Olle Edqvist: Blog 6 - January 2010 onwards
This is my latest picture blog (No. 6) with pictures and comments from January 2010; the earlier one had become a bit too big and slow to download. The purpose is to share some of my pictures and therefore I have now broadened it to 1260 pixels to get maximum size of the pictures. You can always see the pictures in full scale (normally 3-5 MB) if you click on the picture. If you want to send a comment to a blog or a picture it would be most welcome. My email is olle.edqvist(at)gmail.com.You find links to earlier blogs in the right margin.
Last updated 2010-01-28.
Christian Radich - the Norwegian schoolship
Thursday, 2010-01-28
I have taken some pictures of the threemaster ship I have built the last years, actually I began the work in January 2002 and it was finished 7 years later. It lives in a glass cage but I need to put in some lighting also.
I wonder how it would be to sail on it?
Click on the picture for a full-size file 1,2 MB
A new interest -- amateur astronomy
Wednesday, 2010-01-20
For me it really begun when I passed a shop where they sell cheap stuff - sometimes quite good value and I have bought a good part of my workshop tools there - and they advertised a telescope. It was not expensive and I thought it might be worth a try. But I had the good sense to ask a friend who is an experienced amateur astonomer for advice and he very firmly said that never buy supermarket stuff - it does not work! The quality of the scope and the mount are not good for anything. You are better off with your eyes or a pair of binoculars.
So I started off not with a telescope but with a pair of good binoculars, a planisphere where you can see what constellations are where when and a small red lamp for checking on things without losing your night sight. I did not know where to look and that is actually the first problem when you get some serious equipment in your hands, yes even for a binocular. Suddenly the sky is just full of stars! The only constellation I knew was the Great Dipper and the Pole star.
Next thing was my usual - to get all books on the subject which I got get and that was a fair number. Book packets started to arrive and I read a lot. It did not take me long to discover that my friend's good advice was shared by everyone. Start with simple but good stuff if you are not going to be disappointed and give it up in despair. It turned out that what kind of telescope (reflector or refractor type) you need partly depends on what you want to see - the moon and planets or distant galaxies and the like. For me it is the latter - it is so much more of it... The idea of looking back in time some million or billion of years is intriguing.
So after a while I bought a so-called Dobsonian reflector with a mirror diameter of 8" - that is about as much as I comfortably can carry in and out of the workshop/house (split into in two pieces - the tube and the stand).
When you finally find your galaxy, nebula or star cluster the sight is amazing! However, the type of telescope I bought is not the thing to take photos with - that requires a lot more from the mount really, which must be able to track the movement of the sky quite precisely so that you can take long time exposures. But the Moon is easier as it is so bright, so I have tried my hand on it.
The left picture was taken on New Year's eve and the right picture three nights later. It shows a part of the north-west corner of the moon where the shadow is just about to creep in and creates nice contrasts. The upper dark field is Mare Serenitatis and the one below is Mare Tranquillitatis. The big crater at the top is Posidonius and the sharply illuminated crater below on the edge of the view is Römer (click on the picture for larger size).
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And in addition: Two family pictures
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