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Not the postman and not new - not even new to me - but returned to my care at the weekend. 29 years ago this year "my" first scope was a 4.5in Newtonian i bought my wife on an early anniversary. About 15 years ago "my" second scope was this 120mm achro we bought our son for good exam results. Spot the theme 🤣 It's returned to me while he does some house renovations and generally makes a mess for a bit. I have permission to spend money on it and repurpose it as a white light solar scope if the fancy takes me... This scope saw quite a bit of use so when my son fully reclaimed it after finishing uni I finally did have to buy my very own scope for the first time. I found the Celestron Omni a and GEM mount a bit tedious to carry up to the local park so i "downsized" to the ~9kgs of Cassegrain and ~11ks of Berlebach Planet i still use now. I'm not sure i thought that through properly.

Could always enquire with FLO to see if they can supply. Other than that approach OVL directly they SHOULD be able to supply. https://www.opticalvision.co.uk/ Rob

Thanks and good luck with the guiding ! Thanks

I don't know what it is but nevermind the actual utility of it - a big finder is aesthetically very very appealing to me. Weird (or weirdo maybe). Two finders screams SERIOUS intent! 🙂 That bracket is exactly to fit an accessory ring snuggled around the OTA - a nice concept because it means you can get the finder quite far forward and out of the way easily. The rings also take a handle so quite useful even if a bit pricey.

Thanks. It's been nearly 5 years since I last had an observatory. ☹️ It's been a long road, but I'm nearly there 🙂

This is looking ace Michael! Lovely work and nice design 🙂

The benefits of jumping from 80mm to 102mm is massive. You definitely won't regret it if you do. As for mounts, I really like a German equatorial, as it follows the object you're studying but simply turning one knob, or if motorised it will track for ages with very little tweaking. Of course an Altazimuth gives you the ability to sweep across large vistas of star fields, stopping to admire the sights as you go. Ideally having both types of mount has its advantages.

First fix on the electrics today 😁😁😁😁😁

I will go find the movie to understand this better, but your analogy seems already funny to me

Hi there and welcome to SGL, focal length and ratio is 1400/150, which, looking at the picture of the scope suggests this is a Bird/Jones type telescope.

Not to answer facetiously but have you seen John Boorman's film Excalibur? There is a pivotal scene where Arthur "escalates" a circle of victorious knights stood on hill to Camelot in about three steps...( i will build a round table for you my knights to sit around (yay) and a hall around the table (yay) and a castle around the hall (yay) and take a bride to join me in my castle (yay)!!! 🤣 The analogy would be escalation of pencil and pad with simple alt az mounted small scope to 36" dob in a 5m dome under an SQM22 sky - you need to see the film to get the joke. So far i have resisted! I understand the driven mount though - that has crossed my mind a few times too (sp. for Lunar).

Still suffering from storm wides, rain and persistent cloud in North Wales, so here is something recent from Roboscopes in Spain. WR 134 in amongst all the LBNs and clusters in Cygnus. Pier 5 @Roboscopes (Tak Epsilon 180, ASI 2400MC Pro, Askar Colour Magic Ha/O3 6nm dual band, Paramount MX unguided). 108 x 60 sec, 49 x 120 sec & 44 x 180 sec. 5.6 hrs total integration time. Processed using HDRCombination in Pixinsight.

Does anyone know where you can get replacements top screw plastic bit broke off I have got it together by melting plastic on to it but its a bodge job.

Some super images here already. Hoping to also see entries from @gorann, @ollypenrice and other masters of the widefield!

Some clear sky here but occasional showers and 45+mph winds put me off. Next few nights look promising though.

Another vote here for a 102ED f7. Its a nice sweet spot of a scope on all fronts. Can also sit on an EQ5 with no problem.

In the cold light of day, I now have the overnight timelapse. It runs dawn to dawn and the PaullSky Pi then FTP's it to another Mini PC ( a cute little N100 from Chineshire) that came with W11 but got retrofitted with Ubuntu (I'm done with headless PC's balking at Microsofts demands). That machine is the server for my other survelance cameras via AgentDVR, I can VNC into both Pi and PC should I need to but Agent drills through the portforwarding and dynamic IP malarky and gives me a lovely screen showing the normal camera's live view, the latest frame from the PaulSky camera and the current dawn to dawn Paulsky Timelapse. Until I find a way to lash it up differently, the MP4 just plays contininuously. I can download the the file to my home PC for editing such as below where I've trimmed the timelaps to show the overnight period only. You'll see the ickle aurora at the 8 o'clock position at around the 23:00 mark. Untitled video.mp4

I thought this would be a funny question to ask! SGL is littered with comments about big expenses pursued to improve the experience as an amateur astronomer, but I'm asking you: have you ever spent a lot of money on an item that you wanted specifically to improve your astro-sketching experience? For example, I'm thinking seriously to buy a star tracker, even though for my normal visual observation I don't feel like I need it at all - and I don't really do astrophotography. But for sketching... (OK I would probably start doing some sort of DSLR astrophotography too!)

Absolutely this Mike! I tracked the apparition last year and it was absolutely terrific as a project from April till August. This particular observation at conjunction -6 (or 7) days (this is the 6th August, i think Inferior Conjunction was on the 13th) and the Venusian crescent at just 2.4% was probably my highlight and best observation of the year: The weather then over the next few days didn't allow an observation closer to the Sun until it was too late a day or two before conjunction - too late for me to find Venus (manually) safely. A definite bucket list item to get closer. Utterly beguiling at even this thin crescent a few days before. No ashen light for me here.

Thanks Mark. I will never unsee the smilly crater now 😂. Yes I hate when updates decide to happen during imaging. I hope the weather improves so we can get some high resolution images.

Thanks. I keep it firmly in mind that there is nobody to stick a plaster on any injuries. Probably nobody would find me for weeks out here in the sticks. It gives one a proper sense of fragility and vulnerability.

Can you ssh into the asiair and look at the filesystem , see if there is an indi catalogue and what the indi catalogue says ?

If you are convinced it's XML what's the odds that it is indi ? And that's well documented .. It would be quick to knock up a test.

@bosun21 I have used the mount in AZ but I am trying to use Ascom and CdC with varying degrees of success and as I found in an earlier topic post I made the rooky mistake and was struggling to get it lined up, so it is at least for now in EQ mode.