So, it’s back to Limerick then.
By the mid-summer, I’ll be back in Limerick full-time, and back as a full-time student as well. Life’s going to be busy for the next year or so!
Now to look for accomodation.
Easter cycling
Easter saw me up in Achill and the weather was spectacular for a weekend on the island. Easter Saturday morning, I cycled the 3 kilometres from the road junction to the transmitters on Minaun in ~45 minutes, turned the camera on and cycled down the 3km on the road and 350m vertical descent, in about 3 minutes. Video here:
Descending Minaun, easter 2011
Fun!
MR2 – getting it back on the road!
So, the MR2 is now insured as a classic car, as it’s 20 years old. Limited mileage policy, fully comprehensive, full euro breakdown cover for less than €350. I’m very happy!
Now I’ve to tax and NCT it. At least doing the NCT now will mean no NCT until October next year from when it will require a yearly NCT. As the car has been off the road completely since it was last out of tax I’ve to get that Garda stamp then pay more cash to the Government.
A few hour’s worth of hard labour and the fading of the standard Toyota red has now been reversed, and a proper resin wax is now on. I also realigned the foglights, and I replaced the OEM air filter, returning it to stock. The next steps are to probably change out the wheels for ones that are a proper size for the car (staggered 16×7 and 16×8, or 17×7 and 17×9, and a decent set of tires of the correct size (205s on the front, 235s on the back) to tame the oversteer tendencies a bit.
The red did come up well!
March 1st stargazing, trawling through the NGC catalogue
Weather: 3-6 degrees, very broken light high altitude cloud, intermittent alto cumulus. There was a little local haze as well. Seeing was moderate to good, I could make out the Airy disks most of the time, as well as the first and second rings some of the time.
I set up the scope at sundown to give it a chance to temperature equalise, not that it needed much. Keeping the scope locked up in the shed really makes a difference to the visuals as there is a lack of tube thermals or boundary layer on the mirror.
After it got dark and I had 3-star aligned, I opened up the Collins Atlas of the Night Sky and I started trawling through the constellations, looking at each listed double star or deep space object.
Highlights include Gamma Sextantis seperated cleanly at ~1.0″ seperation, seeing the dust lanes in M64 and M104, locating and identifying each of the Messier galaxies in the Virgo cluster. Mag 11 galaxies were very difficult to see, M97 was just barely visible, M51 didn’t show the spiral arms only the dual cores and a very faint disk. NGC2419 was a possible as well, I’ll have to revisit that one.
Saturn was impressive as always, with four satellites clearly visible and I wasn;t sure if I saw Enceladus or not. I had trouble seeing the Cassini division as the seeing had deteriorated with large tremors rising off a nearby neighbours roof. As for the dragon storm, I could see a darker band across the southern hemisphere with tantalising hints of detail within it. I didn’t see a brighter portion at all.
I think I’ll have to start doing planned sessions where I have a list of items that I’ll take a look at, and a longterm plan is to view each of the double stars and the DSOs that are listed in Burnham’s handbook, and I’ll have to start taking better notes as well.
I parked the scope and packed up at about one o’clock, happy after an evening’s viewing that turned out to be more rewarding that the conditions would have led me to believe.
Updated to 3.1
Updated to WordPress 3.1. Relatively painless. Kudos to the WordPress gang!
Long day!
It was good to get out on the water on the Castleconnell section of the Shannon, just northeast of Limerick. Myself, Mel, and Damien were on at a low flow level, nice to get some of the old cobwebs out. It was not easy getting up at 07.30 on a Sunday morning to go and get wet..
Then later in the day myself and Damien went to BallyH for a loop of the Brown, and it was tiring and good fun overall, thoguh Damien did find out how slippery the boardwalks can be if you are not smoothly cycling on them..
Wishlists – an opinion.
I have often found it useful to keep a wishlist of things that I’d like to have (usually to allow me to do things that I have not previously been able to do). Sometimes it’s amusing to see after a few years haev passed which items on an old list I am glad I did not get, along with those items that I would still ike to have. I suppose it’s a good way of making sure that I don’t spend money on something that I end up not using that much anymore after a short time. Especially with expensive capital purchases.
I should also go through what I own and move on the stuff that I no longer have much use for and clear out a few drawers…
Old Mercedes-Benz
I’ve been looking around (not that I’ve much chance if affording it) at 1980′s MB cars, E-class or S-class W124/W126 cars. They appear to be coming in at reasonable prices for reasonable cars. Maybe they’ll be on the radar in a few years…
Another option is the W116 450 SEL 6.9. That is looking like a real option, if any can be found in good nick.
September 29th stargazing.
For once, it looked as though there was going to be some clear weather to get some stargazing done, and a proper first light for the 6″. The forecast was for some heavy showers so I had to keep a weather eye out in case I had to move in a hurry as I’m still working off main power until I figure a proper battery connection. The plan was to whistlestop on the sights, checking the GoTo and working between the clouds that were scudding across.
Around sunset, I decided to properly focus the polarscope as I messed that one up in my first attempts to use the mount indoors. This meant I had to realign the polarscope so I did a better job on that. I also got replacement cell batteries for the reticle illuminator and this makes a world of difference to polar aligning!. I levelled the tripod and marked the feet tips on the tarmac, to help with any daytime setup. After using the Polaris-Kochab Clock trick, I centered Polaris in the little circle and did a 3-star alignment. The handset tells me I’m less than 5′ from the pole. Not too bad a start!
I tried the “Best of Tonight” guide but that appeared to get a bit confused if a meridian flip was involved, so I went manually searching for targets.
- M8 Lagoon Nebula. The first impressions of this were poorer than my 15×70 views recently, until I tried the UHC and OIII filters – took the nebula right out of the horizon haze, and made it clearly visible.
- M20 Trifid Nebula. This was almost invisible, only really locatable with the multiple central star.
- M22. Hazy and suffering from atmospheric extinction, but resolved and quite pretty. Oh to live further south to see these sights without peering through atmospheric murk!
- M13. Wonderful sight with the 8.8UWA and TV 2x barlow. Didn’t go looking for ngc6207.
- M92. Smaller and resolved.
- M57 Ring Nebula. Good sight, and very distinct with either filter.
- M27 Dumbbell. With the OIII, the UWA and the barlow, this took up over half the field of view. I could just make out the extensions that make it appear circular.
- M76 Little Dumbbell. My first time seeing this, and it was quite clear and obvious with the UHC in.
- M93 Owl nebula. Fainter and larger than I was expecting, but identified with the help of the UHC.
- M51. Could easily see both cores, and there were hints of the spiral structure.
- M81/82. Identified, but not a lot of time spent on these.
- NGC6543 Cats Eye Nebula. Small, but really noticeable and non-stellar.
- NGC7331. Was quite obvious.
- 103/P Hartley. The Autostar’s guess for the position was wrong, so I got the coords from heavens-above, typed in to the digital setting circles mode and there it was dead centre. Not easy, but visible with direct vision. Small and concentrating towards the nucleus.
- Jupiter. The seeing was *terrible* with obvious rivers and waves of turbulent air rushing over the planet, distorting the limb and mushing up the cloud features. I could make out some features in the belts but it really was not easy.
- Uranus. It’s a blue-green disk. Nothing else of note, didn’t try to spot any moons.
All in all, a worthy 2 hours spent slewing and identifying, even though I didn’t spend a lot of time actually looking at things and I had to pick up and run with a large heavy rainshower that came in. Yes, the weather in this country sucks for astronomy.