Gfamily

Ok I've used astrometry to identify the three brightest stars as HD199770 HD197407 HD197559

Can you give the RA/Dec ?

Photo on PC desktop (imaged after a Lovell Lecture talk) Image on Laptop (using an 'oil painting' filter)

Yes, took advantage of an offer a couple of years ago and look forward to getting the bi-monthly magazine, which has articles for the different special groups as well as a section for young astronomers. It usually has up-to-date news on research etc, so is valuable in that regard. One difference to the 'newsagent' monthly magazines is that it's very light on adverts - which, is likely to appeal to some readers.

Just to be clear, (and apologies if this is obvious), the t adapter has two parts - one is a ring with the internal t-thread, the other will be specific to your camera mount. You buy them both together If you do an ebay search for " t mount for <insert camera make and model here>" you will get the one you want.

It makes more sense (or at least, it's easier to see what's going on) if you use this ESA slider image that shows both the NIRCam image (as above) and the MIRI image. https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/potm2307/

You might do better if you change your telescope type - a newt may be more amenable than a cat.

Given that it looks like Stellarium is using a photo based image of the stars, I'd put that down as being an internal reflection of Vega.

Ah, but not all systems are immediately conducive to allowing indoor practice. I was asked to help someone out with a Celestron SLT today - my first experience with this scope. Unfortunately, because (I assume) it works on relative displacements between whatever three bright 'alignment' stars are selected, I wasn't able to do a fake sorry indoor alignment .

It's worth noting that if you use the Point And Track with the SynScan app, it doesn't update the telescope position details onto Sky Safari. I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned that you can run the SynScan app in 'Emulator mode' so you can practice linking that app with the Sky Safari app. Also, when using Sky Safari to find your targets, it can often be useful to adjust the 'Star Magnitude' until it only shows the stars you can see through the eyepiece. That is how I make sure I'm seeing what I want to look at.

One thing I particularly like about the Synscan app is that it has a 'Point And Track' capability. This means you can use the scope for tracking without having to do an initial align. If you can see your target (Moon, planet, brighter target) you can find it in the app's catalogue, point the telescope at it (using the finder if necessary) you can then simply use the Point And Track option. The scope then knows what its future movement will be across the sky, and can track it.

I may have posted this already - it's one of my most favourite Private Eye cartoons ever. Apologies if anyone is seriously offended

Trying to imagine the gravitational attraction between - - some imaginary mass and some ordinary mass - two pieces of imaginary mass - three pieces of imaginary mass!

For those of us that could get here early, we've had an unexpectedly clear clear evening. For the first hour or two, typically half the sky was cloudy (which half varied as the clouds moved) but by about 10:30 it was pretty clear all over. As it was the evening before the Star Party proper, there were some 'non Astro' guests staying, and they were delighted to be shown some of the treasures of the night sky - almost as much as we were delighted to be able to share the views with them. I do hope we get some reasonable viewing once the party starts proper, but I think we may have had the best night already.

I enjoyed The Comet Sweeper by Claire Brock. Available on Kindle or Google Play Books for about £4 ish

Yes, the DM needs to impact the event horizon, but a significant difference with a BH is that the 'cross section area' of the black hole is proportional to the square of the mass, (rather than the ⅔ power or less for stellar/planetary bodies), and also that any infalling DM will have no obstructions to impacting the event horizon, in contrast to OM which will generally have to negotiate the accretion disc and potentially high magnetic fields in the vicinity of the BH. Given that we often detect BHs via their emission of radio and X rays from jets, much infalling OM fails to make it to the event horizon. So primordial supermassive BHs could potentially accrete DM significantly faster than ordinary matter.

One difference between ordinary matter (OM) and dark matter (DM) is the way that OM can aggregate together. If you consider a piece of OM on the edge of the Milky Way or the Solar System. The material at the outside has a lot of gravitational potential, and when it falls in it converts the gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy (it speeds up) and after passing through the inner Solar System It heads back out and slows down. However, if it hits something in the middle, it'll give up some of its kinetic energy as heat and the light that hot objects give off. This means that after the collision, the OM won't go as far out and thus the Ordinary Matter collects in the centre of the Solar System. The means of aggregation is the conversion of kinetic energy into light (electromagnetic energy) which is then lost from the system. Because Dark Matter does not participate in any process involving electromagnetic energy, it doesn't have a way of losing energy, so any DM that falls towards the centre, simply passes through it and back out again with no means of aggregating there in the same way that OM can. This means that the average density of DM in the inner Solar System remains very low (similarly in the inner reaches of the Milky Way there's no particular concentration). Interestingly, it seems that any DM that falls directly into the Supermassive Black Hole at the centre of a galaxy will be captured and will not escape - as far as I can tell, this is the only way of constraining DM. This last point is not one I've seen referenced anywhere, so it is my personal contribution to cosmology. If I was a better astronomer I'd have a clue how to apply this hypothesis to see if it's useful. 🙂

I don't think they have his 40ft scope, though they have one of his smaller (6" I think) scopes on display

Following a successful Kickstarter, they're also in the process of putting together a new podcast series "Sixteen Sunsets" - title based on the number of sunrises and sunsets experienced by the astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS each day. https://sixteensunsets.com/

Be warned, that Saturn's rings are not going to be particularly prominent this year or for the next 2 or 3 years as their inclination angle is quite small. If you can get a 'scope this year, they'll be moderately well ❤️‍🩹 visible, but less so after that. However, Jupiter is a very rewarding alternative target, as it's bigger, has visible surface bands, and it's moons are constantly changing. I'm terms of what telescope, I can recommend the Skywatcher 127mm Maksutov, mentioned above as it's got a long focal length, so will more easily give a larger image. It's also outstanding on the Moon.

An ADC is a nice to have, particularly if you're imaging planets relatively low to the horizon. As you may know, refraction through the Earth's atmosphere can behave like a prism, so you get red and blue fringes above and below the disc of the planet - this is Atmospheric Dispersion. Not only above and below, but red and blue light from features on the disc, get 'smeared' across the disc. If you're imaging without an ADC (AD Corrector), you can get some relief from this by letting your processing software realign the red and blue channels - this will help, but a better solution is to use an ADC, as this means that the camera sensor gathers the correct colour data in the correct place on the image. Ian Morison (a good authority) has a page about this on his Astronomy Digest blog https://www.ianmorison.com/combating-atmospheric-dispersion/

Our daughter was age 2 when she called one of her dolls 'Baby Vega' and knew that it's the first star you can see on a summer evening. Ended up getting a Masters in Astrophysics from Edinburgh. Good luck to yours.

Quite literally, YMMV. For the OP - if you look at the Events listing page of gostargazing.co.uk website, you can see events in your area. Some of these will be regular club meetings, others may be special public access events, which may offer the opportunity to do observing. Of course, in the UK, the weather is a limiting factor, as planned events may not coincide with clear skies, but there's usually some alternative activities offered, as well as the chance to meet up with members of the local societies. https://gostargazing.co.uk/stargazing-events/

Yes. I understood you to mean the equivalent of a lunar eclipse, where the moon goes into the shadow of the planet.

Celestron do a 2x Barlow that has a T-thread at the top, for which the Barlow lens element can be removed. Very cheap and cheerful