Gfamily

Ah, scratch that - Mercury won't be visible, as it's between us and the Sun, and less than 2% illuminated. A thought though.

In preparing my "What's up in April" sides for yesterday's Club meeting, I mentioned that the only planets visible in the night sky next month are Jupiter and Uranus, as the others are all too close to the Sun I now realise that for anyone living on the track of the Total Solar Eclipse, this gives the chance for a Solar System Family Portrait using a panorama of two or three images. Uranus and Jupiter are about 30 degrees from the Sun, whereas Mars and Saturn are about 36 degrees on the other side. Worth a go, if the opportunity arises - and if you include the horizon, it'll be the full 8 planets.

It did strike us that some of the space near the cafe area could have had a small stage where people could give talks. Would need chairs etc setting out, but I gather that the absence of speakers was a disincentive for some previous patrons of the PAS.

It's the first trade event we've been to since before 2020, so it's hard to compare. It was nice to run into a few familiar faces, some from close to home, and some from further afield that we'd met at things like the much missed Solarsphere. Bought a couple of filters and a second hand book, and admired some of the glass and mounts on display.

Don't worry, none of them are essential, though practicing aligning the RDF is something worth trying before you want to do it in earnest. Streetlights or distant aerials can be good substitutes for stars or the moon.

A few new members of our Astro Group had recently bought telescopes, but weren't sure about how to get the most from them. So we had a session with 2 or 3 'experienced' users to help out 5 'newbies'. The main problem is that our weather is so dreadfully unpredictable, so planning ahead is always going to be very conditional. In the end we said, "hang it; if it's cloudy, at least we can go through the motions" and went ahead last Wednesday. In the end, we had some breaks in the clouds and we could see the Moon, Jupiter and the Pleiades. This was taken fairly early in the evening - showing how to set up being easier when there's a bit of light in the sky. Very likely we'll do something similar next autumn, when it gets dark at a reasonable hour.

If you contact the Dumfries Astro Society, they may be able to help your daughter get the advice she's looking for. They seem to meet on the second Tuesday of the month - https://dumfriesastronomy.wordpress.com/ Otherwise, there are several nightscape tutorials online (though I can't comment on their quality), for example - https://nightscapephotographer.com/category/tutorials/

Plus 1 - for all the same reasons (well, I don't have a Quark, but y-know!) To think I didn't have a 'frac until I borrowed one a couple of years ago, and now it's the one I always start with.

Ding ding ding (alert for Jim) Update - The run has been extended to October. From 19th June it'll be showing Wednesday pm to Saturday until 13th October. I think it's still worth adding to your list https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/the-moonwalkers/ We enjoyed the similar Hockney exhibition that's playing Sunday-Wednesday am from 17th June

FLO have an OVL one for £89 https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reducersflatteners/ovl-field-flattener.html

Working downwards in size Meade LS8 8" SCT - hardly ever used now - must get it to a dark sky site Skywatcher 127mm Mak Skywatcher 102mm Mak Skywatcher ST80 - needs fixing Altair Lightwave 72 ED - my 'goto' Az GTI mount, plus a couple of SynScan mounts, with 1 Synscan WiFi module available Plus an old unmounted Meade 114mm Newtonian as I donated the handset to someone who could make use of it

My favourite dwarf galaxy - the age profile of its stellar population indicates that it's about 200 million years old - less than one orbit of the Solar System around the galaxy - and incidentally, means there were already mammals on Earth when it formed. I wonder if it's formed from material disrupted from the interaction between M81 and M82.

I don't know if anyone's looking at doing a Messier Marathon, this year, if so I have versions of Don Machholz's proposed sequence in a couple of formats. Google Sheets - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L2jp_22MnaoI4cD_hnvzZvcM8z2pLOATz35xKsvpAwE/edit?usp=sharing Skysafari skylist Messier Marathon.skylist You may find that downloading from here adds '.txt' to the filename, remove that to allow it to be imported into Skysafari (works on version 6 Plus)

This is a book I was given when my interest was starting - about 50 years ago. However, I've not been able to find where my old copy is, despite looking several times over the last ~15 years. But seeing a copy in a National Trust second hand bookshop... well, that's not to be sniffed at.

