Its Cold at the Pole

A composite of a number of images taken from our backyard put together using Microsofts freeware 'Image Composite Editor'

The craters Tycho,Maginus, Clavius, Blancanus, Gruemberger and Moretus plus hundreds of smaller craters.

Scientists have discovered that deep craters at the Lunar South Pole hold vast quantities of frozen water. Such water will be available to future brave men and women who venture to the Moon to construct mining facilities for rare minerals and helium, unless of course the barbarians in our species return us to the 'Stoneage' first!

"Lets hope there is intelligent life in space..........."

The large crater Copernicus and above it and to its left the crater Eratosphenes. Taken from our backyard in June 2016, using my Meade 127mm. Apo-refractor and QHY5-11 planetary camera.

The crater Copernicus is roughly circular with a diameter of 93 kilometres. The walls are terraced and slumped. The central mountains are the result of bounce back after the massive impact that created the crater.

This colour saturated view reflects the differences in mineral composition of the Moon's surface in and around Copernicus in Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms).

The colours in themselves do not signify anything, and under different lighting conditions the same area may appear a different colour.  The colours reflect changes in albedo or how much light is being reflected and albedo is related to mineral composition. Therefore it is the differences in colour between different areas that are significant.

Eratosphenes and Copernicus at higher resolution taken with my 127mm apo-refractor at F22

You know, sometimes late at night when I'm out alone in our backyard looking out into the Universe, I wonder if somewhere there are intelligent life forms, beings who long ago gave up on hate, war, strife, and greed. Then again, I'm a real naive, a hopeless dreamer and to be fair the Universe is only 13.7 billion years old. I guess I will have to wait a little longer to find out.

The mineral version

Nicholas Copernicus was a Polish cleric, diplomat, mathematician and astronomer who was born in 1473.  He is best known for his model of the universe which placed the Sun rather than the Earth at its centre. The crater was named after him in recognition of his contribution to the scientific revolution.

Eratosphenes of Cyrene (now part of Libya) was an ancient Greek born in 276BC. He was a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer and music theorist. He is attributed with inventing the discipline of 'geography' and being first to estimate the circumference of the Earth. 

Credits: Wikipedia

Outraged of Oulton Broad the final part

One Hundred Thousand

Care in the Community

The genius behind Cabine du Jardin Deux celebrates the official Blogger 100,000th page view!  Google + has a much higher count of 237,690 page views but in a similar vein I'm told "there's a man down the chip shop who thinks he's Elvis".


George 'Malformed'  Roberts would like to thank the many people from all around the globe who have taken the brave step and time to enter his sad online world. In many ways you have helped to make him a sillier person.  For those of you who aren't related to him and have read more than one of his pages whilst supposedly being at work "I really think its time you considered a career change. Get a job you like"

For those of you who have opened this page as a "Cabine du Jardin Deux" virgin, there are another 433 posts on this Blog readily available to any non-discerning reader. I would not necessarily recommend them but 'hey' if you have time on your hands reading any or all of them will not result in you going blind.

In the six years since he started this blog, no one has asked him to play the banjo and so in the absence of any requests, he has resisted the temptation to provide proof of his acknowledged mastery of the "Three fingered throtch".

His Banjo nestling amongst the Jitterbugs
 overlaid by his legendary and chubby fingers of '3 finger throtch' fame

Did you know 100,000 can be factorised as 2⁵× 5⁵ and 100,003 is the smallest 6 digit prime number?


Credits: Wikipedia

Sketching in the Vendee

Water meadow in the Vendee June 2016 Watercolour sketch insitu

I enjoyed a brilliant afternoon sketching in the landscape with my granddaughter Maisy. What a lucky way for an old man to utilise time!  I love the way wild flowers seed in drifts amongst the grasses. No wonder so many of the Impressionists were living and working in this part of France. Everywhere you look you can see beauty. Perhaps if I live for one hundred years I might be able to capture its essence?

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The Lake June 2016 Graphite stick sketch insitu.

Took me awhile to get used to sketching in pencil again, strange considering my 40 years practice as an architect. I guess the use of computer graphics in my profession over the latter years took its toll! An architect should never be without his 6B pencil. Anyways, my second sketch of the Boat House is an improvement on my first sketch of the Lake. Well at least I think so!

The  Boathouse by the Lake  June 2016 Graphite stick sketch insitu.

 

 

 

Ratty's Little Song

All along the backwater,

Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!

Ducks' tails, drakes' tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!

Slushy green undergrowth
Where the roach swim--
Here we keep our larder,
Cool and full and dim.

Everyone for what he likes!
WE like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!

High in the blue above
Swifts whirl and call--
WE are down a-dabbling
Up tails all!

Credits: Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

How low can you get

Saturn on early hours 10-06-2016. QHY 5-11 planetary camera- 127mm apo telescope and x2.5 barlow lens. Saturn was low in the south.

Mars on early hours 10-06-2016. QHY 5-11 planetary camera- 127mm apo telescope and x2.5 barlow lens. Mars was low in the south.

This year Saturn and Mars, as viewed from the United Kingdom, will not climb far above the horizon.  This is not good for planetary imagers located in the UK as images taken close to the horizon suffer more from the thermal movement of air, differential diffraction of light at different wavelengths and pollution. In addition the weather in East Anglia has been exceptionally poor and all of the above images were taken through cloud. 

Unfortunately for us Northern Hemisphere Astro-imagers, Saturn will continue to get lower in our night sky until 2018 when, resident in the constellation Sagittarius it will commence its northward journey culminating in its appearance in the constellation Gemini in 2033. Sadly, by then, I will be either very old or dead!

Earth is moving away for Mars as it speeds along its inner orbit and it will be 2018 before it comes to opposition again (closest point to Earth).  However early in 2017 Mars will still be visible, although much fainter, in our winter sky.  In January, Mars is involved in its closest planetary conjunction with Neptune for over seven centuries! At 0637 hours UT on January 1st Mars, at magnitude +0.9 and less than 6" across, passes just 1'.2 (1.2 arcminutes or 0º.02) South of Neptune, at mag. +7.9.  Lets hope for a clear night and I will try to catch the two planets in one image!

Jupiter late on 09-06-2016. QHY 5-11 planetary camera- 127mm apo telescope and x2.5 barlow lens. Jupiter was low in the west. The shadow of the innermost moon Io can be seen transitting the Jovian disc with moons Io and Europa just visible to the right of Jupiter. The Great Red Spot can just be seen on Jupiter's eastern limb and southern equatorial belt.

Credits: NakedEyePlanets . com

Like a bird on a wire

Zip-Wire Grandma

"Not bad for an old woman" - We are all proud of you Toot !