Ratlet

9 hours ago, Magnum said:

They just got back to me saying i was correct and they have now gone in and recalculated everywhere. But i just had a look and both cams are still showing the same price lol.

Just checked the prices.  Looks like they've increased them all 🤣.  The Saturn is looking a bit less alluring now.

Did a test on M33.  Got sewed out after and hour but focused as best as I could.

When focusing I used live view without guiding on focused on deneb without a bahtinov mask.

As I moved the lens through focus the stars went from having a horizontal bloat to a vertical bloat.  Odd.  I will need to try stopping down the lens some more next time

23 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Sorry, good luck in the retest later

I'm grateful for you summoning them.  Alacant is usually correct. 

I didn't want to bother alacant 🤣.  The guru of the tair and the 130pds.

I checked the hot shoe bracket after the post and it had worked itself loose through the evening.  I'm going to try and jury rig it for this evening but I'll sort out a more permanent solution in the morning.

I'd wait to see what starfield say.  It looks awfully like someone has messed up the pricing and put the satru notice on the other sensor.

Just don't get the Saturn-C.  I want that lol.

On second thoughts it's fairly even across the whole image and there is a less severe vertical component.  To me this does suggest guiding as the issue.

I'm wondering if it could be because I'm using a hotshoe mount for the guide camera and it could be a small amount of flex.

I'm using a Tair 3 and stock canon t3i for imaging mounted on a GEM 28.  One thing I've noticed is that whenever I image my stars have a tendancy to show a horizontal smear to them.  I'm certain it's not guiding as it appears to be aligned with the sensor of the camera.  I've attached a snip from an autostretch from siril.  The tair has the ability to rotate the lens on its mount and this was done with the sensor and lens vertical relative to the mount but I've seen similar in my images on M31 here the lens was horizontal relative to the mount.

The lens was stopped down to about F5.6 in this case, but was broadly similar when fully open.

Is this just because of the correction of the glass?  It seems odd that the effect is worse aligned with the sensor.  I've attached a stack and autostretched image as well.  This is only about 21 minutes of data.  I'm not really attempting to produce images yet, just working my way through nina, guiding, etc to figure everything out so any usable data is a bonus.  Crescent nebula was selected because it's a dense starfield and a bit of nebulosity (quite chuffed there is anything as the dslr is stock)

Another night of figuring out how things work.  Setup the Tair to do the crescent nebula (not the ideal target for an unmodified DSLR but I wanted a fairly dense starfield for testing) and left it cooking.  Probably one of my more successsful evenings with that.  I finally got everything to work together.

M27 - as much a test of star hopping as anything.  Managed to find my way from Albireo (great place to start).  Managed to find it surprisingly easy.  Pleased to note that my observation matched sketches by other people as well.  Attempted a sketch but it was a bit guff and I wasn't really setup for it.  First Observation of M27.

M31 - meant to be another star hopping however I could see the stars either side of M31 visually so it was largely point and shoot.  Dew was becoming an issue here, so largely only saw the core and the condensation.

M13 - At this point I was getting horribly dewed out.  All my eyepieces were getting fogged up and the Starguider as basically useless.  Managed to basically just point and land on it.

Pleiades - Had basically given up at this point, but could just about make it out through the trees about 20° up so waited for it to clear a bit more and framed it up quite pleasant, but the cold and damp was getting to be a bit much.  Still worth it, this marks my first observation of the open cluster!

All in all a good night, learned a few things (I need bigger finder charts than what I've been making, the mily way is amazing from my back garden; I should get some constellation binos, dew is a killer and it will be much colder than you think lol).

37 minutes ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

Absolutely gorgeous! These RASAs almost seem like they have - to borrow a term from the auto industry - forced induction (for photons)

Maybe I should get one - how much do I really need two kidneys I wonder... 🤔

The good news is that if you sell the one kidney for the RASA you won't be able to afford to drink so it works fine 🤣

Been going through this myself.  You might need to loosen one first before you can tighten the others. Just don't loosen two at once too much as the mirror might rotate and you'll have an extra step (rotate the secondary to the correct position).

Good luck.  It's not too bad once you get going.  Bit of a steep learning curve but levels out pretty quick.

1 minute ago, Knighty2112 said:

Nah, JWST needs a good collimation performing only!  

I bet @FLO would get a Cheshire eyepiece out there in 2 days.

