Quitting my job and setting up a Star Party

Hi everyone, I found myself neglecting this blog lately. Lately being the understatement of the year. Between setting up a media business and an annual star party I have been very busy.

So, when I started this blog I was working in a stock media production company. I was very comfortable, financially, and it was the perfect time for me to take up the hobby of astronomy. Of course it wasn't the principal cause of my sudden fascination with the night sky. I was able to buy a decent telescope and away I went.

Since then I've quit my job due to the lack of satisfaction I was getting from the work. Yes, let's leave it with that. After leaving that comfortable job I joined some friends in setting up a media company of our own called Dog Day Media. I won't go on about it but suffice to say it's going really well and I haven't turned back since.

Now onto the star party bit. Last year I spoke at the annual Irish astronomy event Cosmos about my then recent trip to the observatory on Tenerife. I had a wonderful time giving my talk and listening to all the other talks. I also made good friends with the organisers, one of whom I kept in constant contact. Some time went by and he got me together with another amateur astronomer to start planning an official star party right in the middle of the northern hemispheres only gold tier dark sky reserve, in Kerry, Ireland. We had our first gathering there in August 2014 and our busily preparing for our next event in August 2015. All are welcome and it's all about getting your telescopes out under the amazing night sky. So, here it is, the Skellig Star Party.

Astronomy and Animation

I'm in the process of combining my two passions, animation and astronomy. One of these I chose as my career. Can you guess which one? Clue, it's not the one that's confined to hobby status.

Now, however, I'm trying to introduce astronomy into my animation work and one solution I've come up with is setting up an astronomy animation website dedicated to illustrative animation about astronomy. It will be freely available for anyone to use.

Below are some tested examples of the kind of thing I'm interested in doing.

P.s. I've also set up a film and animation studio with three friends after quitting my job at a stock media company which I had worked at for the last two and a half years. Check us out here!

P.p.s. We sent a jar of relish into the stratosphere!

Telescope Mount Design

I'm having all kinds of fancy notions lately. The most recent of which is designing and building my own mount. Inspired by Astro Physics mounts/piers, Paramount ME, and Gemini MoFoD MkII.

This is my equatorial fork mount design. Mainly the idea is heavy duty observatory mount here. I give you the EQF

To Planisphere or to App-isphere? - Astronomy apps

One of the most recommended pieces of equipment to buy when starting out in astronomy is the humble Planisphere.

Planisphere Wikipedia

Although these are very quick and easy to use, not to mention cheap, a lot of us now own smartphones. Off course, smartphones aren't cheap in any context but they are never the less part of our lives now and the chances that a new amateur astronomer owns one are high. With this in mind, I decided to list off some of my favourite apps that I like to use when doing astronomy. I must mention that this list will be totally biased towards Android, although I know that amazing apps do also exist for iOS.

1. Weather apps

A good place to start is weather forecasting apps. Without clear skies there is no astronomy, at least in the optical sense, and to know what the weather is doing a few days in advance in invaluable for planning your observing or imaging sessions. To say that I have trialled a few weather apps, would be an understatement. I've gone through AccuWeather, Weatherbug, you name it, but the only one that really stood out from the crowd is a fantastic little app called Astro Panel by Shibby Developments. I have already covered the features of this app in a previous article, but it has a solid position in my list and deserves another mention

Screenshot of Astro Panel on my phone. This was during my visit to the Mt Teide Observatory, Tenerife.

2. Planetarium apps

Being an Android user there are really only two choices to consider when looking for a decent planetarium software, Google Sky Map Devs Sky Map and Harshad RJs SkEye. While Sky Map is a perfectly good planetarium app with lots of great features and searchable objects, not to mention being the first one I used, I'm going to show preference to SkEye. The main reason for this is that I encountered a lot of glitches in Sky Map when searching for objects in real time, and the planetarium would be misaligned from the true sky. I don't know if it was an issue with my phone or the current OS at the time, but it made me search for something better. Something better came in the form of SkEye.

