Ratlet

Just now, Louis D said:

Here's the Datyson Moon & Skyglow from ebay for under 3 GBP.  How wrong can you go for that money?

As a fringe benefit, that filter gives a good boost to contrast for planetary viewing (and a great boost when combined with a yellow, if you don't mind the colour cast).

Hello from Scotland!

I think it comes down to how the images is displayed.  Astroinmaging you stack the images and process them after the fact to get the most detailed final product and might image a target for hours.

EAA you are generally stacking live with a bit of stretching applied to get detail out, but not heavy processing.  Time frames are generally shorter per target.

It's the difference between 'good and good enough' in a way

4 hours ago, Don Pensack said:

I just completed the 2023 Eyepieces Buyer's Guide

It is posted here:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/862337-2023-eyepiece-buyers-guide/

It is free to download.

Almost 1700 entries this year, the largest number ever.

You'd need some case to put them in!

I'm going to go for:

1.  Mt Hooker for making the universe so much larger.

2.  Hubble for bringing space to the masses and relentless output.

3.  John Dobson's first scope for bringing astronomy to the masses.

For myself, I usually go with the green is clear enough for imaging, orange is clear enough for observing, assuming they are long stretches.

High cloud can be an issue with the app in my experience.  You can have fairly continuous but thin high cloud and can be pretty okay for observing in.

I don't generally sorry too much about the app unless it's a big band of green all night. But I've devolved into an astronomical scavenger, running out of the house whilst the chips cook because it is currently clear.

4 hours ago, FLO said:

The tripods are new. The Alt-Az mounts are also new, kinda. (We now source both direct from the factory).

Neither are on our website, but they soon will be.

 

We talking actual soon or Skywatcher Soon™?

This was more an accident than design.  I 3D printed up some inserts that allowed my Tair 3 lens to be held by cheapo skywatcher 90mm tube rings. 

They are lined with flocking material for a bit of softness and friction and worked really well to hold the lens securely.  If you've ever held a Tair you'll attest to the fact it weights over 1.5kg!

However I started to look into the zwo tube holder that holds the camera.  Now there is no way I'd try hanging a Tair 3 off the front of an astro cam with no support, but I do a lot of imaging with 200mm lens and just got a 135mm so I needed something different to minimise having to reconfigure my setup constantly.

For my Hypercam 533 I'd need an 80mm I'd insert which... Is exactly the same size as my thin insert for the Tair 3.  A quick check showed this to be true and what's more the small cutout fits nicely around the desiccant cap preventing crushing and allowing it to grip over the front of the camera rather than over the grill. 

Better yet, it also allows me to have one setup configured for all 3 of my imaging lenses as the 200mm and 135mm are light enough to not need additional support where as the Tair 3 can use one of the tube rings and a single insert.

Having tried it out indoors the friction is sufficient that I have no concerns about using it, although I'll probably make a disk to go between camera and lens to act as a stop if it did slip.

Quite chuffed about this and thought I would share.  I'll upload the stl later.

Time to see what all the fuss is about with 82° FOV with a newly purchased 16mm Nirvana.  Massive thanks to everyone who helped me choose it.

Also arrived with a no8 yellow for some testing on planetary/lunar with my higher powers.

And to round it off an svbony guidescope bar which means I can free up a dovetail.  Magic.

Can't comment on those, I got an sv171 (8-24mm) and the sv215(3-8mm).  Svbony do some good zooms.

If you're going to order from AliExpress for them get the sv131 plossl.  Really nice eyepiece for not a lot of money.  Currently my most used eyepiece

2 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Au contraire. Handles are nearly as popular as Taks here.

That's the truth.

11 minutes ago, badhex said:

You can actually use a synscan handset with the AZ-GTi, not sure if that is a suitable option for you? 

That's... that's actually a very good shout.  I just need something to make manually steering the thing more pleasant.  I suspect if I didn't have to contend with the lack of physical buttons on the mobile I would get on better with using the gears to slew it about.

I think a lot of it is just getting used to it.  I had the sweet spot on the AZ5 and got very comfortable with swinging it about bodily and then using the slow mo controls to get it lined up.  I suspect once I get more time with the AZGTI I'll come to get used to it.  But aye, hand paddle would be a massive quality of life improvement.  I wonder if I could get my bluetooth pc game controller to interface with the phone and let me map commands through that?

23 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Why do you end up cropping the 533, what scope are you using it with and what are you taking images of?

But in almost all cases I would see that as a downgrade. 

Adam

 

 

Just more aesthetically pleasing images.  I mostly use 200 and 300mm lenses and for some targets at those focal lengths it just works better to crop it down.

Don't get me wrong though, I do use it full what often too.  It just depends on what I'm imaging.  I'm happy with the pictures either way.

I recently got a 533 based camera and quite often I end up cropping it to the same fov as the 585.  I like my 533, but I don't think I'd be missing a huge amount of i got a 585 instead.

@Whistlin Bob is a bad influence.  Bought my second Tak (ahem) so I can do some 135mm focal length imaging.