Another Scot here.  Welcome to the forum.  The craic is top notch.

You are in for a treat

I desperately hope these are still available at Christmas.  They are fantastic!

That's going to get added to the list.

Ive been listening to a LOT (ie all of) Actually Astronomy podcast and I think visual astronomy is very well suited to an audio platform. 

Going to give this a try tonight!

1 hour ago, braybarr said:

Sorry for the double post but there may be hope for this dew shield after all. I took a peek down the tube at the end of the night and the secondary mirror and coma corrector both looked clear. My primary mirror, however, was super foggy and looked like it was glistening. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because it’s extremely dirty. I’m going to clean it for the first time ever and see if this shield ends up working.

I’m still open to dew heater recommendations, though, just in case. 

 

 

Is that daylight for round the bottom?

Bit late to the party, but I'm also a complete noob and have the 130pds (same aperture and focal length as the 130slt). 

I picked up the 8mm BST and it gives very nice views of the planets. It's a great focal length for views and you can pick up a good bit of detail.  It's also a decent FL for DSO's.  Got a real nice view of M13 and I could swear I saw some granularity, although that might have been wishful thinking.

But you should also pick yourself up a +/-30mm Plossl.  I got an SVBONY SV131 (32mm, 48° FOV) for £23 from AliExpress (I was ordering other bits and pieces).  I honestly get more use out of the Plossl.  The vixen would be a good shout unless you were desperate to save the cost difference. 

11 minutes ago, col said:

This sketching at the eye piece has grabbed my interest, what a good idea. 

Watercolour painting is something I enjoy trying to learn, and with most things it happens in phases. Then I'll have a phase on another hobby and it continues. 

I'll definitely not be bored with retirement when it comes I have that many interests. 

This sketching what we see through the eyepiece is another I think I'll add to the list. 

I'm waiting to get out to try sketching myself.  Seems the best way and it costs buttons which is an anomaly in astronomy.

I've got the SVBONY 8-24.  It's a heavy beast.  I can't decide if I like it though.  But that's mostly because I usually stick my 32mm Plossl in and go with that.

The focus does shift somewhat as you change the power, but not much.

I did make a comment it had some weird flares coming of stars but I retracted that comment on the thread.  It's decent and pretty good for the price but is HEAVY

58 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

I should have bought a variable moon filter the first time around, but didn't.

This one caught my eye on the bay as it was £2.49, presumably a mistake. It's since been changed to £29.99, and I've been feeling smug all morning.

Love me a svbony bargain.  Thinking about getting a UHC filter next month.

"Ah Mr Ratlett, we've been trying to reach you.  Look, Hubble's getting a bit old now and we saw on SGL you were looking to swap your homebrew gear for a new imaging rig..."

I'm going to work my way up to eaa.  I've got enough to learn so far.  

To be honest, the more I try to understand astronomy the more I get the impression that it like woodworking and the various scopes and eye pieces and cameras are like tools.  Planetary so far for me has been ace, watching Jupiter and it's moons and Saturn's rings whip around, reasonably blurry except every so often the seeing is for an nstant perfect and you can pick out loads more detail.  Explaining that to a normal isn't the same as showing them a picture though.

They each have a job they do well and have their time and place.  Asking if a camera won't have to scroll far to find my own post asking about what scope I should get which wasn't the right question really.  Is a camera better than an eyepiece is like asking If a chisel is better than axe.  Well it depends if you are fitting a hung to a door or chopping down a tree.

11 minutes ago, gorann said:

I fully agree. Sky at Night is also only giving out four or five stars to everything they "test",  so it is the net, including SGL and CN, that you need to turn to for objective evaluations.

Forums are great for finding out information.  Just be aware that if you are struggling to get an answer on the forum the best tactic is not to ask a question but to make a post with an answer that you know is wrong, because if there is one thing people can't let alone is some being wrong on the internet.

This fact is known as Godwin's Law.

On 11/08/2022 at 15:29, westmarch said:

You do know that most UK libraries have these for free on their ebook app. Ours is called Libby. Use it before it gets cut.

John

Phenomenal tip.  Just got Libby and sure enough s@n.  Also sky and telescope Australia for some reason (I'm in Scotland)

That is phenomenal.  Cracking read through from beginning to end

I like the fact you imaged one of the solar systems larger planets and one of the smallest class of stars so close together.