Partial Lunar Eclipse New Year’s Eve 2009

Posted on: January 1, 2010 /

Categories: The Moon

Managed to get out tonight for a while around 7.30pm, I did not think the clouds would clear. Usually whenever there is something worth looking at it’s always cloudy! But eventually the clouds went and the moon was in full view, even though it was -1 degrees in the shed.

I took these images by attaching my Canon 450d to my cheap £100 guiding refractor telescope, I still think the photographs it produces are great for a £100 telescope. Images were taken mostly using an exposure time of 1/800th and an ISO400

I stayed out as long as possible to try and get the full story of the eclipse, all the way through from start to finish, but I did move my camera between the refractor and the lx200 so some later shots did get rotated as I did not put the camera back in the exactly same position.

The partial eclipse was not a great site to behold, but still something worth looking at.

Damian Peach No Show at FAS 2009

Posted on: October 3, 2009 /

Categories: General

Hi, Just returned from a day at the Cambridge Federation of Astronomical Societies Annual Convention. It was quite a nice and quiet day at the Cambridge campus. I arrived just after the Dr Hayley Gomez talk, to be told on the door that Damian Peach was ill and would not be presenting.

It was really strange, as I was thinking what would I do if he did not show up, on my way to Cambridge in the car. Would I just ask for my £8 back and go home and do something else? Because I had only turned out to see Damian, but I stayed anyway and had a quick look around the stalls and luckily Jerry from Loughton AS stood in and gave a good old fashioned slide presentation instead.

After lunch, Chris Lintott spoke on Galaxy Zoo, the same talk he gave at Herstmonceux, but luckily I did not attend that talk. After that I then came home without waiting for Martin Ree’s talk.

I hope that the FAS still publish Damian Peach’s talk on the web as I would still like to read it, but I was gutted he did not show up along with several other people.