Martin Piers Nicholson's Astronomical Projects

Martin Nicholson's Astronomical Projects

Astro Imaging

Binary and Double Stars

Cis and Trans-Neptunian objects

Messier Ten Minute Challenge

Novae and Supernovae

Variable Stars

Big images from small telescopes

Common Proper Motion Pairs in UCAC3

Introduction to my projects

Just a little bit about me. I live in Daventry, a small town in Northamptonshire, England. I retired from teaching in 2005 and since then I have spent most of my leisure time on a wide range of astronomical projects. For a number of years most of my practical work was done using a 12" Meade LX200 that was situated in roll-off roof observatory in my garden. Sadly ever increasing light pollution has meant that for the last few years all of my work has been done over the internet using telescopes based in the USA and Australia.

In the days when the Meade was in use I concentrated on neglected double stars. As the Washington Double Star Catalogue web site explains - "A large number of systems in the WDS may be characterized as ``neglected.'' These include unconfirmed binaries as well as systems which have not been resolved for many years. The reasons for this neglect are varied: poor coordinates or large proper motion (so the systems are ``lost''), erroneous magnitude or delta-m estimates (so the systems are skipped over or misidentified), or true neglect (too many binaries and too few observers). While the veracity of some of these systems is certainly suspect, many (if not most) of these are bona fide double stars. In all I observed 2,249 of these systems which put me, at the time of writing, in 7th place in the all-time list.

Since 2005 I spent a fair bit of time studying variable stars and found that there are many possible options for the remote observer with an interest in this section of the amateur hobby. I had my share of success and failure - as is always the case with amateur science - but overall had a lot of fun. Newcomers to variable stars do need to be aware that both the on-line and society-based resources available for amateur use are heavily duplicated and highly fragmented and there are some seriously strange people involved in this branch of astronomy.

My Double Star Discoveries - as listed in the Washington Double Star Catalogue

	_RAJ2000 "h:m:s"	_DEJ2000 "d:m:s"	WDS	Disc	Obs1 yr	pa1 deg	sep1 arcsec	mag1 mag	mag2 mag
1	00 40 06.26	+50 14 15.5	00401+5014	NI 2	2000	311	24.9	10.90	13.00
2	01 41 51.28	+47 46 25.8	01419+4746	NI 3	2000	359	3.4	12.40	12.40
3	03 02 09.81	+26 00 47.6	03022+2601	NI 5	2000	356	11.1	13.10	13.10
4	03 27 52.36	+14 50 49.7	03279+1451	NI 6	2000	299	3.7	12.80	12.80
5	03 44 48.90	+57 01 41.6	03448+5702	NI 8	2000	316	16.6	11.30	11.50
6	04 07 57.53	+04 44 37.8	04080+0445	NI 9	2000	288	2.5	13.50	13.90
7	04 10 38.31	+20 02 25.9	04106+2002	NI 10	2000	227	3.3	12.30	12.30
8	04 12 48.86	+19 53 52.3	04128+1954	NI 11	2000	229	5.0	10.30	10.50
9	04 45 25.41	+29 55 28.5	04454+2955	NI 12	2000	145	84.2	11.30	11.70
10	06 20 53.28	+54 24 59.6	06209+5425	NI 13	2000	139	78.5	9.60	12.90
11	07 26 40.04	+26 58 51.5	07267+2659	NI 14	2000	151	5.4	10.90	11.00
12	07 31 36.14	+62 01 11.5	07316+6201	NI 15	2000	75	22.9	12.00	13.50
13	07 48 07.48	+50 13 03.3	07481+5013	NI 17	2000	342	31.2	11.20	11.30
14	08 26 45.45	+32 50 00.0	08268+3250	NI 20	2000	1	2.7	10.80	10.90
15	08 45 53.45	+31 07 19.4	08459+3107	NI 21	2000	302	21.0	11.10	12.00
16	08 52 58.17	+29 31 44.5	08530+2932	NI 22	2000	156	4.1	11.10	11.20
17	08 57 42.11	+55 22 00.1	08577+5522	NI 23	2000	259	12.2	13.60	13.70
18	10 38 40.78	+11 32 22.1	10387+1132	NI 24	2000	123	7.9	13.20	13.70
19	11 22 44.74	+30 17 40.5	11227+3018	NI 25	2000	85	4.5	12.00	12.50
20	11 43 53.14	+33 18 30.6	11439+3319	NI 27	2000	223	3.4	13.40	13.40
21	11 55 36.20	+73 30 19.1	11556+7330	NI 28	2000	151	3.3	12.60	12.70
22	12 52 16.15	+38 35 40.0	12523+3836	NI 30	2000	158	10.6	13.80	13.90
23	13 24 29.41	+41 12 00.8	13245+4112	NI 31	2000	173	8.3	11.10	11.60
24	15 10 36.61	+39 23 12.7	15106+3923	NI 34	2000	54	8.3	13.00	13.30
25	17 15 27.74	+30 52 36.6	17155+3053	NI 36	2000	166	15.0	11.30	13.60
26	18 26 24.59	+11 20 57.4	18264+1121	NI 38	2000	190	7.8	13.10	13.10
27	22 04 17.31	+09 51 34.6	22043+0952	NI 43	2000	135	40.4	11.50	13.40
28	22 05 46.11	+65 38 50.7	22058+6539	NI 44	2000	316	6.8	10.50	11.70
29	23 27 46.08	+12 23 40.9	23278+1224	NI 48	2000	279	11.6	12.50	13.80
30	23 50 02.80	+05 30 46.0	23500+0531	NI 49	2000	125	11.2	9.60	10.90

Martin Nicholson's Asteroid Discovery

Astrometric observations of any of the following objects should be sent directly to mpc@cfa.harvard.edu. Updated orbits will be available automatically through this page.

Display ephemerides or summary

The following objects are available:

2009 SP₁₈

Options:

By default, ephemerides are geocentric, begin now and are for 20 days at 1 day intervals.

Start date for ephemerides: Number of dates to output

Ephemeris interval: Ephemeris units: days hours minutes seconds

For daily ephemerides, enter desired offset from 0h UT: hours

Observatory code:

Display positions in: truncated sexagesimal or full sexagesimal or decimal units

Display motions as: "/sec "/min "/hr °/day

Total motion and direction Separate R.A. and Decl. sky motions Separate R.A. and Decl. coordinate motions

Suppress output if sun above local horizon

Suppress output if object below local horizon

Generate perturbed ephemerides for unperturbed orbits

Measure azimuths:
westwards from the south meridian
eastwards from the north meridian

Also display elements for epoch

Format for elements output:

none	MPC 1-line	MPC 8-line
SkyMap (SkyMap Software)	Guide (Project Pluto)	xephem (E. Downey)
Home Planet (J. Walker)	MyStars! (Relative Data Products)	TheSky (Software Bisque)
Starry Night (Sienna Software)	Deep Space (D. S. Chandler)	PC-TCS (D. Harvey)
Earth Centered Universe (Nova Astronomics)	Dance of the Planets (ARC)	MegaStar V4.x (E.L.B. Software)
SkyChart 2000.0 (Southern Stars Software)	Voyager II (Carina Software)	SkyTools (CapellaSoft)
Autostar (Meade Instruments)

If you select 8-line MPC format, you may display the residual block for the objects selected:

Show residuals blocks. Show only residual lines containing observations from code . If you select 8-line MPC format the elements will be displayed with the ephemerides. If you select any format other than 8-line MPC format, only the elements are returned. In such cases your browser should download the elements file and save it to your local disk.

I also spent (too much!) time doing astronomical imaging, particularly narrow-band images of emission nebulae but also unfiltered images of asteroids, comets and any galaxies exhibiting pronounced dust lanes.

Martin Piers Nicholson - Daventry, United Kingdom.

A partial backup can be found here and also here.

This page was last updated on October 29th 2009.