Plans for 2016

Update January 16th

OK, progress to report! The first step in the site revamp is finished: http://philippughastronomer.com/Phil.html. It is now a case of testing, refinement and responding to feedback and suggestions.

Original

I don't make resolutions as such but am setting myself targets for health, like walking and diet. However, I am planning my observations and photographs for the coming year. My job and family situation is unlikely to change much, so I'm expecting life to continue to be busy. This means no big writing projects. I will be looking to make a few tweaks to my website, as hardly anyone is visiting it! Note I don't make any money from my website. Many people follow my tweets and read this blog, all of which are provided for free.

As weekdays are likely to be very busy, I will concentrate on solar and lunar, just maybe the odd deep sky or constellation shot on moonless nights. As I'm getting close to perfecting the technique of snapping the Moon with my DSLR, I will probably not use my telescope midweek. I'm hoping for some birthday dosh in March to get more lenses. I'm hoping to use similar techniques for sunspot photography. As I'm getting a new compact digital camera, I hope to do some more afocal shots with my PST to get some hydrogen alpha shots. On less busy days, I will try some afocal lunar close-ups. I don't think the technique is completely dead unless someone invents a 20x Barlow lens. Obviously, I need to stack and stitch like I do for DSLR shots.

For deep sky shots, I will probably do some of the usual suspects but wish to concentrate my efforts on some key objects. First is the Hyades and I've already done some experimental shots that are better than my previous efforts. I'll then go for the Beehive (M44) and Melotte 111.

I'm going to have a go at Jupiter's moons but, without a good imaging method, I won't spend much time on planets. I really need a webcam that works on Windows 10.

I've decided to have a go at my website: http://philippughastronomer.com/index.html

It really hasn't had many visits recently. OK, most of my recent content is hosted on BlogSpot and Photobucket. I'm going to do some writing on there and post some articles that I wrote for the now-defunct Astronomy Wise. I did this for free.

Although the common drop down menu is a good idea, I've decided to revert to having a sort of hierarchy, where you need to move up and down levels. To start with, I will have a main home (index) page and "Level 2" pages for different topics, such as external websites and my content hosted on other sites.