun so the sky will always be a little light. Nevertheless I have managed to capture this image, believed to be the first from Ireland. Currently around mag 7.5, LONEOS is expected to brighten, possibly as bright as mag 4 or 5 in weeks to come. Well worth keeping an eye on!

The Comet is the green fuzzball in the dead centre of the image!

New 'scope

2007-10-10T21:45:00.001+01:00

I have joined the Dobsonian Telescope Owners Club. The new 'scope consists of a 10" Newtonian reflector mounted on a simple alt/az mount which keeps the heavy mirror down low while the eyepiece is a few feet off the ground. The whole thing can be easily carried around in two parts and assembly is the work of a minute or so.

However, to add to the versatility of the setup I also purchased the mechanical parts to allow the 'scope to be mounted on my Equatorial Mount so that it can be used for photography, so I now have one setup for quick viewing and another, which takes rather longer to set up, for long exposure photography!

Another Excellent IAA Lecture

2007-10-10T21:36:00.001+01:00

Last Wednesday I went to the Irish Astronomical Association meeting at Queen's University Belfast to see Dr John Mason talk about "The Next Giant Leap For Mankind".

This was a superb talk which briefly covered the last 50 years of space exploration from Sputnik, through Vostock and Soyuz by the Russians, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle by the US, then went on to cover where we go next. Dr Mason, a Past President of the BAA and regular on the BBC's "Sky at Night" amongst his many credentials, took the view that the involvement of private enterprise will move space exploration forward at an advanced rate.

He highlighted those such as Richard Branson whose "Virgin Galactic" promises to put tourists into space within three years and then looked at other possibilities such as mining the Moon and asteroids.

The US Orion/Ares programme was also outlined - this being a continuation from where Project Apollo left off in 1972 - indeed much of the technology for this program is derived from the mighty Saturn V rocket with additions from the subsequent Shuttle and Delta rockets.

All in all a fabulous lecture, thought provoking, entertaining and informative.

Three Images from Saturday Morning

2007-09-23T16:08:00.001+01:00

I tried some imaging on Friday night but the haze and consequent LP was just too much for anything meaningful to be captured - not even the NAN shone through, so I gave up and went to bed, got up just after 0530 BST Saturday morning when there was still a little darkness left and generally better clarity though still a lot of high level cloud about.

So here's Orion. Not a very deep image (no Flame or Horsehead) but note colour and detail in M42.

And M45 and the Hyades.

And towards the oncoming dawn, here, from the right, Venus, Regulus and Saturn! Is this the first glimpse of Saturn from Ireland this time around?

Excellent IAA Season Opener

2007-09-23T15:47:00.001+01:00

On Wednesday evening I attended the first meeting this season of the Irish Astronomical Association. The Association has moved to new premises - the Bell Theatre in Queen's University, Belfast, and it's actually easy to get to - no problem with parking as I had worried there might be. It's a fully equipped theatre which can hold just over 100 and was at about 80% of capacity on Wednesday, so a good turnout!

The evening started with introductions and matters of business being handled by Vice-President Philip Baxter, then Past President Dr Andy McCrea MBE gave us a short tour of the sky in September - there's some great stuff on show this month - we just need the weather to co-operate!

The main lecture was by Prof Tom Ray from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), entitled "The Birth Of Stars and Planets: Do we really know how the Solar System Formed?".

Prof Ray gave an informative, entertaining and thought provoking talk bringing us right up to date on the thinking and evidence behind star-formation from the very small (Brown Dwarfs) up to the very large. The knowledge on this subject has advanced very much in recent years and has changed a lot of previous thinking. I certainly didn't know that in the Milky Way there is one new star formed per year!

Here is Prof Ray answering questions at the end of this excellent season opener.

North America Nebula

2007-09-22T12:28:00.001+01:00

This object, NGC 7000, has to be one of my favourite objects in the sky which is a little strange because I've never actually been able to see it, even through a telescope! I have only ever seen it on photographs that I've taken. It's an easy one to find as it's just 3 degres to the East of Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus and the North-Eastern corner of the Summer Triangle. The reason for its nickname is obvious.

Andromeda and Orion

2007-09-17T08:08:00.001+01:00

Well here's an unlikely pairing - firstly M31, the Andromeda Galaxy which I imaged on Friday night, then Orion taken in the early hours of this morning when I awoke at 0400 for some unknown reason!

