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I could indeed. I should keep better records, but I estimate around 40% of the 30 hrs I have to date was captured under a moonlit sky.

The group 3664 is astounding. When the the seeing settled the numerous fainter sunspots popped out. Very good sketch 😀. Cheers Ian

Don't think it's possible as the air uses the equatorial coordinate system. If you want to use it visually, get a planetary camera to go into the guidescope but set it as the main camera and use that to goto and plate solve. Perfect framing every time. Or use the azgti with sky safari pro on your mobile or something, that does work in alt az mode.

If there is no glass in the component that I suggested removing then the small hole is what defines the field stop of a system of lenses nearer the prime objective. There would then be another tube screwed to the threaded portion that also contains a set of lenses, this is what creates the image erection, the furthest end of this last tube will include a female thread to accept a RAS fit eyepiece. It appears that this tube and an eyepiece may be missing. 🙂

Where’s your other trainer, John? 🤔

A 127 Skywatcher Maksutov OTA and a carbon fibre tripod. Nice and light. Also airplane friendly and cheaper than the the C5.

Hello all, I am trying to sort out a portable setup using the az gti and asiair. The az gti is alt az and eq mode updated. I can access both modes using either the handset or the phone app, but I can't find a method of connecting to the mount with the asiair and use alt az mode. Am I missing something or is it not possible? I link between mount and asiair with an eqmod cable and I have tried selecting both eqmod mount and az mount in the asiair software, both drive the mount but it seems to be expecting the mount to be on the wedge. Any pointers would be most welcome, I am up to page 30 in the thread and havent spotted anything. Ta much.

I was at a star party a few years ago when a guy turned up towing what appeared to be a small horse box. He opened up the rear doors, let down a couple of ramps and gently rolled a 20 inch dobsonian, on wheels, down onto the field. My interests are more modest than this though 🙂 A "quart into a pint pot" as the saying goes:

As Peter mentioned it will probably have another lens ,you should be able to see some glass in the small hole.I had one with the first reflector I built years ago im sure it's the old RAS thread

That's my point. You simply can't take a big vehicle out to the British countryside to haul a big telescope even if you had one and could afford the gas (petrol) for it. I suppose you could try to go with a long and slim trailer to haul a large telescope, though.

You could always gather more data on M101 to match Onikkinen's newt 😁 In all seriousness, look forward to seeing the results.

It's fine here in Season One , bar the EP bit .... 😉

Wow, look at the spirals, that's great Lee. Here's what I captured during the Full Moon, and it was only 1.5 hours not the 2 that I originally said. I did use a video on YT that used pixel math to add it to the image, but I'll have a look for the method you've described and see what I can find. Thanks.

I spent some time viewing the. Sunspots this morning. It is interesting that it is linked to an M class flare. I was chatting about this with my wife and thought it would be linked to a strong flare. I was amazed how much the groups changed in less than 24 hours. Cheers Ian

Thanks, I've just looked at the SDSS catalogue....my screen is white with text! I'll have to try and whittle it down a bit to see if I can make it readable and find out what those small fuzzies are. Whilst looking into this, I also spotted another possible galaxy cluster just below M106 in amongst that group of those quasars at 12h+19m. Speaking of quasars, I created the below image and the text file, sorted it in Excel and the largest redshift in the field is 3.741, located towards the bottom right. I haven't captured it, but I have captured the third largest in the field of 3.321. So if I'm right, using the calculator you linked, this gives 11.784 billion light years ! * My caveat with that, is I have only filled in the Z value, assuming all others are default values that need not be changed, and using the "flat" button, not "open". Not sure what the difference is, but "flat" gives a larger light year value. I also thought there was an exceptionally bright quasar to the right of +47'20, called "NPM 1G+47.0221". Querying this in Aladin it tells me it's "LEDA 3087510 -- Galaxy", redshift of 0.067. Fascinating!

When we visited Arizona a few years ago, the rental car was a mid-size option, a Nissan I seem to recall, which seemed quite large to me when I got into it and started off. Once we got out into the large scale Arizona landscape though, the car seemed rather small. In countries such as the USA, Australia and Canada, larger cars seem to fit in well. Over here in the rural areas of my part of the UK there are plenty of small lanes where the hedges will almost be touching the wing mirrors on both sides of my small hatchback 😬

Yes...... but that was Olly in his youth. He has mellowed with all his RC car racing. Marvin

The old GSO 8 inch newtonians used to get criticised for having small and fiddly collimation and locking bolts which needed different tools for the different screw heads. I guess they responded to that with the larger, "no tool" bolts that are fitted today. At the end of the day though, they are just bolts, so I guess they could be replaced with something with a lower profile 🤔

Thank you. I'll try collimating again and see how the stars look. I'm kind of thinking of selling the scope due to all the collimation difficulties it's giving me. Plus I often catch the bolts when I'm carrying it. I'm quite clumsy. I never had to worry about that with the Skywatcher.

The dobsonian bases on table top dobs do not collapse down and any tripod legs do not collapse down small enough for your backpack I don't think. If you are handy at making things you could make a dobsonian base at home for a telescope if you decided to get a mak/sct. There might be importation taxation too when carrying new items in.

You need something like Horace Dall’s collapsible pocket 6-inch Cassegrain, @John

Celestron C5 SCT''s are compact and quite light at 2.8kg for the optical tube.

They have the white bolts but they don't use them - they leave them loose. I used to do that with my Orion Optics newt, unless I was taking it somewhere in the car. Often locking bolts are a different size (smaller usually) than the collimation bolts but GSO have chosen the colour scheme and sizes you have. This is the back end of the Stellalyra 8" F/4: