Ratlet

6 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

A telecentric has the same magnifying power as a Barlow but without increasing eye relief. 

Gah, got my terminology the wrong way round there, it was the eye relief I was thinking of.  Cheers for the correction. Barlow increases but telecentric doesn't increase the eyerelief?

It has been a long day 😂

39 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Perhaps try a quality Barlow or telecentric magnifier ahead of it to use the 5mm to 8mm settings at higher powers to take advantage of the more generous eye relief at those focal lengths?

I feel I should know this, but a Barlow will extend the focal length whilst a telwcentric will maintain it?

I had the mirror out of the Stellalyra so I could put some spacers between the cell and the fan (just felt it was too close to do much good) and loosen the mirror clips.

When I put it back together I noticed that there was a fair bit of play between the mirror and the cork pads on the cell in the X/Y axis.  I seem to remember that my 130pds was a snug fit so just want to check if this is anything to be concerned about or needing rectified.  Can't imagine the mirro would love much during a session and I normally use a barlowed laser at the start of a session.

16 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

Nothing to report yet, it is supposed to be clear this evening so i am going for it.  The scope and eyepieces will be all cooled down and ready to go by dark.  This will be the first clear night i have been able to get out for more then a half hour since November.  Unfortunately i pulled the mirror out of the 16 inch for cleaning yesterday, so no big light bucket tonight 

Looking forward to the report.  That looks like a fantastic observing spot.  Really like the wiring you have done on the dob.  What all are you powering?

Welcome to the forum bud!

19 hours ago, russ.will said:

This means for the first time in my astro journey I'm enjoying astronomy for the sake of it and not worrying about what it could be like for a few $$$ more.

Welcome back.  Love the attitude in the quote! 

Welcome to the forum, you'll find lots of help here!

I've found with some doubles the longer I observe them the less colour I can see.  Try moving off from them and back on. 

@mikeDnight I'm going to shamelessly steal your doubles sketching technique.  Seems most threads you comment on turn me into one of the seagulls from finding Nemo.

Fantastic sketch.  Really like the difference in shading as you approach the terminator from the limb.

This has inspired me to try out some daytime observing of the planets.

@Don Pensack that's mildly terrifying.  Sounds like a poisoned chalice.  Glad that even at sale prices they're a bit too much for me (not to mention the bigger fact that I don't think I'm good enough an observer to really get the benefit)

Monet is an interesting example of the reliability of eyes.  An equally compelling argument would be that it is possible to observe colour on the moon, just that you can't. 

I did wonder why you said it was psychology earlier, so thanks for clarifying your opinion on how psychology comes into it. 

I don't agree with it, but it is certainly an interesting opinion.

Looking forward to the feedback on the 3-8mm zoom from everyone.  I love mine.

Absolutely loving the dob.  Quick to setup with the sack barrow.

Having used setting circles and the inclinometer with it I'm not sure why these aren't sold as standard with them.  Makes it and absolute dream to use and find objects.

Also featuring the other game changer the astronomy chair.  You can just about see the cushion on it from the mother in law.  Almost worth marrying her daughter just for it!

Much like @bosun21 we had an unexpected bout of clear sky.  I must have not crossed the cloud threshold with the setting circles.  So I took them out and tested them out.

Initial calibration on Polaris easy split with the 16mm Nirvana (x78).  M81 and M82 for a first and unfortunately they were nowhere to be seen.  Woops.  SkySafari was still set for August 2031 (I was checking how Saturn's position changed in the sky each year).  Anyway, sorted it out and whilst they didn't look good due to the moon, they were both more or less in the FOV.  Good Start.  Tried for M51 and whilst there was something there it was incredibly faint against the sky glow.  The Cat's Eye Nebula was up next with the 12mm BST (x104) and UHC filter.  This put up a much better fight against the moon light and was quite bright in averted vision.  I'd say it wasn't quite circular, more light a pinched square ish shape.  M3 was bogging and M65/M66 were visible with averted imagination.

Wrapped up with a couple doubles and got Zeta Cancri (16mm) and Algeiba(12mm) and the Eskimo Nebula.  I'd been at it for 2 hours somehow so decided to call it with that.