A worthy honour

2007-09-11T18:30:00.000+01:00

Word reaches me that The East Antrim Astronomical Society have finally done something right! They have awarded Life Memberships to founder member Robert Dick and Chairman of 8 years, John C McConnell. Both of course are very well deserved and the awards are notable as they mark a step back towards respectability for the Society which, shall we say, has not done itself any favours over the last year.

The next step is awaited with bated breath - C'mon guys, how about coming up with the requisite apologies for those keen members who have been driven away over the last year?

Milky Way in Cygnus

2007-09-01T10:08:00.001+01:00

Having been struck down by the lurgy I've had the opportunity to spend some time processing some recently taken images. Among them was this Milky Way image taken on 8th August with my DSLR piggy-backed on top of my 'scope. This is an exposure of 2mins 15secs with a 28mm f2.8 lens wide open and the camera set to ISO 400.

Click on the image to open a much bigger (500kB) version.

I'm particularly pleased with the way the North American Nebula has come out, also the H-alpha (Red) areas around Sadr, the middle star in Cygnus.

Hopefully September will bring more clear skies so I can do more imaging - the Summer has been a bit of a washout this year, so much so that leaves are falling off the trees here signifying a very early Autumn!

I'm please also to see that we're passed 2000 visitors - but don't just visit, feel free to comment too!

999 miles

2007-08-29T13:21:00.001+01:00

As is usual around this time of year, we made our annual pilgrimage to Bridlington on the East Yorkshire coast for some golf, scenery and the best Fish and Chips in the country!

Here's me on the approach to the 9th at Bridlington Links short course.

We then stayed at the Cow and Calf Hotel on Ilkley Moor where I climbed to the top of the rocks to converse with a local gentleman.....

Later on we witnesed a most unusual sunset as the sky filled with Lenticular Clouds...

As the sunset progressed Crepuscular Rays joined the scene - these are the rays which appear to originate below the horizon...

I also took a Panoramic View of the Dusk here...

We went for a ride on the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Railway in North Yorkshire. Very good although the realisation that one is covered in soot afterwards makes one realise that this isn't a technology that should be reintroduced on a grand scale!

We made a little diversion to see the Ribblehead Viaduct on the Settle to Carlisle Railway - a spectacular piece of engineering in a great location...

We then headed north to Aysgarth Falls in North Yorkshire - these are the Upper Falls...

Then we stayed with a friend in Northumberland and came home through Scotland. All in all a most enjoyable trip, just under 1000 miles in a week!

Successful Perseid Watch

2007-08-13T09:42:00.001+01:00

The sky cleared after 2200 here in Larne allowing us to see an excellent ISS pass at 2205 then as it got darker we saw over 20 Perseids in the next two hours including this one....

Many were brighter than this and at least three left smoke trails lasting a couple of seconds.

In the end we were looking at smaller and smaller areas of clear sky so we called it a night.

However, the shower goes on for a few more nights yet so we may see more!

My 2004 Perseid sighting remains the best to date - here it is:-

The Chase - ISS and Space Shuttle Endeavour

2007-08-09T23:02:00.001+01:00

These two pictures were taken just three minutes apart. That equates to nearly 900 miles. The exposure time in each shot is 15 secs which equates to about 75 miles of travel!

ISS at 2230BST

Shuttle Endeavour at 2233BST

Dramatic to say the least!

Clear skies,

Paul.

International Space Station

2007-08-08T08:22:00.001+01:00

The last Space Shuttle mission to the ISS attached more solar panels to increase the electrical power available on the ISS. This had the effect of increasing the brightness of the Station as seen from the Earth, thus last night's pass was billed as the brightest ever over Northern Ireland at magnitude -2.0.

Rather than photograph this as the conventional time exposure giving a streak across the sky, I thought I'd try and get a single still image through my telescope. The plan was to set the camera on the scope, pre-focused, then set it running on continuous drive while trying to keep the ISS in the finderscope. Most of the frames were blank of course, but a few weren't and this was the best one..

It's a bit overexposed but the concept seems to be sound. I shall have another go and of course if tonight's launch of Endeavour goes ahead there will be a Shuttle to aim at as well, then the pair of them will be docked for a few nights!

An unusual Perseid and an Interloper

2007-08-07T08:16:00.001+01:00

I caught my first Perseid of the season in the early hours of Monday morning. I spent half-an-hour outside during whihc I saw six Perseids and caught this one right on the edge of the frame - Vega is top right with the Coathanger below centre left. What's unusual about this Perseid is that it flared twice!

Mars is very much back on the scene, being the interloper in this otherwise convention view of the Hyades (left) and Pleiades (right). Although Mars is not as close this year as 2003 or 2005, it will be much higher up thus better placed for imaging this winter, so keep an eye out!

