Astronomical Observations: 30 November 2009

This morning was a Manhattan Henge event but somebody forgot to open the curtains and all we have had has been liquid sunshine today.

The Royal Society is celebrating its 350^th anniversary and is uploading 60 images of important documents they have produced since their inception. At this point there are only 35 available but some of them are relevant to astronomy.

Newton's drawing of his reflecting telescope, January 1672
Figure from Newton's 'Optiks', Book 1, part 1, Plate II (2 images)
Robert Hooke's aerial telescope, 5th June 1684
James Short's Equatorial Telescope engraving from Philosophical Transactions, Volume 46, opposite page 189. c.1749
Engraving by J Basire showing the construction of Specula of six-feet aperture by William Parsons, Earl of Rosse, from Philosophical Transactions, Volume 151, 1861, Plate 24, p 681
Sketch from the paper 'Pulsars - Basic Problems', April 1982 (3 images)
several images of works dealing with light and vision

Unfortunately I have not been able to figure out how to link to the images so have to hope that they have some longevity on the Web.

The Royal Society: Moments of Seeing Further

Sunspots Observed

I was not able to do any solar observing this month. I think there were some sunspots early in the month but don't remember many.

Observing Hours for the Year 2009

	Day			Night			Total
	Hours	Days	Avg	Hours	Days	Avg	Hours	Days	Avg
Jan	0.50	2	0.25	0.25	1	0.25	0.75	2	0.38
Feb	2.75	11	0.25	2.50	9	0.28	2.25	14	0.38
Mar	0.00	0	0.0	4.00	7	0.57	4.00	7	0.57
Apr	0.25	1	0.25	0.75	2	0.38	1.00	2	0.50
May	1.25	2	0.63	0.25	1	0.25	1.50	3	0.50
Jun	0.00	0	0.00	0.50	1	0.50	0.50	1	0.50
Jul	0.50	1	0.50	0.50	1	0.50	1.00	2	0.50
Aug	0.50	2	0.25	15.50	5	3.10	16.00	6	2.67
Sep	1.00	1	1.00	27.00	7	3.86	28.00	8	3.50
Oct	0.00	0	0.00	11.00	6	1.83	11.00	6	1.83
Nov	1.00	1	1.00	23.50	8	2.94	24.50	9	2.72
TOTAL	7.75	21	0.37	85.75	48	1.79	92.25	59	1.56