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  1. Past hour
  2. Smiggsy Smiggsy changed their profile photo
  3. Sunshine started following Power Tank for Celestron AVX Mount
  4. Sunshine
    Of you by chance have or have access to a deep cycle marine battery, they are fantastic for scope power supply, alligator to female cigarette plugs are a few dollars, aside from that, a regular power tank is great also. These sort of power supply units are usually kept in cars for boosting, I prefer a regular car battery (not my own car battery, a separate one just for my scope) kept in my trunk and charged occasionally with a trickle charger as a designated scope supply. I use a deep cycle marine battery I ran into for free, they are indestructible and last forever but if bought new they are pricey.
  5. Stefan94 Stefan94 joined the community
  6. Today
  7. Skyline
    I am looking for a Baader MK II MPCC Coma Corrector. Not to be confused with the MKIII, which is in present production. Thanks.
  8. Greg6498 started following Power Tank for Celestron AVX Mount
  9. Greg6498
    Now that I have my new AVX Mount all set up, I realized that I have no way to power it up! Apparently, I need a power tank of some sort. The Mount came with a cigarette lighter cable but I’m no where near my car! Any suggestions??
  10. maw lod qan
    The Milkyway is awesome, and even more so in such a wonderful area like that.
  11. Yesterday
  12. Littleguy80 started following Peace
  13. Littleguy80
    Ignoring that pessimistic weatherman and trusting in the blue sky above me, I put the dob out to cool around 9:30pm. Returning to it around 10:45pm, I performed a quick collimation check and then took in the constellations available to me. Vega caught my and proved useful for aligning my finders with. Where to go? What to see? M57 was the answer. The little ring of cosmic dust tells the story of the death of a star. Moving closer in revealed a faint star on the outside of the ring. The central star too faint for my telescope. In complete contrast, the great globular cluster of Hercules contains hundreds of thousands of stars. At high power, I can almost fill the entire field of view with stars. My eye doesn't know where to focus, there's almost too much to see. Drifting down, I find a faint grey smudge. This is the galaxy NGC 6207, which I have never seen before. I make eyepiece changes to slowly reduce the magnification bringing the galaxy and the globular cluster into the same field of view. The galaxy has always been there, I just never thought to look for it until tonight. I go in search of another globular cluster, NGC 6229. Again thousands of stars but it seems so small after the previous expansive cluster. Higher powers do reveal the granulation from all those stars at its core. Overhead a bright light starts to move across the sky. The ISS! I decide to chase it with the scope. Initially, just managing fleeting glances and then starting to track it. Soon I am following it at 133x magnification and tweaking focus as I go. I can make out the basic outline of the space station. As it disappears out of view, my heart is racing from the thrill of the chase. Pointing the scope high overhead, I find a pattern of three stars in Ursa Major. Next to these 3 stars are 3 galaxies. Two are very close to each, NGC 5353 and NGC 5354 and a third, NGC 5350, is a bit further away. Within one of these galaxies a star has gone Supernova and the light is only now reaching us. The galaxy, NGC 5353, is 119 million light years away. I reach 200x magnification and begin the process of letting the pair of galaxies drift through the eyepiece. The supernova appears out of range until a chance knock of the telescope gives a slight wobble and briefly the faint point of light is seen. Encouraged, I continue to search and after a few minutes I have learned where to place my eye to see the supernova with averted vision. It is my second time observing this supernova but it still feels special. An event that will pass most of the planet by unnoticed. I lose view of the galaxies and look up to see that the weatherman's clouds have arrived. Before the sky is completely lost, I enjoy a close pair of stars known as Izar. The tiny blue companion star is a favourite sight of mine. Time now to come in from the peace of the universe and reflect on just how nice it is to look up.
  14. Alien 13
    The big plus of a Mak that all other scopes struggle with is the ability to hang any camera off the back regardless of weight without issues of loading and distorting the focusser tube or wondering if you have enough or too much back focus.... Alan
  15. adyj1 started following when i do polar alignment? and Star Hopping with a Mak on an EQ mount
  16. adyj1
    Are you sure? I thought this was in the free version (although now I've upgraded to 'plus', I can't check) In the picture below, I have tapped the '11.1 x 17.6' text to bring up the screen @Pazis talking about. Ady
  17. adyj1
    You've got it right - polar alignment sets an EQ mount up to be used accurately, and is a physical alignment achieved by physically moving the RA axis (using the latitude and elevation bolts). This is done first and there is no need to have the mount switched on. Star alignment is the setting up of the goto 'computer' (traditionally the handset in an out-of-the-box goto mount), rotating the mount around its RA and Dec axes to allow the computer to align its internal database of sky objects with where in the sky it needs to point the telescope to see those objects. The goto computer assumes accurate polar alignment, and so star alignment always needs to be done second. Ady (I hope this makes sense, I've redrafted it a couple of times for clarity, but in my experience this can sometimes make it less clear )
  18. nicolae started following Coronado PST Field of View Very Small
  19. Sunshine
    Super pumped about my new (used) piece of glass, immaculately cared for by original owner, now i have adopted it, it will complement my Starmaster nicely. Enormous piece of glass on these i noticed, i was surprised by the size of the eye lens, larger than my first scope lol, i have read much about the Morpheus line, i hear they're great, if only the skies would clear up.