Gorgeous Sunrise

2007-08-03T06:14:00.001+01:00

There aren't usually many reasons for getting up at 0500hrs, but that's just when I woke up this morning! I looked out of the window and saw that the sky was looking a little bit interesting so I got the camera out and started snapping. So here's three of the best...

At last, a clear night!

2007-07-29T12:56:00.001+01:00

Clear skies are back!

I spent a very pleasant Saturday afternoon at Carnfunnock Country Park where my astronomy society, the Irish Astronomical Association, were holding a Solar Day. The Sun was somewhat intermittent and hazy but it was possible to see new sunspot 965 on the disc - also a couple of the members had H-alpha 'scopes which gave interesting views although not as - good as is possible with these 'scopes where a really clear sky reveals prominences at the Sun's edge of which there are currently quite a few active.

Later on the skies cleared and the telescope came out - firstly looking at Jupiter and its moons - very low in the sky and somewhat hampered by looking through power lines but still very spectacular - here's a shot I took earlier in the week...

Imaging was made difficult by the almost full Moon casting its glow across the sky but I was able to get a few good ones - mostly I was just happy to look through the scope sighting such gems as Albireo, M13, M81 and 82, the Double Cluster and many others. I also saw numerous meteors though none of them was a Perseid.

Here's M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules

The Double Cluster in Perseus

A not so great shot of M82, the Cigar Galaxy

M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra

And finally the return of a couple of old friends we haven't seen for a while - Mars and M45, the Pleiades.

It was nice to log on this morning to find that the BBC have used a photo of a double rainbow I took on Thursday evening here...

Daytime Moon

2007-07-21T12:19:00.001+01:00

During a sunny period on Thursday evening (19th July) I observed both the Moon and Venus in the daylight sky through 10x50 binoculars. Venus was showing a crescent much the same as the Moon - it is remarkable how quickly it has changed. I tried to get images of both but failed to get Venus through the 6 inch reflector - the contrast is sufficient to show in the binoculars but it didn't appear in the finderscope so I has to settle for this image of the Moon - I made a blue mask from a surrounding area of sky and subtracted it from the original image so the blue sky doesn't appear at all...

After the Storm

2007-07-17T23:45:00.002+01:00

I was very pleased that the BBC used one of my photos from yesterday's blog entries in their News coverage of yesterday's weather. It's here....

After a generally good day the weather turned again late afternoon with thunderstorms and torrential rain - no hail seen by me today though friends over in Maghera saw a funnel which was pretty close to being a full blown tornado!

I had a good sky towards sunset and caught this Sundog...

And this nice conjunction of the 3 day Moon and Venus...

That's it!

Thin Moon

2007-07-17T08:21:00.001+01:00

I just managed to catch this 6% illuminated Moon before it fell below the rooftops last night. Amazing that it was taken within just a few hours of the earlier storms!

More extreme weather!

2007-07-16T20:29:00.001+01:00

This is Summer. The middle of July. In Antrim....

We had torrential rain, thunder, lightning and hailstones....

Buttons in monochrome

2007-07-16T20:22:00.002+01:00

Here's a nice portait of of our big sleepy cat, Buttons. Having tried a few variations on the theme I reckoned this shot looked better as monochrome. Buttons is of course a Black and White cat, but his green eyes were distracting attention from the rest of the shot....

Nice NLC display 9th July

2007-07-16T20:17:00.001+01:00

This was good, in fact the best NLC display of this season, a different view of the display currently taking the "Picture of the Month" slot on my main site...

Updating the main website

2007-07-12T21:37:00.001+01:00

For those interested in such things I am in the process of a major update to my main website which can be found here...

Paul's Place

Apart from a new Picture of the Month for July there are new sections covering Talks I've given and Media Publications, and there's a 2007 Favourites Photo Gallery. Apart from which the general look and feel has been tidied up and there's more to come!

So, bookmark it and keep looking back!

A Clear Night!

2007-07-08T18:39:00.001+01:00

After all the weather we've been having it was a pleasant surprise when the sky cleared on Saturday night.

So, the first image was a rather unusual cloud formation which I'm told is called Cirrus Radiatus...

Then it was time to catch Venus before it set - Venus is now moving towards the Earth and as it does so it moves closer to the Sun in the sky and forms a crescent as we are looking at it from behind with only a small proportion being sunlit...

