RobertI

Best of luck Stu, hope you finally catch the flame, 🤞

First session in a while. Beautifully transparent, a fair amount of sky glow and wobbly seeing. Out with the 102ED plus 17.5mm Morpheus plus dew straps. Sub-zero temps but ski jacket, thermals and warm boots kept me toasty for the whole 90 minutes. My main goal was to try out my new Hb filter. After thoroughly dark adapting and using an observing hood, I spent a good thirty minutes trying to see the Horsehead. A bit ambitious perhaps, but I was actually quite pleased, although I was not close to seeing it, there was distinct nebulosity in the right area and in the right direction, which was not visible in any other filters. I have to confess, I was hallucinating seeing it at times! I learned the starfield well and have hopefully taken my first step on the quest for the HH. I’ll try with the 8” sometime. Sigma Orionis looked lovely nearby and I was surprised to see the faint fourth member at just x40 mag. Seeing was too awful for planetary or challenging doubles, so I scanned for some old favourite “two in a view”. M97 was clearly seen, and much better with the OIII and UHC filters, but no sign of nearby M108 in the low murk. Higher up in the darker skies, M81 and M82 were spectacular and benefitted from increased magnification, M82 especially so. M35 and its small companion cluster looked wonderful. The Morpheus is such a lovely eyepiece, so immersive and foible-free, made observing a joy. Nice to be out again.

Wonderful pic. With your 4x4 it really looks like you were on a “Sky Safari”!

Really very sad to hear this news. John was a big presence on this forum - knowledgeable, humorous and always hit the right tone with his posts. You’d never see John getting involved in arguments, he was all about the astronomy. We will all miss him. Condolences to you and you family @thunderbird02 and thank you for taking the time to let us know.

What a wonderful scope, love Newts and that’s a beaut. Interesting focuser, does this ‘transverse’ design have any advantages over the traditional design?

Agreed, it’s a brilliant match, almost like the AZ4 was made for a 4” F7 scope. The sturdiness is really helped by the excellent 1.75” tripod. Regularly use at x180 for viewing planets and it’s solid and nice to push around. And a lot lighter than my Skytee + 2” tripod too.

A fascinating history for this scope, very interesting read. I think the majority of the value of this scope is probably in its provenance!

Has anyone tried this method to clean their objectives? In some countries, if you get grit in your eye, you go to visit your local ‘doctor’ who will probe your eyeball with their tongue until they find the offending particle and then slurp it out. Apparently a very effective method. 😆😆

Nice comparison Nigella. I wonder what amateurs will be capable of in another 100 years? Will the concept of telescopes and cameras seem rather quaint!

Truly amazing. 👍

The first one is a very popular scope on this forum, also available branded as Altair Astro, Tecnosky and Starfield. I have the Altair Astro version and have been very happy with it, its high power planetary and lunar capabilities have been a revelation. Perhaps lacking in aperture for deep sky, but not sure the 110 would show a huge amount more. The 102ED is now my main observing scope. I have no experience of the 110 and have never done a direct comparison, so I am doubtless biased towards the 102 .🙂

Great observing session, some nice objects there. If you loved what you saw, then you have a lot more to look forward to. Yes I agree totally about the Hyades looking like the Predator laser pointer!

Looks like you got it Phil, amazing, we’ll done!! 🥳 It’s great to know it can be seen in a smaller scope, and will encourage me to keep trying ….I shall continue to wait for that rare night of good seeing.

Hi, I’m a bit confused, why do you want to put the Skywatcher lens in the Helios tube? You’d have to shorten the tube considerably I think and the Skywatcher objective lens would not perform any better. Have I missed something?

Nice Reggie!

I have a spare slot on my visual filter wheel, the consensus from fellow SGL’ers was that an Hb could be fun, looking forward to finding out…..

I'm afraid it's ruined Stu, if you want to give it to me I might be able to find a use for it. 🤭 Seriously though, good job, a clean lens is a thing of beauty.

I have to confess a similar frustration to you Dave - even when I decide to give the moon a go, it still sometimes frustrates by being too low or too full! And it seems to hang around for so long. But when I got my binoviewers, I was blown away by the views of the moon and it did trigger an awakening of interest - I started to track down some more challenging or unusual features like domes. But my interest has waned again. I think the key for me is to do some proper planning, and a good book or lunar resource can really help - looks like you've found a goodun'. I found a Lunar 100 list ordered by lunar day which also refers to Rukl charts which happen to be in my Colins Concise Guide to Moon and Mars, so that should help me plan. I'd also like a nice lunar map for my wall, to remind me it's there! We can do this together Dave! 😄

I think you’re right, the bino-bandit made fogging happen quicker and I also found that I couldn’t help touching the bino-bandit which induced vibration at very high mags, so possibly only for use when deep sky viewing at lower mags and with the dew heaters. It’s not really needed for planetary and lunar anyway to be honest so I should probably have removed it.

Great news Alan. 👍

Nice clear night, but it’s just a humid hell, bino eyepieces instantly fogged and by the time I had attached the eyepiece dewstraps, the objective was starting to dew - a very rare occurrence. I’d run out of dew heater sockets so time to pack away and order a 4-way dew heater controller! Mars looked very good tonight…briefly.

Great story, thanks for sharing Mike.

How did you wangle that Mike? 😮 What a wonderful experience. I did have the pleasure of having a pint with Patrick after he gave a talk at our local club over forty years ago. As you say a perfect gentleman and gave his time so freely to the astronomy community.

Although I tried to define EAA above, I think the subject of what constitutes EAA, and more controversially which forum one should post in, has been the subject of some extremely heated debates in the past, both on SGL and CN. The whole debate is probably best avoided, especially as we just don’t have enough posters for EAA, NV and VS for it to be a problem on SGL. I think if people feel an EEA contribution is of more value to imaging folk, then they may politely suggested that the poster also posts in the imaging forum, but I can’t recall any issues of this sort recently. Keep doing what you’re doing @fwm891, it’s good stuff.

Well done! It’s great sharing the night sky like that isn’t it? I have been meaning to arrange a ‘sidewalk session’ for my neighbours for some time, need to just to it…..