Chris

This won't win any awards, but it's surprisingly fun seeing what you can ring out of a supermarket webcam. I would love to know a trick for removing the red and blue atmospheric dispersion though!? -Modded Logitech C270 -Skywatcher 150pl -Meade pedestal mount that sometimes tracks a bit. Image below, plus hopefully a slightly educational video about the phases of Venus. I empathise the word slightly.

Wow, you can clearly see where darkness gently fades in at the terminator. Lovely capture!

You really shouldn't be hard on yourself, especially after capturing such a nice phase of Venus

Thanks Bobby, it's the best I've managed with a 6" Newt I've started leaning towards more ambient music for my channel, it just seems to fit astronomy and space quite well. I've also become a little OCD about timing changes in the music to the changing images. Glad you liked it

Thank you, very kind Honestly that was quite good seeing comparatively speaking, it was much worse the other day! lol

Ah I recon it's my rusty Registax skills lol It's been a while. I might watch a couple of tutorials just to see if I'm doing anything a bit different. I think I know what you mean, the AVI looks great to me, but one or two of the stacks look a teeny bit mushy. Then again it could be that I was imaging at 3000mm of focal length with a revelation Barlow. Maybe with 6" of aperture I just ran out of resolution also? Oh, then there's the cheap Tesco webcam I used lol

Thank you I didn't check collimation on the night, but I collimated the scope the time before and the doughnut was concentric in the centre of a Plossl. I can't imagine it's far out, but I'm very interested to hear what you've noticed?

Yeah, really pleased thanks Rob, a much better outing this time I think they should be stacked in colour? Registax points out that it thinks the footage is colour with a little notice that pops up. It then asks for confirmation which I remember doing.

This was the second time out Lunar imaging with the Logitech webcam, 150pl f/8, and the vintage Meade pillar mount. First time out didn't go well, the mount wasn't tracking and the seeing was bad so not only could I not stack any images, even the AVI footage looked poor. Second time out the other night was a completely different story! With the scope better balanced on the Meade mount (works on a friction plate on RA making balance critical), and much better seeing, I not only managed to get still AVI footage for stacking, but I could even Barlow the focal length to a massive 3000mm for real 'up close' images. I've gone from being worried to impressed. Footage and images below:

These look lovely, liked more formal less bling WO Zenithstar's. They look to be of a similar spec, so maybe priced similarly, or slightly less if we're lucky.

The 6" has 96% reflectivity on it's mirrors, whilst the 8" has 99%. Not sure why the difference? You're saying the CC is better for lunar?

38% for the 6", pretty much the same as a 6" SCT. Could be a cheaper option than a SCT without the dew issues, but I'm sceptical for some reason.

I had first light (imaging wise) with my new 150pl and modded Logitech webcam the other night. Well, I did have a peak at Orion visually previously to this, and that was a treat as the seeing was very good then. I have the scope aboard a vintage Meade pillar mount and did have a bit of trouble getting the thing to track properly, although I didn't have sight of the pole star so probably user error with my PA. It just means I've got AVI footage rather then stacked images but I kind of like videoing stuff as well, so it's all good. both the Moon and Venus were low down scraping the tops of the houses so there were thermals as well as a thick slab of atmosphere. Not the best footage but it's something, and the crescent Moon did look nice and Venus was super bright in the sky! The AVI footage is in my video below.....it's just what I do now days. Don't worry I've kept it short-ish if you want to see the 150pl footage

Hi Mark, welcome back to SGL. I'm also in Suffolk

Happy new year to everyone on SGL and at FLO! Wow, 2020! It doesn't feel that long ago we were staring 2000 in the face, and with all the y2k computer crashing business. I wonder if the 20's will bring a return of the Charleston? 100th anniversary

You'll also save quite a bit of money opting for the 150p Nice report Robert! and have you thought about running a dew band from a power bank? I do this with my camera gear sometimes and just strap the power bank to a tripod leg.

