Ratlet

10 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

The key thing about any socks, from a warmth point of view, is that they need the shoes around them to be large enough, which is likely to be a size up on your regular size. Thick socks in tight shoes don't work, they restrict circulation when what's needed is the opposite.

If you want the warmest socks on earth, I'd suggest Dachstein wool. I'ts a shrunk, felted wool of remarkable density.

https://www.sweaterchalet.com/dachstein-woolwear/dw-5111-adult-socks/

Olly

Looking at the price of these in the UK, it'll cost as much ay some of my eyepieces lol

Cheers folks.  This should be me some time since I do need socks.  Little does the wife realise that I'm actually looking at astronomy gear (who am I kidding.  She knows)

I don't think I'd risk wearing the crocks in the frost.  Big fan of them from offshore where they help stop you getting trench foot with wearing boots for 12 hours then swapping to trainers 🤮.  Although I do wish the missus didn't get me pink ones, once I wore them once I couldn't stop wearing them because that would be admiring defeat.

Boots are suitably large.  Again thanks to the offshore I make sure to get a slightly larger pair.

I eventually got back out, unfortunately Jupiter was very much in the weeds by that point and declared out of bounds.  I spent an inordinate amount of time viewing the moon.  More than I would have thought.  The 12mm (x54) provided a really nice view and was nice for a leasurely viewing.  The detail was incredible.  The star of the show was the 8mm in the 2x ED Barlow (x162) which revealed far more detail than I've previously seen.  I could easily have pushed the magnification futher.  Previously at this magnification I've always felt it was more comfortable on any object to back it off a bit, this was the first time I've felt the need for more.

Not a lunar expert by any means, but Gassendi Crater (I think)  was pretty much bob on the terminator and the whole are was rife with tremendous contrast and shadows.  I popped back a few times through the night from about 21:00 to 01:00 and the seeing was always good and each time the scene appeared to change slghtly.  Was nice coming back and watching the shadows from the crater walls and the bright central feature change over time.  So many tiny craters visible around it.  Magnificent.  I would have put a polarizing filter on it to try and get better contrast on the rest of the moon, but the terminator and monochrome viewing there was more than enough!

I spent a fair bit of time playing with the scope.  It was too bright to really do any Deep Sky observing so I just mooched about various constellations playing with focus and splitting a couple doubles.  My collimation is probably not perfect but I'm pretty sure it is a lot better than it has been.  Quite satisfying watching Airy discs in a weird way.

I also setup the Takumer 200 SMC and Altair Astro 533c.  Not ideal conditions for astrophotgraphy, but fortunately I basically use it as a way of sharing astronomy with friends and family and they are not pixel peepers!  IC33 (Horsehead), M42 (Orion), and IC 1396 (Elephant's Trunk Nebula) All got a go.  About 30-45 minutes each of 90s exposures so pictures are noisy as heck but get the point across.  I think I landed on the wrong side of focus so the red CA is a bit more apparent, but for a £40 lens I'm not complaining.  Orion got an extra round of 10s exposures.  That core region is fairly bright!  Can't split the trapezium, but you can definitely see it ain't just one star in there!

Baltic.  Absolutely Baltic.  Still, the scope star tested well and the seeing is ace.  I kind of regret selling the mak now.  First time I've stumped out and not had enough power in the eyepieces for the scope, the moon just gobbled it up!

Do any of you have any recommendations for decent high quality socks.  I'm looking for cozy and hard wearing.

The other half is starting to take a dim view of my astro purchases, but I think some fancy socks might slip under the radar.

Collimated the scope with a Cheshire after it all suddenly clicking on what I was supposed to do.  Very close to what I could get with my laser to be fair.

Quick star test on Vega and the collimation looks good.  Quite chuffed since I've also figured out how that works too.  Seeing also looked very good.  Very very good.

Had a peak at Jupiter at 180x and it was easily supporting it.  Contrast was garbage, but very sharp views.

I'll be back out later but looks to be an exceptional night, lunar light pollution excepting of course.

Telrad or quickfinder.  I use a quickfinder myself.  I've got a 130pds and use a combination of it, a 32mm plossl and skysafari to starhop. Quite easy to find stuff with that.  The 150pds should have come with a 28mm ler eyepiece (great eyepiece btw) which will give about a 2° FOV which should be fine for star hopping and viewing.

