It seems that we are completely dead here around La Azotea. But treality is quite different. What is happening with La Azotea is that we are centering our efforts into the construction of a real remote observatory. Our intention is to construct it in the next August (when we will have more free time). However and until we reach that date we are learning about the different possibilities to control our astronomical hardware remotely.

Altough there are some alternatives, the typical ones do not meet our criterions. And thus, we are creating our particular one. In fact, we have found a not very well known astronomical hardware communication protocol called INDI whichis now being iused by more and more people. It has several advantages: it is free (free as in freedom and free as in "free beer"), it works in serious systems (not Windows based ones) and it is specifically designed to operate hardware remotelly (although it can also be used in local environments).

And becuase it is free, we are currently constructing our own software based on INDI to control our observatory the way we like it. In fact we are developing a complete library based on INDI in our favourite programming language. It is called INDI for Java and it is free to be used by anone that has interest on it. Please note that at this moment there is no easy to use software there (but there will be). In any case you can check it if you are interested just clicking in the INDI for Java logo.

Obsession telescopes do have the primary mirror inside a quite big wood box. The box is opened in the bottom side and has a cap in the upper one. However, as we usually observe in dusty places the primary mirror (and the secondary one) get dirty easily. In fact, we think that after each observation session the dust which remains suspended inside the box settles in the primary mirror.

To avoid this problem we have created a cap that rests half an inch above the primary mirror. Moreover, we use a transparent plastic that covers the cap and mirror. Now it is much more difficult for the dust to soil the primary mirror. In the following we show a little video of the construction of the cap.

The January 31 night Antonio was making some tests with the telescope from La Azotea in the Albaycin. He took some videos of the Moon even when he tought that seeing was not good. To his surprise, after an initial processing he discovered that seeing was not affecting the quality of the takes. In the following we show a photo of the Appeninus mountains and a small panoramic photo which explores in a more ample way the surroundings of this famous mountain range.

The past January 4th just before dawn we went to observe the Quadrantids meteor shower. It was a nice night and we could see several spectacular meteors. Following we show two time lapse videos of the observation. The first one is encoded adding several frames in order to enhace the meteors.

Often, amateur astronomers found that the universe doesn’t change quickly in our lives. Galaxies, nebulae and other objects appear to be motionless. Even in our solar system, comets and other objects seem to be still and we only perceive movement after several days. 

These shots of the Crab Nebula (M1) were made a year ago (11/11/2010) but we had no time to process them before.

Last October 2011 one of our Jupiter photos (that has previously won an award) has been published in the journal Espacio. Here we post a copy of the page in which it has been published with some of our comments about it (in Spanish). We want to thank the editorial board for their interest in publishing the photo.

Last October 8th we went to Sierra Nevada to observe the Draconids meteor shower. Although the night began quite badly (with some clouds covering all the sky) later on they dissapeared and we could observe around 60 meteors in about 2 hours. We attach a composition of the event and a time lapse video of that period of time.

Some time ago we wanted to start making a deepsky object with a focal greater than 600 mm of a 80ED Skywatcher .

After a long period without any new updates, we show you a timelapse of the comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd). The images were taken from 20:38:21 until 22:52:22 (UT) of September 4th, 2011.

• Telescope: Meade LX200R 8” Reductor f/6.3
• Camera: Atik 314 L+, Sin Filtro
• Guided with: Lunático guiding solution, QHY5
• Capture Software: Artemis ATK Capture
• 125 takes of 60 seconds no binning
• Place: Granada, España (Albaicín)