Arthur Davis’ September’17 sky notes and chart.
4 September, 2017
Arthur Davis’ August 2017 Sky notes and chart
26 July, 2017
July 2017 meeting
21 July, 2017
As Mike Witt our scheduled speaker couldn’t make it, we decided to use the time to talk about the care and use of equipment. Bud led the question and answer session, covering topics like the cleaning of lenses and eyepieces, collimation and polar aligning. One thread that emerged was that ‘if it ‘aint broke don’t fix it’ especially when it comes to a bit of dust on mirrors and lenses. Clean only when absolutely necessary and then with great care.
During the break Caroline Clements impressed many interested members by showing how easy it was to set up and use her Celestron NexStar ‘scope.
Arthur Davis presented Cygnus as the Constellation of the month featuring NGC7000 the North America nebula and IC5070 Pelican Nebula. We were encouraged to observe that colourful double star Albiero (Beta Cygni) at the head of the swan and which is well placed for viewing now.
Jan Wrightson treated us to a great image of the ISS transiting the sun. She’d captured this with a 600mm lens on her Canon DSLR. Given that the transit time was 0.5 seconds this was quite a feat!
Ken Honour shared his superb images of the Whirlpool, Needle and Blackeye galaxies as well as NBL_618, Cave, NGC7380, NGC7000 and the Heart nebulae. Ken also illustrated and described the equipment he uses including several of the DIY electronic elements he constructed for controlling the scope and imaging.
Many thanks to all the contributors, to Zena and Annabelle and to all who helped with the ‘housekeeping’ chores.
I sometimes wonder how we manage to pack so much in to the evening!
Next month Bill Coombes’ talk will be on the International Space Station. This is one not to be missed!
Change of Programme for July.
2 July, 2017
Please note that our scheduled main speaker is unable to come to the meeting. Members decided that we would fill the slot with a ‘Care and feeding of your telescope’ session. Bring any equpment along especially if you would like help with setting up, cleaning, upgrading, callibrating or anything else.