All in all a good night.  The setting circles and inclinometer is basically everything I thought goto would be.  The only slight downside is that I have to walk round to the marker to line it up.  Objects were always in the FOV of the 30mm and more often than not in the FOV of the 16mm.  Highly recommended.

I'm going to subscribe.  There isn't enough YouTube content for general astronomy so hoping this will fill the gaping maw in my soul.

Some setting circles for the Dob.  One for the top board and one for the bottom of I so decide to go down that route.

Easy enough to fit the top one.  So be interesting to see how it goes.  There is also some setting circles for the az5 since there was space on the poster.

It's supposed to be hard wearing and water proof.  Not sure how it will last as I can scrape it with a nail and a bit of effort.  Should be good for a test.

27 minutes ago, Ags said:

Looking at the full Moon with my family on a hazy night. My granddaughter wins the internet with this handheld afocal snap of Luna.

They're obviously teaching the kids well in Photography GCSE.

That's a fantastic shot.  Miles better than my feeble attempts!

Despite going down the Dob route I still love the 130pds.  Fantastic visual scope and was my dream scope way back in 2012.  Wee pocket rocket.

Just need to figure out how to mount it to the Dob and I think I'd have the perfect setup.

1 minute ago, Jim L said:

Here’s a parafocal ring in action for those of us who might not have seen one in the wild.  The parafocal ring reduced the inserted eyepiece barrel length from a prism smashing 36.7 mm, to the quite safe 29 mm shown. You can get a set of three rings from FLO here:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-parfocal-rings.html

Quite handy things to have all told, and unlike most astro things they don't cost the earth.

I use mine to do this and make a slightly beefier collar for my laser collimator.

4 hours ago, Mike Q said:

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/what-colour-is-the-moon/

Had a look at Aristarchus tonight (it gets the honour of being the first lunar feature I have observed proper) and yup, it does have a distinctly different colour.  By coincidence I was making notes on the crater and then checked the article and it matched up with my own observations.

The hazy clouds surprisingly did one tonight and left after about 20 minutes.  Against tradition I decided to whip out Turn Left At Orion and actually try and figure out what I was looking at.  Picked the incredibly white crater Aristarchus out towards the limb.  Managed to push the SVBony 3-8mm to 5mm (x250) where the seeing would sporadically allow it to reveal additional detail.  There raised central portion was clearly lit and contrasted against the slightly darker floor.  The illumintated far wall showed variations of light and dark vertical banding.  Herodotus is somewhat less impressive and looked more like a depression than a crater proper.  There is a diamond area projecting west from the crater which is noticably different in shade than the surrounding area, appearing less 'blue' and slightly warmer.

By good luck @Mike Q linked a S@N article on observing colour on the moon and I decided to track it down.  It turned out to be... Aristarchus.  

We've got some fairly thin hazy high atmospheric clouds tonight.  The moon doesn't appear to be overly troubled by them so I'm going to head out and try and figure out what is where.

Google seems to yield lots of hits on mineral moon for this, but visually can you see colour on the moon?

I'm not talking primary colours or anything dramatic, but like really subtle colours, like someone has mixed a tiny amount of rust into a bag of sugar?

I'm sure I'm seeing a rusty/ruddyness to parts of the moon when I've been observing it, but I'm not sure if it's an artifact of the eyepiece/scope/my eyes or if it is legitimate?

The colours are not dramatic.  It's more a sort of 'this area looks redder than that area' sort of thing, it's still grey, but with the slightest hint of a colour.

If you want an idea of how much mars size has changed this website is pretty good:

https://skymarvels.com/infopages/vids/Mars - Current 001.htm

It shows the most variation in size of all the planets if I recall.

20 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Same here.  I'm thinking a harmonic mount would be terrific.  My biggest gripe with regular GEMs is that they require counterbalance weights.  Really?  It's been how many years since harmonic drives became common place in manufacturing robots (with no counterweights), and they're only now making it into astro mounts?

After seeing some of the connectors that are still common in astronomy setups it doesn't surprise me they've been slow to adopt.  £200 for an ipolar that still uses a mini usb!