Those of you who know me, will know that twice a year - regular as clockwork - I rant against the utter insanity of "changing the clocks" due to the damage it wreaks to my body-clock ( Read more... )

"Scud". A nice, innocuous little verb, with quite pretty connotations ( Read more... )

This is the telescope I've had my eye on for some time ( Read more... )

First of all, thanks to all who have "friended" me, especially those from The Shed. I hope I've now reciprocated, after forgetting my password for a week. (Yes, not-writing-your-password-down is *very* secure ( Read more... )

Look, I've had as much fun as anyone with the doomsday predictions over today's switching on of the LHC, but for crying out loud ( Read more... )

Trying a PNG upload to see if that's a better image than a JPG. Behind the cut is hopefully a decent-sized annotated version of the stars I managed to take this morning.

( Annotated PNG )

Well, there are *some* stars anyway...

After many 30 second exposures with useless focussing, I managed to focus properly ("focus on infinity" sounds more like some New Age instruction than something from a photography manual!)

Sadly the light pollution from the streetlamp is abysmal (or literally, exactly the opposite of "abysmal", still rotten ( Read more... )

An unexpected break in the clouds led to some quick snaps with 10 second exposures.

This leads to the question: how do I focus on a star when I can't really see it through the viewfinder? Autofocus is useless of course.


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 I'm not sure what looks better. This original blue-sky picture or the B&W one I posted earlier. Opinions?


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The large version of my userpic. This was taken in daylight (~6:30am) with the 75-300mm lens then turned to greyscale and darkened in GraphicConverter.


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