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MESSAGE OF THE MONTH
Solar showcase
I captured the images above today during the partial solar eclipse using my Google Pixel 4 smartphone and Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope with solar filter attached!
Debbie Townsend, Doncaster
What a great record of the event, Debbie! Your montage of the whole passage of the eclipse is a really effective way to present the afocal images you captured on the day.
– Ed.
The ‘Message of the Month’ writer will receive a bundle of two top titles courtesy of astronomy publisher Philip’s: Nigel Henbest’s Stargazing 2022 and Robin Scagell’s Guide to the Northern Constellations
Winner’s details will be passed on to Octopus Publishing to fulfil the prize
The glare essentials
For the partial solar eclipse on 25 October, I used a 4-inch reflecting telescope to project the Sun’s image onto a screen in my garden, capturing it with my mobile phone. I also viewed the eclipse with a pair of solar eclipse glasses that I have owned since 1999, when I bought them for the total solar eclipse.
Model behaviour
Having read in the November issue’s Message of the Month about the young lad who had made the Lego model of the Apollo 11 lunar module, I can endorse just how pleased he would have been to have put this terrific model together. Last Christmas my daughter bought me the very same kit and I was equally pleased at the result, so much so that I treated myself to the Saturn V Apollo rocket model. This was equally as impressive once constructed, standing around a metre high! Having created a diorama to display the model of the lunar module, I then set about creating one for the Saturn V. I’m old enough to have witnessed the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969 and I’m eagerly looking forward to witnessing the next, although I didn’t expect to have waited so long!
Giza teaser
This photo (above) was taken a few minutes after the peak of the partial solar eclipse from the Great Pyramid of Giza. The duration of the eclipse in Cairo was two hours, but the weather conditions were so extreme there were only 30 minutes without heavy cloud cover. I had been planning this image for three months and made three visits to the Great Pyramid to select the best scene. I also bought a Sigma 28–70mm lens and Formatt-Hitech ND 3.0 nautral density filter for my modified Nikon Z6 camera especially for this capture.
In plane sight
This is my first shot with the Sun and a plane. I was trying to focus the Sun to take a photo when a plane went by, so I just clicked quickly, which explains why it’s not in the best focus. But I’m over the Moon that my first shot of the Sun with a plane also included the partial solar eclipse! The equipment I used was a Sky-Watcher 10-inch Dobsonian, Seymour thin solar film and a Google Pixel 6 smartphone.
Cloud pleaser
For me, the 25 October eclipse was hampered by clouds almost throughout the event, however I managed to get a few pictures I was happy with. I took this image with a hand-held Canon R6 camera and RF70–200mm lens at 200mm, using a Lee Big Stopper 10x neutral density filter.
Tweet
Alan Crossland @alan65834785 • 27 Sep
Winter skies are here! Andromeda rising over Beacon Mill, Rottingdean. #Andromeda #astrophotography #Brighton #stars #Southdowns
ON FACEBOOK
WE ASKED: Why do we always see the same side of the Moon?
Steve Green Is this a trick question? The moon is a sphere, so it doesn’t have a side!
Ed Jonze I thought it was in synchronous rotation with Earth but no – it’s apparently some white-tac that got stuck on the camera lens.
Gilles Blanchette The Moon rotates one turn in the same number of days that it takes to make one revolution around the Earth. That’s why we always see the same side of the Moon.
Philip Horn-Botha Coz the Moon is shy? The other side is full of junk?
Pete Madge The Moon’s rotational period is almost the same as its orbital period around its parent body, with some libration.
Mark Pearsons The 19 largest moons in our Solar System are all tidally locked to their host planets.
Stephen Croft Because a lunar day is about 29.5 Earth days.
cellistontheroof • 25 October
My only option for getting an image today was the RedCat51 with an Explore Scientific white-light solar filter and ZWO ASI224MC – the only setup that can fit the whole Sun in frame. I couldn’t get my larger telescope out because while the Sun was out it was actually RAINING! #solareclipse #astrophotography
SOCIETY IN FOCUS
Bristol Astronomical Society celebrates its 80th anniversary on 8 December. The UK was in the midst of the Second World War 80 years ago, with heavy bombing and air raids a common occurrence. But with the city lights out, the wonders of the night sky became more visible. In winter 1942 an advert in the Bristol Evening Post invited those with an interest in astronomy to join a meeting on 8 December.
Little is known about the group in the early years, but enthusiasm clearly grew. In the 1970s the society built an observatory southwest of the city in Failand. An 18-inch telescope was donated by Cyril Swindin CBE and the observatory was officially opened by Sir Patrick Moore in 1972.
The society is much changed. Our telescope is now a 12-inch Meade LX600, polar-aligned and fitted with a CCD camera, ideal for astrophotography, group viewings and Zoom meetings. We host star parties during autumn and winter and have a full calendar heading towards 2023.
Our meetings are held at the Bristol Photographic Society in the Montpelier area of the city. During the pandemic, they moved online to keep the society together during difficult times. Now, all meetings are over Zoom as well as at the BPS. For more info on our talks and observing events, visit our Facebook page or our website.
SCOPE DOCTOR
Our equipment specialist, Steve Richards, cures your optical ailments and technical maladies
Email your queries to scopedoctor@skyatnightmagazine.com
I have a pair of Celestron SkyMaster 20×80 binoculars with a Horizon Heavy Duty Tripod, but I find the screw in the tripod’s mounting plate is too short to hold the binoculars. Am I doing something wrong?
This is a rather puzzling problem as there is no reason why this combination shouldn’t work correctly. The binoculars have an adjustable, but not removable, tripod adaptor attached to a cylindrical bar running from the front to the back. This adaptor is tightened onto the bar using a thumb bolt at the top and projects downwards, exiting from underneath the binoculars where you will find a 1/4–20 threaded hole. The captive bolt in the Horizon Heavy Duty Tripod’s quick-release mounting plate screws into this threaded hole. The quick-release plate is then fitted into the quick-release shoe at the top of the tripod and locked in place.
If the plate cannot be attached to the binoculars’ tripod adaptor for some reason, a simple solution would be to use a small 1/4-inch male to 1/4-inch female tripod adaptor between the binoculars’ adaptor and the mount’s quick-release plate.
Steve’s top tip
How can I prevent vignetting?
Vignetting is the appearance of the light intensity through a telescope falling off towards the edges of the field of view, and can be very obvious in deep-sky images. It can be caused by an obstruction in the light path, the natural effect of light passing through a lens, or pixel vignetting where light falling on the edges of a sensor arrives at a slight angle, whereas light falling on the centre arrives perpendicular.
The cure for all forms of vignetting is to calibrate your images with a series of ‘flat’ frames, captured with a diffuse material over the front of the telescope while aimed at an even light source, such as a cloudy daytime sky.
Steve Richards is a keen astro imager and an astronomy equipment expert
CORRECTION
In the feature ‘Mars season has arrived’ in our October 2022 issue, the caption for the map of Mars’s surface features on page 62 mistakenly mentioned areocentric longitude, where it should simply have mentioned longitude.