Apples, apples, everywhere…

Posted on November 10, 2019 by james

And most of them will be drunk.

I took advantage of the first sunny day for what seems like months a couple of weekends back to get out in the orchard and do something that’s been on my list of things to do for a few weeks: collect as many of the apples as I could that would be suitable for juicing. I ended up with ten sacks — probably somewhere between 150kg and 200kg.

I picked pretty much anything that I thought we’d not eat all of and isn’t a cooking or cider apple (cider apples will be harvested soon) and there’s quite a mix of varieties including Egremont Russet, Tom Putt, Ellison’s Orange, Blenheim Orange, Ashmead’s Kernel, Charles Ross and Braeburn.

Of course this now adds several more jobs to my list as I must now dig out the apple crusher and press and clean them up ready to do the actual juicing.

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A DIY Stevenson screen

Posted on November 10, 2019 by james

Now the observatory is up and running my mind has turned to wiring up my weather station kit again and getting it all working as I can now connect it all to the PC in the observatory and have some records of conditions when I’ve been observing/imaging. I dismantled everything some time back when my last bodged-together screen gave up the ghost, so this time I thought I’d do a bit better job though most of the materials will be stuff I have sitting around the place.

Initially I had considered 3D printing the louvred sides, but I discovered that Screwfix sell vents about 200mm square with built-in insect screens (I’m not desperately keen on it becoming a home for bees/wasps/hornets) for about £1.40 each and anything else looked rather too much effort at that point, so I bought four of them, one for each side and two for the door:

A hunt about in the stack of wood “that may come in useful one day” turned up some 30mm square softwood, a bit of T&G and a few offcuts of ply and I also found some galvanised mesh I could use for a floor, so I set to with the tools and made up a box and frame for the door:

The wooden floor section is to allow me to drill holes for feeding cables in.

The next steps are to make up a second roof (apparently a second roof with an air gap underneath is desirable, presumably to reduce the effect of the Sun) and to paint everything so I can finish assembling it all. I was contemplating covering the second roof with an offcut of EPDM, but I’m not sure at the moment. It might well defeat the object of having a second roof in the first place. On the other hand, this will be going on the north east wall of the observatory, so shouldn’t really get any significant heating from the Sun anyhow.

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Adding the TSRED279 reducer/flattener to the Photoline 72

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

I’m very happy with my little Photoline 72, but with a camera sensor of any size it becomes obvious that the field is far from flat. So much so in fact that it’s sometimes difficult to get Deep Sky Stacker to stack my image frames. When a TSRED279 come up for sale used it seemed like an obvious choice to try.

Spacing between the reducer/flattener and the camera sensor is supposed to be fairly critical and the figures on TS’s website are a bit on the vague side. An email to their support people didn’t help much, so I tried to draw a rough graph from the figures they do publish and estimated the actual distance from there. I also used the 3d printer to make some spacers of varying thicknesses from 0.5mm to 3mm that would fit over a T2 thread to help with getting the spacing correct. These will doubtless come in useful elsewhere and in fact help to prevent threads on extensions and suchlike from locking against each other.

The result is a huge improvement, though I’m not sure I have things perfect quite yet. I’ve gone from having stars that were barely even recognisable as such towards the edges of the frame to this:

Top left:

Top right:

Bottom left:

Bottom right:

Centre:

I think there’s more to be done here, possibly in getting the camera sensor completely perpendicular to the optical axis, as the reducer is only threaded on the camera side and has to be clamped into the end of the OTA which obviously has the potential to create alignment errors.

I’m going to give it a bit of time to see how I get on with a few images before changing anything else though.

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Landmark day for the barn conversion

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

A large dent in my wallet has arrived in the shape of these:

Sadly they’re mostly covered up to stop them getting damaged by builders’ boots.

Other than the central post, much of the wood to make them actually came out of the barn when we replaced the roof, including two huge pieces of oak that must have come from trees that were already hundreds of years old before they were put into the barn hundreds of years ago. Amazing to think that we could we walking between the floors on something that started growing when the first Queen Elizabeth was on the throne…

The spindles for the bannisters will be made from a mixture of ash and elm that also came out of the barn, but they’re still a work in progress…

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Blobservatory Bitter is ready!

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

Back in August I posted about making my first batch of beer in some time as a celebration of getting the observatory into a usable state. After a little time to condition, here it is:

First impressions? It’s quite drinkable. Not quite as good as I was hoping, but I think I need a little practice to get back into the swing of things. I look forward to the next few brews, and getting through this one certainly won’t present a problem.

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Mists and mellow fruitfulness

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

Over the last few weeks I’ve been out harvesting the bounty of the local hedgerows, in particular the blackberries which grow almost everywhere around us. I’ve picked pounds and pounds (or even kilos and kilos if you want to be a bit more modern) of these.

Many will probably be made into blackberry jelly, but for now I satisfy myself with the fantastic smell of the ripe fruit.

I’ve also picked a nice crop of crab apples. These will definitely be turned into crab apple jelly, to be served with roast dinners throughout the winter.

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DIY dew controller

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

As we get later into Autumn it is becoming obvious that dew control is going to become necessary for my telescopes. To do that for all my OTAs would be quite expensive, so I looked around and found Robert Brown’s open source “myDewControllerPro” project that looks as though it might be quite a practical solution.

I ordered some PCBs which have arrived. Now I need to wait for parts to arrive and I can start soldering.

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M27 revisited

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

I first imaged M27 quite some years back and it has always been a favourite, so it being the summertime this planetary nebula was an obvious choice for an early target. This time I used the Skywatcher ED80 and Atik 314L+. In fact I’ve had a few bites of this particular cherry this year, but this is my first: a total of twelve hours LRGB using ten minute subs.

As soon as I get it organised I’ll put a larger version in a new “DSO images” option on the main menu.

Since I captured this image I’ve collected a lot more data including Ha, OIII and SII as 15 minute subs. I’ll post that when I’ve processed it.

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The observatory at work

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

Work on the observatory has slowed somewhat as I need to catch up on other domestic jobs, but from the images I’ve already posted it’s obviously being used. I’m not sure I have the arrangement of mounts and telescopes that I really want at the moment, but for now here’s an “action shot”.

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It’s been a while…

Posted on November 9, 2019 by james

I’ve not posted about swimming (nor indeed anything else it seems) for a couple of months. This is not because I haven’t been swimming. However, on her return to school after the summer holidays my daughter managed to catch a horrible cold virus within a couple of days which she then very kindly shared with me. I’ve been struggling to get rid of it for a couple of months now and I’m still not really done. Day-to-day things are fine, but if I get into a swimming pool and try to push myself I’m struggling for breath. I suspect that in fact I might have caught several different cold viruses in rapid succession. Things are getting better, but even two days ago I went to the pool and felt as though my body couldn’t actually remember how to swim properly 🙁

Regardless, I’ve been doing the best I can, trying to keep fitness levels somewhere up where I’d like them whilst working on technique. I’ve also shortened my usual set of 50m reps and added a set of 25m reps at a faster pace afterwards.

I’ll start posting updates on all this next week.

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