Hitting the bull's eye with a Telrad

Have you purchased your favourite astronomical magazine for this month yet? I am sure you are familiar with the vast amount of pages devoted to telescope accessories and have made a mental list of all the gear you would like to purchase in the future to compliment your astronomical observing which brings me to the ‘point’ of this article. Having a good telescope is one thing however being able to point it swiftly and accurately to a star or galaxy in the night sky is another matter entirely.

Unlike its sister disciplines within astrophysics and planetary science, meteor astronomy has traditionally been the domain of the visual observer. Large databases of visual meteor observations, meticulously calibrated and compiled via the “Mk I eyeball” detector, have formed the basis of scientific studies of meteor storms, variation of meteor showers from year to year, sporadic meteor statistics and so on. Ultimately however, camera technology would have the last word.

45 DEGREE AFOV TELESCOPE BINOCULARS
HELICAL FOCUSERS WITH INTER-CHANGEABLE 1.25 EYEPIECES

I received the above binoculars in April 2005 from John Burns of Strathspey Binoculars, Scotland, and he had delivered them before I had paid for them. There is not much change from £1,000. I admire the trust.

REFLECTION

So how long have you been into astronomy? Take a quiet minute and reflect back over your observing career. Do you remember the excitement of getting your first telescope? The first time you saw the rings of Saturn? What about those spectacular Auroras, Meteor showers, Fireballs, that great Comet or that naked eye Sunspot you seen as the Sun set into a murky western sky on a gorgeous Summer evening? Better yet, did you keep a written record of these observations? Astronomy is not just about observing, it’s an experience, a life style but more than that it is a collection of priceless memories.

Robert Cobain from Bangor runs an automatic meteor observing station from his house and has kindly taken the time to tell us of his observations and his setup. This is truly a fantastic way to record meteor showers and to capture bright meteors even when there is partial cloud cover. Robert has also setup a website, MeteorLogNI which automatically displays his observations each evening and these observations are used by the Armagh Observatory which also has an observing station for distance and altitude estimates of meteors.

Meade Starfinder 16" F/4.5 Dobsonian Refurbishment

Before refurbishment...

After much thought on the refurbishment of my Dobsonian, I realised that I was wasting time considering different options instead of doing anything about it. The moon was moving out of the evening sky very briefly, leaving a very short dark window for observing so I needed to get this scope sorted out or I would never get observing with the 16”.