Compton Bay - Isle of Wight

The Fossil Collectors (Digital media)

Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight is a great place to hunt dinosaurs. There is a car park at Hanover Point and a set of steps leads to the beach.  The best time to visit is at low tide when it is possible to trace the footprints of the herbivorous dinosaur 'Iguanodon'. If you are lucky you might find some fossilised dinosaur bone or perhaps a tooth and pieces of fossil cycad wood known as lignite.

 

Iguanodon

We enjoyed a warm and sunny weekend on the Isle of Wight and in just three hours at Hanover Point we found our own pieces of fossilised Iguanodon bone, lots of 'lignite' and possibly a beach worn Iguanodon leaf shaped tooth.

As the tide receded, flat sandstone ledges were revealed and on them were the clear remains of dinosaur tracks.  Iguanodon had three toes on each foot and these can be seen at Compton and Brook Bays as both negative indents and positive casts. 

After we finished fossil hunting we walked back to the car park and enjoyed ice cream from the ice cream van.

Paleontologist Archie Boon discovers an Iguanodon Fossil

Iguanodon bone finds

Iguanodon footprint cast in the sea foam

Possible Iguanodon tooth

Drawings of Iguanodon teeth

Fossilised Cycad wood 'lignite' probably burnt after a lightening strike in a storm some 130 million years ago. The silvery mineral on the wood is iron pyrites or 'fools gold'.

Credits: Wikipedia, Dinosaur Isle, Natural History Museum. Dr Ian West

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~imw/wight.htm

Saturn at Opposition 2014

The early hours of the 25th of May dawned clear and transparent, so out I tiptoed into our backyard taking care not to wake our neighbours and four of our grandchildren who were sound asleep upstairs in our house.

Having tested my new power supply in daylight, I was pleased to connect my mount in the dark and find it up and working.

Carrying out my telescope tube, eyepieces, cameras, laptop and all the other bits and pieces in complete darkness and silence is quite a skill!

I quickly located and identified Saturn low above my southern horizon and realised that I would have to work fast as Saturn was soon to be lost behind our holly tree. Luckily, my camera and laptop functioned efficiently and I quickly captured a number of avi-clips.


I processed the video clips using the software: PIPP, AutoStakkert, Registax 6 and Photoshop.

The top image shows Saturn more or less as I saw it through the eyepiece of my Meade 127mm Apo refracting telescope. I was pleased that my image has recorded both the shadow of the rings on the surface of the planet and the shadow of the planet on the rings. There is also a hint of the hexagonal storm at Saturn's North Pole. The dark Cassini Division separating Saturn's A and B rings is very obvious in this image.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Saturn&Display=Rings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn

The composite image 'Saturn's Seasons' shows how, over the last three years, the angle at which we view Saturn from Earth has changed. In 2014 Saturn's Rings have 'opened out' as we view them less obliquely.

What is also both obvious and pleasing, is that the quality of my images has improved significantly since 2012.  I think we can put this down to; improved kit (it never hurts throwing more money at a problem) and to some improvement in my astro skills both at the telescope and in post capture processing.

Thanks for all the advice I have gained from Stargazers Lounge, and the magazines: 'The Sky at Night' and 'Astronomy Now'.

My best  image

White Heat

The Sun in white light 20-5-2014 Canon 600d DSLR on Meade 127mm Apo refractor 5x light frames stacked in APS, sunspots are clearly visible on the Sun's surface (the photosphere)

The same image stretched in Registax 6 to show the 'orange peel' affect of thermal convection cells in plasma at the Sun's photosphere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosphere

As the weather in Lowestoft had taken a turn for the better, I decided to overhaul my telescope's mount and to try out my new 12 volt ac-dc transformer.  I was surprised how rusty stainless steel can get but very easily removed with a plastic pan scourer and some WD40 oil.

The transformer worked superbly well, much better than my old battery so many thanks to 'Modern Astronomy' for the excellent service.

http://www.modernastronomy.com/accessories.html

Whilst I had my gear set up I took some quick images to check the mount's tracking. All the images were taken with my Canon 600d DSLR through my refracting telescope, the enlarged image was taken using a 3x Televue Barlow lens using the video feature on the camera. The video was stacked using Registax 6.