Screenshot of SkEye, looking at the constellation Orion.

As you can see from the screenshot, there is a wealth of information on-screen when trawling through the sky, much more in fact  than Sky Map has to offer. The simple displaying of right ascension, declination and other coordinates shows that this app is made for the serious amateur. Another great feature is that magnitudes for celestial objects are also provided.

Don't get me wrong, Sky Map is a great app. However. if you are an Android using amateur astronomer and want an app that is useful beyond simply locating objects in the sky, SkEye is the one for you. I cannot vouch for any of the planetarium apps on iOS platforms but I have been told that they run very smoothly and are very reliable. As to features, you'll need to talk to an Apple fan.


3. Compass apps

 The next couple of apps I'm going to discuss, I use mainly for mount set up. Compass apps are very useful, and come in all shapes and sizes. However, the compass I chose is actually part of a package app containing a number of different navigation and positioning apps. Ulysse Gizmos by binarytoys has an array of interfaces, including a very detailed compass.

Screenshot of Ulysse Gizmos on the compass interface.

As well as finding your bearings, it also measures your altitude which is important for many GOTO systems that may not have GPS included, and require the manual entering of these coordinates. Another feature shown in the screenshot hints at my next chosen app for use in astronomy and the reason why I chose Ulysse Gizmos.


4. Spirit Level apps

Getting your mount level and polar aligned is in most cases essential, especially when using GOTO systems and doing high focal length astrophotography. Whereas some do, many mounts don't come with built in spirit levels. The solution I came up with was using a spirit level app on my Android phone and placing the phone onto the accessory tray of my HEQ5 Pro while levelling it. The Ulysse Gizmos spirit level works great. Since doing this my mount alignment has been very satisfactory, enabling unguided subs of 1min and being perfectly adequate for 5min+ guided exposures.

If for some reason, like me, you'd like to have a simpler dedicated spirit level app on your phone, I would recommend Bubble Level by Antoine Vianey.

Screenshot of Bubble Level

With this super simple interface and high resolution spirit level, aligning and levelling your mount is easy as pie.


I hope this list might make some ones observing or imaging life a little easier, and I might add to it in the future. Also, watch out for another future article on a very handy little modification I made to my smartphone that I use every single night I go out to observe or do some astrophotography.

For now, clear skies.

Proud Member of WETI

While listening to a great episode of my beloved Astronomy Cast, Fraser and Pamela were discussing the search for extraterrestrial life. During this episode they mentioned the WETI Institute, a completely legitimate organisation which is dedicated to their mission of waiting for extraterrestrial intelligence. This is a cause I simply had to give my assistance. Considering my resources and availible time I can pledge to WETI, I am proud to announce that I am now a full time 24/7 member of the Effortless Action Committee and strive to do my very best to wait as hard as I can.

I now call on you, to join the wait and become a member too.

WETI needs you!

WETI of course an offshoot of the SETI Institute, who's mission is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI also need your help, and perhaps, even more than WETI.

SETI@home is a project which allows you to use any idle CPU time you may have on your computer to mine through huge amounts of astronomical radio data in the hope that you might be the one to uncover a pattern or signal hidden in it that will indicate the whereabouts of intelligent life elsewhere in our universe.

This is a noble cause, and I was quick to sign up and donate some of my idle computer time. I may have a been a little generous however and my computers power supply exploded.

Next time I'll be more careful, and there will be a next time.

A New Addition

As soon as I caught the astronomy bug I new right away that I would eventually be drawn to the art of astrophotography, and so I did.

Like, most amateurs and professionals would tell you, you should begin your hobby by getting your hands on a cheap and cheerful planisphere and a pair of decent binoculars. As sensible and good this advise is, I was stubborn and wanted to skip ahead to imaging. Although I don't regret the course I took I may have missed out a little bit on the simpler pleasures of astronomy.

