Hopefully the upcoming legislation will make it difficult for a non-county-council clamper to have any comeback if a clamp is removed by any means..Give us the freedom to remobilise our illegally-immobilised cars!

FOAD NCPS, basically.

So the summertime beckons, with Thesis work continuing and Lit Review to look over and re-complete, as well as a restart on a few personal projects. I’m planning on getting astrophotography autoguiding working with the CG3-2 mount and a possible QHY5 camera with dual mounting. Also on the list is getting the MR2 back into daily use and enjoying any good weather with it. There’s an old telescope mirror that I have to get working as a scope such that I can test it and see if I want to resurrect it with a recoat, scrap it or to get it refigured for use in a possible briefcase scope configuration. There’s also the little matter of getting my fitness back during the summer (gym and bike).

Going to be a busy summer – got to keep myself busy while Sarah’s abroad..

Add to that the 40 hours a week for the usual firefighting and the project work for my place of employment, and I have a lack of time to do anything..

With the good weather recently, I took a few hours to get out and take advantage of the exceptional seeing conditions to get some video captures of Mars and Saturn.  I went through three batteries in the 600D on Tuesday night on Jupiter and the moon through the 4″ achromat, then Mars and Saturn through the 8″ newt. I’m still learning how to post-process properly so these can be considered a work in progress. I’m still doing something wrong, but I’ll figure it out eventually (after the Masters is done!):

Saturn:

Mars at 12 arsec diameter:

I’m at about 350kms on the road bike – I’ve found that cycling is good for the sanity sometimes, to clear the head when it’s overloaded with stuff..

The MR2 should be back on the road this month for the summer, once I replace the tyre that was slashed and get it re-taxed. It’ll be good to get the wind in the hair again, but petrol currently at 1.68/litre will be curtailing my driving in it a bit!

Everything is gearing up for the end of semester exams, during the first two weeks in May. It’ll be good to be finished and back to having weekends, to pursue the thesis work and studying for the I-Grade exam in maths in August. September will be getting the cisco certifications that I’m looking for. That’ll make a difference for my career path :)

I’m currently trying to retrofit the manfrotto head I picked up secondhand as well to the spare ETX tripod I have, to put this little scope onto.

With the new saddle onboard and the updated brakes starting to bed in I went on a looping cycle around Castletroy, in the search for a nice loop that is pleasant to cycle with as little problems as possible. I’ve found that the cycle lanes on the south side of Castletroy (Groody link road, Monaleen Road, SchoolHouse Lane) are not suitable for cycling a road bike at normal speeds (20-35kph) as the surface is rough and rattley with broken surfaces and really poor path-road interfaces. Some places on the paths are rough even at walking pace! I’ve found it is better for my safety to be on the road and able to maintain speed and visibility for roundabouts instead of possibly surprising some poor motorist. Some of the cycle paths are good for kids and people ambling along, but not really for commuters or sport cyclists. It’s a pity that there is little desire to fix the problem and less cash available to implement the fixes. Then again, with a County Council that in all their [lack of] smartness put a pedestrian crossing within the average modern car braking distance from the exit of a roundabout across two lanes – there’s little hope of getting sane and coherent cycle paths that go from A to B.

It was a pleasant enough road cycle, and one of the best bits was accelerating away from cars at the Golf Links Road traffic lights by the Spar, and overtaking cars on the way down to the roundabout! Just under the road speed limit in the are so all legally too.. 56.7 kph according to Node2, 56.09 kph according to Cyctastic.

Seeing was reasonable, but not that good. I got a few videos of Jupiter, one of Mars, and a few of various bits of the moon. all to be processed at a later date. I tried a few 30 sec exposures of M42′s core – came out pretty well even accounting that I was using the 2x barlow to reach focus.. The trapezium was clearly resolved, as were the colours and Herschel’s “Mackerel Sky” pattern of the brightest part of the nebula. After waiting for Mars to clear the treetops to my southeast, I took off the 8″ from the LXD75 and put the Onyx onto the mount. I tried a few widefileds of M42 without much look, the streetlights were washing out the image. So I pointed high to the east, and aimed at M51.

I set the camera to no ISO noise reduction, and auto long exposure noise reduction was set on so that the camera would subtract a dark frame for each light taken. First impression was that I could get the cores of M51 and NGC 5195 and a tantalizing hint of spiral arms at 10 sec @ ISO 800. So I set it off to run out the battery at 1m exposures. I got 14 minutes of exposure, each one a bright orange :( But after downloading and working in IRIS, I got a reasonable image with mag 15 stars and mag 13.5 NGC galaxies in the image. I’m still working on it, but I’ll add it to this post when it’s done.

Very nice short session that wound me down nicely from the evening’s work, and these quick grabs of suitable stargazing time have really made me thankful that I got the 80mm Onyx and the alt-az mount. Setup is minimal and the cooldown isn’t a big issue compared to the Newts.

2nd hand 2011 Trek Madone 4.5 frame in 54 size (black/red), 105 compact chainset, 105 grips/shifters, 105 front brake, tiagra rear brake, Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels, Bontrager Node 2 bike computer, Vittoria 700*20 wheels.

First impressions? Light. Comfortable enough, but I’ll swap out the brakes and the tyres for ones that will better suit my weight. I’ll also have to get a pump that will work with the tubes…