My Profile on Amazon.com AuthorZone

I now have a profile on Amazon.com's AuthorZone. This will hopefully elevate my profile and help promote the book.
For those who are viewing this from my AuthorZone blog pages, hello and welcome! You can access my blog and post comments directly on http://www.phuturespace.com

Cheers
Martin

Equinox Skycamp 2009

Once again my family and I attended the Equinox Skycamp up in Kelling Heath. We also stayed the previous week in Great Yarmouth like we did the previous year and true-to-form caught the customary heavy colds that we attempted to avoid this time of year! Fortunately the colds were out of our system by the time the Skycamp weekend was upon us.

Every year I use the Skycamp as a testing ground for new equipment and gadgets since it is the best location and skies to test them. This year I had a couple of things I wanted to do. Firstly, to test out a wireless communication system for my telescope and secondly to obtain decent digital images of Jupiter.

Tent fun!

One thing I hadn't considered setting up before travelling up to Skycamp was the tent. Well, basically I forgot how to set up the simplest of toilet tents used to house the laptop and accessory equipment (see last year's pictures) and subsequently shattered two the carbon-fibre rods that provides the general shape and rigidity of the tent. Unfortunately the tent as it 'stood' was not very strong and the shape was such that it looked a little art decor! but thanks to a heavy dose of masking tape kindly donated by a friend (thanks Ken!), the tent held together for the weekend and was still functional. Luckily the weekend was wind-free! The worse case scenario would have been working from out of the back of the car. The tent provides me with a cosy enclave sheltering all equipment and myself from the elements. With a small electric heating fan running at low power I was kept relatively warm in comparison to being exposed in the open most of the night. As a result I lasted much longer than I did last year because I felt the cold less.

Bluetooth Wireless Communication

For quite a while I have been considering to set up a Bluetooth (BT) wireless connection between the telescope and the laptop. The Autostar uses a bog-standard Serial RS232C connection for communication so it wasn't too difficult to find on the internet a gadget that converted any Serial device to a Bluetooth wireless device.

In fact I decided to opt for a cheaper alternative than the so-called 'dedicated' Serial to Bluetooth telescope adaptors that are produced by astronomical product retailers such as Software Bisque, these cost in upwards of $110 dollars.

My cost effective solution is a MaxValue BT to Serial adaptor. It comes with its own USB and +5v power transformer. The price? only £22.

Now since USB power uses +5v DC to power it, I decided to go one better and use a USB travel power battery kit instead of using the power transformer supplied with the adaptor (which would have required yet another AC power socket under the telescope). These travel batteries are designed to charge or power mobile phones and mp3 players etc... Maplins supply such a kit and is supplied with various leads, one which connects the battery to the BT adaptor. The battery is rated at 2200mAh so it provides power to the BT adaptor for many hours. In fact it powered the adaptor for the entire weekend and only used up a small amount of juice. See picture.

The system worked perfectly throughout the weekend. The adaptor and battery was placed inside a small plastic box which also contained two transformers that powered the Dew Heater and LXD mount. The electronics were kept dry and relatively warm.

Touring the Norfolk Night Skies

With the wireless system up and running it was time to test it out. I decided to take my LXD55 AR-6 6 inch refractor on the LXD75 mount to the camp this year as I want to get the best images of Jupiter and to be honest I prefer it to my 8 inch SCT.

Friday night was exceptionally clear with some of the best transparent skies I have ever seen up at the site. Setup was not without event as my GPS failed so I had to resort to entering site and time details manually into the Autostar handset. Luckily I already stored the lat-long details in the Carte Du Ciel astronomy software. I also synchronised the time on my laptop with the help of a radio controlled clock. With perfect polar alignment achieved the GOTO system worked flawlessly throughout the whole weekend. The GOTO system was running accurately and I managed to observe large a number of objects including those that I don't normally see. I managed to stay up until about 3am, making the most of the clear sies.

Jupiter Imaging

My aim of the weekend was to get images of Jupiter through the refractor both observationally and digitally and I was not disappointed! I got some excellent views through the telescope, the best I have had for many years.

My first imaging attempt was to use an LPI but I found it easier to use the ToUcam Pro II instead. I cannot seem to get on with the LPI software - too time consuming to play around with it whilst out in the field.

The hardest part of the imaging task was trying to focus the Jupiter so I enlisted a friend to help me - in the future I will probably invest in a motor focuser (I am currently looking at an Orion Accufocuser and a Shoestring Autofocus PC interface). I took about five movies of Jupiter and processed the best one with the latest version of Registax v5.

Unprocessed

Processed

The Weekend

Saturday was the main event day. Trade stands lined the yellow field for most of the day and lectures took place in the Kelling Heath bar. Speakers included Bob Mizon and Nik Syzmanek.

