Tony Acorn

Welcome Dave - as to "all you experienced amateur astronomers out there", if only I could class myself as such! I remain strictly a bumbling amateur but still love the hobby and this friendly and educational site.

Go and "fill your boots" music lovers (as the late Fluff Freeman would have said), you will certainly enjoy it. And yes, I bought The Yes Album (plus Tales From Topographical Oceans), Tubular Bells and I own almost all the Pink Floyd catalogue. Probably over a decade ago, my son and I went to see Roger Waters do DSOTM in Hyde Park and guesting was Nick Mason. The differences between The Planetarium last night and Hyde park were: 1 - Hyde Park had a (comparitively) simple light show and 2 - Weed filled the air at Hyde Park whereas Leicester was strictly no smoking. 🤣 Whilst DSOTM is probably my favourite, the live concert in New York that produced "Delicate Sound Of Thunder" runs it a close second and that is worth sitting down to when Sky Arts sometimes gives it an airing. The full version lasts over 2 hours so it isn't bad to have on whilst stargazing either.

For really wide imaging, the Nikon Z6ii is a full frame beauty which I use with a Samyang (Rokinon) 14mm f/2.8 manual focus lens and it is a good pairing for the likes of The Milky Way, The Summer Triangle and multiple planetary conjunctions but obviously I have to limit exposures to around 15s maximum to avoid star trails. It does hopwever produce good results at ISO 640 for that duration. To assist in the focusing, I have a clamped-on extension rod so I can get finer adjustments but maybe I should add a collar to the front of the lens so I can fit a Bahtinov Mask in the search for perfection.

I'm a bit of a cheapskate so I didn't buy the cooled version of the ASi585 MC, settling for the basic 585MC instead. I have an 80mm f/6.25 refractor with an ASi EAF, an ASi120MM guide camera all sitting on an ASi-AM3 mount and run by an ASiAir-Mini. I planned to do some DSO stuff and a bit of Planetary so the 585MC with my scope isn't a bad compromise although for M31, the 585MC combination requires a mosaic to capture the whole galaxy. If (and it's rather unlikely) I outgrow this set-up, changing the 'scope would open new horizons with the same camera. I also have a 150P-DS SW Explorer on an HEQ5 mount to which I can attach my Nikon Z6ii and a 3x Barlow if I want to zoom in more or use a 2x Barlow or no Barlow if I want to capture wider fields. Referring back to M31, the 150P-DS and the Z6ii captures the whole of M31 in one shot. The ZWO / refractor bundle is an easy rig to put together, to travel and to use with its simple Polar Alignment, good(ish) auto focusing, excellent tracking and a great GoTo facility. By slavishly following the ZWO route, everything is integrated even if it means I have limited my choices. On top of that, it all runs for hours from a 150W lithium power pack and works on a decent tablet so doesn't need a laptop in a dark field. HTH and waiting for clear skies (I bought too many boxes from FLO that definitely did contain clouds), Tony

Last night I went to The National Space Centre in Leicester to see and hear a performance of the digitally remastered 1973 Pink Floyd album matched to a mixture of real and artificial astro images of Planets, The Moon, the ISS, NASA's Lunar Orbiter and its Lunar Lander and the ESA's Cassini satellite amongst others. It was certainly impressive and ended with the track "Eclipse" matched to a visual of a solar eclipse. There are some tickets still available for the shows on 9th August I believe but if this gets a wider release and gets to a screen near you, I'd highly recommend it. It does make my efforts at astrophotography pale into insignificance! PS - parking there is free afer 5pm!

Hello and welcome. That's pretty clever as a start Viktor! I find my 10" dob is a bit too much to drag about these days so have gone down to a 6" reflector on an HEQ5 mount - the joys of getting old. Tony

I finally got my new rig in operation and very happy with the process too! The Polar Alignment went well, as did auto focusing. I was able to get the mount to move to M31 as an easy target and two series of images are still in the ASiAir Mini - yet to be processed. It's all a huge learning curve for me but I'm very happy to have a good clear, warm night at last however these old bones wanted to retire before The Moon rose.

Hi Dan and welcome. I have a Nikon Z6ii and a Samyang (Rokinon) 14mm f/2.8 manual focus lens which I use successfully without a tracker for wide angle astro photography such as The Milky Way. It is mounted on a Manfrotto 052 tripod which is pretty sturdy. I tend to limit exposures to 13 seconds and at ISO 640 or 800. Beyond 13s, some trailing becomes apparent. A key part of my rig is an Aodelan WTR-2 wireless Intervalometer / trigger that allows me to set various exposure and sequence combinations without touching the camera. If you go down the route of a pre-owned tracker, be sure to consider the weight of your camera and lens when deciding which one to settle on. I have a Star Adventurer 2i wifi Pro but its true limit is under 5Kg and it isn't easy to balance in RA and Dec modes - vital to avoid overloading your tracker's drive motor and to get smooth tracking. I'm aware that there can be flexing between the tripod and the mount so an improved equilateral wedge might be advisable. Good luck and clear skies! Tony

