My first observatory was in South Australia in Elizabeth some 20 km north of Adelaide. The observatory used half of a galvanized iron garage with a slide-off roof and housed a 6 inch f/7 Newtonian telescope on a heavy mounting all self constructed around 1965.
My second observatory was in Canberra in Weston in 1970 which used the double-door garage below the house with a roll out 10 inch f/10 Newtonian (the Wearne telescope) as well as my home made 6 inch Newtonian. Here the lunar occultation program was commenced, initially with the Royal Greenwich Observatory UK, and later with IOTA and then ILOC, the Japanese clearing house for lunar occultations.
My third observatory was in Paradise (longitude 138º 39' 22.3" E, latitude -34º 52' 04.3" S, elevation 56 m) 5 km north of Adelaide in South Australia and housed my 6 inch Newtonian telescope above my galvanized iron garage. This observatory also featured a roll-off roof but it was not very resistant to floor vibration which effected the telescope. Here the lunar occultation program was continued and my first video capture of a lunar eclipse was undertaken using borrowed video cameras and VCR.
My fourth and by far, the most successful observatory to date was in Canberra constructed at Calwell (longitude149º 06' 00.9" E, latitude -35º 26' 31.4" S, elevation 630 m) in 1993 which housed the 6 inch Newtonian mounted on a new pier and remotely controlled in both axes. The lunar occultation program was continued and various refractors with a Sony Handycam were used for on-line transmission of many lunar eclipses and planetary transits to my then, new web site. The observatory was set-up temporarily in the suburb of Fadden, but little observation was done due to the poor horizons.
My fifth Observatory was also here in Canberra in Theodore (longitude 149º 07 ' 01.1" E, latitude -35º 27 ' 04.6" S, elevation 704 m). Two instruments, the 6 inch Newtonian and a Jason 360 Newtonian were used with video and digital cameras on the telescopes, set-up on a concrete apron in front of the house with an unobstructed view to the North East and the ecliptic. As this observatory was near Tuggeranong Hill (885 m) a clear view to the West horizon was not possible.
My sixth observatory is in Canberra nearby in the southern suburb of Isabella Plains (longitude 149o05'16.6" E, latitude -35o25'52.2" S, elevation 586 m). Here, I operate a Meade ETX-90EC only as the Jason has been presented to my granddaughter Minnah. My program will remain the same with the sky here a little dominated by trees, but most of the ecliptic is visible.
Most of the activities are centered on computer prediction and analysis
of
lunar and solar eclipse observations with the Observatory a
clearing house for global lunar eclipse observations.
The most important aspect of maintaining an up-to-date web site is to promote and collate observations such as crater timings during all lunar eclipses from observers around the world. Recently timings have been received from South Africa and South America.
Recently, I have updated my software to predict past and future expected umbral oblateness variations for each of the lunar eclipses studied. The early observations of both Schmidt and Bouska have been included into my web pages.
Back to topA suite of Microsoft GWBasic computer programs were developed in 1984 which were converted to QuickBasic programs for the Macintosh to provide a comprehensive methodology for the prediction, reduction and analysis of lunar eclipse observations. The QuickBasic programs have recently been modified to run under Windows 98 or Windows XP Professional. They have been provided for downloading to any PC for execution. The CTR program and data files are in compressed form and can be found here. They need to be expanded before use onto any available drive into a folder named "CTR2" without the quotes.
In addition, several image analysis commercial suites of software were applied to analyse the many images of lunar eclipses obtained personally, or from overseas observers, to investigate the change in size of the umbra during more recent lunar eclipses. An excellent result for the measurement of the size of the umbra was obtained from Bernard Durand's images from France for the 2008 February 21 total lunar eclipse - this data confirmed my Topocentric Umbra theory.The application and results from these computer programs can be seen in the favourite links given below.
The iMac is used to convert many of the 16-bit datasets to web pages using Claris Homepage 2 and Graphic Converter for image manipulation. The iMac uses Interarchie to up-load these files to my web pages on the Netspeed domain.
The Dell Inspiron 600m laptop obtained to facilitate computer control of the Meade telescope was loaded with the Meade Autostar Suite of software which includes a Lunar and Planetary Imaging (LPI) camera and the Rikaline GPS-6010 receiver. These units and software provide flexible remote computer control and full imaging capability for the Observatory.
Recently, a MacBook was obtained and Parallels was installed to provide a Windows XP SP2 environment for program development and image analysis. I have also obtained a USB to Serial converter cable to control the Meade telescope with this computer, but have installed the driver for this and the LPI camera input.
A Canon Ixus 2.1 Mpixel digital
camera with a telescope eyepiece mount is also used on my Jason 360 and
Meade telescopes, this gives great results for lunar observations and
of the Sun using my solar filters with due consideration of the
camera's inherent exposure and brightness controls.
E-mail address mailto:minnah@netspeed.com.au
Web address http://www.netspeed.com.au/minnah/LEO.html
Office phone in Australia +61 2 6292 8448Analysing data from the Total Solar Eclipse cruise south of
Rhodes in 2006 March (completed)
The Solar and Lunar Eclipses web pages and my Observatory pages
Modernising my web pages using Dreamweaver MX Version 6 (completed)
Analysing images from lunar eclipses with Digimizer©, a new measuring engine
Updating my Quickbasic Version 4.5 crater timing reduction program suite for XP execution using numeric date format (completed).
I am a research amateur astronomer specialising in solar and lunar eclipse observation, prediction and analysis. I have observed and analysed over 55 lunar eclipses and travelled to and successfully observed total solar eclipses in Java (1983), New Guinea (1984), Bangka Island off the north coast of Java (1988), the annular solar eclipse in Geralton in Western Australia (1999), Zambia in Africa (2001), Ceduna in South Australia (2002), and the recent total solar eclipse of 2006 March 29 at sea, which included successful observation and analysis of Baily's Beads at third contact.
I have maintained my web pages on lunar eclipses, solar eclipses and transits including many "live" web casts since 1997. I am a past member of the British Astronomical Association, the Astronomical Society of Australia and the Canberra Astronomical Society.1976 B.W. Soulsby, Proceedings of the National Convention of Amateur Astronomers (NACAA), various from 1976 to 2008.
1984 B.W. Soulsby, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Volume 95, Number 1, JBAA95 (this is large file of the scanned paper)1985 B.W. Soulsby, Australian Journal of Astronomy, Volumes 1, et seq
1990 B.W. Soulsby, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Volume 100, Number 6, JBAA100 (this is a very large file of the scanned paper), or down-load the 760 Kb pdf file here.
1992 B.W. Soulsby, Journal of the Astronomical Society of Australia, Volume 10, Number 2, ASA92 (a 291 Kb pdf file).
2005 B.W. Soulsby, Canberra Astronomical Society, My 50th Lunar Eclipse (a 761 Kb pdf file)
2006 B.W. Soulsby, the 22 National Australian Convention of
Amateur Astronomers (NACAA) held in Frankston, Victoria in April 2006
2006 B W Soulsby, the New Sky & Space magazine, A lunar eclipse Challenge for Readers, July/August edition, pages 38 & 39.
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Back to topLast revised 10 June 2008 using SeaMonkey.
