melsmore

Sirius B in my Vixen SD115S. Never had a hint of it in my 8" newt nor C8. Never tried with an aperture mask though.

Or if anyone can suggest a mini pier or extension tube with photo 3/8" and height of around 38-40 cm.

Hi All

I have a ZWO TC40 Tripod with Sky-Watcher AZ mount Extension Tube, on top of which sits a Giro II Mini mount with TS80APOF6 telescope and counter weight, say <6Kg in all. Its a bit too close to the ground for me. Does anyone know if its OK to double-stack the Extension Tubes - or will I get too much vibration? Has anyone done this with similar weight equipment? I'll use it for my visual grab and go at powers up to 160x. I tried using it sitting on a low naughty step, which was OK getting my eye to the eyepiece, but then had trouble getting up again ☹️

Siril will, I believe, also process .SER files. Although I had some trouble with debayer with it.

Yes, I think I’m around then.

You've definitely got the hang of this now. Excellent images. Wish I could get to try some images. It’s clear outside now, but very windy.

Thanks @jonbosley, nice picture. They're on my lunar list and looks like I have a wider observation window than I thought.

5 hours ago, jonbosley said:

Here is a recent observation report I made in average seeing.

Mons Gruithuisen Domes Lunation Day 11 Observation 4” f11 Refractor 204x
Mons Gamma the dome on the west side is casting a shadow to the southwest. The north eastern part of the dome is in sunlight with the summit also brightly illuminated. No summit crater was  visible.
Mons Delta  is casting a more prominent shadow to its southwest towards mons Gamma with the summit a slightly darker albedo than mons Gamma. The isolated raised highland  is well seen to the south of Mons Delta, this is casting in westerly shadow over the newly named Sinus Viscositatis. The crater Gruithuisen P located just east of mons Delta is well seen with much of its floor in shadow.
The third dome NW is much smaller but could be clearly observed just to the west side of Mons gamma. Mons NW has a bright illuminated summit and like its larger neighbor casting a small shadow towards the southwe

Do you know exactly when this observation was made?

Fantastic! Looks like you got them to me.

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Very nicely done, colour balance is good. Either the seeing was very poor (you hinted at that), or you didn't quite get tight focus.

You' may well be right: my rig is just over 11kg on a Vixen GPD2 (rated for 10kg). Focusing and setting the ADC is a wobbly challenge. It's alright for visual but ..... 🤔 I think it's time to sell some scopes to fund an upgrade.

Another attempt at Jupiter, this time using the barlow tube rather than attaching it directly to end of the ADC. This should have given me closer to F28 compared to F21 - better for my 5.6 micron pixel size?

Processed in astrosurface (alignment, selection and wavelets), with registax for colour balance and Gimp for adding the text and curves/levels. I think its better than my 24/11/2023 attempt - no grid pattern, and the seeing wasn't as good this time either.

I think (hope) that a Christmas Elf will be preparing my one for despatch shortly. Has anyone tried two of these BVed yet?

1 hour ago, catburglar said:

@lunator I did look at the BAA/VSS web pages - but the AAVSO pages seemed a bit more coherent with links / guides that went from start to finish. I’d hope to go back to the BAA (I like to keep it local 🙂 ) and contribute something meaningful when I’ve got a bit better. At this point I’m just seeing if I can get to a useful level of precision without needing major upgrades to my equipment.

I started with exoplanets because they sound exotic…However, it seems like similar techniques apply to study of CV’s of which there there are also lots of fairly bright targets that can show clear results from a single session…whenever the weather cooperates.

To me this seems like an almost ‘instantly rewarding’ observational activity, much more so than monitoring many other variable star types- I might get hooked.

Try the BAA exoplanet section pages for loads of info and tutorials. Exoclock project may well want your results posted to them too. 🙂

The grid pattern seems to have come from using 1.5 drizzle in AS!3. But I can't get the image any better, as I don't think I had the ADC aligned properly. I had a further three AVIs from the night, which I ran through WINJUPOS image de-rotation, but the end result was even worse. I need to get some better data. 

Thanks for the help.

I used raw8 and debayered in AS3.

The moons are Ganymede (close left) and Io. I thought Io would be more yellow, 🤔

This is my first attempt to image Jupiter through my new APM140F7APO. Using Sharpcap, DBK21AUS618, ZWO ADC and 3x Barlow.

Processed in AS!3, Registax and Gimp. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing yet, so any advice would be appreciated.

That's really excellent, well done!

10 minutes ago, John said:

As I have been comparing a number of different short FL eyepieces over the past couple of nights, it has been the extent of the glare / scatter of light around Saturn that has been the main thing that varied in their performance. None were notably bad in this respect but I noticed that the abbe orthos and, a little surprisingly, the 6mm and 4.7mm Ethos that consistently showed the least. 

I've found glare / scatter control has been a significant factor in being able to see faint planetary moons close to their parent planets disks and also cracking challenges like spotting the "Pup" star, Sirius B. 

I'm looking forward to having a look at Neptune's moon Triton and trying to spot Uranus's brightest 4 moons when those planets are better positioned from my back yard.

 Did you try a svbonny 3-8 and TV 3-6 zooms? I'd be interested to know how well they do.

APM140 pointing at Rasalgethi

Iapetus made an attractive pairing with TYC 5807-0033-1 at 2023-09-03.23:30 UTC. APM140 x245 (4mm Nirvana). 

1 iapetus 

2 TYC 5807-0033-1

3 Titan

4 Rhea

5 HD 212113 (which I've drawn too far East ). Here's a poor sketch.

Certainly no one else on COBS has used anything smaller than a 4" scope on it....

The magnitude seems to vary rapidly. Following from COBS database

Excellent sketches. 

2 minutes ago, John said:

I used to have a Vixen GP-DX. It was rock solid with my Tak F/9 100mm and my ED120 F/7.5 but my 130mm F/9.2 triplet was just a little too much for it, when high powers were being used. Shame really because the 130 / GP-DX combination really looked nice 🙂

 

You're probably right, I need to try it a bit more under proper darkness and at higher magnification. Then decide on half-pillar or new mount. I hope it'll just do it, as I really like my GPD2. 🤞But it is at the very top end weight wise and quite long .....