I really only saw Sir Patrick on Gamesmaster in the 90's but someone on YouTube has uploaded heaps of Sky at Night and some of his interviews with amateur astronomers is amazing.  He seems to love praising talent and encouraging people in the hobby.

https://youtu.be/8tFQwCLv62E

Dropped a link to one video, but the guy has hundreds up

16 minutes ago, Astro_Dad said:

“Warming up” for the occultation of Uranus later. The big Dob is out ready and already showing some nice crater detail e.g on Copernicus here. 

Hopefully there'll be a follow up image/report.  Weather is utter rank up here and my scopes collimation is even worse.

Delighted with how this one turned out as it was something like 90% lunar illumination at the time.  Taken with my cheapo 200mm takumar lens and 533 hypercam

Cuiv, asterobloke, patriotastro and lukomatico are about the only ones I watch that would qualify as influencers on the ap front.

Really enjoy refreshing views for visual and sketching related stuff as well has his talks with other astronomers and Mary McIntyre too her suggestion to sketch astrophotos is great.

Ed Ting is awesome for his reviews.  Very fair and balanced I think.  Clearly knows his stuff.

I think there is a bit of a split between who some of the influencers gear their channel towards.  Some pitch more towards the newbies, some towards more experienced and some try to walk the line.

I'm just sitting here hoping that someone will do something like Actual Astronomy Podcast but with videos.  Not them though. They need to keep doing the podcast.  It's the only thing that gets me through my 40 minute commute to work!

Marvelous sketches!

You could try an acrylic pen for the stars.  I use a posca pen and it works really well.  I did try a pen with a ball rather than a felt tip but it's not so much use for point like stars.

I've recently started doing the pastels on black paper thing and it's very addictive.

I got the svbony 8-24mm zoom and use it with an F5 130pds.  Visually it's okay.  No complaints but the FOV at 24mm feels tiny although it does get better as you move towards 8mm.  Its worth pointing out that it isn't parfocal so you need to adjust the focus as you move through the magnification.

The lack of fov is what primarily put me off.

I mostly ended up using it for planetary with a 2x Barlow where the small fov was less of an issue, but the zoom with a Barlow was quite long and heavy.

Ultimately I got more use out of a 32mm plossl, 8mm starguider and an x2 Barlow.  I think if I could go back and pick again I'd get a 12mm instead of the 8mm.  In fact, it was the 12mm I just got for Christmas.

So from my limited experience of one zoom, I'd suggest just getting 2 fixed focal lengths and a barlow and  rather than the svbony 8-24mm.  If strapped for cash like I was go for a long focal length plossl and short focal length starguider and a Barlow.

All that being said, I've ordered the svbony 3-8mm zoom because it's got a decent FOV, is almost parfocal and should be pretty much perfect for sniping planets.

Might have a look at this.  I've got a Nikon d70s sitting in a box waiting to go to the charity shop.

Cracking report.  You are doing little to disuade me from buying a dob.  At the moment it's a dead heat for my 40th next year between bino viewers and a Dob, but reading this the Dob has nosed ahead.

I think tonight I mostly saw poor transparency.  Orion was visible over the house but I could hardly make out his sword.  For all the improvement pointing my scope at things made, I would have been as well throwing it at it! 

Everything just seemed dim and dark and there wasn't much of the milky way visible.  Mars looked okay, but a continuing theme of me being unable to discern contrast on the red planet and I came in ealier than I would have liked.

I did try the UHC filter on the rosette but it's got several massive thumb prints on it.  I'm not sure how my 4 year old did it, but he's getting the blame in the morning lol.  Surely couldn't be me that did it...

Came in and cleaned it up and printed out an ew collimation cap since the 4 year old lost it as well.  Normally use a laser pointer but I put some milk carton on the secondary as the screws were binding the aluminium and I'm pretty sure it's not aligned properly.

1 minute ago, Nigella Bryant said:

It's not in colour, lol 🤔

It is.  Those are the colours I saw lol

2 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Joking aside (you were joking, weren't you? 😇), that too is a valid observational experience. 

Perhaps though, in this age of shared experience, it's easier to share an imaging session on a forum such as SGL than to share a visual observing session. I do like to read accounts of someone's night at the eyepiece but they tend to be "wordy".

An image speaks a thousand words!

 

Absolutely. 👼

If you are observing the moon the cap for the 150pds should have a small bit you can pop off on the lid.  You can put the cap on, remove the small bit (put it on the other nubbin to hold it), line it up so it's not over a spider vane and observe the moon.  It reduced the aperture, but also helps reduce the brightness and avoid the feeling that you're about to have your head blown off via your eyeballs.

