Author Archives: james

Observation Report 2/3/2011

Posted on March 3, 2011 by james

Another night when the seeing was far from great, not helped by having a breakdown truck parked nearby with all the lights flashing whilst I was setting up, and then someone wandering through the adjoining field at about 10pm flashing … Continue reading →

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Observation Report 26/2/2011

Posted on March 3, 2011 by james

Despite not being a great night in terms of seeing, this was the first time I’d been able to give the ST102 a good try out so I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity. Initially I skipped a few Messier … Continue reading →

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DIY Small-Scale Anaerobic Digestion (part one)

Posted on February 28, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 28, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 21, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 19, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 16, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 15, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 15, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 14, 2011 by james

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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