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Blogs, Information,
Links and Archives
This is where you will find the latest blogs and
information posted onto the website together with archive material
from the past. If you have material that could be featured here
please send it the the webmaster.
Please click on any of the following links:
14th August 2008
By Alan Dyer
Click here for the full blog |
Eclipses come in pairs. Two weeks ago
(has it been that long already?!) I chased a Total
Eclipse of the Sun. Thousands of others did as well,
traveling to the far ends of the Earth to stand in the
Moon’s shadow, to witness the Moon cover the Sun. This
Saturday millions of people will be able to watch the
Moon itself disappear, into the shadow of the Earth.
The occasion is an eclipse of the
Moon, when the Full Moon lines up directly with Earth and Sun,
and passes into our planet’s shadow. Our three
worlds were precisely aligned on August 1 to produce
the total solar eclipse. Now, two weeks later the orbital
angles are still lined up well enough to produce another
eclipse, this time with the Moon on the other side of
its orbit. Instead of it being between us and the Sun,
blocking the Sun from our view, it is us, Earth, that
is in the way. Earth will be blocking sunlight
from hitting the Full Moon.
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11th August 2008
Vern's Weblog
Click here for the full blog |
Animation from about a half hour before red spot transit last night
(11:57 pm) to half hour after. Images acquired with Celeston
Nexstar11 with Phillips Toucam 840K at cassegrain focus.
Mostly cloudless sky but only fair seeing, about 5/10 at
start but deteriorated to maybe 4. Animated gif created from
24 videos (1800 frames), each stacked and aligned with Registax4.
North up and east to the left in the image more or less.
Shadow from Ganymede is the black spot in the north of rotating
to the right. I think red spot jr is there too, off to the
lower right of the great red spot. Appears to be another
one to the lower left of the GRS, not sure what that is,
I’ll have to do some checking. |
| Transit
of Venus 2004 |
On Tuesday 8th June 2004
the visible surface of the Sun was crossed by the planet
Venus. This is a very rare event and was last seen in December
1882. The page has pictures of the transit, click on the pictures
for larger images. |
| Building an
Astrograph |
This article describes how to make an Astrograph
that can be taken out into the country and used on a car roof,
or any flat stable surface. |
| Space Station Viewing
Times |
The International Space Station can sometimes
be seen fom Lincoln. It appears as a bright star, moving across
the sky from West to East, travelling faster than high flying
aircraft and usually brighter than most stars. |
| Testing Telescope Optics |
Testing is usually carried out on a bright
star at night. Before this is done, several conditions should
be met. |
| Current Solar Activity |
Realtime graphs of Solar Activity including
X-Ray Flux, Electron Flux, Proton Flux, Magnetometer and KP
Index. |
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