Category Archives: Astronomy

View of ISS and Discovery on its way home

Posted on March 8, 2011 by james

I was looking at some galaxy information in Stellarium last night with my son when I noticed the ISS pop up over the horizon. I’ve never seen it before, so we rushed outside to watch it pass overhead and were … Continue reading →

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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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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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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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Observation Report 13/2/2011

Posted on February 14, 2011 by james

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

Posted on February 14, 2011 by james

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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