Mars 15 inch newt.

[Trevor]

Sir Patrick recently let Ed Sampson and myself image Mars with his 15 inch Newt.
Mono Toucam, Astronomik Filters.

Regards Trev.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/700vs/Mars11Dec07PML.jpg

[matt]

Very nice, Trevor.

Plenty of detail and colour looks good. Nicely processed.

Must be nice to have access to that scope?

Good to see you here at IceInSpace too.:thumbsup:

Cheers.

[Dennis]

A wonderful image Trevor. Thanks for the education on “marsography” too; the labelling of the features add much interest to an already excellent image. I assume the session was at Patrick’s observatory at Selsey?

Cheers

Dennis

[rumples riot]

Nice image Trevor. Plenty of detail and great colouring.

Was nice of Sir Patrick to do that. I spent some time with him in the late 80's through a friend Jim Barclay, he was a real character. One of the nicest 4 hours I have ever spent in astronomy.

[Ric]

That's a lovely image Trevor, a fine effort.

It must have been quite an experience to use Sir Patricks scope. I would love to meet the great man, he must be such a fascinating person.

Cheers

[IanL]

Very nice image Trevor.

You seem to have better sky's in the UK than we have here in Brisbane at the moment.

As soon as I saw Mars with 15" newt. Sir Patrick's was the first i thought of. Not many 15" newts about. Fine detail indeed. I saw the pictures of the mirror in that scope being redone. By the detail you captured with it they have done a good job. Would I be right in saying that this was also captured with no tracking.


Cheers
Ian

[Trevor]

Hi Guy’s

Thank you for the comments.

Credit for the processing goes to Ed, he really is very good at what he does.

The scope has a motor drive and once we got the orientation of the camera set up correctly it was reasonably easy to hold the image for a couple of minutes without to much drift.
It will be nice to try a F/40 shot next time.

Sir Patrick really is a character he is so welcoming and genuine .

Here is a quote from one of my friends who accompanied us on a visit.

I don't normally consider myself to be particularly lucky in that I have always had to work for everything I have and rarely win anything except a bag of dog treats at the Dog Training Club tombola but I have been extremely lucky again this weekend by having another opportunity to spend an evening with Sir Patrick Moore - and what an evening!

To start off with, how about a good view of the Moon through Sir Patrick's 15" Newtonian and an opportunity to handle Sir Patrick's beloved Dawes eyepiece (the one used by him for much of his Moon mapping) of which only three were ever made. This delightful eyepiece has a drawtube allowing a range of magnifications to be achieved and is beautifully made in brass.

Later there was an opportunity to image the Moon through the same telescope and some excellent results were achieved in difficult sky conditions but I elected instead to spend some time with Sir Patrick and his guest Hilton Ratcliffe (http://www.s8int.com/bigbang5.html)visiting England for a week from South Africa. Hilton's papers on an alternative version of the Universe, the formation of stars, the lack of nuclear fusion in the CORE of stars and his arguments against 'dark matter' (hooray another voice in protest!) and the discussion that ensued made for a very entertaining evening indeed. You may not have heard of Hilton yet but you will in the future as his controversial views offer some compelling answers but as usual pose yet more difficult questions!

A truly splendid evening and Sir Patrick's easy manner (always with his anecdotes) will, I am sure, have made Hilton's visit to England all the more enjoyable.

But that's not all! How about watching an episode of 'The Sky at Night' on the subject of meteors with a real-time additional commentary from Patrick himself followed by the next episode of 'The Universe' with further commentary (Patrick does not like background music to these programs by the way!!) - it doesn't get much better than this .......

[5ash]

Lovely image Trev,
your description of sir patrick brought back memories for me.when i was in my early teens.I lived in Crawley , sussex and was a member of the local astronomical society who's vice president was none other than Patrick Moore , who at that time lived near east grinstead and had an alt/azimuth 12" reflector.I always remember being allowed to stay up to listen to his TV program "the sky at night" late on a friday night.
regards philip fiveash

[ving]

great image!!! :D