Lens turned up in pretty much mint condition.

Managed to snag a quick 15 minutes whilst the tatties boiled for dinner.  Initially wanted to test the st80 so brought the az5.  The finder must have gotten knocked so gave up and put the 130pds on.

Jupiter and the moon mostly.  I'm going to have to invest in a decent lunar observing book.  The zoom makes it really fun to observe as you can go for zoomed in hunting fine detail or a longer focal length for more of a general vista.

Jupiter was good up to about 5 or 6mm but at 130x was whizzing through the FOV. 

I'm going to have to do some thinking on a solution.  The azgti is more stable, can track and can hunt down objects more easily I just don't like steering it.

I need something to give me a bit more leverage so I do t have to push the scope or use my phone for fine adjustment.  Something like the az4.  I need...

A handle.

1 hour ago, bomberbaz said:

I have only read a few of the posts so sorry if I am repeating others.

I have actually been looking at eyepieces tonight potentially for an F5.5 frac and so could be right in the bolt hole with what I am commenting.

These are something new but are a clone of APM UFF's:  StellaLyra Telescope Eyepieces for Sale Online | First Light Optics, the ultra flat field versions. 

I am drawn to the 30mm for my needs but I already own the APM 24,18 & 10 versions which get used in an F4.7 pair of bins. (I also use a 24mm in my F4.8 dob)

They are simply superb to use but the only downside is the FOV isn't giving you a lot more than you already have, nothing in the case of the 10mm.

However what they are superb and will give you pretty much a flat, well correct image across the entire fov.

Something a lot of people overlook is that a well corrected eyepiece with a narrower FOV (65 degree in this case)  is actually giving you a better return than a poorly corrected UWA type eyepiece. EG 100% performance of 65 degree is 65, 75% of 80 is 60. 

Given you are using an F5  OTA then consideration of performance needs to be top next to price.

Cheers baz, this ties in with part of what I'm looking to do with getting the wide angle.  I'm trying to figure out what works best for me.  I'm absolutely satisfied with my 60° FOV at the moment and I'm stepping up to 82° purely out of curiosity and dip my toe in. 

Chances are in a couple of months a flat field will be on the cards.  Never tried a flat field before so it'll be interesting to see what difference it makes and if that's what I'm looking for. 

I'm enjoying the learning process immensely, even if my initial expectations are usually wrong.  But flat field is definitely something I'm wanting to look into.

1 minute ago, Sunshine said:

What is? 

James Webb space telescope.  It's focal length is 131.4m. The picture blew my mind and I wondered what JWST focal length was 

Focal length of 134m

Edit: 131.4m rather.

Was the comet quite near zenith while you were imaging?  I had mine click near zenith the other night and I think it was because my balance was off.

It's blowing a gale up here right now but clear.  I know the seeing going to be terrible, but still I quite fancy going out reading this...

1 hour ago, Whistlin Bob said:

These are all mono only, there's a definite step up from my DSLR, which is a comparatively geriatric 600d. I agree about old lenses: you need to try a few, but this one has been great, and I've got a plastic canon nifty fifty which performs excellently.

The others I've tried (Chinon 200mm, Paragon 28mm, Tair Photosniper 300mm) have all been a little more flawed, but none have been outright bad.

The Tair 3 has a fair amount of variation.  I've got one that does well and one that had some awful astigmatism.  I'm hoping it is pinched optics due to the rear element being too tight, but getting to it is a nightmare.  One of these days...

My takumar 200mm is great though.   One of the reasons I went for one again at a different focal length.

The beauty for me of course is that my processing is awful so the aberrations would need to be even worse to stand out from it

2 minutes ago, Louis D said:

It seems a rather simple effort of trial and error under the stars/planets to find the cutoffs for various achromat f-ratios at both spectrum ends to make them more usable by eliminating most of the unfocused light ruining sharpness.  Once these are cutoffs have been established, either dyed or interference filters could be made to pass only the well focused central region tailored to each focal ratio.  Sure, the color balance would be way off being a teal blue-green mixed with yellow-orange, but they could be sold as general purpose planetary and double star splitting filters for achieving the best sharpness while retaining as much of the spectrum as possible in fast achromats.

If astro-imaging has taught me anything it's that the colour balance isn't off, it's just a colour palette.

My concern about the colour cast of Jupiter on Mars when using the a cheap yellow and skyglow filter to boost contrast with my Newtonian lasted about a femtosecond compared to my absolute joy at the improvement in image quality.  Really interesting to read your observations as I just picked up an ST80 which I've yet to try in anger.

Very nice.

I've made the mistake of buying a lens where the description said clear optics but there were no images of said optics...  That said, once I cleaned it up and put it together (the correct way round) it performed well.

Part of the reason I bought the tak was because they had good images of the optics.

These old lenses are wonderfully versatile and I'm not sure why they don't get recommended more.

Are these all with mono only or have you mixed the mono and DSLR data?

Looks pretty darn good in the light too mate!  Not had the courage to do the moon under live fire, but done a couple from photos.