Cracking report as well.  M31 was what I started on and your 28mm will frame it well.  Truck on over the M42 when you have a chance next.  The nebulosity is bright enough that it will put up a good fight against the moon light.  M45 is pretty moon proof as are a lot of clusters.  Auriga is absolutely rife with them!  Almaak is a very nice double in Andromeda and is pretty easy to find.

I (along with everyone else on the forum) look forward to reading your continuing adventures!  The next best thing to observing is reading other peoples reports.

Most of it is missing and it still looks amazing!

Out for a decent run with the new 12mm BST Starguider, in spite of the moon. 

With the 130PDS and a barlow this gives me x54 and  x108 power.  Whilst quite close to the 8mm Starguider (x81 and x162)  I already have, I figured it would provide slightly better framing of some DSO.  I initially tried it out on Jupiter and I would say the 8mm beat it here without the barlow (unsurprising) but the seeing or lack of scope cooling meant the barlowed 12mm was the best of the views.  I’m pretty confident that I’d be able to pick out the GRS with it, but by the time the miserable sod got round, Jupiter was behind my house.  Soon™…

I did throw the barlowed 12mm at the moon and it was definitely worth it.  Seeing wasn’t great as, like Jupiter, it was above my house so it looked like it was underwater, but it wasn’t too unpleasant.  I should probably do a bit of moon map studying as I’ve essentially no idea what anything is called but the Southern Highlands showed some really nice contrast with one of the craters showing a nice bright central peak and some deep shadows towards the crater walls.  At the far south towards the limb there was a incredibly bright region well within the terminator shadow.  No idea what it was but it was very nice. 

I finally remembered that The Garnet Star existed whilst I was outside and got an observation in.  It's remarkably different in colour to anything else near by and stood out nicely.

Almach was a fairly easy split with the 12mm but a no go with the 32mm (x20).

I tried the Double Cluster but whilst I can see it with my widefield binos I struggled massively to see it with the 32mm.  It’s too near Zenith and navigating that high is a real struggle for me.  I did see lots of clusters though as I panned through but nothing I would conclusively say was the double cluster.

I tried a quick look at M81/M82 but they were fairly brutally washed out by the moon.  I was listening to Actual Astronomy podcast and remembered them talking about Auriga being rife with cluster so decided to give that a shot instead, clusters being relatively moon proof.

Star hopping has gotten a lot easier since I started using Skysafari instead of Stellarium on my phone but there is always a bit of uncertainty that you are going to find what you are looking for or if you’re going to find something else by accident.  The Starfish Cluster M38 is not one of those objects.  As it rolled into view on the 32mm it quite clearly looked like a Starfish.  It was quite nice to change from the 12mm to the 32mm as it would go from a collection of stars to a granular squashed star fish.  I could also make out NGC 1907, although it was mostly fuzzy.  I star hopped using the 12mm up to M36 but neglected to change the eyepiece here so missed a trick.  I think some of these clusters look better with lower power so you can get the granularity.

Back to the 32mm for a hop over to M37.  This is an absolute treat.  There is something faintly organic about it. It almost looks like a cluster of clusters.  Little islands of graininess of unresolved stars separated by very dark bands.  The 12mm framed it beautifully.

I finished off with M42.  It’s getting better placed earlier and despite the moon the nebulosity looked great.  This is actually the reason I went for the 12mm.  I thought it might provide better framing for the nebula and make it a bit easier to pick out the nebulosity.  Just about spot on I think.  Comparing to an earlier sketch I’m pretty sure I could make out more faint nebulosity compared to the 8mm and also more structure within the nebula.  I did drop in an SVBONY UHC filter which may have helped in that regard.

All in all it was a really good session.  I got more time out of it than I thought I would as it was supposed to cloud over.  I should really have gotten some sketching in, but feeling pressed I just decided to try and cram in as much as I could.

I like my az5. The slow mo controls are pretty darn handy.  I've got a 130pds on mine.  Only issue is the mount has a bolt that holds the dovetail and it chews up the anodising on the dovetail something fierce

Yeah, wasn't my intent to make them sound gimmicky, rather to state that they aren't mandatory when you are just starting out.

Filters are not required at all.  They can be useful but there is plenty to see without them.

The 28mm that came with the scope is pretty decent for widefield and if you are just getting going it will be ideal for a lot of stuff.

Download stellarium and you can configure it to show an eyepiece view for your scope and eyepiece.  You can go for a while with the eyepieces you've got.

It could be a reflection from the filter rather than the tube.