Ratlet

Is the 3 point guidescope style ring on the samyang to aid with getting it in line with the other scopes?  I could see that working, but I'm not massivly familiar with the style of lens to camera adapter.  I use my vintage glass with just two guide scope rings holding the lens in place.  I would imagine it would basically need 'collimating' with the other scope that is iamging but would be reasonably straightforward.

Q:  What focal length are you imaging at?

A:  All of them.

I had a flashback with that first pic.  Looked like the rig in my student flat in Edinburgh.  4 lads in there and not a hoover between us.  Just kidding cracking, job cleaning it.  Can't blame you for letting it develop.  I'd be bricking it having to clean it.

Good job on the cleaning.  

That's it turned up now.  Feels very good quality.  The  1.25" barrel is quite a bit longer than my other eyepieces (about 15mm longer).  Shouldn't make a difference for me as I've got a reflector.  It'll be interesting to see how it compares next to the BST and barlow setup I've got at the moment.  Be able to make direct comparisons with the 8mm and 6mm and 4mm via the 12mm and 8mm using a barlow.  Best be quick though.  Jupiter is getting lower and lower.

Very impressed with the quick delivery from SVBONY.  SV215 3-8mm eyepiece arrived today after being ordered on the 21st!  Looking forward to seeing how it behaves and should give me a bit more options with the 130PDS.  Also got a 1.25" adapter so I can use the Hypercam 533c with the barlow for some cheeky moon/planetary imaging.  The 1.25" Barrel is very long.  About 15mm longer than my other eyepieces.  Got some parfocal rings which will take care of that though.

Do any of you use their char on grass?  Wondering how stable it is on soft ground.  Also how the coating appears to be holding up 

15 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

You're right, Mike, Superficial is the word..so much detail, it's scary, and hard to make sense of with just short, 5 minute views. 

The other night I actually used my Moon maps mentioned above, on and off for over an hour, checking that what I thought I was seeing was what I was actually seeing. In this regard, what really helped were the maps with the same orientation view as my scope, ie image right way up but reversed left and right with a diagonal.

It was quite rewarding to "navigate" from the map and actually identify objects and features for myself, and to have different maps covering "chunks" of the moon definitely makes it easier to learn key features within that "chunk"..

Dave

This was largely my issue with the moon.  There is so much going on its intimidating.  Think I'll be up for the challenge now though.  If I start building that observing chair it'll help massively though.

I'd better get on that actually.  My work schedule has me off when the moon is fullest so I need to make the most of it.

That's fantastic!

That's a fantastic list.  You use what I call the daily report date scheme yymmdd, so called because you can copy and paste the subject of the email and change the bear minimum digits before you send out today's report.

Probably best not to look at the total spent at Flo but rather £/hour.  Makes it slightly more bearable 

I'm beginning to enjoy the moon.  I'd rather be observing DSO's, but going up and down the terminator is good fun.

Thanks @Stu for the lunar references.  That'll be very useful.  I've tried using Turn Left at Orion for finding my way around but it is not so good on lunar, at least from my limited experience.

One thing I like about the moon as it approaches fullness is it's (almost) guaranteed to bring clear skies for a decent length of time.  I've also found that my image processing is so bad that the moonlight doesn't even touch the sides of the problems my images have, so I can safely ignore its existence.

If you're attached using the m48 on the baader then you'll need closer to 58mm back focus

59 minutes ago, Jay6879 said:

 the people on the uh...other side of the debate told me it was full of CA which I found bizarre haha.

Not wanting to jump to conclusions or indeed name names, but would it have been a 'debate' on a forum that might have a name that possibly sounds like a time of day where the weather would prevent astronomy?

1 hour ago, Louis D said:

FYI, huge price drop on ebay for these.  $98+tax with free shipping from China on ebay US, and £102.00 shipped from China on ebay UK.

That's a good saving!  Wish I hadn't checked though.  The eBay seller has their new dual band filters listed!

I'm just hoping for a picture of it assembled!

https://www.youtube.com/c/patriotastro/videos does some good videos on sequencer.  Cuiv the lazy geek is also good.  Have a look at the ones where he talks about local palte solving if you haven't already.  It speeds everything up massively.  Oh, and get the sky atlas and sky survey ran locally too, again just get's everything moving nice and quickly.

