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Monday, 29 September 2025

Astronomy and 'townie' neighbours!

As regular readers might recall, a year or so ago a small bungalow was crammed into a garden beyond our eastern border. The person who bought the place revealed his credentials almost immediately, complaining to the Environmental Health Officer about Linda's bees. She decided to move them to a flower farm about half an hour's drive away, despite the EHO saying there was no need to do so.

Since then this fugitive from urban life has chopped chunks out of any of our trees that hang over his small garden (saying the bird droppings stain his patio!) trespassed on another neighbour's land to reduce the height of a hedge and habitually leaves his dogs in the garden when he goes out: they yap constantly until his return.

As a keen amateur astronomer, the worst impact though has been the installation of powerful uplighter security lights at the front and back of the new build. They come on randomly all night, lighting up the eastern sky right to the zenith, making long exposure photography impossible. This was the main reason I sold my beautiful 'retirement present' telescope: I could rarely set up the 'go to' drive, because halfway through these blinding lights would confuse the sensors.

As an example: the sky was ultra-clear this morning, so I decided to try for better shots of Comet Lemmon, using the Astrotracker function on my Pentax K3: every time I started an exposure the sky was lit up like Guy Fawkes night....



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