Astronomy every Thursday
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Sun dogs are a common bright circular spot on a solar halo. It is an atmospheric optical phenomenon primarily associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. Often, two sun dogs can be seen (one on each side of the sun) simultaneously.
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I must admit that the picture does have a certain surreal quality, which will hopefully make up for any lack of scientific weight! When I first saw the mock-sun I genuinely thought for an instant that it was the real one behind high cloud, but then realised that it was in the wrong direction and the real sun was going down behind the houses on the right!
It was taken 4 January 2019 at 1427UT with an Alcatel One Touch Pixi 3 (not my choice of name, but so be it) Model 4009X and was allegedly 1680x1120 pixels before JPEG compression. It hasn't been processed in any way.
The location was about halfway along Eastry Road, location 51deg 28' 33"N, 0 deg 9' 3"E to the nearest 100 feet or so.
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The parhelion (to left) was visible from Bexleyheath train station at 1646hrs today 18th March 2019. The sun is partly obscured by the tree in both pictures. There was no parhelion on the right hand side of the sun.
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100 meteors were detected by the meteor group in February 2019, 70 of these were sporadic and the remainder from minor showers.
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We had a clear night on Thursday 21st February 2019, and before the Moon rose a few members had a go at the Orion Star Count, showing the diversity of eyesight and experience in our group.
The moon rose above the trees as a golden gibbous Moon and some of our group took to observing it with one of the Societies telescopes, affectionately known as Anita.
On the right is an image from Honor Wheeler taken through Anita, a Fuller Scopes 8" F8 recently converted to a Dobsonian by a couple of our members.
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Other members were experimenting with the new CCD camera purchased by the society for the Peter Hindle telescope, a 16" LX200, using the F3.3 focal reducer we got a wide field view of the Orion nebula (M42) and M1 the Crab nebula.
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Another member, Leigh Slomer, was experimenting with his Skywatcher Star Adventurer, DSLR and a 70-200mm zoom to capture images of M42.
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This unique design of roll-off roof observatory, is easy to make, very compact and makes use of all the available space.
I spent months searching the internet for roll-off roof observatory designs and images but none were quite what I was looking for, so inspired by others I set about designing my own observatory.
I have been a member of the Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society for 25 years many members were helpful with ideas and Steve, recently retired, helped with the construction, the observatory design is named after the society, and I believe it to be unique.
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The top 1/3rd of the observatory, slides over the smaller warm room, both 'rooms' were made from standard garden sheds.
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The warm room is a standard 6' x 6' double door (barn door) garden shed, constructed in panels, the end panels came in two pieces allowing a single door to be fitted to each end, without any modification. The door into the warm room was converted from a hinged door to a sliding door.
Despite the shed being top of the makers range it was not that sturdy, so after fitting insulation to the walls and roof, the inside was lined with 12mm ply, and this transformed the rigidity of the shed.
The warm room is fitted with mains electricity, LED light strips, carpet and decoration, it feels like a study rather than a shed, the desk, has an old 1960's moon map from National geographic, this was sprayed with multiple costs of lacquer and has proved to be very robust. I heat the warm room with a small fan heater, it takes about a minute to go from freezing to 'cosy' I then normally turn the fan off and let the warm room slowly cool down, which takes a couple of hours.
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This sort of roof comes with four design challenges.
The design of the roof, with the sides attached is not naturally stable, so additional support was added to increase rigidity, and this seems to be working well, the Observatory is a couple of years old and I've not experienced any problems yet.
The roof automatically locks in place when closed using a standard 'Yale type' door latch. In the video below you can also see the storm fasteners that prevent the roof from lifting off and some additional strengthening for the sides of the roof.
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Rain from the roof, falls into gutters and a down pipe, which transfer the water to 'hoppers', made from standard guttering parts, to the downpipes fixed to the lower walls of the observatory.
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The observatory is made from an 8' x 8' shed, I had this reduced in size to 7' x 7', by doing this the angle of the roof could be made the same as for the warm room. The additional wood used as a base for the one inch angle iron rails lifted the roof enough to allow the clearance necessary for the observatory roof to slide over the warm room roof.
The observatory walls were lined in 12mm ply to increase rigidity. finally the hatch is secured in place with a 'Yale type' door latch so that simply closing the hatch locks it in place. Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out.
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[ngg src="tags" ids="CrayfordTypeRollOffRoofObservatorySlide" display="basic_slideshow" gallery_width="800" gallery_height="600" arrows="1" show_thumbnail_link="0"]
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NGC 7789, known as Carolines Rose, is an open cluster in Cassiopeia that was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783.
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NGC 6946, known as the Fireworks Galaxy is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus.
Discovered by William Herschel on 9 September 1798,
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A cloudy January resulted in a small number of meteors detected, 97 in total, most sporadic, but we did detect 20 Quadrantid's and identified meteors from 17 different showers.
If you want to join in and help with the observations please contact Janice.
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