The bright 'filigree' areas around the sunpots close to the Sun's limb are called 'Faculae' (plural of facula). These are hotter areas of the Sun's photosphere created by extreme magnetic fields. These Faculae are present across the whole of the Sun's disc but are only visible in white light towards the edge of the disc (the solar limb)

PLEASE DO NOT STARE DIRECTLY AT THE SUN WITH YOUR NAKED EYE AND NEVER LOOK THROUGH BINOCULARS OR A TELESCOPE OR A CAMERA'S VIEW FINDER AT THE SUN - DOING SO WILL A DAMAGE YOUR EYESIGHT BEYOND REPAIR AND MOST LIKELY CAUSE PERMANENT BLINDNESS. YOUR RETINA DO NOT POSSESS PAIN RECEPTORS SO YOU WILL NOT BE AWARE OF THE DAMAGE YOU ARE DOING.  I HAVE SPECIAL FILTERS AND EQUIPMENT PLUS LOTS OF EXPERIENCE IN IMAGING THE SUN BUT LAST YEAR I MADE A CARELESS MISTAKE AND FRIED A CAMERA COSTING ME OVER £100 IN REPLACEMENT COSTS.  I DIDN'T LOSE MY SIGHT AS MY CAMERA RATHER THAN EYEBALL TOOK THE HIT.

Water - H20

'Miniature' by George Roberts 2014  (digital media)

The search for extraterrestrial life continues unabated.  On earth, life proliferates almost everywhere we look. The fearsome beasts in this digital painting were all visible through my microscope, living their relatively short lives in a single drop of  stream water taken from 'Fisher's Row'.

"Are we alone in the Universe"?  Not likely, but knowing where and how we should look are separate and intriguing questions.

Water exists in vast quantities both in the solar system and deep space. If this much life can thrive in such a small droplet of magical H20 how many life forms could exist in a subterranean sea on  Saturn's Moon Enceladus?
  
Our curiosity drives our species to find stuff out and this and the increasing complexity of our discoveries has led to increasing specialisation.  Science, Technology and Art have become separated if not divorced, leaving the ground once trod by Leonardo to become the realm of  'Crackpots, evangelists and bullshitters'.

On a dark and stormy night, I like to consider myself to be the last of the Victorian clergymen dabbling in the wonders of the natural sciences, looking through my telescope, peering through my microscope,doing difficult sums, painting pictures and collecting my fossils. In reality, I'm probably at best, a crackpot with too much time on my hands and an indulgent wife!

A real scientist would be able to name the creatures in the painting.  So I've named the worm in the middle Charlie!

Jasmine's Fifth Birthday

Jasmine, Kitty and Toot riding in a horse and cart at Southwold by Jasmine Tinkerbell

Happy Birthday  Jasmine T!

love from Papa and Toot

What's white with a big black end and comes out at night?

My 'Backyard Observatory' with Meade 127mm Apo-refractor set on its NEQ6 Pro mount and ready to go.

Having had a number of recent problems with the battery you can see located beneath the telescope tripod, I await the arrival of a mains transformer-12volt power supply from 'Modern Astronomy'.

A mains power supply is a third of the price of a new battery and generally more reliable, particularly in very cold weather.  As I'm getting too feeble to take the Meade Apo  'walk-about' and away from a mains socket, a new power supply rather than a new battery was a no brainer.

Not much chance of any 'photon collecting' tonight as the weather in Lowestoft has turned both cloudy and wet.

"Oh Tooty don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars" (Well we would have if the clouds should part)

Lost in Space

"Summer is a coming" The lovely star Vega in the Constellation Lyra

Well, what a strange night, started off well, the sky cleared as it became dark.  Mars was shining bright and steady in the South and the Great Bear was sitting on his tail above our house.  So...... I lug out all my astro gear and set up in our backyard.

Well then everything started to go wrong. I pointed my planetary camera at Mars, ran a test Avi clip and inspected it on screen. All looked a bit blurry, so I refocussed and tried again. Still looked blurry.  After a lot of messing about and quiet cursing I managed to record a couple of blurry clips of the red planet and then my planetary camera software started to play up.  As Saturn rose in the south east I decided to await a better night for trying to image it.  Instead I tried to find the comet passing through Ursa Major. Because the area of sky I needed to view was straight above my head, I had lots of fun kneeling on the ground looking through various eyepieces trying to find said comet. After an hour or so, which involved knocking my spectacles from my head twice and tripping over my stool once, I gave up on the comet.

As the evening had turned into early morning, I decided to take some aimless snaps of the night sky. Then the battery powering  my telescope mount started to fail.  Made mental note to purchase a new battery as likely to be less expensive than an anger management course.

On a positive note I managed to capture the above image of the beautiful star Vega. When I see Vega in spring rising in the east, I know either Summer or dawn  are close at hand.

I also picked up the trail of a satellite or some space junk as it sped in front of the stars in the Great Bear.

After drinking a mug of hot 'Marmite' I climbed the stairs to bed. 

Satellite trail

My blurry image of Mars