John

Great report - the seeing was 1st class last night

I got it last night with my ED120. Great seeing last night

3 minutes ago, Mark68 said:

Yeah,  it did go against all logic. 

You would what's think getting closer is getting better. 

I need to get my head around that. 

Most deep sky observing is done at low to medium magnifications. Not all, but most. So 40x - 100x or similar ?

The Orion Nebula is quite a large object - a large as the full moon, so high magnifications just show parts of it:

It sounds like you have seen the central part of the Orion nebula and the Trapezium cluster.

You were using a lot of magnification (300x !). To see the whole of the nebula you need to use much less magnification - about 50x is fine so a 25mm eyepiece (no barlow) will do the job.

I don't think any refractor short of (maybe) an ED120 would give you a better experience for planetary observing than your 127mm mak-cassegrain.

Great young space enthusiast here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-leicestershire-56445616

20 minutes ago, Stu said:

..... I tried defocusing until it disappeared, which it seemed to do just before HD220770.

That's a neat trick - I'll have to try that

9 minutes ago, Second Time Around said:

We should soon know for sure whether a Dioptrx will fit.  The first redesign wouldn't, so I sent my spare Dioptrx to the makers in China so that they could use it as a template.  They received it last week.  I'll report back in due course.

Hope you get one of the zooms gratis in return for your input Steve

6 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

There was a post on CN noting posters on SGL where complaining about the froth in the APM superzoom thread today. 😄

It's shame if the two major forums feel that each other might "trash talk" each other. I've been a member of both SGL and CN for a similar amount of time and found them both very useful but in different ways and with different styles.

I'm sure we used to have a rule on here about not rubbishing other forums and likewise on CN. I'd like to think that mutual respect still exists.

12 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Time for the Tak FC 100, John?

Not tonight Jeremy. Monday night is ED120 night

Just had a look at the Nova V1405 Cas with the ED120. I think it has dimmed very slightly. It's still brighter than the nearby mag 9.0 star but not quite to the extent it was when I last observed it. The latest AAVSO visual report says mag 8.0 which seems reasonable.

The Pup star is visible tonight with my ED120 refractor at 225x and 257x. Nice, steady, seeing tonight

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Same here John, looks like it should be a good night. The Jetstream is elsewhere too so seeing might be reasonable, we will see!

I've just split Sirius reasonably easily with my ED120 at 225x = the seeing is GOOD

Should be able to have a peek at this again later. Nice clear evening here

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

I’d stick with your existing triplet 115 frac, Fish. Especially as you mainly use for low power wide field. I can’t see the Tak 100s outperforming.

I have a Tak FC100-DL (the F/9 version) and a very good Skywatcher ED120 and tend to agree with this.

The FC100-DL gets very close to the performance of the ED120 on the moon, planets and double stars. The ED120 goes a little deeper on DSO's.

The FC100 is a superb scope and but it's not really been a "game changer" compared with the humble ED120, not to me at least. I'm glad I own it though

That looks like the Celestron Regal Zoom. One of our members, @Louis D uses those with a binoviewer in astro scopes I seem to recall, and seems to think quite highly of them.

Thank you very much Alexander. I have found Stellarium to be an essential part of my astronomy toolkit for many years now

1 hour ago, bomberbaz said:

I have a chance on Monday night of getting to see it weather depending but signs are good.

Has anyone any up to date information on it's current brightness?

It seems to have been fairly consistent at magnitude 7.7 - 7.9 or thereabouts for the past week.

Very cloudy here tonight so I won't be able to check up on it this evening.

No point in worrying about it. I observe all year round. Just have to wait longer for darkness during BST.

I think we will be seeing a lot of stuff that was bought during the lockdown period up for sale over the coming months. Normally these folks would have to take a "hit" of around 30-35% of the value to sell on even if the gear is virtually unused. The current scarcity of new equipment and recent price rises will likely soften this "hit" though, until supplies start to come through again. 

The buyers here and on the UK Astro Buy & Sell site will generally be pretty savvy on price so with either avoid what they perceive as overpriced items or, at best, will make a lower offer.

E.bay is a bit of a "law unto itself" price-wise and I see lots of stuff on there which is, IMHO unrealistically priced and some of the auctions seem to end at a figure which is surprisingly close to the normal retail price. 

The thing to do is to produce a comprehensive and accurate description of the kit and a good set of photos and offer it for sale at a price that seems reasonable to you.

Don't use the "offers invited" ploy though, potential buyers tend to avoid that and it's not actually allowed on the classifieds section here.

56 minutes ago, John said:

I've come in now with more cloud arriving.

On the moon I finished my session with a look at the interesting pale feature Reiner Gamma which runs, or wriggles, past the crater Reiner. Very odd feature comprising of pale and darker material. Apparently it has no thickness to it and a strong magnetic field.

Finished off with a pleasing split of Zeta Hercules which had risen out of the Bristol light glow into steadier sky.

Nice session considering that it was raining from quite thick cloud 3 hours ago. I was using my 100mm F/9 refractor tonight but not an achromat I'm afraid.

Reiner Gamma and Reiner Crater (not my image):

I've been doing a bit of research into the feature I mention above, Reiner Gamma and it is quite fascinating. It is the best example of what is known as a lunar swirl. I came across this nice little LRO movie about this feature:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Reiner_Gamma_vid.webm

Fairly readily visible in most scopes as well

I've come in now with more cloud arriving.

On the moon I finished my session with a look at the interesting pale feature Reiner Gamma which runs, or wriggles, past the crater Reiner. Very odd feature comprising of pale and darker material. Apparently it has no thickness to it and a strong magnetic field.

Finished off with a pleasing split of Zeta Hercules which had risen out of the Bristol light glow into steadier sky.

Nice session considering that it was raining from quite thick cloud 3 hours ago. I was using my 100mm F/9 refractor tonight but not an achromat I'm afraid.

Reiner Gamma and Reiner Crater (not my image):

I have a clear spell here now as well. Seeing not quite as good as a couple of nights ago but still nice.

Interesting to see how features observed two days ago with shadow in them look now they are fully illuminated.

Aristarchus is blazing white tonight. The steaks of impact melt material can still be seen running up the inner walls of the crater though.

Sirsalis Rille looks nice too at the edge of the Oceanus Procellarum.

30 minutes ago, John said:

Unless I doze off !!!

Wide awake now - It's cleared earlier than predicted !

And my report is ....... it looks pretty much the same to my eye as it has for the past few nights

Nice to see it again anyway.

Nice Stu

It's just cleared here so I'm off out for a look myself !

Just now, 7170 said:

We look forward to the report in a few hours then. 😀

Unless I doze off !!!