Author Archives: james

Veg plot 2020, #1

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

Vegetable seeds started arriving in the first week of April and I considered myself lucky to get so much of what I wanted given that just about everyone else in the country seemed to be trying to do the same … Continue reading →

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A new “lockdown” vegetable plot

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

With the impending arrival of lockdown in the UK we decided that it might be useful to grow some more of our own food and it therefore became necessary to increase the space we use for growing vegetables which has … Continue reading →

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A first attempt at M51

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

Through March and into April I attempted to image Messier 51 with my Skywatcher ED80 and Atik 314L+ (mono). I ended up with twenty-six five-minute luminance exposures and nineteen three-minute exposures for each of red, green and blue for a … Continue reading →

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Possible meteorite image?

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

I suspect long exposure images that catch genuine meteorites burning up are not that common and I try quite hard to explain any unexpected trails on my images as satellites or aircraft, but this one doesn’t seem to fit and … Continue reading →

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Guidescope in need of TLC

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

I recently purchased a used Celestron 80mm guidescope with a focal length of 600mm. Normally I’d probably have gone for another ST80, but in fact I wanted this one to use with a slightly longer focal length OTA anyhow, so … Continue reading →

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Interesting guiding drift plot

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

In relatively poor seeing recently, the drift plot for guiding in Ekos showed up like this: An interesting pattern, I thought, like three circles on a line through the centre of the plot. I can’t explain either the circles or … Continue reading →

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Odd diffraction spikes from a refractor

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

The other night I was framing an image using my 80ED and Atik 314L when I noticed that some stars in one corner of the image had odd diffraction spikes: I couldn’t see what the problem was at all at … Continue reading →

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Odd Maksutov reflections

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

The other night when I slewed to a bright star to check the focus on my Skywatcher 127 Mak I got this image from the ASI174MM camera: I’m thinking the off-centre ring must be a reflection of the bright star, … Continue reading →

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Darkstar restoration, part 6

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

I think the next step has to be sorting out the spider and secondary mirror assembly. Now I’ve had some time to consider options, what I’d really like to do is to build a secondary assembly similar to those used … Continue reading →

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Darkstar restoration, part 5

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

The new stainless bolts arrived, but I’ve had little chance to get out to the workshop so this morning I got out and started work on fitting the new focuser. This took a little longer than planned as I realised … Continue reading →

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