I still haven't bought a planisphere, but for good reason. There are some fantastic apps out there for android and iOS, and since I already had the phone how could I say no to a free download? That's for another post though.

As for binoculars, I've finally got a pair in the form of some Bresser 20x60 Saturns.

They are second hand and did require some collimation. A lot of people will say they collimating binoculars should be left up to proffessional optics dealers/repair shops but it actually was quite simple and, in my case didn't even require the use of a bench. I found this great write up on Cloudy Nights forum which explained the proccess very well.

I'm now looking forward to some 'zero setup time' observing and something to occupy myself when my imaging scope is doing it's thing.

Best Weather App Ever!

Pesky Atmosphere and weather!

When it comes down to it, weather is the biggest factor when doing observational astronomy and astrophotography. I'm sure like me, most of you will have and iPhone or android phone and have sampled most of the weather apps available on the two platforms. I was never overly impressed by the accuracy of these but recently a fellow amateur recommended I try Astro Panel by Shibby Developments. 

All I can say is, you no longer have to look through "Top 10 Weather App" lists. For one, you probably won't find Astro Panel in any of the lists and two, it's the only one you'll ever need. Providing extremely accurate three day forecasts for every three hours it's perfect for Astronomers needs but it I don't know anyone who wouldn't find it useful for any other hobby or just planning a weekend at the beach.

Using GPS coordinates it also gives readings for humidity, wind speed and directions, seeing, transparency, moon phases and temperature, and I'm sure there's something I'm leaving out. You can even set alarms and notifications for specified parameters so you'll never miss a clear sky.

I highly recommend this app and thanks to Simon for recommending it to me.

Note: You can press the symbols and the app will give you a scale and explanation of what they mean.

Thoughts on the Mass Effect Series and its Conclusion

I love science fiction, and that's probably why I love astronomy. Or is it the other way around?

Having just completed the Mass Effect series from Bioware and feeling particularly inspired I thought I'd lay out my thoughts on the game and some of the controversies surrounding the reception it got from its fans.

Spoiler free-ish!

One reason why I think this series is such a success is because it's so grounded in reality. Think about it, if we were to make contact with other races from elsewhere in the galaxy, Mass Effect is one of the most believable examples of how the resulting events would unfold. 

I'm referring more to the political and social aspects of the Mass Effect universe, because if life evolves similarly all over the galaxy then we can expect that other species would have roughly the same needs as humanity. Natural resources is what I think of first, but if you take into account our ever growing population on Earth, space travel and the search for new habitable planets start to move to the top of the list very quickly. There is no reason to think that a successful species on another planet wouldn't inevitably come up with the same solutions.

Although it's easy to say that the technological and biological aspects of the Mass Effect universe are completely fictional and speculative, there are still very convincing links to reality to be found throughout the story. Granted, we might not find as many bipedal humanoid species as there are in Mass Effect, but our biological structure is only a response to the environment in which it evolved in. The chances of us finding similar environments to Earth on other planets are quite high. So again, there is no reason to believe that we won't discover more humanoid life in the galaxy. Taking into account that we evolved from our mammalian ancestors, why couldn't a race like the Salarians evolve from their amphibious ancestors. A more likely evolutionary stage we might encounter is that of the Elcor, whose biology evolved to serve the very specific purposes of surviving on a planet with very high gravity. Since we're finding more and more multiple Earth mass planets around other stars, we might be having some very dreary and monotonous conversations in the future.

