| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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I omitted to mention that I gave up waiting for the Moon rise, according to the available data Moon rise was 01:09 that night, at 02:35 it still hadn't shown so as I became rather tired, Christopher had gone to sleep and I hit a 'wall' I packed up and went, I had good hours drive back to Lancaster and it was freezing quite hard. I didn't get the Moon rise. As we drove back through the lanes the Moon hove into sight, it was a lovely laid back crescent Moon which I had really wanted to capture breaking over the rocky crags, next time maybe.
Perhaps I may be a bit obsessed with this particular location but it's very isolated, not too hard to reach and seems to enjoy reasonably dark skies, despite the best efforts of the Sellafield nuclear site. The summit of Stickle Pike is not too difficult to reach with stunning views over the Western aspects of the Lake District and part of The Isle of Man is clearly visible.
The only person we saw that night was a cyclist, who raced up from the Duddon Valley, turned up towards Stickle Pike and without pausing or slacking speed climbed the steep grassy hill and disappears from sight, he may still be going!!! A motorbike probably wouldn't have been much faster. These athletes never fail to amaze me, when we used to climb Coniston Old Man, runners would pass us on the way up, react the summit and pass us again as they came back, we were still less than half way up!!!
Posting more than one image in this forum via the forum image feature isn't possible. In most cases I use Flicker, which has the added advantage I can make the image whatever size I wish and the IQ isn't degraded.
The constellations are something of an enigma for me, I know Ursa Major and Polaris/Ursa Minor, now thanks to your prompt last week Orion but most of the others are a mystery, I must find an app which gives a reliable and less 'flowery' map of the stars, currently I use an 'iCandy' app which is pretty good, it shows the location and orientation of the stars in real time but the names only stay visible for a second or two before they fade from the screen, which is less than useful. I want to be able to study them and get them into my head. It needs more than a second or two to do that.
Apparently from the star map you posted the bottom of my second star image is North? I have been trying to find Ursa Major and Polaris to confirm the orientation but am uncertain what do you think?
I was going by the upper right corner of the second image which shows a farmstead in the Duddon valley which is to the North West of our location, so I rotated the finished image 180ยบ so the farm was at the bottom left of the frame and north at the bottom. Which is how I usually view this scene, perhaps North should be at the top?
Whoops, things to do! BBL
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Robert.