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Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society DartfordMember Trips , Society News

The Moon Rochester

 19th February 2020 19th February 2020
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    |   8:55 pm 8:55 pm

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Gary organised a trip to Rochester Cathedral to view the huge 3D moon that is touring the UK and to hear a lecture on the moon. 

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CanterburyMoon1

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RochesterMoon3

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RochesterMoon2

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RochesterMoon4

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Informal Evening / Open Evening 2020/02/06

 9th February 2020 9th February 2020
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    |   10:53 am 10:53 am

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We had clear skies last Thursday (2020/02/06) and had many of the Societies Dobsonian telescopes out, a couple of members bought their own telescopes (both reflectors) and Leigh Slomer produced this image of the Great Orion Nebula (M42).

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"]M42-B Image by Leigh Slomer Stack of 27 images at ISO 800 for 30 seconds, 400mm FL Refractor[/caption]

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The Moon & Venus in an Evening Sky 2020-01-29

 4th February 2020 4th February 2020
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    |   8:37 pm 8:37 pm

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"]OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Image by Jim Burchel - No details provided[/caption]

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AstroImageJ Demonstration

 3rd January 2020 3rd January 2020
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    |   11:55 am 11:55 am

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We had an informal meeting over Christmas where Martin took the members through using AstroImageJ (AIJ) he covered the following...

  • Loading an image
  • analysing stars in an image
  • plate solving an image
  • batch processing images to calibrate them
  •  aligning and stacking images
  • photometry on a sequence of images

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"]MartinExplaininghow-to-us-astroimagej Martin Demonstrating AstroImageJ[/caption]

Final image.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="670"]C2017T2_20191201_2149 Comet C/2017 T2 20191201 21:49 Simon Dawes[/caption]

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Christmas Imaging Session

 2nd January 2020 2nd January 2020
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    |   12:13 pm 12:13 pm

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About a dozen members used the 16" telescope over the Christmas period with Keith providing a demonstration of the set-up and use of the new CCD.

The evening ended with cloud relatively early but they did get 10 light frames and below is a stack of these using Astro Pixel Processor.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="746"]M33CMHADS360s Image by CMHASD Members. 16" LX200, total of 360s unfiltered.[/caption]

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Cycle 25 Sun Spots

 29th December 2019 29th December 2019
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    |   9:28 am 9:28 am

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After checking out spaceweather.com for any astronomy updates yesterday, Honor couldn't believe the Sun had finally got some sunspots. Being up early anyway to walk her Mum's dog, she got home and got her ED80 refractor set up on an EQ3 and took some photo's. 
SunSpor_HW_X20191225_1110UT

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Christmas Quiz Night

 23rd December 2019 23rd December 2019
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    |   2:57 pm 2:57 pm

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Merry Christmas!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"]quiz2019 The legendary Quiz Night.[/caption]

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"]quizmasters Our Quiz Masters[/caption]

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Meteor Report for November 2019

 8th December 2019 8th December 2019
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    |   5:11 pm 5:11 pm

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This is the meteor report for November 2019, by the Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society Dartford.

This month we were plagued with poor weather and this is reflected in the low number of meteors captured.

In total we observed 139 meteors from 29 different showers, none of these showers was particularly active, the most active being the Leonid’s where we captured 19 meteors compared to 55 sporadic meteors in the Month.

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All Sky Cam Project

 20th November 2019 20th November 2019
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    |   7:00 pm 7:00 pm

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At a recent society night Keith described how he has built an all-sky camera, mainly from parts he had laying around, the camera is capable of producing a live view of the sky, time laps video summary of the night, can upload the images to a website for public viewing and can be used as an ASCOM compliant sky sensor.

This short article provides some notes to help others wishing to do the same.

 

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Parts needed:

  • PC/Laptop (windows)
  • A CCD/CMOS Astronomy camera (with ASCOM drivers)
  • Fish eye lens (Keith use a 2.1mm CCTV Cmount lens)
  • Long USB cable 
  • Rechargeable dehumidifier 
  • Water proof electrical junction box 
  • 3.5" Acrylic dome (from dewcontrol.com)
  • Plumbers Mate putty (to seal the dome to the junction box)
  • AllSkEye software 
  • Tektite Skies software (ASCOM cloud sensor software based on all sky camera)
  • 1 Ohm resistors (to make dew heater - although dewcontrol.com make them if you don't want to make your own)
  • Rain-X Plastic - to reduce raindrops and dew on the dome.
  • USB female panel mount connector
  • 12v power supply - for the dew heater

 

Key Features provided by AllSkEye 

  • Can run 24/7 automonously
  • Acquire images during pre-set or calculated (e.g. night) times
  • Place latest image on the Internet (FTP)
  • Can automatically creates video files of saved images
  • Add overlay on images (e.g. timestamp, compass, text)
  • Can save files in FITS format
  • Detects meteor trails

Key Features provided by Tektite Skies

  • Able to detect stars and clouds
  • Can send an email or sound an alert when sky is clear
  • Start and stop times
  • Optional free ASCOM interface

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="582"]AllSkyCam_KR All sky camera built by Keith Rickard[/caption]

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More information can be found in Keith's Original Presentation.

Have you made one? Have other ideas on how to make an all sky camera? Leave a comment below

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AM or PM for meteor observations?

 18th November 2019 18th November 2019
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    |   9:37 pm 9:37 pm

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It is well known that you see fewer meteors before midnight than after. This is explained by the fact that before local midnight Meteors hitting the Earth's atmosphere must be travelling in the same direction as the Earth, so the relative speed of the meteor to the Earth is smaller, whereas after midnight the Earth is passing through Meteors on the Earth's leading edge, so the relative speed of the meteors are faster, and since the speed the meteor hits our atmosphere affects its brightness we should see more after midnight than before.

My own experience sifting through the meteor candidates from our camera and observing over long periods, suggest this bias should be easy to detect, so now that we have over 15 months of data, I thought I'd see if this bias in observations was real. 

The UFO analysis software categorises the meteors into named showers, if a shower can't be identified it is classed as a sporadic meteor. I have only used the sporadic meteors in the analysis to minimise any bias due to known meteor showers.

My (very simple) analysis suggests on average you are 2.7 times more likely to see a meteor after midnight than before, a much larger factor than I'd expected.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"]AMPMMeteorPlot Plot showing the number of sporadic meteors per hour over a 15 month period as captured by the Meteor team using the Societies meteor camera. Overall you are 2.69 times more likely to see a meteor after midnight than before.[/caption]

Does this reflect your experience? Comment below.

 

 

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