On technology, Biotics and mass effect fields are probably the most fictional things in the Mass Effect universe, but are also the things that really make it all possible. So here is where we need to suspend our disbelief in order to buy into the reality. Psych! Actually, the only thing we need to accept for the Mass Effect reality to be real is that mysterious element, Element Zero or Eezo. If I was listening properly, mass effect fields are created by sending positive or negative electrical charges through this element, resulting in different effects. Hold on a minute, but don't we also have a mysterious substance which profoundly affects how our universe has formed to the present day? Yes! Dark matter and dark energy are two of the major components of our universe, and are the two things which we know the least about. If we were to solve these two mysteries, we might find the key to our own Mass Effect reality. Perhaps dark energy will allow us to control gravitons, giving us the ability to create real artificial gravity in space. Just like in Battlestar or every other science fiction series or movie ever made! Or, perhaps it will allow us to reach that most holy of space grails, faster than light travel. Now, I'm not going to talk about Biotics, because what the hells going on there!? However, let me serve up a huge cheesy corn dog and say that humanitys only limit is it's imagination and curiosity, and I hope that we never run out of those two things.

Now just a quick note on the people who shouted "Betrayal!" after playing Mass Effect 3 and just so you know, what I have to say is a mix of things I read elsewhere which I agree with and various brain farts that I've had myself. This is Biowares baby, it's up to them how the story ends and up to us to enjoy it or not, and I for one think that it was a great ending. I know science fiction fans can be some of the most sensitive when it comes to the titles they love, just look at Star Wars Episode 1, but petitioning for Bioware to change the ending of Mass Effect 3 was a huge over reaction. I'm not sure what the haters expected to find at the end of this fantastic game series, but it might have been something like this; A complete and comprehensive explanation of why the universe and life exists and what it did after the Reaper crisis. Picture if you can, the freeze frame end sequence from Animal House. This would have been a terribly tedious way to end such an original and exciting gaming experience. I won't mention how the crisis of the Reapers ends but the game ends in a way that every good science fiction story should end. Open and ready for our amazing brains to fill in the rest with our imagination. As far as what happens to Shepard at the end, I will only say that he wouldn't have seemed as much of a hero any other way.

I'd like to thank and commend Casey Hudson and crew on this fantastic trilogy and for many hours of awesome gaming.

Solar 1 - First Solar imaging

We got a few breaks in the clouds today so I decided to give my new Celestron Solar filter a whirl.

OTA: 120mm Achromatic Refractor with x3 ED Barlow

Camera: Nikon D3100 14.2mp

Mount: CG-4 mount
Filter: Celestron Solar filter

Exposure: 15sec AVI video

ISO: 100

I must say I am quite happy with this result and I'm glad the sun put on a show with this huge sun spot. The footage took a bit of tweaking in After Effects, mainly to increase the contrast, which really brought out the detail in the sun spot. It was also a little over exposed so decreasing it darkened the image, allowing for more detail to come through.

I can't wait to get my hands on a Hydrogen-Alpha filter! The sun spots are awesome, but the prospect of photographing solar flares, granulation, coronal mass ejections is just too good to ignore. They are pretty darn pricey though.

UCC Transition Year Astronomy Module

A new transition year astronomy module has been designed and launched in a collaboration between Irish physics teachers, The Science Foundation of Ireland and the physics Dept. at UCC.

Serving as a broad introduction to the field of astronomy and astrophysics, students will conduct experiments, learn about the planets and their movements, and learn about the physics which govern our universe.

This fantastic module is the brain child of Dr. Paul Callanan and I just wish had been available when I was in school.

All the necessary information about the module can be found right here

Irish Astronomy Blues

I feel the need to prove that I've at least tried to do some astronomy during our recent bout of bad weather. One night did provide fairly good seeing but photography was right out of the question as I was dodging the clouds for most of the evening.

I'm starting to believe what I heard another Irish amateur astronomer say, which was something like; "Irish astronomers are all masochists!".

However, after acquiring a fine Celestron solar filter for my scope, I now have twice the time in which I can be disappointed by the weather. I was really looking forward to getting one seeing that we have a solar maximum coming this year. Speaking of which I'm also hoping to see some Aurora this year. Something people further north have been lucky enough to enjoy already.

Over 1 Million burgers... I mean, Stars Classified

And we did it! Fantastic result for planet hunters and citizen scientists everywhere. That's a million stars clissified in three days if I'm not very much mistaken.