The 10" Dob is BIG and I mean BIG! You will almost certainly need to break it down to move it around and, if you want to take it somewhere away from home, I'd consider the Flex-Tube version over the Classic design as the Flex-Tube collapses for transport. I have a SkyLiner 250P Flex-Tube myself and, at the age of 75, it is getting too much for me to handle. For a motorised 'scope and non-home use such as travelling to a dark(er) skies site, you will certainly require an external power supply such as the PowerTank. If I was buying mine (it has Alt/Az motorisation) today, I'd go for the Lithium Battery version and that is supplied with a suitable charger. The SynScan handset is OK but the latest versions of this Dob will work with a wifi app on a tablet or smart cell phone. The SkyWatcher comes with two basic eye-pieces but neither lets you see the whole of Andromeda so you might want to get say a 40mm additional eyepiece and a 2x Barlow to start. Don't forget the Bahtinov Mask to help with focusing, a reasonable collimating tool and maybe a dew heater to extend your viewing sessions. There's nothing worse than getting all set up, aligned and then the perfectly focused scope mirrors start to get condensation on them - I've got that particularl tee-shirt. Good luck and clear skies - let us know how you get on! Tony

Hello Paul and welcome. Taking on Stu's comments, I am a comparative newbie but I have discovered how integrated the ZWO bundle is so, without any knowledge of DwarfLabs Dwarf, I would strongly consider the ZWO SeeStar as a portable rig that you can all access and view through your smart cell phones. I think the SeeStar comes with its own mini tripod whereas I think you have to buy that as an extra for the Dwarf. Convenience, simplicity and the speed in which you can start using the selected apparatus will be key to getting the family to buy into astro time. ZWO's bundle certainly can be run from an iPad (which I do) and so at least a couple of people can see what is being imaged out in the sticks (you set up a local wifi network). Expanding on Stu's points, the outlay for either the SeeStar or the Dwarf would be less than what you'd spend on a 10" Dob even before you start adding the likes of Barlows, collimation tools, masks, camera mountings, dew heaters and improved lenses plus it's quite a lump to move around which sometimes puts one off getting it all set up. Perhaps most importantly, either the Seestar or the Dwarf is truly portable so can be carried around by one person and either seem to offer "a lot of bang for your bucks". With time, you may find that this isn't what you hoped and so you won't have spent a lot on a white elephant. Equally, the SeeStar / Dwarf bundle is likely to have a good pre-owned market potential if you subsequently want to get bigger / better kit. HTH Tony

We have to face the reality that there is a need for (a lot?) more housing to be built and that this will invariably extend the boundaries of towns, cities and even villages withing 5 miles of any town because the (probably heavily overloaded) infrastructure is there already. If I was to move again, it would probably be to sonewhere more remote, not on regular flight paths and without urban conerbations within 30 miles. Of course such places rarely exist in this country and, if you found one, it would be without a shop, school, pub, health facility and probably lacking mains water, sewerage and electricity. The southwest coast of The Isle of Wight appeals but / and there are towns not too far away. The main issue for that location is the cost of getting too or leaving the island which works out on average at nearly £20 per mile for a car using the ferry between Portsmouth and Fishbourne. This adds considerably to the cost of living on the island but for some it may be a small price to pay for clear skies and solitude except in the height of summer when observing times are more limited anyway.

I replaced the battery in mine but then the charging circuit board blew. I now charge the battery using the screw-on posts so the 12V cigar lighter ports can still be used when I get out the HEQ-5 rig if needs. For my new, more portable rig I bought a Beaudens 1502 power supply from Mr Bezos's large ladies 😂 and it is smaller, neater, weighs less and does a full night even when powering my DSLR too. It doesn't have the cigar lighter sockets but does have 2 x 5521 DC sockets, three USBs (one is a power thru version) and an inbuilt inverter so I get 230V AC to feed the DSLR via its own regulator. That lets me power the ASiAir (and on to the connected devices), the dew heater and my iPad if I'm (rarely) sitting outside.

The loop is long enough to cope as long as the mount is set to do a Meridian Flip. Sadly ZWO doesn't provide cables to match the shade of metallic red that they use to coat their hardware - that's almost enough to put of potential purchasers 🤣 but thanks for the compliment anyway. Of course "I am but a poor boy (and my story's seldom told), I have squandered ..." - with apologies to Simon & Garfunkel - lots of savings in the direction of FLO to buy that StellaMira refractor set-up as it is and a WO RedCat would have resulted in certain bits of me being cut off and thrown to the circling vultures!

If this is simply a temporary need, something like spiral wrap would solve the issue until you get your tiny / mini PC and power hub. I have used this to tidy all my assorted connecting wires from guide camera, main camera, electronic focuser, mount, ASiAir Mini and a dew heater with just two cables running beyond the mount (12V Input and Dew Heater USB from the Beaudens power pacxk). I left a decent loop so the mount can swing fully without pulling the cables too tight. There's less than 3m in the picture - PM me if you want a similar length popped in the post.

