My book has finally been officially reviewed by a popular astronomy magazine. The Society for Popular Astronomy quaterly issue October-December 2008 has a review of my book by Ian Morison.
Ian praises the book and even recommends it to those who dont even own the telescopes described in the book. I didn't expect such high praise so I am very grateful to Ian for writing such a positive review.
At some point my book is going to be reviewed in Astronomy Now so it will be interesting to see what the reviewer says.
Saturday 11 October 2008
Sunday 5 October 2008
Equinox Skycamp Report: Kelling Heath Sept 26th-29th 2008
The 13th Eqinox skycamp took place in late september at the Kelling Heath Touring Park, Sheringham Norfolk. It was hosted by Loughton Astronomical Society (who I am a member) in association with the Society for Popular Astronomy.
My family and I stayed in a lodge for the weekend. I also had a a pitch in the red field which had an electrical hook up for my telescope.
My family and I stayed in a lodge for the weekend. I also had a a pitch in the red field which had an electrical hook up for my telescope.
We stayed in Yarmouth the week before for an extended holiday, so it did not take long to travel up to Cromer on the A149.
Like the previous year I used a small tent, which was basically a tent normally used for er.. other purposes - a toilet tent! I decided a few years earlier that I did not need to have a large empty tent on the pitch since we stay in a lodge at these events. The small tent is fit-for-purpose, it has enough space for a small table and my laptop and acts as storage for tools and eyepiece boxes. It also acts as an excellent windbreak and keeps me relatively cosy whilst I am searching for objects with the laptop.
This year I took along my LXD75 Sc-8 and left the LXd55 AR-6 at home. The telescope's Autostar #497 handset was hooked up to the laptop via the usb-serial port. This meant that I did not need to use the handset, only for initial setup.
The Friday night (26th Sept) was clear ...but there was a lot of moisture in the air and the cover to the telescope was soaked when I removed it ready to observe. This was a night for the Dew zapper to run at full blast!!
Polar alignment and GPS setup went smoothly as did the two star alignment. The laptop was hooked up and I was ready to go. Time was about 22:00 BST.
With this setup I could observe countless objects in a single observing session. The Goto aligment was accurate such that the object was always in the centre of a 26mm Meade 4000 eyepiece. I decided to stay observing in the region of the Summer Triangle (Cygnus, Lyra, Aquila) area and adjacent constellations. Once the usual Messier objects were observed (M57, M27, M74) I proceeded to look for NGC and Caldwell objects. Over the course of the evening until about 1am I must have observed over 60 objects. The only failing I had was when the scope did a 'meridian flip' when looking for M31 and Uranus, this caused the Goto to lose its accuracy so I had to re-sync to re-acquire accuracy. By then however, my scope was suffering from Dew so I called it a night.
Saturday (27th Sept) was the main event day. Trade stands were plentiful in the Trade viallge situated in the yellow field. Lectures took place in the afternoon in the Bar. I attended Nik Syzmanek talk which was excellent. I also heard that thother by Les Cowley and Robin Scagell were also well attended.
A telescope tour took place at 5pm by Alan Marriot and at 6:30 the prize raffle took place, where first prize was a basic CCD camera.
The day was sunny and moderately warm with just a brief period when fog rolled in from the sea and the temperature dropped a little. It was a little eerie seeing how quickly it enveloped the campsite...I was expecting the sound of a ghost ship passing by !!!
Saturday night was relatively dew free although I would say not better sky conditions compared to the previous night. Nethertheless over 70 objects was notched up including Uranus until I retired around 2:30am. This time I was concentrating on objects in the east-south-east region of the sky such as Andromeda, Perseus and Casseopeia.
Unfortunately two days of sunshine and good weather was not to last...the Sunday (28th September) started windy with drizzly rain. This continued through to late afternoon. There were two lectures that took place in the Kelling Heath bar. Although I did not attend them I did hear that both talks were very good. I took my family for our usual day trip to Cromer.
The rain luckily held off whilst we were there...but by the time we headed back to the campsite, it seemed that any hopes for observing on the Sunday night were dashed. Funny enough this came to the relief to some astronomers who found three consecutive clear nights since the previous thursday of observing exhausting!!
Monday it was time to head off back home. Overall it was an excellent skycamp, well organsised and a great atmosphere too. The lodge and pitch for Sept 2009 is already booked and I may attend the spring skycamp in 2009.
Monday it was time to head off back home. Overall it was an excellent skycamp, well organsised and a great atmosphere too. The lodge and pitch for Sept 2009 is already booked and I may attend the spring skycamp in 2009.
More pictures of the event below:
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