Now I wonder how many exoplanets we've descovered.

BBC Stargazing Exoplanet Search

It's back! BBC stargazing live with Prof. Brian Cox and our very own Dara O'Brien has started this week for a brand new series, and it's been fantastic so far.

Starting with the Moon on Monday 16th, each episode concentrates on a different aspect of astronomy. On the back of the new series, Zooniverse Planet Hunters has set a goal of classifying 250,000 stars in the search for extra-solar planets. After completely smashing the target, they are now aiming for a million classified stars by the evening of Wednesday 18th. As far as I can tell, there success is inevitable. 

It just goes to show the scale of the following and enthusiasm the field of astronomy has all over the world. Between my work, I have made my own contribution to the project but I'm sure it only made a quantum dent in the numbers.

This is a very exciting astronomical week! So, keep up the great science work everyone and don't forget to tune in for the rest of the Stargazing Live series on BBC2.

Merry Cosmic Christmas and Happy Astronomical New Year!

Happy 2012, Astro fans!

What a happy holiday it was. Family, food, and astronomical pressies! Yes, Christmas is the amateur astronomers best friend. Evidently I was a very good boy and received a brand new Crayford focuser for my telescope.

Here it is, the new William Optics DDG Synta focuser, the DDG standing for digital display gauge. The DDG tells you precisely, to two decimal points in millimetre, how much you've pulled the focus. Along with the 10:1 gear ratio focusing knob, this focuser really is fantastic!

William Optics say on their site; "Solid as a rock, smooth like a feather". Apart from being brilliantly cheesy with their wording, they are not wrong. The motion when pulling focus really is silky smooth and there is absolutely zero wobble or travel in the tube. In short, it's miles ahead of the stock rack and pinion focuser supplied with the Celestron Omni XLT 120mm refractor.

As you can see, it is a much more substantial focuser and looks stunning. A couple of minor niggles I'd have with it is that the focus tube is a little on the short side which does adversely focusing with a barlow lens. This problem however is easily remedied with the use of a simple extension tube. There is also no finder scope shoe on this focuser like the stock Synta model has but this can also be corrected buy procuring a standalone one and fastening it to the telescope somewhere.

Another plus on the other hand, is that the left focusing knob is actually a handy thermometer. Presumably for those with temperature sensitive equipment or who like to brag about their ability to withstand extreme environments.

All in all, I'm extremely happy with Santa and I can't wait to start shooting some ultra sharp images with my new toy. I will of course be detailing my thoughts on this fantastic focuser as I use it. Ten out of ten and smiles all around.

Citizen Science - Moon Zoo

Is there such thing as an educational adiction? There is now!

I've just opened my account on the magnificent citizen science project, Zooniverse. I've never felt so good about procrastination before. I've started with the Moon Zoo project which consists of two main classification and identification activities. The first and most extensive one is the Crater Survey which is the screenshot below.

Apart from skimming through the less featured images, there are some incredibly detailed ones and it's just so interesting and addictive to classify the various craters, features and abnormalities. What really adds to the compulsion to pour through hundreds of Lunar surface images is the possibility of finding abandoned spacecraft hardware.

The second activity you can partake in is called Boulder Wars, in which you are given a choice of two Lunar surface images and indicate which one has the most boulders. Pretty simple, but fun! You can also tag something interesting or unusual in either image which you will do at some point. I did. Here is a screenshot of Boulder Wars in action.

There are a number of projects live on Zooniverse but I'll cover them when I get sucked into them.

Lunar 3 - Image Stacking

I must say the Moon really is becoming one of my favorite objects to photograph and I think this is my best one yet!

OTA: 120mm Achromatic Refractor

Camera: Nikon D3100 14.2mp

Mount: CG-4 mount
Exposures: 12

Exposure: 1/100sec

ISO: 100

This one however is different from my previous efforts because it's actually twelve separate images stacked together.

