Category: Society News

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The winner has been announced, every image was great but there has to be a winner and our congratulations goes to Richard Bohner of Arizona (yes he is a member of CMHASD) with this marvellous image taken from his back yard.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] The Winner of the 'Milkyway from my back yard' competition. Image by Richard Bohner Taken with Canon 6D with wide angle lens at 24 mm at iso 1600 for 60 seconds. Jupiter & Saturn at far left with Sagittarius Teapot to left of galaxy and constellation Scorpius to right of galaxy. Taken on 15 June in Arizona, USA. (Richard lives in the USA so this is a valid entry)[/caption]

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November 2020 was spent largely in lockdown due to the Corona virus, one thing keeping us from all going crazy is our astronomy and with our remotely operated meteor camera our members were still able to observe and had lots of candidates to look forward to, and it turned out this was our most productive November 'since records began' - ok the records only go back to August 2018 - so was it better weather, is COVID-19 actually space borne and arriving on the meteors, or perhaps it is just a useless fact? Personally I think it has something to do with 5G masts...

Sorry back to the report.

We observed 244 meteors, 39 of them Leonid's and you can watch them all - thanks to our members of the meteor team - without having to wade through all the false positive sightings.

I've embedded the video below, but if your attention span isn't what it was, then just check-out the highlights at the times listed below (if you click on them they will take you to the correct part of he video)

Highlights:

01:50     02:06      02:22     02:22     02:57     03:20     04:00     05:40     07:18     07:50 

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Image by Dianne

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Image by Dianne. Mars, the Moon, & the ISS Canon 750d, Sigma 18-250mm lens, @18mm Exp 6 secs @ f/5.6, ISO-400 Static tripod[/caption]

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7 members of the society attended the Kelling Heath Autumn Equinox Star Party, some booking camping pitches and others static caravans. The weather was overcast with showers with long dry spells and whilst the astronomical observations were very limited between clouds it was still a great event which I'd recommend any keen observers try to book.

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This is the meteor report for the automated meteor camera operated by the Crayford manor house astronomical society Dartford, for the month of September 2020

This month we detected a total of 269 meteors, well over half were sporadic meteors, meteors from known showers only making a minor contribution to the total, the largest identified shower came from the September Perseids but contributed only 22 meteors to the months total

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The below video is a report for the perseid meteor shower, based on meteors captured by the semi-automated meteor camera operated by the society members.

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This is a simple competition, take an image of the Milkyway from your back garden - or close to where you live. The winning image will be the one that the webmaster is most impressed with.

Rules:

1. You have to be a member of the society
2. No telescopes! This is for camera and lens only!
3. Must be from your location not some superb dark sky you travelled to.
4. Ends November-ish

What will impress the Webmaster most?

• It's all about effort taken and obstacles overcome.
• Local sky conditions vs image captured

Good luck!

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="602"] mage by Leigh Slomer 26 light frames at 75 seconds ISO 800. 15 darks frames 20 flat frames Equipment used: Canon EOS200D Sigma 30mm f1.4 EX DC HSM lens @ f2.2 Skywatcher Star Adventurer tracking mount. Processed in Deep Sky Stacker and GIMP[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Leigh Sloamer I made an attempt at capturing the milky way last night. This is a 14 x 3 minute stack at iso 3200. I would have captured more but my new lens is a dew magnet. I also had to crop the image a bit due to amp glow in the lower left corner.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by John Archer Thought I would pop out and snap the Milky Way while the evening is still mild and the breeze has died down. Bit of a change from planet spotting....[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="416"] Image by Honor Wheeler finally found this image of the Milky Way taken from my back garden on the evening of the 23rd of August 2014. I'd just got back from the cinema and the sky was amazing. As you'll see it was a single shot with my Canon 1100D on a tripod, no tracking! Black and White as light pollution was an issue.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Richard Bohner Taken with Canon 6D with wide angle lens at 24 mm at iso 1600 for 60 seconds. Jupiter & Saturn at far left with Sagittarius Teapot to left of galaxy and constellation Scorpius to right of galaxy. Taken on 15 June in Arizona, USA. (Richard lives in the USA so this is a valid entry)[/caption]

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The recent conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Mercury in the evening sky has been delighting our members, below are some contributions from those who imaged it.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Jim Burchell The Moon and Mercury showing Earthshine. Taken Dartford top road. Pentax K70.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by John Howarth Venus is at lower right on both photos, Mercury (faint, but visible) is about equidistant from Venus and the moon, practically level with the moon.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by John Howarth Venus is at lower right on both photos, Mercury (faint, but visible) is about equidistant from Venus and the moon, practically level with the moon. Taken from the park.[/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Stephen Goldson 'First time I've seen Mercury clearly'[/caption]

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Images of Saturn are from the same 2 minute long raw format video, but stacked and processed differently. The last version had a 1.5x drizzle applied to enlarge the size.

Equipment used:

•Skywatcher heq5 pro mount
•Skywatcher skymax 150 pro maksutov cassegrain telescope
•celestron 2× Barlow 
•Zwo asi290mc one shot colour uncooled CMOS camera

•Captured with ASICAP for android
•First and second version stacked in registax, the last version in autostakkert with wavelets in registax 
•Final processing in GIMP

Camera settings:

•Raw16 colour space 
•Gain 300
•Exposure time 82000ųs

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image by Leigh Slomer processed in RegiStax[/caption]

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image by Leigh Slomer processed in RegiStax[/caption]

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Image by Leigh Slomer processed in AutoStakkert[/caption]

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by John Howarth Image taken through glass in upstairs window. (Window will open but not in the right direction. Telephone wires are a nuisance too, just in wrong place..or perhaps Mercury's in the wrong place!)[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Jim Burchell - no details provided[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Image by Jim Burchell Image of Venus and Mercury taken this evening (2020,05/19) at Barn End Lane Dartford[/caption]

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