The moon isn't getting very high at the moment - which could be positive. Sadly, Astronomical Twilight doesn't end until 22:44 so the period of darkness unaffected by the moon will be 46 minutes (reference my Hertfordshire location) so overall, I wouldn't if I was seeking dark sky objects and particularly so if a long journey or much expense was involved. Clear skies if you do go, Tony

Of course Torban - I prefer Tuborg to Carlsberg but I'm not a lager fan. I'm a person who likes what we call Real Ale - it offers a variety of flavours whereas both the above are very heavily controlled to make the same flavour. Clear skies (tonight looks possible here), Tony

Good morning Torben, Thanks for that very informative response including so much that I didn't know! My knowledge of Copenhagen is limited to your nice airport and my experience of the wider Denmark is limited to an oil refinery / storage port at Fredericia, your efficient and clean railway systems and a manufacturer of food factories' cleaning equipment in Aarhus. There are obvious benefits to having a much lower population density than we have in England but of course many people wish to live near all the urban facilities so cities grow whilst rural dwelling people gradually disappear. My house did have green fields to the south, east and north when we bought it in 2017. In just 7 years, so much new housing has been built that it has houses in all those directions so I am totally surrounded. To view or image anything below an altitude of 15º-20º, I have to go somewhere else. That means I no longer use my 254mm Dobsonian and even moving the 150mm reflector with its HEQ5 mount is becoming an issue because of my age. That is why I have bought a lighter, portable rig including the ZWO AM3 mount and an 80mm f/6.25 refractor and an imaging camera but I'm still getting used to that bundle so I can't say it's a successful purchase - time will tell but at least I should be ready for the August 21st Lunar Occultation and to capture Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) if it survives perihelion. Clear skies, Tony

Hello Travelman and welcome. If travelling to the UK, you'll probably find we have more light pollution that you're used to at home. Tony

Bedtime reading for cloudy nights?

Sorry - I didn't save anything!

You can always screw that onto the top of a garden gnome in the meantime Martyn 😂

I bought a Nikon D5300 camera from Hong Kong ten years ago and I didn't anything! I recently bought a lens from Cotswold Cameras in the UK (www dot cotswoldcameras dot co dot uk) and so there were not additional taxes to pay. The service was very good, the Nikon Z-mount lens arrived properly packaged inside 10 days and with all the accessories that would have been supplied by the normal UK retailers. The saving was almost 30% in this case and there is a 12 months warranty on it. It might be worth looking at that option Luke? Tony

I faced a similar dilema a couple of years back Josef. My Nikon D7200 was very good but I wanted to achieve more and the later iterations of the D7xxx series raised more issues (such as a dodgy hinged screen). I was debating whether to go from cropped sensor to full frame so the Z6ii seemed a good route for me (and I have no regrets in doing almost 20,000 shots later). I also bought Nikon's FTZii mount converter at the same time and this allowed me to continue using the F-mount lenses I had accumulated. That meant I could just buy the Z6ii body and the FTZii and didn't have to buy lots of new glass. The Z6ii is undoubtedly a significant advance from the D7200 with its sensor's greater low light sensitivity (lower ASO options), its dual image processors, a CFExpress card slot alongside the usual SD card slot and the screen is a touch-screen device. It has a menu otion to shoot in DX (cropped sensor) mode too which gives you effectively a 1.5x teleconverter without the physical connection between lens and body. Now that Nikon have introduced a Z6iii, it seems likely that you will be able to get the Z6ii for somewhat less than earlier this year. I like Sigma lenses and one drawback is that Sigma so far haven't released any Z-mount lenses AFIK. As an aside, I decided to sell my D7200 as a bundle with some DX-format lenses, my old Samyang 14mm f/2.8 MF lens and assorted accumulated goodies. Now I wish that I hadn't done so and that I had had the D7200 converted for astro work, despite the old camera's sale funding yet more GAS! Tony PS - I don't work for Nikon 😂

Thank you M40. Guide and main scopes plus cameras, accessories and cables weigh in at 5.6Kg, the mount is 3.6Kg so just over 9Kg sits on the tripod and doesn't need a counterweight although I've yet to get it really well balanced. The battery pack is almost another 2Kg but that is hanging on a hook from the tripod (a Manfrotto 055 aluminium jobbie but I also have a 3-Legged-Thing carbon tripod that is rated to 20Kg if necessary) so it acts positively to steady things. I have a 3-point levelling plate between the tripod and the AM3 mount so I can get the mount's base truly horizontal with little effort wherever I turn up to get darker skies. I chose to go the ZWO ASi route because it seemed to offer great integration whilst being able to be managed through and perform on my iPad Pro (no laptop in the field). To quote a well-worn adage, I've all the gear and no idea so plenty of head scratching / anglo-saxon dictionary entries / frustrations to come, not least with the almost unbroken cloud cover we have had so far this year.