REPORT

 

27 November 2012 Meeting

The King Street Halls from 1930-2130

This month Michael gave a great talk about the ins and outs of Astro-Photography.

From using a camera to take images of star-trails to hooking your telescope up to your computer with a webcam it was all there.  You can find links to software that allow you to do this in the 'Links' section of the site.

 

30 October 2012 Meeting

The King Street Halls from 1930-2130

 

This months meeting was centred around Collimation 

Tony gave an excellent talk about why it is important to ensure that your telescopes mirrors are in perfect allignment and how to go about doing this.

A step by step demonstration was given with his Newtonian Reflector  on how to acheive collimation and he showed off some of the tools and tricks that can help to make it as easy and accurate as possible.

Tony also prepated a brilliant handout demonstrating all of the steps.  A PDF of which will be uploaded to the site in due course.

 

 

31 July 2012 Meeting

 

The King Street Halls from 1930-2130

 

This months meeting was centred around Solar Observation.

We started off the meeting with Michael giving members a chance to observe the sun with his telecope he kindly brought in (with appropriate filter) set up out the front of the building.  This gave members a great clear image of the sun where you could clearly see many active sun spots.

 

The meeting was then taken inside where we discussed different equipment that can be used to view the sun in different wavelenghts on the light spectrum and how this can change your view of the sun. 

Incidentally, members might be interested in the image of the sun displayed in this article.  It shows an image taken of the sun taken roughly the same time was we observed it on Tuesday nights meeting but using a Hydrogen-Alpha filter.

 

Also discussed were polar alignment and the possiblity of a star party/bbq meeting maybe in September.  Keep an eye on your emails for more details on that!

 

29 May 2012 Meeting

 

The King Street Halls from 1930-2100.

 

This months meeting was centred around accessories and equipment to complement your telescope.

Mark Reeves brought in a wide variety of his gear and discussed what they do and how they work.  Areas covered included different eyepieces, filters and aiming devices that help you get more out of your scope.

Also discussed was the upcoming transit of Venus and the best ways of safely and effectivley viewing this rare event.

Finally a quick walkthrough was given of the excellent piece of software Stellarium.  Excellent for planning when and where things are going to be in the sky.

 

 

 

24 April 2012 Meeting

The  King Street Halls from 1900-2100.

 

Todays meeting was more of an informal meeting.  The main points discussed were based around the setup of a telescope and gave members a chance to bring in and have an informal chat about any equipment of setup issues they are having.

 

Mark gave an excellent presentation on how to setup and polar align an equitorial mount and also gave details of great computer software that can help make astronomy easier and more satisfying. Links to these can be found in the Links sections of the website.