Society for Popular Astronomy

I saw it tonight in 10x50 binoculars at 19.00. Lovely sight, with quite a significant tail pointing upwards towards the Moon. Couldn't see it without the binoculars and it was very quickly lost in the thick cloud blotting out the horizon. Not enough time to get any pictures and as the nearest good W...

Some fantastic footage of this on the BBC - amazing!

Rachel

Yes, all of those were using a 2x Barlow.

Rachel

Most of my images are in the gallery somewhere, but I haven't posted any for quite some time, the last year being quite the worst as far as weather goes. Rather than trawl through trying to find them, here are a sample few. My camera is different to yours. I have an Imaging Source camera and use dif...

I have an almost identical setup with a C8 on CG5 mount. Mine is not Go-To but I have managed to get some reasonable pics of the planets. You shouldn't need guide instruments with a webcam. I don't polar align exactly - usually I'm happy if I can sight Polaris up the polar axis - and I can normally ...

Would you mind explaining the red dot finder a little more? The finder is the little scope attached to the side of the main telescope tube. It's used like a gunsight to point the telescope in the general direction of the object you want to observe. There are 3 types of finder: Red dot - projects a ...

Hi Tom Welcome! :D David is right: Turn Left at Orion is a great book and will help you get started with finding many of the best sights out there. The finder on that scope looks like a red dot finder if I'm right. That will make star hopping to some fainter objects a little trickier but you should ...

Given the proximity of the Moon and Mercury to the sun, and the fact that the occultation occurred in broad daylight, I would suggest this would have been phenomenally difficult (maybe even dangerous) to either see or record.

Rachel

Skywatcher scopes are a popular brand and are generally good. You'll certainly be able to see the rings of Saturn, Jupiter's moons and the phases of Venus. I don't think the scope itself will be rubbish, but the finder looks like a red dot finder which in my experience is limited in its usefulness (...

Just to say thanks to the SPA for coming along and supporting North Essex Astronomical Society's Starfest II convention in Braintree yesterday with their trade stand and donation of a raffle prize. And thanks in particular to Robin Scagell for an excellent presentation on comets, which I heard sever...

I have bought a new power tank in the last couple of weeks and this one actually comes with instructions on the tank to recharge periodically - every 3 months in winter and monthly in summer - and not to let it drain fully.

Rachel

STARFEST II Following on from our successful inaugural STARFEST convention last year where we welcomed over 140 attendees, North Essex Astronomical Society will be hosting its follow-up, STARFEST II, on Saturday 10 November 2012 at the Alec Hunter Humanities College, Braintree. We have a line up of...

North Essex Astronomical Society Public Solar Observing After a fair bit of cloud dodging for our July event, North Essex Astronomical Society will be hosting the next in our series of public observing events at Great Notley Country Park, near Braintree, on bank holiday Monday 27 August. As we are ...

Ha ha . I didn't go to bed because I thought maybe I wouldn't want to get up again ... for all the good it did as a group of us met up and stared at a cloudy sky for 90 mins. Really worth staying up till 4.00am .

Rachel

Saw a lovely occultation of Jupiter last night. Completely occulted by cloud!

Rachel