I can't say it's this for sure, but as a camera designed for domestic use, your Canon would automatically be presenting the image as inverted relative to how it was detected on the sensor (because that's what we expect with a camera). It's possible that when the raw data is packaged as a FITS format file, the inversion is not applied.

A couple of times, when we wanted to try and catch up with some astronomy after visiting MrsG's mum in WsM General Hospital, we'd drive out to a layby on Webbington Road below Crook Peak - it's not perfect, but it has a good view to the South, and the road it's on isn't too busy. The hills to the north, block out a fair amount of light from the nearby towns. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2914226,-2.8726762,3a,75y,145.94h,82.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srV41ZsdzUioJWzWj0TgW3g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

If you don't have a view of things up to a kilometre away, don't worry - if something is about 100 metres away, the difference in focus position is only a bit over 4mm (which is about 2/3 of a turn of the focuser), so it's not critical. If you can get a focus on anything over about 50m away (1.5 turns), then you will be able to get focus on something at infinity. Just to confirm; when extending the telescope, has it gone as far as the 'click'?

Until recently, the North Wales Astro Society was active, but along with Covid and it losing its venue, it has not been able to meet up, and nobody has stepped up to take on the running of the group (the previous admins don't have the time to run it any more). One of the group has started doing talks in Llangollen, so it seems there is an interest in Astronomy in North Wales: rest assured you're not alone. The NWAS still has a presence on Facebook, and if you are able to find a venue that's convenient for your location, you may find that some of the previous members would like to join you. I suggest you find them on Facebook and see if you can get some of them on board. You will want to get some people to share the work, I am involved with my local group (a bit more over the border than Chester) and am very grateful to have an excellent Club Secretary and Treasurer to work with. However, even if it remains just as a virtual society, it'll be a community to share your interest (alongside the excellent people here). All the best

I don't know whether you are familiar with the Irish National Inventory of Historic Scientific Instruments which is available as a PDF from Google Books - it has a list of Grubb telescopes amongst other items https://www.google.com/books/edition/Irish_National_Inventory_of_Historic_Sci/vwXPDwAAQBAJ It might be useful if you've not seen it before.

Good point - but it may be useful to someone else who's wondering the same.

There's a calculator available at the 'astronomy tools' website that will show you what the field of view will be for a variety of scopes and eyepieces, lined up against a variety of targets, such as the Moon and any of the Messier objects. Basically, it depends on the f/ratio of your OTA, the focal length of the eyepiece and the Apparent Field of View (which will depend on the design of the eyepiece). https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ There's a variety of tools that you may find useful - but don't get too stuck into them, just use them as guides rather than instruction manuals

It's a very nice scope. Practice getting the balance right with your preferred eyepiece, otherwise you may find it drooping when in use. The helical focuser can be a bit sloppy, so it's worth getting some plumbers' teflon tape to wrap around the thread to make it a little bit more snug. Also, if you are using it in an area with some local lights, it can be worth getting a lightweight dark fabric to drape over the open truss so you can cut out some of the stray lights. Finally, I'd suggest getting a sticky label to put on the dust cover that says in big letters "Turn off the Red Dot Finder", otherwise you'll be constantly replacing the 2032 button cells! Enjoy

Someone on Twitter was asking about the likelihood of being able to see changes within 30 seconds. They posted 4 images and I converted 3 of them into a GIF animation Unclear whether the result is due to actual change over that period, or whether it's just some variation in the image quality Original tweet - https://x.com/la_foley/status/1761641449127371194

For those of you not on Twitter https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1761531341978427402.html

An explanation... https://x.com/DrPhiltill/status/1761531341978427402 Incidentally, the most recent Awesome Astronomy podcast has an interview with Dr Phil Metzger