Author Archives: james

Coronado PST “Stage 0.5” mod

Posted on October 15, 2013 by james

A short while ago I purchased a slightly damaged PST for solar Ha viewing. Not wishing to stump up the price of a Tal 100RS just yet, but wanting to make life somewhat easier for imaging and not being entirely … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay…

Posted on October 15, 2013 by james

A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon. So the saying goes. This was my first of the year, on 31st May. I reckon that counts as June 🙂 It was a fairly large swarm, too. Now safely tucked … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee-keeping, Smallholding | Tagged | Leave a comment

DSO Imaging with a 127 Mak

Posted on October 15, 2013 by james

It’s often said that slow focal ratio telescopes are unsuitable for DSO imaging and in the general case I’d probably agree. However, having seen a few other imaging attempts with a 127 Mak I thought it might be interesting to … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

It’s been a busy summer…

Posted on October 15, 2013 by james

And I’ve had little time to write up what I’ve been doing, so now the autumn is well under way I shall be catching up with details of the last three or four months…

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One Swallow does not a summer make…

Posted on June 23, 2013 by james

But lots of them is really quite impressive. Especially when you can get up close. Just went out to feed some scraps to the chickens with my daughter and saw a number of swallows tearing around the trees in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Environment | Tagged | Leave a comment

Enough of the demonising of private schools

Posted on June 21, 2013 by james

I see today that yet another person (the Chief Inspector of Schools, this time) is taking a cheap pop at private schools in a poorly-veiled effort to grab a few headlines. One more strike against the privileged on behalf of … Continue reading →

Posted in Random | Leave a comment

Ghosting problem on Moon images solved

Posted on May 20, 2013 by james

I hope I have now resolved my problem with ghosting appearing on lunar images with my 450D. I finally had a night with a clear period long enough to take subs of the Moon at multiple exposure times. First I … Continue reading →

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My first piece of astronomy-related lathework

Posted on May 20, 2013 by james

I’ve been wanting to tinker with Mire de Collimation to collimate my dob, but I didn’t have any handy way to fit a webcam into the eyepiece holder without removing the lens. So I found a lump of waste (and … Continue reading →

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Impressive new solar active regions

Posted on May 20, 2013 by james

Whilst still relatively quiet, the Sun showed some impressive new active regions last week, apparently associated with quite large flares. Here are my white light images of the newer regions. First, AR1745: AR1746: And AR1748, just after passing around the … Continue reading →

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Adobe ripping off UK users?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by james

I read on the BBC News website yesterday that Adobe was moving to subscription-based charges for its software and “Creative Cloud” (whatever that means). If you’re in the UK though, it seems like you get stitched up on the pricing … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | 1 Comment