PhotoGav

Damn! Good luck sorting out the issue.

Hi Tony, I have a Mesu 200 mount (not e series - don’t know if that matters?) with sitech controller and I’m in Wiltshire, not too far from Oxford. I’m very happy to help if I can. Here’s a pic of my controller system, is it the same as yours?! Ah, reading your post again, looks like you have version 1 and mine is version 2, so possibly no use? Let me know.

There are three kinds of Lunar libration: libration in longitude, libration in latitude and diurnal libration. You describe libration in latitude above with the cause of the Moon ‘nodding’ being down to the tilt of the Moon, 5.1° to the ecliptic and 1.5° on its axis; meaning that sometimes it is above the ecliptic and we see more of its southern region and sometimes it is below the ecliptic so we see more of its northern region. You also describe libration in longitude, the ‘shaking’ of the Moon from side to side, resulting in us seeing around the eastern and western edges. This is due to the elliptical nature of the Moon’s orbit. When it is closer to the Earth (around perigee) it is traveling faster, so it has orbited a bit more than usual, meaning that we see around more of its eastern limb (right side), and when it is further away (at apogee) it is traveling slower, so has orbited a bit less, meaning we see around its western limb (left side). (I think I have my Lunar East and West the right way round! Always confusing!). Finally there is diurnal libration. This is a form of libration in longitude, i.e. ‘shaking’. At moonrise, we can see a bit further around its eastern limb and later that night, at moonset, we can see a bit further around its western limb. All this libration means that despite the Moon being tidally locked and always showing the same face to Earth, we can see a total of about 59% of the lunar surface. The first time we saw the far side of the Moon was in 1959 when the Russian spacecraft, Luna 3, photographed the Moon whilst in orbit and radioed back the images to Earth. I hope that helps and makes some sense.

Absolutely, Astronomy happens from outside under the sky, though of course, a clear sky is still needed to enjoy monitors as data is being gathered, and that can be a rare thing! My visual Astronomy really took off again once I fully automated my imaging dome, so thank goodness for how far AP has come! That can now be ‘fire and forget’, leaving me time to go to my other observatory (I run the Blackett Observatory) and enjoy showing people the skies there! Whatever form it takes, Astronomy is so wonderful and the general public’s interest in it seems to be growing.

That made me chuckle. I let the dog out an hour ago. I stood in the garden, about where I used to set up my picnic table for the laptop in a cardboard box, looked up at the beautiful sky and thought to myself how I missed those times, sitting outside, waiting for a sub to complete, leaning back in the picnic chair and just taking in the heavens. Tonight my dome is running and I’m lying in bed monitoring progress on the iPad!

Beautiful images. Do you use flats for these?

Close up with Lunt LS50THa, Chameleon3 and 2.5x PowerMate. 1000 frames, 15% stacked.

Full disk with a Lunt LS50THa and Chameleon3 camera. 1000 frames, 15% stacked.

Here are some attempts at the Sun with a Lunt LS50THa and Chameleon3 this morning. I used a 2.5x PowerMate for the close-ups, with the Televue adapter which arrived from FLO in good time this morning. I was using another adapter before and these shots with the new adapter seem to be sharper / clearer. Perhaps the spacing is better for the PowerMate now? I experimented with full disk flats and failed miserably! The full disk shot has an ugly highlight as a result. Apparently a cereal bag placed away from the objective is the way forwards - I will try that tomorrow. Does anyone have any advice and photos of the set up for whole disk flats, please? For comparison, here's a close up from yesterday, using the old adapter: Enjoy the sunny skies! Gav.

Your longitude also has an impact on where things appear and when. Cyprus is at least 30° further East than the UK, so the same object will culminate about two hours earlier out there in Cyprus. So, at 19:00 UTC, Mars is significantly closer to setting in the West for you out there than it is for us here in the UK, hence at the same time UTC it is lower in your sky. If that makes any sense. When it culminated it would have been higher in altitude in Cyprus than in the UK.

Thank you @Kon, @Mark at Beaufort & @geoflewis - I was torn by which set up to use to try and capture the occultation - wide-ish or in close with the planetary camera. I opted for the wider and am not convinced it gave the best pics, but it was good to be able to see the event and have an overview. Obviously, more telescopes needed for next time!!

A cold start to the day, almost scuppered by cloud, but managed to grab a few shots. The neighbour's garden got in the way at the end!

Ha! Yes, the EM-500 is a big old thing, it’s carrying a Mewlon 300 - not a bad scope! I had a bit of a wander around the skies once aligned, lovely views of Jupiter, core of M31, Ring Nebula, M15, Almach, the Double Double and the Owl Cluster. Tried Mars too, but too low and was a featureless orange blob!

I am happy to report that some washers have provided the necessary tilt to the pier adapter. I successfully polar aligned the mount this evening and all is good. Thank you all for your help and advice.

Thank you for the suggestions. I’ll take the mount off the pier later in the week and hopefully it will be obvious what the best approach will be. But please keep coming with ideas!