There was a telescope tour from Loughton member Alan Marriott demonstrating the various types of telescope design of instruments scattered through the fields.

During the day raffle tickets were available from Loughton Society's stand located on the bandstand in the square. In the early evening the raffle prize draw took place where all prizes were kindly donated from vendors.

The day was sunny and warm with clear skies, but as the Sun went down it began to cloud over and despite some clear random patches, very little observing was done that night.

Sunday was a another bright sunny day. There were more lectures in afternoon, but normally I dont attend them because traditionally my family and I visit Cromer for the afternoon.

By the time the Sun was setting it was looking very likely the night was going to be a clear one. Once again I was not dissapointed. I decided to stick to observing rather than imaging and managed to see more objects than I did on the Friday night including M81, M51, NGC7662 (Blue Snowball) as well as four planets; Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Mars.

On the whole Skycamp was a great success, two out of three nights were clear. Over 1300 people attended on the Saturday and it has become the largest Skycamp in Europe. Looking forward to next year where we have booked a lodge and a pitch for 10 nights.

FAS Newsletter Review

The book has been reviewed in the spring edition of the Newsletter of the Federation of Astronomical Societies. Almost every astronomical society in the UK subscribes to the FAS so this should boost visibility across the whole of the British Isles including Ireland, and the channel islands.
The review was done by Darryl Sergison. I wish to also thank Frank Johns, editor for kindly publishing the review in the magazine.

Astronomy Now Review

The book has finally been reviewed in Astronomy Now, April Edition.
Nick Howes was the reviewer, he is a regular contributor to the magazine.

It was a mixed review to say the least. The first and last paragraphs were very positive and quite flattering. However the middle bit was what I can only describe as diametrically opposite to the other paragraphs.
There were a few points that Nick discussed:
1. Unpacking and Handling
From personal experience I did not find setting up the telescope from out-of-the-box, what Nick described as blindingly obvious. On the contrary feedback from other owners of the telescopes suggested that including the 'obvious' tasks would be beneficial for someone who has never owned these type of telescopes before.
2. Focusing methods
I agree that there are numerous methods for enhancing the focusing of a telescope. However, I do not know of have not heard of any owner that has placed wires across the objective of their telescope in order to improve the focus quality. I am not suggesting that it is not a good idea (I may even try it out one day!!), but I cetainly believe that it was not appropriate for the intended target audience of the book.
3. Quality of Images
Nick commented that perhaps the deep sky images could have been of sufficient quality to 'sell' the telescope. However, I think that the images provided was of sufficient quality to show the 'potential' of what an LXD can do given the right equipment and expertise.
4. Autoguiding
At the time of writing the sentiment amongst members of the LXD user groups suggested that autoguiding using the Aux port via a #909 port converter was not easy to get working. In fact the LPI provides sufficient means to autoguide via the RS232 port and the Meade AutoStar Suite. I considered writing several more pages on autoguiding but decided that there are plenty of resources on the internet that goes into much greater detail on autoguiding with Autostar.

There was no mention of the actual content of the book, such as the complete breakdown of every Autostar function, approximate times of various set up tasks and a whole chapter dedicated to Polar alignment.

I dont mind some criticism, but given that most other reviews were very positive (Mike Weasner, Ian Morison, ebay and Amazon), I expected this one to be no different! In fact Nick missed a couple of technical howlers that Mike Weasner picked up.

In conclusion, although I am pleased that the review was on the whole a positive one some of the review content was dissapointing.

The book should be reviewed shortly in the next FAS newsletter so we'll see whether it will be a positive one or not.

Astrofest 6-7th Feb 2009

Once again Astrofest has come round again. It took place last Friday and Saturday 6th and 7th Feb.
So far I haven't missed a single year and this time it was no different. I attended the lectures on both morning sessions and in the afternoons I wandered around looking at the trade stands and generally 'networking'. The highlight of Friday's lecture was Govert Schilling a Dutch journalist and Astronomer who spoke about the search for Planet X and the discovery of transneptunian objects in the kuiper belt. His book of the same name was on sale on the Springer stand and I got him to sign it.
The highlight for Saturday's talk was a session with Patrick Moore, Reginald Turnall and Garry Hunt reminiscing the 40th anniversary year since Apollo 11.

It was good to see my book on the Springer stand and to know that it was selling quite well.

The only piece of equipment I ordered was a 2 inch ED barlow, which I am hoping it will be delivered shortly. I also purchased a couple of Springer books.

As usual both days went very quick and I always feel that its never long enough. Here looking forward to Astrofest 2010!!!