News

By Doug Bickley

Some of you may remember a talk that I gave a while ago about Lord Wrottesley (1798-1867) and the observatory that he built and operated near Wolverhampton. I was approached a couple of years ago by Wolverhampton Archaeology Group to give a presentation to them. Since then lockdown has come and gone and we rearranged the talk. This was fortuitous in some ways because Steve Wootton and I had made a couple of site visits since and I could bring the talk up to date. The observatory, or what is left of it after 180 years, is on private land and I invited the landowners to the talk.

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By Steve Morrall

In early spring when we were effectively trapped in our own gardens, our interest in the skies I’m sure played an important role keeping us occupied. My postcode is rated by the clear outside forecast website as a bortle 6, although I think now it’s more like 7. On a good night I can see M81 and M82 galaxies but nothing like the Virgo galaxies due to the light pollution. So I thought about just playing about with the camera.
I have a canon 200d dslr, very light with a fold out and rotatable rear viewfinder. I attach it to a Skywatcher ed80 refractor with a t piece. The mount is a basic Skywatcher a/z go to. If you cannot see what you are trying to photograph the goto facility is pretty much essential.

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