Dec 2013 – Jonathan Gazeley

Wide angle lenses

Since I embarked upon my Somerset Towers project, I’ve visited over a dozen churches across the country to photograph them with my Horseman 980 view camera. It’s barely made a scratch in the project, but I have learnt a lot already. View cameras are appropriate for architectural photography because they allow the photographer to captureContinue reading “Wide angle lenses”

Canon A-1

Released 1978 I own several Canon FD-mount SLRs but I’ve fancied an A-1 for a while. I think it’s the alluring black paint, rather than the silver fixtures of most contemporary SLRs. I think these hard-edged SLRs are much prettier than the curved plastic bodies that appeared in the 1980s. The A-1 also has theContinue reading “Canon A-1”

Light pollution

Being an city-dwelling astronomer, light pollution is a huge problem for me. Sure, I love the urban convenience of Tesco Extra for emergency overnight bacon but the orange glow of sodium street lights really ruins a night of stargazing. I always drive to my dark site in rural Somerset for “proper” stargazing nights and there itContinue reading “Light pollution”

Mittens waits for Christmas

This picture was a happy accident while I was attempting to take a picture for the Advent-themed photo challenge this week. I was attempting to set up a snowglobe with lights behind it. I was also going to shake the snowglobe to set the snow swirling around. I was just testing focus when Mittens cameContinue reading “Mittens waits for Christmas”

Always Top Quality, We Insist

I recently looked at the website of the manufacturer of my telescope, Guan Sheng Optical, better known as GSO. I love the juxtaposition of their tag line, “Always Top Quality, We Insist”, with a bunch of gobbledegook (click for bigger version). To be fair to them, my GSO telescope is really excellent and I’m veryContinue reading “Always Top Quality, We Insist”

How big are Messier objects in pixels?

Now I am getting some more experience with some of the brighter Messier objects, I decided to have a look at the catalogue and see how bright and how large some of the objects are – basically what I can expect to see in my telescope. All the copies of the Messier catalogue floating aroundContinue reading “How big are Messier objects in pixels?”

Horsehead nebula

While the weather in Scotland and the North has been terrible today, that wasn’t the case in Somerset last night. It was still, clear and moonless, so I decided to head out for some astronomy. On my previous excursion I looked at as many bright and interesting objects as possible, but the photos didn’t doContinue reading “Horsehead nebula”

Finally – round stars!

This was my telescope’s first outing since I fixed up its mirror cell. A quick glance at a bright star in the city seemed to indicate that the problem was fixed, but there’s no way of knowing for sure without trying some proper photography. Recently the three circles in this Venn diagram have been conspiringContinue reading “Finally – round stars!”