Arwen's meanderings

Hi everyone and welcome to my dinghy cruising blog about my John Welsford designed 'navigator' named Arwen. Built over three years, Arwen was launched in August 2007. She is a standing lug yawl 14' 6" in length. This blog records our dinghy cruising voyages together around the coastal waters of SW England.
Arwen has an associated YouTube channel so visit www.YouTube.com/c/plymouthwelshboy to find our most recent cruises and click subscribe.
On this blog you will find posts about dinghy cruising locations, accounts of our voyages, maintenance tips and 'How to's' ranging from rigging standing lug sails and building galley boxes to using 'anchor buddies' and creating 'pilotage notes'. I hope you find something that inspires you to get out on the water in your boat. Drop us a comment and happy sailing.
Steve and Arwen

Monday 30 August 2021

Cheering myself up with a little astrophotography

Having recovered from sea sickness, I managed to snatch an evening of stargazing down at Wembury Beach. Not the best viewing skies, but its close to home.

Taking the photograph is getting easier. Processing them to bring out their best - frankly that is a dark art worse than sail trimming! 

processing attempt 1 above; processing attempt 2 below


non processed photos from the night 


The problem of having always suffered from memory problems is this.......just as you have learned the main stars and constellations in an evening......you go out a few weeks later and discover..........you have forgotten them all 😂

Still, its all good fun. In the images above, due to our position in the milky way, we see the rest of it as if we were looking at the edge of a plate. To other life in the universe, the galaxy will look spirally disc shaped! 

Meanwhile, these are the best shots I could get of Jupiter. Still learning how to use a smartphone and DSLR on my new telescope. 



I learned afterwards that it is better to video planets and then use a programme to split the video down into individual photo frames and then stack them to get a best detail composite image!

I'll try that next time. 


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