Course Work BY R. A. Chaproniere
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Hubble Reborn takes the reader on a journey through the Universe with spectacular full-colour pictures of galaxies, nebulae, planets and stars as seen through Hubble's eyes, along the way telling the dramatic story of the space telescope, including interviews with key scientists and astronauts.
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John Moores University offers exciting distance learning courses in Astronomy ranging from an Introduction to Astronomy to Planetary Geology . You are sure to find something that interests you and want to know more about. If, like me, you've a lifelong interest in the subject or have been overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the heavens then this is the place to start.
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Observational Work: Some of the courses require an observational assignment to be completed prior to its end. To read completed Observations select the course below.
Exploring the Universe [GoTo]
My Telescope: Choosing a suitable telescope can and very often is a time consuming process with not a little heartache! So many considerations need to be taken into account. and there are one or two nasty diseases that you can catch as decisions are made. Perhaps the most debilitating is aperture fever and it's characterised by an wish to buy the biggest Instrument available that the budget will allow. When I caught it I found myself standing in front of a large 10" Dobsonian behemoth that was as big as I was and occupied a square metre of space. The cure came in the form of a large dose of realism.
Firstly I had to look at where I was going to use it. My back garden is overlooked by no less than three Sodium type street lamps that make it impossible to even see the stars only the light from a full Moon struggles through. I know what it is to live "under chocolate skys" and even for fun observations a car journey was going to be required. Now came the big question how was I going to get said behemoth in the car and then extract it and set it up? That was "strike one" against it. The second came in the form of the available time I had, first to make the journey, then to set it up and wait for the instrument to cool down enough to start to make useful observations. The dream of owning perhaps the biggest Telescope in West Manchester began to fade.
After a period of convalescence reality reasserted itself and I began looking at both the requirements of the course I was about to embark on and the particulars of my situation. I wanted a telescope I would use and that I could "Grab and Go" Enter the Sky Watcher 127mm (5") f/11.8 Computerised Maksutov-Cassegrain and it seemed to tick all of the boxes. Here was a 'scope that was small enough to go anywhere, was quick to set up (5 minutes and the mount is aligned and ready to go and it has a short cooling down period. It also has an aperture that is just shy of double the course requirements.
OK, I won't see fuzzies in all their glory but the 'scope is practical enough to be used on a regular basis - something that would have been very difficult to acheive with the behemoth. The only thing I need to do on a regular basis is to first lookup what I want to observe on a star chart so that I actually learn where it is before pressing that magical "Go To" button!