Ratlet

Depends what you want to image.

You can get pretty far with a 135mm to 300mm telephoto for nebula etc.  Shorter focal lengths will make everything easier in terms of tracking/guiding too.  These were all taken with either a 200mm takumar or 300mm Tair 3 telephoto lens.

Got up at 0300 but it was cloudy so went back to bed.  When I left at 0500 it had cleared up but pretty light, despite this Orion was up in the South East and Jupiter was very prominent.  I'll need to shift the binos into the car again!

Even more surprised to see Venus on my drive to work.  Just less than 10° off the horizon.

I can't help but think that Orion and Venus just left....

Very keen to swing the dob at Orion one morning.

4 hours ago, apaulo said:

did you sell the morph.

No, I picked it up in the recent sale and with inflation it'll never be cheaper than that.

Part of the reason I bought it was to see what a top end eyepiece was like and it is very much brilliant, but for where I am in my astro journey I don't need that level of quality to enjoy the views. 

I'm only a year into observing, but in another 5 years I might outgrow my Starguiders and replace them with morphs, but right now they are perfect for me.

I like this video.  I think you and me have a similar attitude to eyepieces.  Doesn't need to be good, but good enough.

My budget brand was the best Starguiders and where I've got them, I don't feel a need to replace them.  Very much good enough.  I did get the 16mm nirvana which found my limit for edge of field aberration. Also found that I don't like a massive FOV myself.  60-70 is plenty for me.  82° does nothing for me at the moment.

Heck, for some sketching the tight FOV of a plossl is nice.  Everything is right there in front of you.

I would suggest, if someone is into planetary and doesn't wear glasses they should pick up the svbony 3-8mm.  You're essentially getting 5 eyepieces for the price, but with the added benefit of not having to change the eyepiece at high power which can be a frustrating experience at high power.

I did get a Morpheus 17.5mm but honestly I'm just as happy with my BST Starguiders, and they cost 1/4 the price each.  The Morpheus is good, but the Starguiders are definitely good enough.

Nice to see you giving your radar arms a break from tracking the ISS!  Brilliant images.  Jupiter looks incredible and you don't often see Uranus look round!

My honor 20(my dedicated phone for skysafari, red cellophane stuck over the screen) is a bit hit and miss.  Gets a good image sometimes, other times it struggles.  Put the app on my pixel 6 but not tried it yet due to cloud.

Need to test the pixel 6 to see if it is better.  I'm waiting for the update that lets you use the Starsense with skysafari and I believe doing so consumes another code.

I love these.  Must give it a try at some point

26 minutes ago, Merkhet said:

There are some proper weather wimps here.

The late Sir Patrick would be turning in his grave if he could here some of you.

I lost count of the times we heard him tell us of some astronomical event when he declared "We were clouded out here at Selsey."  It didn't stop him carrying on.

🙂

I've been watching some of the old Sky at Night and Patrick seemed to be a cloud magnet for a lot of major events in the Northern Hemisphere.

Managed to get about 30 seconds on Jupiter with the 10" this morning.  Found it with the 12mm and it hid behind a cloud by the time I got the 8mm in.  Managed to briefly get it through the cloud (light cloud makes a brilliant filter imho) before i gave up to go to work.

Really good seeing and it has fairly whet my appetite!  Nice we morning wake up.

Fantastic images.  What was the capture process/camera?

I'd quite like some more variety on the zoom front.  Smaller ranges of focal like the 3-8mm (so 9-14, 15-20, etc) with the constant(ish) and 60°(ish) FOV, minimal refocusing that the 3-8mm has.  A smidge more eye relief would be appreciated (don't Mind it being short for planets, but for DSO sketching a bit more eye relief is good).  I can see the cost getting beefy though, especially at the longer focal lengths.

If they could do all that and have a quality of view like the BST Starguiders I'd be a happy chappy.

I like the adapter.  Looks robust and definitely not heath-Robinson (reminds me of some of the stuff the engineer at work used to make).  I just use a 3D printer as my tool working is very agricultural, but years of computer gaming have given me some precise mouse clicks.

I'm another sky tourist.  The last year of observing (I think it's about a year since I started) has also been learning astronomy.  I've really enjoyed getting a feel for the kit and understanding the details.  I'm not contributing science but I'm certainly getting a better understanding of some aspects, although little of it has been space itself.

I'm going to resurrect this thread since it's got a catchy title.

I'm pretty much sold on getting one of these.  Having recently experience a refractor (celesteon LT80) and a bortle 3 site I'm pretty much sold on this being grab and go-able in a car.

My question is airlines (family go to the med/canaries once a year).  The scope is 67cm long, carry on is 55cm max.  Would it be possible to remove the focuser to get the scope to fit in a carry on bag, say 55x40x20cm?  It's a very sporadic use, but I doubt I'll get authorisation for a second refractor.

The alternative would be to move down slightly in size to a 90mm though I'm not sure on a scope which is comparable to the Starfield in quality for the same price (maybe holding out for a megrez 90?)

TIA

15 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

Hi Gost

Hope it has a "Shoot the StarLink Trains" option...........

Michael

Alternatively make it like snake where you have to make as long a train of Starlinks whilst eating DSO's until you blot out the sky.

