jabberwocky

Unfortunately I can't make it, feel free to put someone on my pitch if needed.

You won't be in anyone's way, everyone is very friendly. Just remember to keep white light to an absolute minimum, little things like disengaging indicators when locking/unlocking cars, turning off interior lights or covering them with red film goes a long way. People will be more than happy for you to look through their telescopes, chat with them etc. Jaffa cakes help.

just booked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, first one since SGL7. Got a motorhome now so a bit of luxury but no scope, may have to sort something out by March. I'm only coming for the hog roast anyway!

I'm going round and round as to whether I go the Lunt 60 or quark route to Ha observing and imaging, am i correct in thinking the Lunt is only really for full disk observing and the magnification needed to get get close enough to isolate smaller areas of the sun are beyond the Lunt 60 ? The quark however can be put in one scope for full disk observing and then a longer one for 'zooming' in to different parts of the sun? On another note, for imaging I take it an eq mount is needed to avoid field rotation as per DSO imaging? Or can you use an alt/az mount and then just align the features on each frame, I say 'just' as I hope there is software that does this rather than having to do each one individually.

Blimey may dig mine out of the garage and stick it on the bay

All a bit of a rush this morning, i was going to view from Glastonbury tor but decided that was way too much of a climb with all my camera gear i changed to barrow mump but on looking at the forecast when i got up i decided i needed to head west to avoid the cloud, so ended up on exmoor. drove through cloudy skies and very thick fog to a spot i know and hey presto, clear skies this is my first go at imaging the sun, D7100, sigma 20-200 hsm os, home made baader filter. now totally hooked. I've been thinking about getting a solar scope for ages now but nobody seems to have the new lunt 50mm in stock.

13mm ethos, when I sold all my kit I was tempted to keep my dob and just one ep, the 13mm ethos, but am offer was made I couldn't refuse so everything went.

I used to have the 30mm ES82* for my 1200mm focal length 200p, great ep but totally put in the shade by my 13mm ethos which was just brilliant, if I ever get back into stargazing the first thing I will buy after a new scope will be a 13 mm ethos. At that focal length it rarely left the ep holder

i had mine with me last year, PITA in a tent, never do that again, i think he enjoyed himself, certainly enjoyed the hog roast

I've used both on my old 8 inch dob and found the RACI much easier to use, plus it takes up far less space, the telrad needed to be on a riser and even with that I never liked using it, only design flaw with the RACI is not having the adjustment knobs recessed so I was forever accidentally using them to try to turn it on or off and miss aligning it. The telrad is also a dew magnet.

I have one for my st102, and to be honest I can't really notice any improvement visually, not sure its worth the money, may make images better? Not sure.

Not sure I'd want to tackle the steps down to durdle door beach in the dark, especially by myself, they are now little more than a land slip of rocks. Does have the advantage of a camp site next to it though.

Once you get the hang of the camera it may be worth starting to shoot in raw and then processing in lightroom, this enables you to bring out the full potential of what you shoot, another steep learning curve though so take your time. Oh and YouTube is great for tutorial videos

Star Walk, probably the most user friendly night sky app out there.

How about staggering the sales so those of us who have made plans to be available on the date that's been advertised( and still is) for months can still buy on Sunday?