I waited and searched for Noctilucent Clouds but no worthwhile display was forthcoming so I had a go at capturing the new comet in the sky. This is called Comet C/2006 VZ13 LINEAR and is currently almost directly overhead at midnight in the constallation of Draco. I was lucky enough to be able to capture the comet and a passing meteor in the same shot! The comet is the turquoise fuzzy object just below centre in the right third of the frame, opposite the meteor...

Then there was the Moonrise, amazingly orange...

A good night!

One week, over 1000 miles.

2007-07-08T17:59:00.001+01:00

We've been on our holidays over to England where the weather has been atrocious and the traffic congestion seems to get worse ever time. Still, we covered over 1000 miles visiting family and friends.

We also attended the "Concert for Diana" at the new Wembley Stadium. This is a really impressive structure although its public transport connections aren't really up to the job of getting the number of people the stadium can hold in and out efficiently. The concert was excellent though - being of the same age as Diana would have been had she lived, this was like having many of my favourite bands all together in the same concert! If one were being critical then one might suggest that having fewer bands could have resulted in less turnaround time between them, but that's always going to be a compromise.

Here's the view of the stadium from our seats....

I briefly visited my old university on the way down. Despite the passage of 24 years since I graduated not very much of what was there in 1983 has changed, though there has been much added to the place, most notably a Science Park that used to be fields in my time! Here's me at my Halls of Residence, home for the first two years I was at Keele....

Here's an example of the weather - this is July remember...

And finally, I managed to take a magnificent panoramic from Holme Moss...

This is a view across the Yorkshire countryside from the top of the Pennines with the town of Holmfirth in the foreground, Emley Moor TV station in the distance and the Drax power station even further in the distance.

Excellent Rainbow

2007-06-27T18:57:00.001+01:00

This most excellent rainbow appeared over Larne this evening - good to know there are some benefits to this changeable weather!

Full size version here... Zoom in and pan across!

Over 1000 visitors!

2007-06-26T20:46:00.001+01:00

Thanks to all of you who have been the first 1000+ to pass by here - do keep coming back, and remember you can comment here if you want to!

As part of the extraordinary weather that one of my friends pointed out is actually "normal" for this location and time of the year, we had a very pretty sunset here last night...

And the nights are drawing in already!

Professor Mark Bailey MBE

2007-06-21T18:22:00.001+01:00

I was very pleased to learn today that Professor Mark Bailey, Director of Armagh Observatory has been awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. He was awarded the honour for services to Astronomy.

Full story here...

Here's Professor Bailey (left) pictured with John McConnell in October 2005.

Congratulations on this well deserved honour!

More extreme weather!

2007-06-20T21:15:00.002+01:00

Not much blogging has happened these last few days as I've been busy changing jobs and otherwise have been pretty much rained in! Will it ever end? Still, there was a brief respite on Sunday evening when I managed to capture this planetary/stellar lineup...

My photo here......

I have to report that I was completely clouded out for Monday's Lunar occultation of Venus - I didn't see a thing - it's that crazy weather again!

Other than which I've been having some more fun in the garden with the macro function on one of my compact cameras. This time it's the Minolta Dimage S414.

The View from my Window

2007-06-14T07:32:00.001+01:00

Apparently the night sky is rather magnificent at the moment - Venus is now entering the crescent phase and is passing right by the Beehive, M44. Jupiter is at the best it will be all year although still rather low and the Noctilucent Clouds are magnificent, very bright and visible from as far south as London.

So here is the view from my window.....

Great weather, then it ended!

2007-06-12T20:39:00.002+01:00

Well we had a few days of splendid weather but it all ended - literally - with a bang! Massive thunderstorms and flooding came today with great disruption in Belfast and two pretty scared cats here. I did manage to stop the thunder for a while by running a video camera until the batteries ran out, but then it started again, so no pictures for me this time.

Still, plenty of photography was done while the weather was good. I've been on the front page of Spaceweather - set the date to June 7th and you'll see my panoramic NLC shot taken last Wednesday night - or see it here....

We've also had the International Space Station come past, as well as the Space Shuttle. Here's a composite image of the ISS pass on Saturday night giving an impression of the arc travelled by the ISS from here in Northern Ireland where we are further north than the top of the orbit.

We've also had some great atmospherics such as this Sun Pillar in a fabulous sky...

But for now it's all over. Here's a great sky just down the road at Drains' Bay

Great website I came across...

Andy's Shot Glass

Andy's a Texan guy who sells telescopes, but this site has some of the best Flash tutorials and articles about things like Polar Alignment and Collimation that I've ever seen, presented in a way that delivers at all levels, beginner to expert. Becaus of the use of the Flash format it is really only for Broadband users though.