I picked up the svbony equivalent.  Only managed to image with it the once, but was impressed with the images it punted out.

Also makes a handy Oiii filter for visual for when there isn't enough time to get to imaging.  Or I'm just lazy.

33 minutes ago, josefk said:

Whoops! ...and now i have to get through ~9hrs working from my desk at home while this sits downstairs 🙂

Thoughts and prayers to you mate.  I'm sure I would be setting the Teams background to an image of me sitting at my desk and going downstairs for a play.

I was trying to figure out what ASAN was...

Great image.  I love this field with the deerlick cluster.  The more you look the more galaxies you see.

Final revisions.

I tried the Flat bottom design out and it made getting into the bolt on the finder shoe a bit awkward.  I've sloped the base now so it is easer to access.  Also modified the dovetail so there is an additional 2mm height for screwing together.  Makes it a lot easier to access the bolt.

The only downside I've found with using the low power eyepiece instead of a finder is that you get so many stars it can be difficult sometime to figure out where the heck you are.

That being said, I've hardly ever used a finder scope and have been using a 32mm plossl in lieu of a finder since I picked up my quickfinder.  In fact for a while the 32mm plossl was my most used EP.  Love it.

I have had struggles with the AZ-GTI but I've found most of them can be solved once I've aligned by first going to a bright star near the target of interest first.  If the goto misses I can line up on that and resync.  It then usually pootles on over to the target within the 32mm FOV.

There was one up on Printables already but having tried it, it was a bit rough (didn't fit well, edges were a bit sharp) so I've done a more refined version.  Friction fit's pretty well and pretty darn solid.  Dovetail and bracket are separate so you could really mount it to anything that'll take an M5 bolt.

STL can be found here:

https://www.printables.com/model/559841-starsense-explorer-finder-shoe-mount

One thing to point out is that the top face and the internal bottom face are at an angle and if you print this 'normally' ie with the bottom external face on the print plate, then the internal and top face can look a bit rough.  You can get around this (in prusa slicer) by using the 'print on face' command to select the top face, then rotating it 180 degrees so the bottom is now towards the plate. It will be hovering so print with support on build plate only enabled.  This will align the internal and top face with the print face and give it a nicer finish at the expense of the bottom external face which will be a bit rough, but nobody will see it.

Just now, bosun21 said:

Why didn't you use the proper Starsense unit that came with the LT80? I bought two of the magnets from Amazon (incase that's the magnet you are referring to). This balances everything on my 12", that's the Starsense unit, phone, RACI and heavy 30mm eyepiece.

I used the actual Starsense unit, it's the holder that I've 3D printed.  I don't want to remove the holder itself from the LT80 so I've just downloaded one of these as it costs about 80p to 3D print (this design works but is a bit rough and the screw is on the wrong side).  The bulk of the balance issues are coming from the dew shield and the single magnet I've got doesn't have the weight to offset it.  Just need to adjust where the tube is balanced to account for the shield and it'll be singing a dream.

Had the opposite of most last night, apps said no (so did the met) but I had a feeling it would be clear so launched the 10" Dob out to cool.  Fitted it with AstroEssentials dew shield and the Starsense unit in a 3D printed holder (I'm redesigning it because the non chamfered edges are actually quite sharp and unpleasant to hold).  The balance of the dob was awful as I didn't have time/inclination to adjust the position of the Dob on the alt axis and I didn't have enough weight in the magnet to sort it that way so I just tightened the clutches right up.  Will get it today.

I'm in Angus so just to the North of the Awful seeing that plagued most.  Transparency and seeing were both good and once it got dark I could pick out all the stars of Ursa Major.  Yet again I had no clear plan and mostly just played with the Starsense app to see what I could see.

It was a good night, but mostly testing and going for a 360 degree sweep of the sky (I had 4 hours sleep the night before and had to get the kids off to school solo today).  I hit the usual suspects (M13, M92, M57, M27) but was unable to see anything conclusive in the Veil Nebula or the Crescent nebula.  I did see M29 and M56 which were both firsts.  The Cats Eye Nebula was next and was very bright in its central region.  Double Cluster and Andromeda were next and both were excellent.  I feel that tehre is better colour with the Dob than the 130PDS, but perhaps I'm just more sensitive as I could easily see different star colours in the Double Cluster where as before I never really noticed it.

I looked at a few more things but my brain was rapidly turning to mince and I was in danger of falling asleep behind the wheel.  Saturn remained stubbornly behind my house (even when it is above the house it is so low it skirts the roof) so I called it a night.

The Starsense performed very well.  It still struggles sometimes with finding it's location when low down which I suspect is because of the old phone I'm using (Honor 20).  I'll try installing the software on the pixel 6 and see how that performs.  The issue can largely be resolved though by just moving up until it gets a lock on something and then dipping down.  I'm looking forward to the hopeful role out of just being able to use the Starsense in SkySafari as that will male my life a bit easier as I've got reticules setup and I can configure some lists.  I think my next project is going to do some double stars and see how that goes.

I was out last night with an LT80 and some non-astronomy friends (testing Starsense) and whilst satellites are a pain in the rear they also drew everyone in.  They loved spotting them and following them across the sky and it often led them to new things to look at.

I think if you've not observed at the sky before they're pretty neat.  Obviously a short lived phenomena.