Not for profit website/blog on astronomy, space and my writing
Some pictures of the Tiede Observatory as seen from Puerto De la Cruz (about an hour’s drive away). Mars was obscured by the Moon for about an hour (approx between 4 am and 5 am) on Thursday, 8th December. Mostly cloudy but here are some pictures. Click for a larger version. All taken using a Canon DSLR.
The best location for an astronomical telescope is on the top of a mountain. Remote, cold and a pain to get to. But with an internet connection – you can “work from home”.
During the summer, I signed up for a free Open University course called Astronomy with an online Telescope. With it you get access to a telescope on mount Tiede on the Island of Tenerife for 6 months.
This professional grade telescope COAST (COmpletely Autonomous Survey Telescope) consists of a 17 inch f/6.8 Corrected Dall-Kirkham Astrograph telescope (a PlaneWave CDK17), is equipped with an FLI ProLine KAF-0900 CCD camera, broadband and narrow-band filters, also mounted on a GM4000. You pick which objects you want to image and select filters. A few days later, you receive an email that the image is ready for download.
The OU course is free and explains how to use the telescope as well as the many aspects of basic astronomy. The course is online, free and available right now. Some of my images are below. Click for a larger version.
Nik Syzamnek is one of the UK’s leading astrophotographers and one who has been doing it for almost four decades.
In this episode, Nik shares his unique perspective on how the hobby of astronomy and especially astrophotography has evolved since the 1980s when he first started.
We cover a lot of ground including modern software used for image processing and telescope control, increasing use of robotic telescopes e.g. Telescope Live by amateurs and the obstacles introduced by Climate Change and the mega-constellations of satellites. We conclude this episode on his lesser-known skills as a drummer in a band.
Books
2005 – Infinity Rising: A Personal View of the Universe
2018 – Co-author of – Spacerocks: A collectors’ guide to meteorites, tektites and impactites
2020 – Shooting Stars – 2nd Edition (AstronomyNow website)
Nik’s images on Flickr.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:11 — 48.2MB) | Embed
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A video of this interview is also available here on Youtube and includes many of his images.
As the lock-down begins to end – Nik is getting out and doing some talks live. If you are in the area – catch him live in 2021 here
2nd November: Stour Astronomical Society
17th November; Havering Astronomical Society twitter.com/HaveringSociety
So here are a few pics with limited post processing. These are my first pictures of a comet since Hale-Bopp in 1997! Got some nice pictures of Hale-Bopp from San Francisco during WWW06 in April 1997. Hale-Bopp has a period of 2500 years and comet Neowise about twice that. So both are once-a-life-time events.
After a couple of futile attempts last week when I did see it between the gaps in the clouds but these were fleeting moments and I got no pictures. The following pictures were taken during the early hours of 20th July 2020.
Yes, I know, this is a pretty feeble attempt compared to some stunning images (I and you will have) seen elsewhere. But ..
