by John Talbot
"The buttons of your mind were difficult to find and my fingers far too clumsy."
London to Edinburgh and back to London on a bike in under five days. Yes really. The hardest most gruelling organised cycling event in the UK. And I entered. Run every four years since 1989 this 1400km audax event is tough, very tough and I’d spent two years planning to enter and ride the 2017 … Continue reading LEL 2017
You’ve probably seen me wittering on about asteroid occultations at some point or other, or you’ve seen the links to my results page on the left. Maybe you’ve even read my Asteroid Occultation 101 page and still have no idea how it’s done or why. It’s rather complicated but the idea of this post is … Continue reading Observing Asteroid Occultations
A colleague and fellow astroimager (Welford Observatory), with whom tips and tricks in the coffee lounge at work are exchanged, suggested I try PixInsight (PI) for processing some astroimages. I tried the demo version once before and I, like many others before me, found it very complicated and daunting and gave up quickly. He pointed me … Continue reading An Insight to PixInsight
I suppose it had to happen at some time. I have a sports injury. I fully expected to get injured running at some point, everyone seems to suffer injuries running. Cycling less likely, unless I crashed or got knocked off. But injured at table tennis? Wasn’t expecting that. I’ve played league table tennis for 30 years … Continue reading Sport Is Bad For You
Time to look back at my 2014 cycling stats. The major achievement of the year was completing Randonneur Round the Year which is an award for completing a 200km or longer audax in each of twelve consecutive months. In total I cycled 5,080 miles (8,176 km) which easily surpassed my previous best in 2014 of … Continue reading 2014 Cycling Summary
There are currently (as of 11th Feb 2015) 1544 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These are small bodies that have the potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Most are very small, from a few metres to a few tens of metres across, but there are quite few larger ones a few kilometres across. … Continue reading (357439) 2004 BL86
B33 – The Horsehead Nebula Imaging opportunites have been few and far between this autumn. Whenever it has been clear there has been a bright Moon, it has been too windy or I’ve been busy. But at last we had a clear night with no Moon and I could finally image something! My choice was … Continue reading Horsehead Nebula
Sh2-101 — The Tulip Nebula Emission nebula in Cygnus. Taken with 300mm F/4 Newtonian telescope with QHY22 camera 2×2 binned. 12x300s exposures with H-alpha filter and TS Coma Corrector. Autoguided with QHY5-II. Captured and processed in Nebulosity 3.
I’ve been taking some images from the Starshed Enterprise when it has been clear over the past few weeks. Experimenting with different settings etc. I’ve now got a nice system going, autoguiding is working well and I’m starting to get some nice images. Messier 51 (Whirpool Galaxy) was the first galaxy shown to have a … Continue reading M51 – Whirpool Galaxy
I took up running (again) in January. This time properly by joining the Didcot Runners club’s improvers group which has helped me enormously with pacing, increasing my endurance etc. The “reward” for finishing the course was participating in the Abingdon Parkrun, my first timed 5k race. I had run 5k on my own and with … Continue reading First 5k Race