This magical process can be done in a delightful freeware image processing program called Registax. "Oh, that sounds interesting" you might say, but no. This is the single most frustrating program I've used since Adobe Illustrator! I'll spare the rant but you do need a liberal amount of patients to learn how to get good results from this program. However, like Illustrator, with countless hours and the help from online tutorials I finally managed to render out this image of our beautiful and full moon.

It just so happened that there was a Lunar eclipse that day, which I unfortunately missed due to weather. I was all ready to make an animation of the event and everything.

And now for something completely different

Being in a creative field of work myself, I get excited when I see an artist tackling the theme of astronomy. During a recent visit to France, we decided to go and visit a local museum. It was that of the French artist Robert Tatin, and I use the term, museum, very loosely. It's more like a park which he dedicated to his work and used to be his home. The museum and grounds are now open to the public and the website can be seen here.

The reason I'm blogging about Robert Tatin is because he had a very big interest in astronomy and incorporated it into his work frequently. Almost as much as the female form!

Here are some examples which I was allowed to photograph:

There were many other examples of his work, depicting astronomical objects. He seemed particularly fond of constellations, most of which seemed to be ones of his own design. Sadly, I forgot to write down any of the names of his paintings so you'll just have to visit the museum yourself.

They even had his refracting telescope on display accompanied with two eyepieces:

The below plaque, according to Google translate, reads; The telescope of Robert Tatin. Day viewing, Night viewing. Which to me means he used the telescope to view the sun as well as for night time viewing.

Now, the reason many people may not know about Robert Tatin is because a large portion of his work was in the form of sculpture and permanently placed on the grounds. One of these "sculptures" is what I can only describe as a full scale Inca or Mayan temple.

Finally, I'll end up with what I think is Robert Tatins most impressive and imposing piece of work. This enormous sculpture which is quite spooky. Just to give you a sense of scale, a grown man could crawl into the mouth, but for some reason there was a statue of the virgin Mary inside it. I do remember watching a film or reading something stating that Tatin was highly skeptical about religion.

It was a great experience and although I may have taken away some of the surprise which I felt when I went to visit, I hope it's at least sparked somebodies interest in going to see Robert Tatins museum.

As a plus, there were some amazingly clear and unpolluted skies in that are of France so it would make a great astro-holiday.

Wide Field 1

We got a nice break in the clouds in West Cork over the weekend and I took this photograph:

Camera: Nikon D3100

Lens: 20mm F2.8

ISO: 1600

Exposure: 15sec

Mount: Manfrotto

The milky way is just visible on the right and the line at the top of the image is most likely a satellite, specifically one called Cosmos 1812 or Cosmos 1500 according to Stellarium

Lunar 2 - The Moon, again

After finally getting my hands on my new DLSR, a Nikon D3100, I was excited to see the difference between the photo I had taken through the eye piece of my telescope with my phone, and one taken with my new camera through prime focus photography. This means attaching the camera directly to the telescope using an adapter.

Here is the result:

OTA: 120mm Achromatic Refractor

Camera: Nikon D3100 14.2mp

Mount: CG-4 mount

Exposure: 1/2sec approx

ISO: 800

It's easy to see that the result is much better. I took this photo while the moon was waxing, which gives much more detail in the craters.

I met a NASA Astronaut

It just so happened that my visit to the Crawford Observatory coincided with a visit from NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough which was very exciting. He gave a talk to the physics students of UCC, and me hiding in the back, and answered many questions about his experiences as an astronaut which was incredible to hear from someone who's actually been "up there".

After a short interview, as time was short, we were able to grab him for another great photo opportunity for my blog. The fact that I'm wearing a blue t-shirt matching the blue of the ISS suit is entirely coincidental.

Left-Right:Prof. Paul Callanan, Lt. Col. Shane Kimbrough, Me.

Here is the interview which can also be viewed on the UCC youtube channel: