AnnMarie's Blog

Harlech Castle stands today as an impressive historical monument to the turbulent British past. When first completed in 1289 it may have been viewed somewhat differently.

Whichever side one sat upon, Welsh or English, there can be little doubt that this castle was a dominant and imposing site within the local Snowdonia scenery. Dressed in its bright lime mortar and standing high upon the 200ft sea cliffs; this castle made a statement. Trouble had occurred between England and Wales because a weakened English crown in the form of Henry III had recognised an independent Wales under Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. Yet within a decade the new English King, Edward I or ‘Longshanks’, wished to reverse this. Llywelyn disagreed and two costly wars broke out.

The first of the pictures below is of a great model, currently on display in the castle gatehouse, it illustrates the castles location & whitened walls. At the right hand side of the model can be seen the steps leading down to the sea gate. During the 13th Century the sea came right to the foot of these cliffs and the castle could therefore be restocked from the sea.

The other two pictures above show the view :

(right) from one of the gatehouse towers looking north and 

(bottom) looking west from by the Prison tower, past the Chapel tower and across the sea to the Lleyn peninsula.

Harlech Castle took over 7 years to build, with 950 workmen toiling upon it. The workmen were drawn from across the whole of England and the castle’s final cost was about £9,500; that was a very large sum 725 years ago. Indeed the entire ring of castles, built by Edward I to subdue the Welsh, cost about £80,000 and even that sum was less than the cost to Edward of the 2 preceding Welsh / English wars. So it appears that the Castles were a good investment for him.

The Castle has a classic ‘concentric’ design. It consists of high inner curtain walls with substantial round towers. These inner walls are then surrounded by lower outer perimeter walls. The sea and natural rocky outcrop upon which the castle is built, add to the defensive strength on 3 sides. The eastern, inland facing side, would have been most exposed and required more fortification. To this end the east side has the impressive gatehouse with twin D-shaped towers. The picture below left shows the gatehouse, as seen from the inner curtain wall.

The picture above right shows the view through the gatehouse, from within the castle. Any attackers who had successfully breached the moat & eastern perimeter wall would now have needed to progress through here. Between Tamsin (far end) and Jane (nearer us) there would have been double metal portcullises. On either side are guardrooms with arrow slits leading in to this passageway and above there are murder holes for further archers, rock throwers and perhaps boiling oil cauldrons too. I would not wish to have been caught in here!

Moments in History:

• 1283 – Subsequent to the fall of the Welsh Castles Dolwyddelan and Castell y Bere during the 2nd Welsh / English war; over 500 English soldiers marched to Harlech. This secured the building of Harlech Castle.
• 1289 / 1290 – Castle completed.
• 1294 – Madog ap Llywelyn besieged Harlech over winter but the castle held out due to its sea gate and the siege was lifted in the spring.
• 1404 – Owain Glyndwr succesfully captures Harlech Castle after a long siege. He sets up court within.
• 1409 – Harry of Monmouth (the future King Henry V) regains Harlech from Owain Glyndwr after an 8 month siege.
• 1468 – After a 7 year siege the Lancastrians surrender Harlech at the end of the War of the Roses. This was the longest siege in British history and inspired the song ‘Men of Harlech’.
• 1558 / 1603 – The Gatehouse residential rooms were refurbished to hold the local Elizabethan Court.
• 1647 – Harlech Castle was the last Royalist stronghold to surrender during the 1st English Civil War. After the surrender, Parliamentary forces damaged the castle beyond use as a fortress.
• 1987 – Harlech is made a World Heritage Site along with Caernarfon, Conwy and Beaumaris.

The pictures below show (left) the westerly facing inner curtain wall from the outer ward and (right) the inside of the same wall looking across the inner ward towards the location of the Great Hall.

Various domestic buildings were built against the inner side of the curtain wall, including Great Hall, Chapel, Kitchens and Well. The Great Hall functioned as a centre of entertainment and business for those who ran the castle. In peace time Harlech usually had a garrison of only about 30 soldiers and craftsmen, so this was somewhat spacious accommodation for the times.

Today the sea has receded and Harlech Castle stands high on its cliffs overlooking the gradually expanding town of Harlech. The castle is cared for by Cadw and I really do recommend a visit if you’re in the area. And finally if it’s night time, go down towards the beach and look back at the spot lit castle.

"Brock" the badger (Meles meles) is a native wild mammal of Britain (amongst other places). Omnivorous & mainly nocturnal these wonderful woodland shadows should normally live their lives undisturbed in their woodland setts. Yet they have been persistently blamed (often with little evidence) for the occurrence of TB in farm cattle. Recently in a rather disturbing development another UK cull of Badgers has been announced. For now it is restricted to Pembrokeshire; but is there any justification at all?

I normally try to keep my blog posts positive, encouraging a love of nature, but I feel that I must at least make a brief post on this topic. I shall attempt to make this post brief, simple & factual.

TB or Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease affecting a variety of species. There are several different types of tuberculosis bacilli; the one that we are concerned with here is Bovine TB (Mycobacterium bovis). This is a disease whose main effect is to cause progressive lesions in the lungs, with a long and protracted downhill effect on the sufferers health. In the UK infected cattle are destroyed & the farmer paid compensation for this loss.

Whilst this is a complicated field there are some critical facts that need to be known:

• TB transmission is mainly via inhalation – research in sheep shows that 5 inhaled bacterium produce the same infection rates as 13million ingested bacterium
• Recent Research shows that at least 80% of cattle infections are caught from other cattle.
• Emerging evidence from Organic farms suggests that lower density stocking & reduced stress levels decreases the risks of TB outbreaks in cattle
• New outbreaks of Bovine TB in areas previously clear of the disease are evidenced as being due to large scale cattle movements, mainly due to restocking after foot & mouth disease.
• Badgers are a wild reserve of Bovine TB, typically between 2% & 12% are infected. However only a low proportion of infected badgers become infectious.
• Other wild species are also a reserve of Bovine TB including fox, mink, rat and deer. Little research has been done in to the infectivity of these species.
• The main evidence for badger to cow infection comes from an experiment where infected badgers were housed in a building with young calves. Despite these ideal transmission conditions it took months for any calves to become infected.
• Badgers often root their noses in cow pats looking for worms & beetles to eat; cows tend to avoid badger latrines. Thus its more likely that badgers catch TB from cows not vice versa.
• Badgers typically have a relatively small territory of ~200acres, they live in family groups & dispersal is low unless they are disturbed by activities such as culling.
• We have a vaccine for Badgers that is being trialled in England. Initial results show that it gives effective protection to badgers and would therefore negate any transmission, if such a thing happens.
• Vaccinating cattle causes problems for government vets testing cattle. An effective cattle vaccine / test combination is expected by 2014. This would be the most effective solution since it should stop cattle to cattle transmission.
• The last large scale cull in the UK was abandoned. It cost far more than any possible gains. The bill to the tax payer was in excess of £11 million.
• The only long term detailed study of Badger / Cattle TB relationship was carried out by the ISG & reported to government. Over 10 years it showed that cattle TB cases continued to rise despite Badger culling.
• The ISG concluded "badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the control of TB in Britain".
• Increased bio-security on farms has been shown to assist in control of disease spread. Keeping wild animals away from feed stores, mangers & watering points are all key to success.

These are the salient points of this issue.

Given the great distress that destroying infected cows causes, it is possible to understand why some farmers may cling misguidedly to the traditional views but if only they would open their minds they should see that a badger cull is not the way forward. As for government, it has access to all the research and to authorise a badger cull must surely be pure folly or worse.

To myself & many others, including eminent scientists, the action plan from these points might be:

• Do not increase wild animal dispersion. Avoid introducing culling.
• Do trial the badger vaccine with a view to large scale deployment if required.
• Do fund an increased rate of research in to a cattle vaccine / test combo. This will enable the EU to change its legislation against cattle vaccination.
• Do increase control on cattle movements from hot spot regions.
• Do encourage farmers to improve bio-security. My own informal observations show that a low level electric fence is very effective at discouraging badgers from grazing land.

I should state that I am not affiliated to any organisation that stands to gain in this debate. My parents were dairy farmers before their retirement and I grew up working on dairy farms. I do however also love our wildlife and try to keep up with current scientific thinking.

For me the conclusions are clear.

What do you think? Vote in my poll.

Ref. & for more information please visit the DEFRA website and also the Badger Trust website.

Some of our tulips are now out, merrily opening & closing their blooms according to their own schedule. What is it that drives this schedule?

  Click image to view larger version …

The tulips  have their own biological clocks built in; this is what drives the circadian rhythm of flower opening & closing. The tulip’s clock is reset everyday by the rising of the sun; the tulip can also move its position with the sun. This is photonasty or the tendency to physically respond to light stimulus. The tulips also demonstrate thermonasty, a response to temperature; tending to close up with a fall in temperature. Thus on a warm bright morning the tulip flowers open up beautifully but as light & temperature drop in the evening, they close their blooms again. Why have they evolved to do this?

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The tulip flower is insect pollinated and the tulip advertises with both bright colours & scent from volatile oils. The picture above shows the male & female structures, with much pollen in evidence. To remain open overnight is to both risk damage from the weather & to waste volatile scents, whilst it’s insect pollinators are not around. Thus a tulip increases its chances of successful reproduction by closing it’s blooms at night. Many flowers show this behaviour and conversely, for example, bat pollinated plants often only open their flowers at night.

Plants also use biological clocks to sense various other things such as opening leaf stomata just before dawn ready for photosynthesis and by monitoring day / night length they can tell whether its flowering season or not.

Read on to view a video …

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I want to transport you to a seedy, or perhaps I should say nutty, region of reproduction. A place where the male structures are vast in comparison to the petite & flushed female variety. But first, do you recognise this flower?

   Click on image for a larger view …

Yes, its a female Hazel (Corylus avellana) flower and that’s the region I’m talking about the spring hedgerow.

The male flowers, that we often call catkins or lamb’s tails are borne on the same tree as the females and are left to hang in the breeze, thereby distributing pollen on the wind.

   Click on image for a larger view …

It is normally February when the catkins open, they first formed back in October or November last year. The male catkins are typically 5cm long, possibly up to 10cm; yet the female flower is tiny with the crimson stamen measuring only 2 – 3 mm. Pollen, carried on the wind, lands on the sticky stamen & fertilises the flower. Note: Hazel is not self pollinating, pollen from a different Hazel tree must fall on the stamen for pollination to take place

Nut clusters will now form at the site of the female flower, ripening in autumn. These nuts are a valuable feed source for many creatures (ourselves included); indeed the hazel relies upon this fact so that animals like squirrels will collect, horde, & loose nuts. This disperses the Hazel’s seed & helps to guarantee a new generation of Hazel trees.

Hazels are a member of the Betulaceae or Birch family. As well as producing edible nuts they have been used in various woodcrafts for many centuries. Wattle hurdles, Hazel walking sticks and Sheppard’s crooks are a few of the uses. The nut shells have recently been discovered to contain useful anti-cancer drug components. Environmentally Hazels are known to be important members of British woodland, they support many lichens & fungi, their leaves are good food for deer and the nuts I’ve already mentioned.

   Click on image for a larger view …

The image above shows Hazel Pollen imaged at x200 magnification with a light microscope.

Trivia: In Celtic myth the Hazel is believed to collect knowledge & wisdom in its nuts, those who consume the nuts may inherit the wisdom.

Apis Mellifera, the European honey bee. For anyone who, like me, enjoys toast & honey at breakfast, there’s a lot to feel thankful towards these busy little insects. I’ve been meaning to post something about them since I found one who had died after being caught in an early cold spell. He was still in the flower but had obviously just run out of energy. Anyway I found this poor bee last autumn & did a bit of a study of him, with camera and microscope. I wasn’t sure how to present the data until I recently came across slideshare, so contained in the second part of this post is my PowerPoint presentation, shared as an experiment on slideshare. Just expand the post and click to start …

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A little way out of Dolgellau, adjacent to Llanelltyd, lie the ruins of an ancient Cistercian abbey. It was a dull, wet & windy day today but since we needed to visit Doll anyway, an educational walk around the abbey seemed in order.

Cymer Abbey was founded by Maredudd ap Cynan in 1198 and populated by monks from Abbey Cwmhir. The monastery was abandoned in the Dissolution of 1536 and today there remains the ruined walls of its main place of worship, a 30m nave:

   Click any of the images for a larger view …

The architecture is certainly beautiful but also plain, this must have been a hard place to live; records show that the monks lived in poverty for most of the abbey’s life. The foundations of cloister, dining hall & chapter also remain today but it would appear any  remaining quarters could only be built from lighter weight materials, leaving little trace today. It is thought that the neighbouring farmhouse may be built around the Abbot’s original house or the guest quarters.

At its height the monks farmed sheep, mined precious metals and kept a stud of high quality horses to supply the local Welsh prince, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (the Great).

Part way through its history a tower was added to the abbey structure, part of this survives today:

The abbey is located at the join between the Wnion & Mawddach rivers and also at the most convenient point to ford the river estuary. So despite its poverty the abbey was on a busy route and may have been visited by passers by, including the Princes of Wales.

The sunshine is back! So posted here, are 10 butterflies that you might see if you visit Mid Wales. I photographed all of them at my home in Dyfi forest.

They are:

• Comma – Polygonum c-album
• Small tortoiseshell – Aglais urticae
• Red Admiral – Vanessa atalanta
• Wall - Lasiommata megera
• Small white – Artogeia rapae
• Speckled wood – Pararge aegeria
• Green veined white – Artogeia napi
• Peacock - Inachis io
• Small copper – Lycaena phlaeas
• Painted lady – Vanessa cardui

Just click on a thumbnail below, to start the slideshow (you can pause at any point) :

There are also a good few more butterflies in the area, like: Ringlets, Orange tips and Meadow browns. So if you are ever having a summer afternoon walk in the Corris – Aberllefenni region; keep your eyes open, you never know which butterflies you’ll see.

If you’d like hard copies of these & other pictures – butterfly prints & posters will be available soon from Poster’s Wales. To find out more about British butterflies try the Butterfly Conservation website.

Why the LHC does not pose a significant risk to the human race.

Ok so, as an interested amateur scientist, I’ve waited a good proportion of my life for this experiment to start. It is, perhaps, one of the greatest experiments carried out by mankind and may bring amazing insights in to the structure of everything, ourselves included.

Yet many seem to fear that the end of the world is nigh. I have found the scare mongering of the press & the resulting ignorant comments of those who know no better to be rather frustrating. Thus I shall attempt to explain, in layman’s language & without much maths, just how preposterous all these suggestions of doom are.

Please forgive me if I miss the odd zero or clarify things insufficiently but I’m not a professional mathematician or physicist, just an interested amateur who doesn’t wish to see lay people scared by an experiment that they could instead be fascinated by. After all it may answer some of the questions that mankind has pondered for thousands of years.

The fear appears to be that a black hole could be born within the Collider and that this would then rapidly expand to consume the earth – here is why this is not the case.

1. What is the LHC?

It is the largest particle accelerator produced by humans. Simply put, it is a long underground railway like tunnel through which 2 pulses of particles will travel & then collide. Particle accelerators have been used by physicists for many years, safely.

In fact there are 2 tubes surrounded by very powerful magnets that first acquire & focus then accelerate a packet of atomic particles. The packet is about 1 metre long and can be accelerated to almost the speed of light. At certain points these 2 packet streams can be made to crossover within a detector. When a collision occurs between atomic particles in the packets, then the detector can record an image of what happens.

2. Can it create black holes?

Probably not, but yes it may just about be feasible for a miniscule black hole to form but you need to understand a bit more about black holes …

a] Astronomers can calculate the relationship between the mass of a black hole and its size, or most importantly the size of its event horizon (the place where things get sucked in). A black hole with the mass of our entire solar system would only be several kilometres across.

b] Black holes can & do lose energy via ‘evaporation’ – this is called Hawking radiation as proposed by Stephen Hawking.

Read on to see why these are important facts…

3. So why isn’t this tiny black hole dangerous?

Briefly, due to its tiny size & the losses by Hawking radiation, it will cease to exist almost the moment it is created.

More detail :

According to Einstein’s most famous equation E=mc², energy may be converted to matter & vice versa; it is this fact that the LHC relies upon for its experiments to work. At maximum energy, the LHC can accelerate 2 lead ions in to each other at almost the speed of light. Following the proven laws of physics the maximum mass it can create in such a collision is about 2e^-21 kg, that’s 21 decimal places if you’re not in to scientific notation. It’s not much is it! If we use the known ratio of size to mass for black holes then its size will be in the order of 10^-49 metres or 0.000000000000… no I’m not going to type 49 zeroes! You get the gist, this is one very small thing, many many times smaller than an atom. So in but an instance pff! and it’s gone. Nothing, zip, nada – it wouldn’t harm a flea – its gone, evaporated, is no more.

4. So what if the journalists know more than Stephen Hawking? What if it didn’t evaporate? What could this 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a metre black hole do?

Not much really, you see its just so small, a proton is about 10³³ times bigger. It can hang around between atoms & sub atomic particles, do nothing, for millennia. It might take a million years before an atom fell within its event horizon. Even then so it swallows one atom, hardly a disaster. It’s many times denser than an atom so it won’t increase its mass or size much by swallowing one atom. So another million years go by and then it swallows a second atom – this is going to make watching paint dry, a fascinating sport. We are going to be long gone before this black hole can cause anything even noticeable. Our sun will long since have run out of energy, maybe our galaxy will have merged with Andromeda before this little black hole grows up!

In summary, it’s unlikely that the LHC will create a black hole, even if it does then it would evaporate in the merest instance of time. If the physicists were completely wrong and it didn’t evaporate, it still wouldn’t be an issue within any timescale that could possibly effect humans – there are much bigger problems for the world.

Part 2 Why do the LHC experiments?

There are many reasons but here are some of the ones that are personally important to me:

· To ask deep questions of our curiosity is one of the noblest traits of humans – to not do so would be a failure of humanity.

· Pure research usually spawns the most useful & positive advances, but we don’t know what they’ll be until many years after the research.

· The unification of gravity in to a theory of everything will bring a huge step forward in understanding.

· For this we need to confirm the existence or not of the Higgs field and its related boson.

· We also need an indication on extra dimensionality & M-theory (strings).

· If humans are going to survive the mess that they make on this planet then it’s likely that we’ll need to move on. Perhaps it’d be a good idea to understand more of what’s out there before we travel.

· Consequently we need to probe dark matter & dark energy; it’s probably over 90% of what’s out there.

· Too many people accept things “just because”, religion’s explanations would be a grand example; this causes untold problems and disasters. A truly thinking person asks for experimental evidence – the LHC is part of providing that.

I hope that you can find interest & enjoyment in the discoveries that will come over the next few years.

Tamsin has been working on her first attempt at casting a plaster model of a horse. She’s now finished it and so here are some views of her handy work:

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I’m really impressed with it, there are a few air bubbles and her painting technique will improve for practice but it’s a good start; guess I’ll be sent out to buy more plaster now.

Microsoft have just released their new photo toy “Photosynth” from beta, so when Tamsin asked if I’d make an animation or 3D shot I thought that was a great excuse to have a go with Photosynth. [Given that its a new web feature I guess most people will need to install Microsoft's Photosynth ActiveX control but its just like flash & other such things]. Here’s the synth: (more…)

The greater Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) is the most common woodpecker in the British Isles. In fact there are thought to be about 25 million of them living in Europe.

Image Details: Focal Length 700mm 3 exposure mosaic Juvenile – note red cap Click image for a larger view …

I have a particular fondness for ‘woody’ and so I’m very pleased to have spotted at least 3 families nesting with us this year. They are real characters and it is fun watching the parents bring up their young. They are fairly nervous birds and don’t seem to like close human attention but with patience its surprising how much you can observe.

To identify the family members look for red markings on the head and neck; the male (3rd picture) has a red nape to his neck, whilst the female (2nd picture, below) has no red on head or neck, the juveniles (top picture) have a red cap, the young male’s often being brighter & larger than his sister’s.

Image Details:Focal Length 1400mm Female – note no red head markings Click image for a larger view …

They are resident all the year around across much of Europe and eat insects, seeds & nuts. They are also rumoured to take small birds eggs / chicks, if times are hard. Happily our families seem to feast on the peanuts that we put out, the many conifer cones in the woodland and of course our bountiful insect harvest!

They are well known for their rapid drumming on hollow trunks, which can be heard from quite a distance and have a specially adapted beak & skull to avoid injuring themselves whilst drumming. It seems that wooden electricity poles are especially good for drumming on, as many a frustrated engineer will tell you Their tongue is long and sticky enabling the recovery of insects from holes in wood or even choice peanut fragments from a feeder.

Image Details: Focal Length 400mm Male – note red nape Click image for a larger view …

For more on that tongue, can you make it out in the picture below? The barbs are just visible pushing the peanut chip up against the juvenile’s top beak. This picture isn’t ideal & I’m working on taking a sharper one but it’ll have to do for now.

To find out more about woodpeckers, try following some of these links:

RSPB page with sound & video

Wiki article on the Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Birds of Britain article on same

or try these two sources for more general Woodpecker articles Britannica or How stuff works.

Oh and if you like my images don’t forget that many are available as prints from my business sites; in fact I hope to have a woodpecker poster out this autumn (08).

Despite all the inclement weather, we have recently been treated to views of some varied & beautiful phenomenon in the sky. Here’s a pictorial account of the last week’s worth:

The other day Tamsin & I were off on the hills of mid Wales when we saw a stunning, bright rainbow.

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I didn’t have an ultra wide lens with me so the image is a mosaic of 5 frames, I’m still pleased with how the rainbow colour spectrum has shown up.

Then the other night, 21st March, was the Spring Equinox. A break in the clouds gave us opportunity to watch the full moon rise.

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I love the view through the trees as the moon crests the mountain ridge behind our home.

And last night ice crystals were causing a beautiful halo around the rising moon.

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Hexagonal ice crystals in Cirrus clouds are the normal cause of this 22.5 degree halo.

Maybe I can photograph some more weather features, and bring them to you this coming year.

As readers of my blog will be aware, I enjoy imaging natural things. For me ” Natural World” includes the very big (like galaxies) and the really rather small (like cells). I’ve decided to include some Microscopy (or Photomicrography) in my blog, so by way of a start I thought I’d include some images of chromosomes, the data bookshelves of life on our planet.

Chromosomes require fairly substantial magnification and the simplest way to achieve acceptable resolution at x1000 with a standard optical microscope is to use oil immersion microscopy; this is how the following images were taken …

Chromosomes during Mitosis

Mitosis is the process of duplicating & splitting the nucleus / genetic material of a eukaryotic cell. It is normally followed by cytokinesis which completes cell division, resulting in 2 identical daughter cells. Mitosis is used for growth & asexual reproduction, it is distinct from meiosis (used for sexual reproduction) and binary fission of prokaryotic cells. Other than the ‘normal’ interphase state of cells, Mitosis has 4 main phases & these allows us to view & photograph chromosomes:

• Prophase – During interphase the genetic material will have been duplicated, now the nucleus swells and the chromatin within, coils up to form chromosomes; each consisting of two chromatids. Simultaneously the centrosome duplicates & each resulting diplosome moves towards opposite ends of the nucleus.
• Metaphase – In most cases the nucleus has now become indistinct. The chromosomes line up across the centre of the cell and protein spindle fibres develop across the cell, coordinated by the centrosome at either side of the cell.
• Anaphase – Each chromatid pair splits, forming sister chromosomes. The protein spindle threads now pull the chromosome sisters apart, to opposite ends of the cell.
• Telophase – Each group of chromosomes are now at either end of the cell, they are now enveloped by a new nuclear envelope. The chromosomes now uncoil back in to chromatin and are no longer distinct for us to see.

To complete cell division the cells cytoplasm will now cleave and two new sister cells will form; this is cytokinesis.

So what of it? Well the chromosomes are particularly distinct during Metaphase & Anaphase and that gives us a great opportunity to photograph them. The process doesn’t take very long, Metaphase can be over in 15 minutes; so we need to look at a whole bunch of cells & pick out the few that have been ‘caught in the act’ as it were. The micrograph below is of onion cells dividing mitotically near the root tip …

Click image for a larger view …

The image was taken at 1000 times magnification (x10 ocular, x100 objective) and used oil immersion to improve the image (see below). The cell in the centre of the picture displays distinct blue stained chromosomes and just possible to make out is the occasional spindle fibre. Two other cells can be seen at different stages.

Giant Chromosomes in Fruit Flies

Drosophilia, the favourite of geneticists across the ages are one of a few insects that have an unusual characteristic. They develop ‘giant’ or polytene chromosomes in their salivary glands. DNA is replicated many times, without cell division taking place. This can lead to large banded chromosomes with perhaps 1000 times the normal compliment of DNA, 85% of which may be concentrated in to the dark bands. These give us another excellent opportunity to photograph chromosomes.

  Click image for a larger view …

Image details: Magnification x1000, Light Microscopy with Oil Immersion, Canon 300D  ISO 100  TV 1.3s, 4 image stack using CombineZM

Technique & Equipment

How were these images taken? The basic equipment is pictured below:

Click image for a larger view …

Referring to the image above, from bottom to top: Light Source, Slide, Oil, Objective Lens, Ocular lens, photo adapter, DSLR

ie. Immersion Oil is carefully placed here (picture below), between objective lens & slide coverslip.

Click image for a larger view …

The microscope is carefully focused away from the slide until best focus is found. One draw back of this method is that the focal plane is absolutely tiny. The advantages are simple, at high magnifications light microscopes loose resolution due to refraction at the glass air boundaries; by using immersion oil with the same refractive index as the glass, 2 such boundaries are removed & resolution is restored.

I shall add more microscopy images in time to come.

Those of you who follow my blog will remember that I enjoy infra-red photography, cf Seeing Red. I have recently acquired a digital camera that has been converted to image in a broader spectrum than our visible one. It is sensitive from 300nm UV to 1100nm IR; by using front filters the range can be limited for a particular bandwidth. The camera was supplied by IRDIGI, who I can recommend for a polite & efficient service. It is a Fuji FinePix S9600, you can find reviews of it (in normal guise) here. Here’s an example image from my first few days with the camera:

The conventional way of displaying IR images is as a B&W image, in the image above I have lightly toned the monochrome output. Notice how the vegetation is very light coloured, this is because it reflects large amounts of Infra-red. Another item of note is how contrasty skies can be made. The sky in the image above appeared very icy blue with only a feint sign of high level clouds, yet they show up clearly in the image. Of course you don’t have to stick with the subtle; in the image below I have used heavy toning to create a particular mood for the image:

And you don’t have to stick with toned images, false colour IR photography is another technique again. In the image below digital manipulation returns a blue sky whilst maintaining the bright IR reflectivity of the plant life.

This camera / technique is capable of much more and I shall be exploring this in the months to come, I shall also be adding some different bandwidth filters to experiment with.

General Points:

• This camera is not for me to do Astrophotography with, that is not its forte. I shall be taking mainly Landscape & Nature shots with it.
• To take pure IR images, one needs a screw on filter on the lens to block visual light, the above were taken with a 750nm cutoff filter.
• With no filter you will take visual & IR, an interesting possibility.
• The camera IR output is a colour file with a very red hue, post processing reveals what you wish.
• With the correct filter, normal visual palette images may be taken.
• A ‘normal’  digital camera or a film camera with standard film will not record infra-red light. In fact you wouldn’t want it to.
• Having a non SLR converted allows for a degree more flexibility in this situation, but do research the options if you’re interested.

The image below is of our 820nm IR medical Laser. My Canon 20D doesn’t record any of the intense IR light from it and my eyes don’t see the Laser as ‘on’ but the IR camera records the diverging light hitting the prism and being redirected:

Note: If you have access to such a device, do wear the correct safety goggles & don’t look directly at the beam.

Oh well that’s enough for now, watch this space for more info & images in the coming months.

A little time ago I wrote an article for a Home Education magazine. It was a light look at how I started taking pictures of the sky and how others could easily join in. I thought this might be worth posting to my blog – so here it is …

    A sight to stare at. Early morning at home, after a night’s astrophotography.

“Always got her head in the clouds”

I was six years old and sitting in the classroom of my local village school. It had a large window which looked out across meadows & farmland. Today was summertime and I was watching the buttercups nod in a light breeze, bathed in a beautiful golden sunshine. My mind wandered, how amazing it all is from the beautiful flowers to the Sun and heaven knows what other fascinating things in the sky above.

“Jones!” yelled the teacher,”You’re not listening!”

“I am Miss” I replied, followed by a verbatim quote of the last 30 seconds of her lecturing.

Then I was punished, for showing off. I never really did get the attitude of schools & some teachers. What I did have was a fascination, a curiosity for all things ‘nature’, including the sky. Here started my voyage into Astronomy & Cosmology.

If you’re out under a clear dark sky one night soon, move away from any artificial light, turn off your torch and stare upwards. Your eyes will gradually become accustomed to the dark and more stars will come into view. Look for the milky patch across the sky, that’s the Milky Way, our own galaxy. It contains about 200 billion stars. The Universe beyond? Well there’s more stars there than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of our planet. And stars don’t account for half the matter out there.

Pictures & a thousand words

Another interest of mine is the use of cameras. I guess it really developed when I was a teenager but I have only fully indulged it within the last decade or so. Photographs can record a moment in time, a memory, that’s what most of us use them for. But that’s not all they can do. Some use them to provoke strong emotions, more than any passage of pros might do; take anti-war journalism for example. For others, the camera can show us sights that our eyes can’t – this is where one of my interests lies. Freeze the motion of a running animal with a fast shutter speed, take a macro shot of an insect feeding on a flower, point the camera down a microscope to reveal the tiny world around us; all these techniques & more, expand our awareness, our comprehension of the things around us. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I wished to put camera & telescope together.

If you have a camera that can take long exposures (more than say 30 seconds), take it out on a dark starry night, put it on something secure preferably a tripod, set the zoom to wide angle & point the camera upwards about 50 to 55 degrees (in the UK) & northwards. Experiment with the exposure time but start with 15 minutes or so.

The resulting image will show stars apparently rotating around a point (the celestial pole) in the sky. You’ve just taken your first astrophotography picture and have also demonstrated the spin of our planet on her axis!

With just a camera & tripod you can also take good pictures of the moon, aurora (if you’re lucky) and even record a few planets (Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars) but they won’t look very big, for that you’ll need a telescope.

Stardust Fairies

Tamsin (our daughter) has, like most children, a wonderful imagination and it helps her jump from one thought to another. This was the case here. She had been thoroughly enjoying reading a series of books about “Stardust Fairies”. Within the tales, each fairy has their own special star; Regulus being one of them. Tamsin wanted to see Regulus (Alpha Leonis) so we checked on its positioning, first star of the constellation Leo, and pointed it out to her. Did you know that Regulus used to be called Cor Leonis, the lion’s heart, so it’s a star for all you courageous home-ed families out there.

We then became involved in a project to survey the darkness of Britain’s skies. To complete the survey you needed to count the number of stars that you can see in Orion’s belt. Tamsin loved it and from here it was but a small step to her wanting a telescope to further her interests in Astronomy.

We bought a 6 inch Schmidt Cassegrain (SCT) scope & an equatorial mount to put it on. There are several different types of scope; the SCT is probably the jack of all trades. It is good for planet viewing & deep sky objects and suited to visual or photographic use. The equatorial mount allows the scope to slowly track across the sky counteracting the rotation of our planet (as you photographed above).

The Low Down

So what do you need to get started? Well the great thing about astrophotography is that it’s easy, simple & cheap; it’s also difficult, complex and expensive. Did you get that? What I mean is that this is an interest that you can start off easily and grow it to become as involved as you wish.

Obviously some sort of camera is a necessity, your current one is probably sufficient for getting started. Modern digital cameras are great, they give you immediate feedback, are fairly sensitive and many have access to multiple settings. Read on for details of different techniques and what’s involved.

The Moon	Setting Sun (with sunspots)

Please note: never look at the sun or image it without specialised filters – it could blind you.

Techniques

Wide field

Just a camera & lens can be used to take a broad picture of the night sky. Short exposures can be made on a tripod but longer exposures will need some sort of tracking mount. This can be as simple as a ‘barn door mount’ (search the web for plans on how to construct this for about £15) but is frequently done by ‘Piggybacking’ your camera on a telescope & mount whilst tracking. This requirement to track the sky for exposures above a handful of seconds is common to all astrophotography where you don’t wish to see the effects of Earth rotating.

Afocal

Your telescope is all set-up and you’re viewing an interesting site through the eyepiece, the simplest way of recording this is t
o hold your digicam to the eyepiece & take a picture. There are things that you can do to refine this:

· Buy a digiscoping adapter to firmly hold your digicam to the eyepiece ~£30

· Match your camera lens to a suitable widefield eyepiece, specialist ones are available

· Set your digicam’s aperture wide open

· Use your digicam’s manual focus, set it to infinity & focus with the telescope

· Use a remote release or your digicam’s internal timer – avoid vibrations

Most of all experiment with different settings & targets, get to know what effect each change makes and have fun.

Prime

This is the main technique for serious astrophotography. The telescope is all set-up and the camera is attached via an adapter directly to the telescope. There is no camera lens between scope & camera; the telescope focuses light directly on to the camera’s sensor or film. The camera itself may be a SLR (Digital or Film), a specialist cooled astronomy CCD, or in some cases a webcam type video camera.

   A collection of Messier objects

SLR

Most people would accept that the Digital SLR now has an advantage over film. You will need a ‘T’ adapter for your camera make, to attach it to the scope camera adapter. You will also need a remote shutter release cable. The ability to connect the camera directly to a computer is also helpful. A 90 degree viewfinder attachment can also help to avoid the need for limbo dancing lessons. (That or a good osteopath). Focusing can be awkward – autofocus is unlikely to work for all but the brightest objects. It is best to find a bright star & focus on that, then leave the focus alone for the night if possible – do take a test shot to check your focus. There are computer programs that can help you with this. Also worth noting is that most standard cameras have an infra-red filter (needed for normal daylight photography) and this reduces their astronomical sensitivity. Only Canon have made a specialist astronomy DSLR, the 20Da, but several conversions are available, particularly by a company called Hutech.

Astro CCD

These devices are very sensitive to light; they are typically cooled to 20 degrees below ambient for noise reduction. They are however, very expensive & can only be used for this one purpose. At £1000 – £4000 this is definitely the hard core end of the hobby. They are controlled from a computer and can produce stunning images. Imaging is usually done by taking four sets of images using a filter wheel, 1 set for luminance & then 1 each for Red, Green & Blue; however ‘one shot colour’ CCD’s are available. Do not however under estimate what can be achieved with a DSLR.

Webcam/Video

This is a relatively new technique and is especially suited to planetary imaging. A short spell of video, perhaps 1000 frames, is recorded straight to PC. Each frame is then analysed by a computer program and the best are stacked together to build a detailed image. The advantage of this is that moments of good ‘seeing’ (I.e. when the atmosphere is still) can be caught and used, whilst more ‘wobbly’ moments can be discarded. The standard software for analysis & stacking is called Registax. You can build your own camera or buy a commercial one such as Celestron’s Neximage (about £90).

CCD / DSLR Processing

Typically when imaging a deep space object (DSO), you will be taking multiple exposures of the object. These exposures are called lights and they will be stacked together in a computer to create a far more detailed image. You should also be taking exposures called darks & flats. Darks are taken at the same temperature & settings as your lights, these will be used to correct the lights for hot pixels & circuit noise. Flats are taken at the lowest ISO setting of your camera and are of an evenly illuminated object, a lightbox or the evening sky just after sunset. These flats are used to correct your lights for vignetting and dirt on the imaging train. You should also take darks for the flats, no I’m not kidding! There’s various software available to help you with this process some commercial some freeware, Deep Sky Stacker is an easy start but my preference is for Iris.

Telescopes

I am not going to go into telescope choice very deeply here, everyone has there own preference & budget. But there are a few pointers:

· Don’t buy a Department Store special, do buy a proper astronomical scope

· Refractors will give you stunning sharp images but they’re expensive per inch of aperture and you’ll want an APO version to keep colour issues to a minimum

· Newtonians are cheap for large apertures but don’t always convert into a photographic instrument without hitches

· Catadioptics are a large group that inhabit the middle ground and are my preference, there are different types:

o Maksutovs are good visual instruments but can be a bit slow for imaging

o Schmidt-Cassegrains are a good all round scope that won’t break the bank, this was our choice.

o Ritchey-Cretiens are the desire of many an astrophotographer. Not cheap but superb for imaging – this is the basic design of Hubble.

   6 inch SCT with piggybacked 400mm Canon lens – all on CG5 equatorial mount

Guiding

Sooner or later you may wish to take images that require an individual exposure time of more than a minute or two & a reasonably long focal length e.g. 1500mm or more. At this point the tracking of your telescope mount may not be accurate enough, now you need a guiding system as well. This will either manually or automatically correct the telescope position at short intervals, on top of the equatorial tracking. The details of this are many, definitely beyond the scope of this article but you should be aware that several methods exist and there are several interest groups on the internet that will be willing to advise you.

Summary

I have tried to give you a brief outline of Astrophotography. There are many wonders to see, they are inspiring, they put us into our proper perspective and they are beautiful. A telescope alone is a fantastic resource for any home educator, but add a camera to the plot and you will see many more beautiful wonders.

Resources:

Books:

Stardust Magic by Moonlight                                  Linda Chapman   ISBN 0141317795          Well, it inspired Tamsin

Starware                                                                     Philip Harrington   ISBN 0471418064          A guide to all the kit

Digital A
strophotography The State of the Art   David Ratledge      ISBN 1852337346          You really need this book

Stars & Planets                                                          Ian Ridpath            ISBN 0751327123          Finding your way around

Astronomy for Dummies                                         Stephen Maran      ISBN 0764584650          A crash course in the basics

What are you waiting for? Go put your head in the clouds.

Popped out to Dolgellau last week, late afternoon was dull cloudy & wet, yet within a little over an hour, a beautiful but fleeting sunset developed.

Typical changeable autumn conditions for us. The picture above is of the old bridge over the Afon Mawddach, between Dolgellau & Llanelltyd. A  fly fisherman stands in front of the bridge enjoying the evening. These days the bridge is closed to motorised traffic and it is very peaceful despite being only just off the A470.

At home in Aberllefenni, the autumn colours have been richening up. This image shows some of our horses enjoying the autumn grass. The paddock is bordered by deciduous woodland, mainly oak, ash and hazel. Beyond that, the mountain is planted with spruce, larch and pine. All the trees have their own distinctive autumn shades, with the spruce & pine remaining green.

Even some of the horses are trying to blend in!

Have you ever wondered why the leaves change colour in autumn? It’s due to the range of pigments that are in the leaves. Chlorophyll is the main pigment that plants use to help them harness sunlight to produce carbohydrates. Chlorophyll appears green, it isn’t very stable though and plants have to continually synthesise it. It’s production falls when temperature & daylight levels drop.  This happens in autumn allowing other pigments to become the dominant leaf colouring agents.

The beech trees are a particular show at the moment.

So what are these other pigments? Carotenoids are a group of yellowy coloured pigments and they are significantly more stable than chlorophyll. Thus some leaves turn yellow as the green fades. What about the reds, I hear you call. Well they are due to a family of pigments called anthocyanins. As the tree prepares for leaf senescence (dropping of its leaves) the amount of sugar in a leaf may build. Depending upon temperature & light levels, this can trigger flavonoids to be converted to anthocyanins. The exact resulting colour tone depends upon the pH (acidity) of the plant sap.

But eventually they’ll all end up on the floor.

Finally a membrane between leaf stem & tree is completed, it now separates the leaves from the tree. As the membrane joint withers the leaves fall from the tree and carpet the floor.

Any how, it all produces a marvelous sight for us to enjoy.

In these modern times, we have become rather profligate with our lighting. Yes a bit of light to read or work by is beneficial but do we really need to light up our whole planet like some over decorated Christmas tree! There seems to be a common held belief that high levels of external lighting will improve safety and reduce crime; yet there is very little evidence to support this. If light is genuinely required then it should be used sparingly & only be directed where needed, not left to pollute a large area. There are various good reasons to control light pollution, here are just a few:

• Creating light costs energy, wasting energy is environmentally unfriendly
• Broad light pollution can confuse & maybe harm wildlife
• Lack of proper darkness disrupts the natural rhythm of human life and can lead to illness & an inability to sleep
• A complete generation of city dwelling children are growing up without seeing the beauty of our night skies
• Besides anything else, give your eyes a few minutes and its amazing how much you can see in the dark.

I’m lucky to live in one of the darkest areas of the UK with magnitude 5 – 6 skies, great for wildlife & great for astronomy. BUT even here there are a few street lights across in the village, not many but a handful. I can often avoid them during astrophotography sessions; they’re at least half a mile away behind my house & some trees. However I want to illustrate just how damaging even a few lights can be, here is a picture from the other night:

  Click image for larger view – Canon 300D 10mm f3.5 49secs

It was taken at almost 2am, long after the street lights are needed for anything. The night was basically clear at high levels with mountain cloud & valley mist drifting in and out. There was a partial moon so the high night sky wasn’t as dark as it can get but the village lights are dominating the scene with their orange glow. If that’s from a few lights imagine what an entire city of lights can cause.

What can you do about this? Well try not to use ‘flood’ type lighting unless you really need it. Use outdoor lighting that only throws light downwards to where its needed. Ask your local authority to minimise the use of wasteful street lighting. Join a campaign for dark skies. And more immediately …

You can carry out a survey on how dark your local night skies are. We were part of the UK specific survey earlier this year. Now Ed over at Flintstone Stargazing has kindly pointed out that there is an International Survey taking place and we can all take part in this project, so why not head over there and take a look, it closes on 15th October.

Here’s some ..

  Oops…No..that’s not the type I meant.

Seriously have you ever walked through long fleshy grass and after the walk wondered why your boots are all orange? Well this is the culprit.

  Click image for larger view …

The grass blades are gradually turning orange. In fact they are being consumed by a fungus; this is rust disease. It’s pretty much the oldest disease known to attack grasses. The fungal hyphae attack the fleshy leaves of grass during mild damp spells of weather. This year has been wonderful for it, my weather station keeps setting off alarms to warn about it and there’s certainly plenty on some grass patches. As the fungus fruits, it produces spores & these are the orange particles that you see on the grass. Let’s take a closer look …

  Click image for larger view …

In this micrograph you can clearly see how the leaf is being consumed by the fungus, which is present right through the flesh of the leaf. I think the colours are rather beautiful really but this group of fungi are quite serious across the world. Rusts infect Cereal crops (cereals are also grasses) and damage the leaves. Crop losses can be in the order of 20% and in really serious situations whole fields may be destroyed.

  Click image for larger view …

The micrograph above shows the orange spores on the leaf, these can be carried off and infect another plant. Later on in the autumn the spores produced by our grass rust will be black. These black spores are tougher and this is how the rust will over winter.

The wheat that is ground to make bread for your breakfast time toast has not only survived attack by bird, rodent & insects but has also won the battle against a whole variety of fungal infections such as rusts. Quite some plant really.

The other day we took some time out to do one of our educational trips. Such a variety of things and just on our doorstep so I thought that I should post about it.

We started off by journeying up towards Clocaenog, a nice trip via Dolgellau & Bala, always inspiring whatever the weather. Just as we neared our first destination we spotted a beautiful little lake, so on with the anchors and enjoy the scenery.

  Click image for larger view …

After watching the ducks for a while we moved on to our main event – looking for the wild horses in the forestry. After a bit of a trek & a search, we found them; or should I say they found us …

  Cute huh! Click on me for my bigger portrait …

These are in fact Przewalski’s horses. They are in excess to the needs of the current UK breeding programs and so they have been released into an area of ancient woodland that they appear to manage better than humans can. Przewalski’s became extinct in the wild due to pressure from mankind but a breeding program has seen the transfer of several groups from UK zoos to be released back into the wild in Hungary. There have also been several smaller releases in a few suitable areas of the UK. Others have also been released in Mongolia, where it is thought that they are now breeding wild. There’s some interesting info about Przewalski’s on the ARKive website.

  Click on my picture, if you’ll risk it …

Przewalski’s are members of the species Equus Ferus (The Wild Horse) and not of Equus Caballus (The Domesticated Horse). They have 66 chromosomes, 2 more than the domestic horse but they can interbreed with domestic horses. As you can see in the picture above, they like to keep a strict herd order. They did however seem to be quite unfussed by our presence. You can read more about this group here.  Przewalski’s are known to have roamed in Britain around 2000BC which is around the time that people were using the archaeological site that we visited next.

Click image for larger view …

A short drive around Llyn Brenig brought us to this fascinating site. The image above shows “The Platform Cairn”. Initially built around 2000BC as an open ring of stones marking the burial place of an adult & a child; it was later filled entirely with stone and an urn of ashes buried beneath. This is not the only archeologically interesting structure here, there are several burial monuments & an ancient structure for mourners to congregate in. All date from 1000-2000BC. Regarding more modern history there are the remains of a medieval welsh long house & enclosure, from perhaps the 14th Century. We stood and shared the sunset with the hillside cattle, wondering what it was like all those years ago.

Click image for larger view …

Our day was coming to an end; night was falling and we needed to return home to check our own horses and have some much needed supper. As we walked back to the car along the shores of Llyn Brenig we watched the sunset intensify, right over Snowdon.

Click image for larger view …

All in all a very enjoyable & educational day. You’ll be able to read more about the archaeology on Tamsin’s Blog & watch a video of the Przewalski’s on Jane’s site.

Well, I didn’t stay away from Cygnus for long! To be honest I had some scope time to spare whilst trying out my new hyper-expensive techno gismo. I jest, it’s a diffraction focusing device to help me get the imaging just so. Take one homemade dew shield (tube of photo mount board plus tank tape) add 4 small holes, 90 degrees apart, as close to the telescope end as possible. Now thread 2 long fine knitting needles (thank you Jane) through holes so that they are at right angles to each other & thus form a cross at the front of the telescope. Now when you try to focus the telescope for the camera (i.e. looking through DSLR viewfinder) it is much easier since bright diffraction spikes appear when focus is reached. See picture below:

 Click image for a larger view.

This is Sadr, a beautiful star at the centre of Cygnus. Normally once all properly focused you would gently remove the knitting needles before imaging, but I felt like experimenting with the effect, so in they stayed. Now if we look at the full image after processing …

 Again click image for a larger view.

..you can see that much of the area around Sadr displays significant nebulosity. Imaging Details: Canon 20D C6SGT Prime f10 ISO1600 Exposure 44 mins 16s in 16 subs

So what is ‘Diffraction’ anyway? To quote GCSE Physics sources, “Diffraction is the spreading out of waves when they pass though a gap or around an object”; a little crude but that is essentially it. Light can be thought of as either a particle (photons) or a wave form i.e. it has duality. If you consider a wave front of light as it approaches a small ‘gap’ such as a diffraction grating or the ridges & troughs on the back of one of your music CDs; flat parallel waves of light may approach but waves that are curving appear from the other side of the gap. If there is more than one ‘gap’ then these curved waves can interfere with each other and this causes the colours that you see when looking at a CD or DVD surface. This same principle applies to my two knitting needles – parallel light from the stars curves (diffracts) around the needles, these resulting waves interfere with each other, producing a pattern that helps me focus. There are loads of uses for this, holographic imaging for one, analysing crystal structure is another; it is also the limiting factor for focusing good quality telescopes & cameras, see Airy Disc.

I really enjoy macro photography; it can show us worlds that we don’t usually notice. What’s life like for other creatures? A beautiful flower in our garden might be a fast food bar or a solarium for a small insect. Take this afternoon for example, I was enjoying one of my favourite roses.

It has beautiful shades, sometimes looking purple & sometimes blue. The scent is wonderful but you always have to check before smelling it closely, let’s look why …

Inside the flower not only is there a veritable feast of pollen & nectar but it’s also a perfect sun trap. This small fly has found heaven! Hmm I don’t want him up my nose; perhaps I’ll look at a different flower. Nearby is a yellow rambling rose that also has a scent to enjoy but I’m not alone there either. There’s a rather nice hoverfly enjoying the flowers, in fact he’s quite polite and poses for me to take his portrait.

They have the most fantastic compound eyes (click on the image for a closer look) but I don’t suppose that will help him approve of his portrait photo – it’s not sweet & sticky enough.

In Britain it is, quite correctly, the case that all children must have access to education. This access should enable the child to function within their lifestyle & social group whilst not obstructing them from changing lifestyle & socio-economic group, if they so choose. The way in which this education is obtained, is not prescribed by the state and many different methods are felt to be suitable. Home Education is an accepted method of educational provision.

My apologies for the slightly definitive start to this post, but many people may be unaware of the above, particularly overseas readers. There are many reasons why people may choose to Home Educate, Here are a few examples:

• Religious Belief
• Special Needs
• Unsuitable local schools
• Bullying
• Personal values & opinion

There are many more reasons but in the end it tends to be simply because the parent’s feel that they can do the best for their child. After all this is how children would naturally have learnt. Home Education does not mean School at Home; one does not have to follow the National Curriculum or have set subject lessons in a set timetable. Some people may choose to do so but many parents believe in child led learning; that is where the child is encouraged to express his / her interests and then the parents facilitate the child’s learning about & around those topics. Children are naturally inquisitive, they wish to learn, have much curiosity and even more imagination. The child led approach allows for far more in depth education, where days in a row may be devoted to discovery & discussion of a particular topic. As in real life, many different ‘subjects’ are required to fully investigate one topic. For example:

My daughter might ask why the pond water is turning green. To investigate this we might note that there has recently been more sunlight & warmth and we already know that sunlight is used by plants to photosynthesise. We next take a sample of pond water, mount it on a slide and study it under the microscope. We note green spiral filaments of plant matter. We must calculate the magnification & scale that we are viewing at, we then search books & internet to identify the plant matter as Spirogyra. We also noted other creatures in the pond water, this leads to a discussion about provision of safe drinking water, around the world. We photograph & draw our finds and end the topic with a discussion about the historical development of microscopes before finally watching a DVD about pond life.

From the one initial question we have covered, amongst others:

• Biology
• Maths
• English & Comprehension
• Geography
• Art
• History
• Media Studies

What’s more it was all really great fun!

Hopefully this post has given you a taste of why people choose it & how Home Education might work. I’ll provide more posts in time to come, in the meantime there are two useful UK organisations that you can contact if you need to know more.

• Education Otherwise
• Home Education Advisory Service

Well apart from all the routine daily things, we’ve had an interesting day of observations. Just after lunchtime I was looking out of the window whilst drinking my tea. We have a little bird feeding area set-up just outside and I was watching a Greater Spotted Woodpecker come for food. It occurred to me that he was carrying food away rather than simply eating it, so I called the family round and we used binoculars to follow his flight up into a large Ash tree. Towards the top of the tree was a juvenile woodpecker; we then spent a few interesting minutes watching the adult male ferry food back & too to the juvenile, passing the food from beak to beak. Curiously we never spotted the female. The juvenile wasn’t in a good spot to take a photograph, but here’s the male:

We see him quite regularly and the female a little less often (she seems shier).

And for the second part of our observations we went out this evening to watch the ISS fly over us from West to East, but the great thing about this evening’s view was that 14 minutes behind it was Space Shuttle Mission STS-117. We had a very good view (its in orbit 130miles up but very bright in the evening sky). We then rushed in side (escaping the midges) to listen to NASA radio & what the shuttle astronauts were doing. Apparently they were checking the docking systems ready for docking with the ISS tomorrow.

In 1610 the Italian scientist Galileo trained one of the new telescope devices on the skies; amongst his observations were 4 moons that orbit Jupiter. Today we know that there are over 60 moon like objects that orbit this great planet; but it’s still an experience to view the 4 Galilean moons [that is, Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa]. And so it is here that our continued educational adventures with a telescope have taken us.

Mid summer planet watching at our Latitude can be a seriously middle of the night activity, so whilst the rest of the family slept, I was despatched to carry out the necessary viewing and to return with the photographic & video evidence for our study. The Azores high has recently pushed in over Wales, so seeing conditions were quite acceptable but with some ground mist forming by about 4am. To capture an image of Jupiter & the moons I used a Canon G7 camera and afocal technique. That is, focus the digital camera to infinity & then take a picture of what you see through the telescope eyepiece. A problem here is that an exposure for the moons is far too bright for any detail in Jupiter to be saved. Therefore the next step is to capture some planetary detail, for this I used a CCD camera (Celestron’s Neximage) mounted via a Barlow lens onto the scope. The resulting avi file was processed with Registax and the best 70 frames stacked.

Having captured the images, they were then combined in Photoshop before being given a final tweak in Lightroom. Orientating everything correctly is a bit tricky since the different lens set-ups flip the images in different ways, so my apologies to any hardcore astronomers if I’ve slipped up on that one. The resulting image is below, it’s far from perfect and I hope to improve, but it’s good enough for some fun & education. Besides the feeling of recreating Galileo’s observations & photographing them, is a really exiting one.

Whilst waiting for the right moment to take the above shots, I was experimenting with some other techniques (prime, positive projection & wide field). One thing I was doing was taking wide field shots with my Canon 20D mounted on the scope’s equatorial mount. This set-up allows the camera to track the stars, thereby avoiding star trails in exposures over 30 seconds. Whilst taking a series of 1 minute exposures, the camera captured several shooting stars but of particular interest was a bright object that appeared in two frames, whilst crossing the sky from west to east. I processed & stacked these two frames (with Deep Sky Stacker) and then tweaked in Photoshop. Here’s the resulting image, orientated as seen from the observatory:

I then started researching to identify the object, which turned out to be the International Space Station [thanks to Heavens Above]. So the image title should be “ISS crosses beneath Milky Way”, since the original exposures were of the south eastern view of the Milky Way; a cool bonus for the night. I wonder what Galileo would have thought?

The sky is a truly wonderful sight, our sparkling ceiling of glittering stars. Tamsin is fascinated by space and all that’s in it.

I guess her interest is helped partly by catching on with my interests but also helped along by Linda Chapman’s excellent ‘Stardust’ children’s story books, which she loves.

While I’m on the topic may I heartily recommend Linda Chapman’s other books, especially the ‘My Secret Unicorn’ series.

Anyway back to Astronomy, Tamsin’s interest in such things is very strong; so last week we went off to pick up a telescope to study the sky with.

It’s a middle of the road Celestron scope, a 6inch Schmidt-Cassegrain, and portable yet big enough when combined with our dark skies to give a decent view of the major celestial objects.

To get the most out of it, we’re planning to take up Astrophotography. We’ll use a T-adapter to attach my Canon DSLR cameras directly to the scope but we’re also going to attempt some afocal photography using the Canon G7 (got to find an adapter mount for that). In addition we’re using a Neximage CCD imager for video capture & stacking. I’d also love to convert an old webcam for deep sky imaging but all things in due course. Anyway enough of the technical stuff, what have we been doing with it?

Well the last week has given us a clear day and a few clearish evenings, with no moon to start off on, we’ve had to find different targets. The Sun (with Solar Filter) was fun but it’s fairly quiet at the moment, so not to many sun spots to observe. By night Saturn has been fantastic and the views that we’ve had after only a few hours, I am just blown away by. Finally, just last night, we turned our attention briefly to M42 in Orion, then the cloud rolled in; not before we’d had an appetising taster of what a nebula can look like. Tamsin was jumping up and down like a jack-in-a-box!

Here are three sample images that we’ve captured:

(Fig2 & Fig3 used a F6.3 reducer corrector, Fig2 was also through a 25mm Plössl eyepiece, Fig1 simply used the scope “as is”)

{Additional processing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop}

Figure 1 – Saturn, CCD capture processed in registax

Figure 2 – The Trapezium (M42), handheld afocal with Canon G7

It was a cloudy night tonight, so I thought I’d make this post but its getting way too late now, after all I’ve got an observatory roof to build J soon.