IYA 2009
Well, I am in the process of reorganising my web presence. The problems are twofold - Lycos, who have hosted my "pevans.me.uk" domain since 2004, are pulling out of webhosting. Secondly, I have found that these days a .me.uk domain will tend to be heavily filtered by the corporates so it's not so useful. I am therefore moving my web presence to:-
Northern Ireland Photography
The Astronomy side of things will get its own site:-
Northern Ireland Astronomy
Both have holding pages on them now. I am also looking at moving this blog away from blogspot hosting as that too is on the wrong side of too many filters.
So, thus far I have give two talks as part of IYA2009 - one to the Ballee Presbyterian Church Mens' Fellowship on Monday 5th January entitled "How far can you see?" which was an introduction to astronomy and which was followed by an observing session using my 10" Dobsonian telescope where we viewed M42,43, Orion's Belt, M45 and the 8-day Moon.
On Wednesday 7th January I talked to the IAA, Northern Ireland's biggest and best Astronomy Society. The talk was entitled "Astrophotography - The Fundamentals" and was a "prequel" to Dave Grennan's excellent talk in November, starting with some photographic basics and showing how different types of astrophotography can be accomplished with quite lowly equipment then adding greater layers of complexity to achive better results. Here's me delivering the talk - thanks to my friend Peter Paice for the photo...
The slides are here...
Astrophotography - the Fundamentals
The talk was very well received and indeed I've already been asked to deliver it to a different audience.
Despite the weather, it has been possible to do some actual astronomy - I had a good night where I took a scoot through the Messier objects in Gemini and Auriga. Here they are...
M35 with NGC2158 adjacent
M36
M37
M38 with NGC1907
Venus is now showing an excellent phase as it moves closer to Earth and thus appears larger, but less of it is illuminated by The Sun. Here she is on 13th January...
The second IAA lecture of the month featured Professor Francis Keenan. This was a light-hearted look at “The Science in Science Fiction” and covered propulsion systems, ray-guns and all the other aspects of sci-fi that the movie makers get wrong! Here's Prof Keenan demontrating the use of a Light-Sabre...
The Forum which friends John C McConnell FRAS, Martin McKenna and myself set up just six months ago has gone from strength to strength - indeed it is now the busiest and best Astronomy based Forum in Ireland which is quite some achievement and far more than we ever expected.
The Forum is always happy to give a warm welcome to new members, and unlike some other places, all are welcome!
Astronomy, Photography and Weather Forum
It is a far better place than the IFAS Forum which I have now stopped using. Whilst there are many excellent people there I found the Chairman's manners left a bit to be desired so I'll not bother going there any more.
And that, so far, is January!
Northern Ireland Photography
The Astronomy side of things will get its own site:-
Northern Ireland Astronomy
Both have holding pages on them now. I am also looking at moving this blog away from blogspot hosting as that too is on the wrong side of too many filters.
So, thus far I have give two talks as part of IYA2009 - one to the Ballee Presbyterian Church Mens' Fellowship on Monday 5th January entitled "How far can you see?" which was an introduction to astronomy and which was followed by an observing session using my 10" Dobsonian telescope where we viewed M42,43, Orion's Belt, M45 and the 8-day Moon.
On Wednesday 7th January I talked to the IAA, Northern Ireland's biggest and best Astronomy Society. The talk was entitled "Astrophotography - The Fundamentals" and was a "prequel" to Dave Grennan's excellent talk in November, starting with some photographic basics and showing how different types of astrophotography can be accomplished with quite lowly equipment then adding greater layers of complexity to achive better results. Here's me delivering the talk - thanks to my friend Peter Paice for the photo...
The slides are here...
Astrophotography - the Fundamentals
The talk was very well received and indeed I've already been asked to deliver it to a different audience.
Despite the weather, it has been possible to do some actual astronomy - I had a good night where I took a scoot through the Messier objects in Gemini and Auriga. Here they are...
M35 with NGC2158 adjacent
M36
M37
M38 with NGC1907
Venus is now showing an excellent phase as it moves closer to Earth and thus appears larger, but less of it is illuminated by The Sun. Here she is on 13th January...
The second IAA lecture of the month featured Professor Francis Keenan. This was a light-hearted look at “The Science in Science Fiction” and covered propulsion systems, ray-guns and all the other aspects of sci-fi that the movie makers get wrong! Here's Prof Keenan demontrating the use of a Light-Sabre...
The Forum which friends John C McConnell FRAS, Martin McKenna and myself set up just six months ago has gone from strength to strength - indeed it is now the busiest and best Astronomy based Forum in Ireland which is quite some achievement and far more than we ever expected.
The Forum is always happy to give a warm welcome to new members, and unlike some other places, all are welcome!
Astronomy, Photography and Weather Forum
It is a far better place than the IFAS Forum which I have now stopped using. Whilst there are many excellent people there I found the Chairman's manners left a bit to be desired so I'll not bother going there any more.
And that, so far, is January!
Labels: astronomy
posted by Paul at
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