Views from my observatory. First-light pictures are here.
I was concerned that my restricted views to the south might obstruct my view of M42, the Orion Nebula. I took this picture at 04:14 on 13 October 2009 when Orion was due south. It is evident that I will be able to see M42, albeit for rather a short time.
I constructed this panorama of the view from roughly where the junction of the two principal axes of the LX200 will be. I pieced this together using a simple photo-manipulation program (PhotoImpact); iMerge made a better job of the junctions and you can see this image by moving your mouse over the image—I don't understand what went wrong. (I do now!)
15th October 2009
This is my horizon. This graph plots the declination as a function of the local hour angle. This is not the same as altitude vs azimuth, but is much more useful to help me determine if or when a given object will be visible. Any planetarium program will give me the hour angle and the declination of any object at any time and I can plot this point to see if it will be visible. Hour Angle (HA) is the same as Right Ascension except that zero hour angle is always due south. It does not rotate with the sky. So 0 is south, 12 is north, 6 is west and 18 (or -6) is east. My planetarium program (written in Canada) runs hour angle from -12 to +12 so this is how I have scaled my graph.
All the horizon is trees except for a tiny section at 8 hours (north-west) which is the roof of my observatory. Fortunately all the trees are old and probably fully grown, except (as luck would have it) at zero HA which is an apple tree which my neighbour cut back a few years ago and which is growing back. The sharp dip at 30 minutes HA is in hope he will allow me to cut it back again, but it is no big deal if he wants the apples.
20th July 2010