Thanks Alan, and you're not alone, I had a few last night. Very sensible going with the bins if you were a bit wobbly lol I was rewarding myself for cooking for 8 on xmas day. We only have a small oven so it took some co ordinating. A nice relaxing end to the day getting out under the stars with wine

I'm afraid not, it's a case of making small adjustments and seeing how it effects the defocused star. Not as easy as an f5 but it only took an extra minute. On the plus side I expect it will hold focus for a long time, It's not a worry

The f/8 was absolutely rock solid on the Meade pedestal mount, not even a sign of wobble. I don't think a Skytee would be too far off it. I did own one once and it held a 1200mm focal length Bresser 127L pretty well. Honestly these 150mm f/8's are a steal for 185 quid if you can mount them!

lol don't feel guilty on xmas day mate, you've done good this year with observing I did need to double check what I was seeing when I spotted the E component. It's much fainter than the first four components as you know, but it was so well defined it kind of popped out at me! The whole street is lit up like a literal xmas tree so I was surprised to see the neb at all to be honest

For sure It was a pleasure to use once out. The only pain was obviously moving it which the locking wheels will solve.

I meant to add! The mount was easy to operate and rock solid. It tracked fairly well with a rough PA, enough to keep objects in a low power eyepiece for a good while and at 100x for a good minute. Really pleased with the mount. p.s my house above is not lit up by a camera flash, but by the street light next to the house lol

With it being Christmas day it was tempting to just stay in and drink wine! Then again it happens to be one of the clearest nights in quite some time so first light just had to be done. Now I carried this setup as a whole due to me needing to bodge the OTA to the mount, so I braced myself and managed to move the whole setup the few metres needed to clear the garage and open up the sky. I will be ordering some wheels with a locking mechanism for the legs I think. Anyway, once out I looked around and could see good old Orion well placed above and beyond the street lights, so I used Betelgeuse to check collimation and look at the optics Fresnel rings inside and outside of focus. I used a 25mm Plossl for this and needed to tweak collimation just a touch, but I was really pleased at how identical the defocused star looked both inside and outside of focus. Well defined uniform rings either side which is very promising Once set I of course trained the finderscope on M42, the Great Orion nebula and could immediately see the familiar green grey, well mainly grey arc of gas surrounding the tight trapezium stars through the main scope. Contrast was impressive considering the four local street lights and plethora of xmas lights. Let's put it this way my expectations were initially low. But I was pleased with what I could see and there was a decent amount of nebula on show. What was more impressive to me were the stars! They were 'refractor' tight....going from my distant memory of once owning ED refractors. I would really like to put this scope next to an ED apo and actually remind myself of the difference, but tonight all I could think of is how tight and sharp the stars were, and how dark the back ground sky was once I got the mag up to around 100x. Anyway, I started off at 48x with the 25mm Plossl and the trapezium was piercingly sharp, the surrounding stars and nebulae gave great context. After enjoying that I moved up the mag..... 20mm plossl, 15mm plossl, then 12mm at 100x, at which point the faint E component of the trap came into view. As I moved up the mag the sky got darker and the Orion nebulae started to pop even more, and my dark adaption was also increasing probably. Next object was the seven sisters M45, and to be fair I really needed a 32mm plossl for this which I don't currently have. I feel this object is much better at really low mags and with a wide FOV. Not the strength of a scope with 1200mm off focal length, better for 20x binoculars. Looking around and being a bit rusty about what's where, I did have a go at M31 but I might have needed to move the scope further from the house to see it clear of the roof (that's my excuse for not being able to find it anyway ) Other than that I had a quick scan around near Taurus and saw a beautiful but faint carbon star which was a treat. At that point, content that the scope was a gooden I then decided to venture back in for wine and rubbish crimbo telly

Can you exchange it? The Astro FI is probably the worst setup I've ever tried, and I've tried a lot of scopes!

Hi, I've reviewed the Astro FI 90 for my YouTube channel. 1st question: Do you use Android or Apple devices? I tried various android devices and never managed to get my example to align. Apparently these telescopes work better with Apple devices. Being sincerely honest with you, I would just return it and buy a goto system with a hand controller. Having said this I've heard good things about the Skywatcher AZ-GTI which uses a tablet or phone, so if you're dead set on tablet control I would give that one a go