Chris

It's a very expensive dream lol But I was thinking once the price of the bodies drop a little more a MF Fuji would be fantastic for astro landscapes on a tripod or on a sturdy startracker with adapted vintage medium format lenses. I think some vintage Canon lenses cover MF, I saw a YT video about that. I understand the MF size argument and I'm in the camp that says anything that's larger than FF is medium format. The reason I think this is because 0.79 crop is barely affordable and practical for amateurs in terms of cost and size of lenses and camera bodies. I think to differentiate between 0.79 and 0.64 crop we would need a name like cropped medium format and things are confusing enough as it is. For me at least lol

I take it this is for visual if on an AZ4 but what areas of visual are you most into? For Lunar and planetary I would go for the StellaMira hands down. I think the qaulity of the optics will outweigh the 20mm aperture difference for these objects as you won't be able to really push the TS on planets because it will have a bit of colour fringing. For DSO's I'd go for the TS because at low powers you can make more use of that little extra aperture because the colour fringing wont show at low powers. It's weird that you should mention these two scope because these are two scopes I would also really like too! The TS for a spot of DSO imaging and the Stella Mira for the pure enjoyment of observing the moon and planets

P.s. I would love to try some astro stuff with one of Fuji's digital medium format cameras. Can you imagine!

I have some experience shooting astro with a Fuji XT100. I'll dig a videos I made regarding imaging with Fuji for you to look at. I did find it to have a very low noise sensor plus a bit better Ha sensitivity compared to most stock cameras, but you can decide for yourself, the image from the video was with 60 sec subs ISO800. I really like tactile controls on some fuji cameras and the colour science is spot on straight out of camera, but one thing to mention for astro is that you need to convert Fuji's RAW files to FITS or TIFF with one of the free online file converters before they will work with Deep Sky Stacker.

I think this is it, I need a little heater in there I have solar lighting installed, but I'm currently trailing the power cable from the other side of the garden where the shed used to be. I've given some thought to solar and wind power but I wont elaborate on this thread as I'm steering away from the OP's subject.

Physics wise is it that straight forward? Don't we need to take into account the thermal properties of the materials within the shed? E.g. my OTA is colder than the wood walls and the air and it does develop condensation without my electric blanket covering it. My obsy is a bit different to most in that it also has windows. These are also colder than the walls and surroundings and thus collect condensation on the inside during damp weather. There is a material temp gradient within the shed to cause condensation I'm guessing. The electric blanket is doing a great job though, just not on the windows lol

I personally have pretty good ventilation in my obsy, but it doesn't work so well when the air outside is so damp. It's been a very wet winter so far don't you think. The toy de humidifier has been replaced with the an electric waterproof pet blanket

Good reminder! Another tip is don't buy a cheap de humidifier! I've literally just binned a de humidifier today after deeming it useless. It was a cheap one from the supermarket but it promised to remove 300ml of moisture a day when in fact it removed around 10ml a day if lucky, even indoors! lol As much good as a chocolate frying pan.

Thanks, no voiceovers on this one, just the text on the slides.

This combo looks utterly perfect! so just for future reference is that a mount zero and report 312?

Oh yeah! that's not so good then. EDIT: just realised the R&P version also doesn't have a finder shoe.

Oh blimey 'want syndrome' is setting in again! Very keenly priced for the spec and premium build quality.

Thanks Jeremy, it had been a little while since I'd used the Heritage. It's still good

The Baader UV/IR cut really does darken the sky for daytime/Dusk lunar imaging! Camera ZWO385mc at native focal length.

I've not forgotten about the mighty Heritage 150p, It's still a table top beast! Just a quick video this time though as I need to fit in home schooling again.

You should get 2/3rds of the new price for it Lee. That's the general rule of thumb for equipment in very good condition. Maybe slightly more as equipment is thin on the ground at the moment.

If you're open to having a goto, the AZ GTI might be a good shout, I've heard good things about it You should get away with something like an ED80 on one of those as well, or maybe even something like a 130pds Newtonian which is both an affordable but well respected imaging scope : )

Hi Lee, the Skywatcher 102 R is a vey nice beginner scope for wide field and deep sky object viewing, and as you can see you can do very basic imaging with it, although it's by no means an imaging setup. As pointed out it's an achromatic refractor so there will be chromatic aberration (purple halos thus bloated stars on images) and the mount being very light weight and the tracking being very basic means you'll get modest exposure times for imaging, but good enough tracking for observing. The RA motor drive only uses 2xAA batteries so these need changing quite regularly. For the money it really is a very good package indeed, you couldn't expect more for the cost. Although, If you're even slightly more serious about the imaging side of things and you live in a first floor flat I would be very tempted to save for a Skywatcher Star Adventurer mount and a small 70ED refractor. If you're mainly interested in observing deep sky and dabbling with the Moon and planets and some very basic imaging then the 102 R will be fine,. It's a noticeably lighter setup than 150p EQ3. If you're into planets mainly they do a 4" Mak version of the StarQuest also. Everything depends on budget of course. p.s I think you might have posted on my YT channel also so I'll check that out in the morning

Many years ago I used a 300D for astrophotography and it was slow to do anything, lots of buffer time. Very small screen and a very low MP count of around 6 mega pixels. Also lots of image noise! Look for a camera with live view, this will really help with focusing in a number of situations. Old Canon DLSR's with Live view include the 1000D, 1100D, 40D, and the 450D. I owned the 1100D and 40D, both of which are a massive upgrade compared to the 300D.

It's a similar class of mount only the EXOS2 PMC Eight is belt driven and has proper bearings so you can nail balancing. The default Explore Stars app works well too if you remember to disable your firewall. that one did stump me for a little while.

Hey Steve, well done on getting that sorted and thanks for adding to the information about this mount.

Butterfly effect

My gut feeling is it's not the same test. When we test the general public we use the much more accurate PCR throat swab test.

My brother is a lorry driver, he has a terrible diet but he's slim to average. Also regarding testing of lorry drivers, I know they use the same lateral flow tests as us NHS staff use, which have a 48% efficacy, so are they basing the same type of test from the general public to those taken by the lorry drivers?

Thanks, and no worries I enjoy making Astronomy content