And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, Happy Feast Day of Julian of Norwich everybody! Wasn’t she brilliant. She was an anti-capitalist by being walled up in her cell, without even a mobile phone. Of course this is totally impractical nowadays. How would you pay for parking?
The world is in a terrible state. But don’t worry, the Invisible Magic Friend will sort it all out. He always has in the past.
https://mega.nz/file/p6kinZJI#i_TvQZjBK2rysoRjJSzT655FvaUfq8kIGXlzTNCNZ_E
And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, Happy Nearly V.E. Day everybody!
It’s like Chariots of Fire. It’s all about winning. No, it’s not about winning. It’s about not winning. It’s about equality. Or possibly belonging and being different. I know, it’s about being non-violent. No, no, I’ve got it. It’s about Jesus. That’s it, Jesus winning is what it’s about. No, wait a minute, Jesus not winning. Jesus is dead, sort of. It must be that Jesus is with us even when he’s sort of dead. Yes, I’ve got it.
Happy Nearly V.E. Day everybody! It’s about Jesus being with us even when he’s sort of dead. Phew!
https://mega.nz/file/Bq9lRJAQ#Zs1nupBEcJS-PkaF-MXqvfAITgwXBMy0BhVbpE_kwWU
And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, Happy Nearly V.E. Day everybody!.
It was the Invisible Magic Friend wot won it. So I hope you’re all properly thankful to Jesus for it. And I hope you’re all really humble like me.
https://mega.nz/file/1qlFHaZB#6ZsI7Qq7Tkcy3uM8A9ad0oYmYwi8Z-A7rlPvN-TSuHM
The Seestar S50 smart telescope comes with what’s called an alt-azimuth mount. It can move left to right and up and down and so track a point object as it moves across the sky. However, unless you want to take a picture of a point object, like a single star, this will only partly compensate for motion across the sky. Extended objects, which is just about everything, also appear to rotate as they move.
Here’s a timelapse movie that shows how an attempt to image M106 is hampered by this effect.
http://www.platitudes.org.uk/m106_edit.mkv
This makes it harder to stack frames. It also means that a lot of frames get rejected due to star trails and other unwanted artefacts.
As summer approaches, the amount of darkness is becoming less and less. Last night, the moon didn’t set until well after 1am. It starts to get light at 4am. With cloud coming and going, the window where images can be taken of deep sky objects is very slim.
However, between 2am and 3am this morning, the moon was gone and there was no cloud. I put the smart scope on an equatorial mount. This has one axis pointed at the celestial north pole. It allows the scope to track both the movement and the rotation of the night sky. This timelapse shows the difference when imaging the galaxy M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy.
http://www.platitudes.org.uk/m51eq.mkv
Not only is the rotation gone, nearly all of the frames, for the full hour of observing were kept. This is the result.
Platitude of the Day 