Monthly Archives: February 2011

DIY Small-Scale Anaerobic Digestion (part one)

Fans of the 1970’s BBC comedy series “The Good Life” will remember that Tom and Barbara had an electricity generator in the cellar that was powered using pig manure. What may be surprising is that it’s based on a fundamentally … Continue reading

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Solar wax melter

Solar wax melters are available commercially and there are a fair few designs about on the web. Here’s one I made a couple of years ago. I started with the tray that the frames would sit in. I had some … Continue reading

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Creating a bespoke landscape for Stellarium

I use Stellarium on several PCs and laptops to help me plan what I’m going to attempt to observe and for finding objects in the sky when I can’t find them from other pictures or star maps. It’s a great … Continue reading

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Lunar 100 map with blue markers

I discovered a couple of nights ago that with my new red torch it wasn’t actually possible to read the red markers on my Lunar 100 map. So, I’ve made a new version with the markers in dark blue, which … Continue reading

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Observation report 15/2/2011

After almost a full day of pouring rain, the skies cleared in the late evening and the seeing was excellent. The moon was bright enough to cast crisp shadows and to illuminate the smoke from one of our chimneys as … Continue reading

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Focus motor drive for Startravel 80 & 102 Review

One of the problems with the ST80 and ST102 on the EQ1 mount is the amount of “wobble” when changing focus, which not only takes a while to settle down afterwards, but makes it more difficult than it need to … Continue reading

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Cider Apple Pressing 2010

Behind our house are a small number of cider apple trees around twenty-five years old. Three of these I have identified as Yarlington Mill, two are Dabinett, four are, I’m fairly sure, Somerset, and the remaining three I have not … Continue reading

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UK light pollution map

Someone pointed me at an excellent interactive UK light pollution map the other day, apparently done as an overlay on Google Earth. It’s quite shocking to think that all those bright areas represent wasted fuel, wasted energy and, especially in … Continue reading

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Observation Report 13/2/2011

Around 11pm the sky eventually cleared after a day of heavy cloud and rain to show a sky mostly washed out by the moon. This was my first chance to try out my new (to me) Startravel 102 though, so … Continue reading

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Observation Report 7/2/2011

Another night with fairly poor seeing and some cloud, but I wanted to catch up on some of the things I’d missed a few days earlier. Again I had to give up on M77 and M79, but this time I … Continue reading

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