Author Archives: james

Why Can’t We See The Flag On The Moon?

Posted on March 14, 2012 by james

I answered this question for someone the other day, whose work colleagues wanted to know if he could see the flag left behind on the moon from the first lunar landing using his new 300mm telescope and thought I’d write … Continue reading →

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Solar System Images

Posted on March 13, 2012 by james

I’ve started collecting together some of my better solar system images so they have a page or two each rather than being interspersed with other posts. See the menu bar for links.

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Registax 6 Tutorial

Posted on March 5, 2012 by james

I use Registax for stacking video frames for planetary imaging, but the learning curve is steep and many online tutorials are out of date because the UI seems to change quite significantly between releases. I was pleased therefore when someone … Continue reading →

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Jupiter, Venus and Mercury

Posted on March 5, 2012 by james

A poor quality photo, I know, but I was grabbing a few seconds when I should have been doing something else so had to make the best of it. Jupiter is at the top, separated from Venus by what appears … Continue reading →

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127 Mak Star Test

Posted on March 2, 2012 by james

There were patches of blue sky this evening, but plenty of thin cloud too, Jupiter and Venus were visible before sunset though, so I decided to get the Mak outside cooling and hope we’d have enough clear sky to do … Continue reading →

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Solar PV Generation Update, Mar 2012

Posted on March 1, 2012 by james

I was bracing myself for low numbers this month as December, January and February are apparently only expected to account for about 7.5% of our total yearly output, but was pleasantly surprised when I read the generation meter to discover … Continue reading →

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EQ3-2 DEC Drive Gearbox Stripdown

Posted on February 29, 2012 by james

With a new DEC motor drive in place, I decided I’d take apart my old DEC drive gearbox to see if it could be improved at all. Once split from the motor I used two pairs of pliers to hold … Continue reading →

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EQ3-2 DEC Motor Strip-Down

Posted on February 29, 2012 by james

Having done a fair bit of work trying to improve the motor drive for my EQ3-2 mount I wanted to look particularly at the DEC motor to see if I could improve its performance at all. It’s had a tough … Continue reading →

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My First FIT Payment

Posted on February 28, 2012 by james

Last week, two and a half months after I submitted the readings, I finally received my first FIT payment for the electricity generated by our solar PV installation during September, October and November last year. Very pleasant at last to … Continue reading →

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127 Mak Collimation

Posted on February 28, 2012 by james

I’ve been doing a fair bit of fiddling around with my 127 Mak recently. The initial reason for this was that the mirror had become loose on the carrier mechanism, meaning lots of trouble getting reliable focus. To fix this … Continue reading →

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