  20. symmetal
    Peter, Here's a quick sketch I did of your circuit which may make the relay/diode connections clearer. I drew the Ground connections as ground symbols to save cluttering the diagram with lines. The ground symbols are of course all connected together in reality. There's also no need for a double pole switch to the 7Ah battery as all the Ground/0V connections can be left connected to avoid things floating when not used. The Rigel motor output connections may need to be swapped over depending on which way the motor turns to make it drive in the same direction as your new system. I didn't draw in the hall effect 12V wire as it would be a bit messy so arrowed the connection instead. Edit: It's worth checking that the USB 0V connection from the raspberry pi is connected to Gnd on the VM110 board. I'm sure it will be or things won't work properly. Also, I didn't notice on your diagram until I redrew it but the symbol you had for the 12V 7Ah battery was drawn the wrong way around. The long line is +ve and the short line is -ve. Alan
  21. Stargazer McCabe
    May I take the 8.8 please ? PM on its way
  22. michael8554
    The Full-Frame camera may well be vignetted, but you can always crop, down to where you would probably crop with a APS-C. Yes EF lenses may well be expensive, but Chaz is hoping to use his EF-S lenses, so maybe Full-Frame is out. Michael
  23. vlaiv
    You have to be careful about usage of word infinite. One that contains "everything that exists" is not necessarily infinite. Infinite that we are talking about has very exact meaning and is related to concept of geometry of space. If for any given number, no matter how large you select it to be, you can find two points in space that have separation greater than that number in your chosen units - then universe is infinite in size. Infinite universe in above sense has infinite amount of "stuff" in it if we assume homogeneity, or if we assume that density is finite number.
  24. Alien 13
    This asks the question "is there a better way" than our concept of mathematics, nature produces circles (not very good ones most of the time) and plenty of other regular shapes with very few apparent rules.... Alan
  25. John
    My outreach eyepiece set is: - 7.2-21.5mm zoom eyepiece - Baader 2.25x barlow lens - Orion 27mm Edge-On eyepiece This set covers a lot of options, cost relatively little, is easy to view through and all three items can fit in my coat pockets easily In fact I seem to be using these quite often when observing on my own at home as well.
  26. cletrac1922
    Zolten First welcome from Land Down Under I have a SW ED80 on an EQ5pro Find serves me very well Have also recently got the WiFi adapter Down load the SynScan APP Makes life easy Sets GPS, date/time from my Android device Have attached pic of my EQ5, taken at a recent solar viewing night with my club John
  27. Benklerk
    I have the astronomik Ha 6nm filter. I have produced some great images with them.
  28. vlaiv
    Actually, I started this thread in search of answer to the question - why do we assume it is infinite in lack of solid evidence. In fact we do not assume that in principle - and as you've said - current data points to near flatness or large curvature radius in case of curved space, and indeed that is a tricky one - you can never measure something to be precisely 0 as there will always be some uncertainty in measurement. It does however seem to be prevailing opinion that universe is indeed infinite (of flat variety) - if it were not so, there would not be many follow up ideas (verifiable or not), like multiverse. It is actually intriguing to me how easily we accepted notion of infinity related to the physical world. It is probably related to mathematics apparatus that we use to describe and formulate our theories. It is easy to forget that we are always working with approximations at best. Good examples are both often used constants, and like you pointed out both GR and QFT are based on continuous space-time. This of course does not mean that these models are 100% true and that our laws need exact pi or e values to be 100% correct. In fact I'm positive that no one ever used exact pi or e value in any of their calculations, ever, let alone in experiments where our theories were confirmed to very high precision. I suspect that same is true for our model of continuous space-time. Regardless of true nature of it, mathematical model we use works extremely well so far, however similar model based on finite distances with "enough granulation" would also work to the same level of empirical precision. Usage of one model over another is matter of convenience rather than proof of underlying reality.
  29. saac
    And that is the problem I have with the concept of infinity. The universe at it's beginning no matter how small or large was by definition infinite as it held everything. As that universe expanded it retained its infinite crown as by definition it contained everything. So infinity is not absolute , there are many versions of infinity. I go back to what I said before, I believe it's a mathematical construct resulting from our language mathematics. A curious artefact. Jim
  30. Stu
    Looks like that's the case unfortunately
  31. discardedastro
    I'd +1 the 7nm Baader, they're a great starting point and don't have major issues with halos/reflection in my limited experience. Baader are a lovely midpoint in most things brand-wise - good enough to be effective and useful in almost all their products, even if they're not the best of the best, whereas others in the same price point often end up going for features or spec over functionality. I'd only look at Astrodon or other high high end brands once I had everything else in my system perfect, really - you'll get much better bang for your buck with a flattener, or mount improvements, etc - or accessories like dew heaters if you don't have those already.
  32. andrew s
    By the way I don't know if the Universe is spatially flat or not and is as @vlaiv proposes. All I am trying to do is explain as best I can what the current consensus view is within science community. My understanding is that the best current data indicates that it has a simple topology and is very close to flat. We could as @vlaiv proposes be mistaken and that it is curved and we are making the same mistake as the original flat earth proponents did. However, it is so close to flat that within the currently observable universe we cannot tell the difference so the current working hypothesis is that it is flat. This makes some calculations simpler! Concerns about the I application of if being infinite if true or not are all outside the obsevable universe so it hardly matters if the are real or not -reather a matter of taste.
  33. pmlogg
    Alan Good stuff! I'll make a start on wiring up tomorrow night. Thanks, Peter
  34. vlaiv
    Oh I need to correct myself before someone spots the mistake and quotes me on it In fact in positively curved space things that are further from us appear larger than they would in flat space and in hyperbolic space - smaller than they would in flat one.
  35. saac
    The language we use to define the circle (mathematics) produces what we define as infinity. Infinity is a consequence of that language it does not follow it exits in nature. Jim
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