Soon™

Do you have an image with the stars in focus, also is this a crop of the full image or is it just shrunk down, it is showing as 653 pixels square to me?  It's a bit hard to tell what is going on with the defocused image.  It doesn't look like the central obstruction is heading towards a common focal point or if they are it's somewhere to the left of the centre of the image.  It could be you've got a flavour of tilt.

Is it the MPCC Mk3 coma corrector and how are you attaching as there is 2 ways, one of which needs 55mm and the other needs 57.5mm of back focus.

Nina sequences are great.  Only downside is that it does exactly what you tell it to.  Make sure to go through the sequence and check you've told it to do everything or you'll end up like me and not check the 'slew to target' box.

I don't see any myself.

If you zoom in there might be a weird artifact around some of the stars that looks like the Photoshop raw filter was used to removing some flaring, but honestly I only see that because you asked my to looks at the stars.

But trust me, nobody looking at this is going the doing that.  Fabulous image.

And Orion from the same night.  90s subs, 45 minutes.

The difference between a super plossl and a plossl depends, but is often marketing.  I think there used to be a super plossl with 5 elements, but nowadays they just have 4 elements.  They might have better coatings on a super plossl though.

Plossls are pretty decent to get going with but can get a bit tight with eyerelief at shorter focal lengths.  15mm will be fine, but might be a bit tight if you were glasses.  Others might be able to comment.  A good choice for upgrading over the stock eyepieces.

I use the sv131 32mm and optically I like it.  It's my most used eyepiece so I doubt you'll have an issue with the 17mm.  The 207 is apparently better.

Ultimately it probably won't make much of a difference.  Meade are more highly regarded and have a better pedigree.

Personally I'd avoid eBay and buy from an actual telescope shop.

You might want to have a look at first light optics astro essential super plossls instead.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astro-essentials-eyepieces/astro-essentials-super-plossl-eyepiece.html

Only £20.  I'm actually thinking about picking one up myself (20mm) just to round out my current range.

Got out again with the Takumar 200mm SMC.  Constantly impressed with how it performs.  45 minutes of data with a AA Hypercam 533c.  Moon would have been about 90% illuminated and about 30-40 degrees from the targets.

Edit: I just did a crop on my android phone and decided to hit the enhance option.  Shows up the noise and shows some artifacts around the stars more but also improves the nebulosity.  I really need to work on my processing lol

7 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Kind of reminds me of how underwhelmed I was when I finally saw Mt. Rushmore for myself.  I kind of expected it to be bigger and grander, but the heads are only 60 feet tall seen from 1000 feet away.  In contrast, I was overwhelmed by the Iwo Jima monument when I finally saw it up close for myself.  The figures are about 30 feet tall seen from about 35 feet away.  I guess I need to get within 70 feet of Mt. Rushmore to get the best effect. 😄

I've worked offshore for ages and it's weird because the oilrigs/platforms are so big you don't realise how big they are.  You're in it so you can't take it all in, but you know somewhere in your head that it's big.

Once I was on a platform and had an intrinsically safe camera in the early am when the pioneering spirit went past carrying the Brent Bravo, which I had worked on.  For some reason that put a context in on how big these things are.  The platform is massive, but the boat that taking it to become razor blades is gigantic.

12 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Socks obey Fermi Dirac statistics and are fermions so two identical socks can't be found together.

Regards Andrew 

Ah, so that's what I was doing wrong, I should have tried paring them top to tail!

42 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

What bugs me about socks is that they are made in different colours. The stupidest thing is a pack of three pairs which are different from each other. This means you have to find and match them, which you never can, and so you have to go out armed with that old joke, 'There's nothing odd about these, I've got another pair the same at home.'

Twice I have bought a large number of identical pairs and twice this has failed, after a time and for reasons unknowable, to solve the problem.  The next time I do it, I'm going to buy one hundred identical pairs and burn all the ones I have in stock!  If that doesn't work, and I have a morbid feeling that it won't, I will abandon all hope and surrender my soul (sole?) to the forces of darkness.

Olly

I refuse point blank to match my socks for pattern.  Life is too short to worry about odd socks (unless they are different weights)