Binocular Challenge

Are you still letting people do this?

I find I go out with the scope or bins and usually end up going round the same old things, this will actually give me an incentive to find new things!
I can also use my SIGNED copy of Sue French's Celestial Sampler!
It'll be a great way to record my observing. I don't keep a log (much to Stevie's disgust!) so this will also be my log!

Is this Micheal's project? Do I ask him?

I email another female astronomer in England, she's also interested in doing this, may I send her the link? She's not a member of an IFAS club but says she'd love to have a go at it. I said I'd check with youze first!

Sorry to be a pain!

Are you still letting people do this?

I find I go out with the scope or bins and usually end up going round the same old things, this will actually give me an incentive to find new things!
I can also use my SIGNED copy of Sue French's Celestial Sampler!
It'll be a great way to record my observing. I don't keep a log (much to Stevie's disgust!) so this will also be my log!

Is this Micheal's project? Do I ask him?

I email another female astronomer in England, she's also interested in doing this, may I send her the link? She's not a member of an IFAS club but says she'd love to have a go at it. I said I'd check with youze first!

Sorry to be a pain!

Hi Mia,

The observing challenges are free for anyone to use for their own personal use. So, your friend in England can of course download any of the handbooks and use it as an observing aid.

In general however, the issuing of certificates is normally limited to members of IFAS clubs as a means of giving something back to the members (this of course incurs a cost on IFAS). At the time of launch we had tremendous interest in the project, particularly from astronomers in the US. So much so, that we had to move the files to a seperate server due to the high levels of downloads.

The observing challenges program is of course still running and once you have completed the challenge, you just send it back to the person listed in the handbook. In this case, I think it's John Flannery.

Hope this clarifies things a little,

Hi Mia,

Sorry I missed you in Birr as I only saw later that you were at the WSP over the weekend.

Delighted to help you out and your friend with the Binocular Handbook. It's due a bit of a revision as some people pointed out difficulties tracking down some objects. Also, I want to drop the mention of Uranus and Neptune as I'd prefer to have purely deep sky objects.

A further revision is to do the handbook as a series of binocular tours rather than a challenge -- you've now given me the impetus to get cracking on the project!

The handbook btw has been translated into French, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Czech, and a couple of other languages! Reps from clubs abroad contacted me before about using the publication.

I'd also recommend Toshimi Taki's free pdf magnitude 8.5 star atlas. It's an excellent resouce and an ideal compliment to any deep sky observing with binoculars. You can download it at www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zs3t-tk/ (the menu on the left of his home page has the relevant link). Toshimi recently released a free double star atlas which is excellent.

All the best,

John

Thanks for replying guys.

John, I've it all printed out and was going to start last night but had imbibed somewhat and decided it wasn't the best way to begin!
(all the sketches would contain double the amount of stars! )

I'm happy to run with it as it is. My friend in England says thanks for letting her use it, she says I can get her a bottle of Jack Daniels when she completes it! (I'm happy with the certificate!)

If I get stuck, I'll give youze a shout on here (or maybe just ask Stevie, the EAAS's human GoTo!)

I may have to go on hols again to see the challenges located in Puppis, Scorpius and Sagitarrius (any excuse!) so next question, is there a time limit?
Considering how bad the weather's been, it might take me til next Whirlpool to complete this (and that's being optimistic!)

Hi Mia,

Sky sketches after a few beers are always interesting

No time limit on the challenge objects -- no-one has submitted any observations so far. Feel free to drop me a PM any stage if you need any info.

I have a new version of the booklet done up (only some very slight corrections) but for some reason the pdf has ballooned in size to 3Mb! Really weird -- actually, with computers I'm never amazed at what can happen :roll:

Put it this way; the original Ms-Publisher 97 manuscript was 33Mb and I imported it to Office 2003 when I upgraded the product. Publisher 2003 then decided to reformat every page! Aaarrrgghhh!!!! Interestingly, the new document is only 3.5Mb yet the pdf is bigger than ever before! What the *@#!£ is going on!

Anyway, I want to add that there have been some new binocular observing books to market in the last two years (these are listed in the revised handbook which I will upload once I fix the size problem). The books are;

"Binocular Astronomy" by Stephen Tonkin, Springer-Verlag (2007) -- has a very good section (and detailed) on buying and using binoculars along with optical principles. It also devotes 150 pages to what deep-sky targets you can turn your binoculars to.

"Binocular Highlights" by Gary Seronik, Sky and Telescope (2007) -- a spiral-bound compilation of 99 of Gary's articles from Sky and Telescope magazine. Only 9 pages are devoted to binocular types and using these instruments however. I picked up a copy recently and it will be nice to tote to observing sessions instead of the actual magazines

"Binocular Stargazing" by Mike D. Reynolds, Stackpole Books (2005). A cheerful guide for the binocular observer. Lots of good advice and binocular sky highlights are picked out by season. Like the next book, Mike Reynold's little tome discusses viewing the Moon, eclipses, the planets, and other Solar System sights with binoculars.

"Stargazing with Binoculars" by Robin Scagell, Philips London (2007) -- published less than a month ago, this is a new edition to the Philips Observer's Guides series (Deep-Sky by Neil Bone, The Sun by Pam Spence, The Moon by Peter Grego, are others). I highly recommend this guide and it's cheap too. Robin has done a great job in covering all the basics of binocular observing and also details showpieces of the sky for the binocular user. Observing Solar System objects with binoculars is discussed too.

atb,

John

John --

If you have Acrobat, open up the PDF and chose PDF Optimizer... from the Advanced menu. This will give you several options for reducing the size of the PDF.

If you don't have Acrobat you can email me the PDF and I'll see if there's anything I can do. (jey(at)adobe(dot)com)

-- Jeff.