Astrophotography - the Moon and Jupiter

For the first time in months I got the big telescope out in the back garden and took some pictures, of the Moon and Jupiter. Here's a colour one of the moon:

I did a couple in black & white as well:

They were all taken by connecting the SLR camera directly to the telescope, with no lens in between. The telescope is a Skywatcher newtonian reflector, 200mm diameter and 1000mm focal length. That means it's like connecting a 1000mm F5 lens to the SLR! I actually took about 10 photos and stacked them using Registax to get a sharper image.

I took some more pictures by recording video using my Panasonic FZ8 compact - this is used with an eyepiece in the telescope, allowing you to try different magnifications, but it's a lot harder to focus. The video is again processed using Registax. Here's a close-up of some craters on the moon:

A couple of Jupiter, using different settings in Registax:

and another of Jupiter at a higher magnification, but a bit blurry - the "seeing" wasn't that great, the view was shimmering a lot due to turbulence in the atmosphere:

Anyway, very pleased to get these pics of Jupiter, they're my first. Hope to get some more another time. Finally, here's the SLR camera next to the telescope tube, just for scale:

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Thermal imaging in the woods

There's a research project into wild boar going on in our wood and the surrounding woods (details here). Last night we went up to open the gate for some people coming with thermal imaging equipment and show them where some of the boar tracks are - you need to know where they are already to find them in the dark! Here's one in the daylight:
We went up before dark to enjoy dusk in the wood, and have a hot drink.
While we were sat quietly we saw a number of pheasants, a few rabbits, and best of all - a Tawny Owl flying around the wood and the wayleave. Although we saw it, it was getting dark, so it was by its call that we identified it.

The researchers turned up about about quarter to nine and started unpacking their equipment:
I can't show you a picture through the thermal imager, though we did get a look though it - it's amazing how the difference in temperature lets you see different types of vegetation, and any animals (OK, people in this case) glow bright red. Their plan at this stage is to patrol different parts of the wood with the imager and see what they find - partly just to see how well they are able to distinguish boar from other animals that are around, especially at a distance.

Once we'd showed them round, we left them to get on with it, as having too many people around would scare off the boar. Just to finish though, here's a few long-exposure pictures of the wood lit by moonlight:
Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Assorted woodland photos

There's a few odds and ends collected over the weekend, and also yesterday evening, when we popped up to the wood for a walk around at sunset.

A birch trying to grow as fast as it can after we pollarded it a couple of months ago:

more follows, including oak apples, a rabbit, a beetle and where some of our woodland produce has gone...

and a coppiced chestnut doing the same:
An "oak apple" we found lying on the ground under one of the oaks. These aren't apples at all, but are a mutation of the the oak leaf cause by chemicals injected by the larvae of a gall wasp, according to Wikipedia. The wasp matures inside the "apple", and apparently is good fishing bait and even survival food!
A rabbit and a beetle on the wayleave:
sunset through the trees:
a gibbous moon:
and the track between Sweep Wood and Grist Wood looking rather dark!
and finally, some of our produce in use. First, bean poles at a neighbouring allotment patch:
and a trailer load of oak sawdust, which has gone to a friend who plans to build something to smoke the game he shoots.
Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Lop and carry

Tracy chose the title, as that's what we did mostly today... somehow there was a backlog of felled trees, needing lopping, chopping and carrying, so it was nearly lunchtime before I got to fell a tree!

Someone else had been in the wood while we were away, and they left evidence on the chopping block:
Looks like it was a squirrel eating acorns - I imagine it made a good lookout point.

We had yet another beautiful day, I think there's only been a couple of days all winter when we wanted to work that have been too wet.
Today we remembered to take "before and after" shots of the area we cleared (after the lop and carry...)
Before:
After:
Doesn't look like a lot, but that's about 3 hours work for two of us - it's the lopping,
copping and carrying that takes the time...

We left as the sun was setting, lighting up the birch in the wayleave:
and the moon was preparing to take of the role of main source of light:
We're hoping to go up again tomorrow, as it should be sunny again :-)

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.