Ant

Welcome to SGL. 

Nowt wrong with the Celestron 9.25, personally I think that scope is the jewel in Celestron's crown. There are of course other scopes that are suited better to different types of observing and Imaging.  But I loved my C9.25

Ant

37 minutes ago, russ said:

Great to see you getting back into it Ant  

Start of a new chapter, last day today, new role on monday (well actually an revisit to an old role lol). New Kit - what can possibly go wrong  

2 hours ago, Pixies said:

A second-hand flight-case, being sold on ebay as left-over part of some new lighting equipment and unused apart from the delivery of such.

Much less than a  new one, but the perfect size for my new finderscope and Telrad. After John's horror stories about the dangers of moving Dobs with their finders attached! Just need some suitable foam to fill it.

Try looking for a local upholsterer, they are likely to have some sizable off cuts of foam, with varying thicknesses.

Ant

This is my latest arrival. My first steps back into astrophotography. Asi120Mini and finder guider.

I have an ASIair enroute. I will probably push the button on a new mount as well at some point. Quite like the look of the EQ-35.

Ant

I've ordered a number of things from FLO in recent weeks, all the orders have come through roughly within the dates suggested when I ordered.

Some next day, some in a few days and some in a few weeks. Thanks for still being open and working.

Stay safe guys and girls.

Ant

I too was at the side of the road, down a one track lane at 3am looking rather dodgy. Lol

My NE wasn't too bad, but not sure if the cloud that was there was in the wrong places or the sky brightness was the problem.

This was 3am.

Some are saying leave it later, but i would have thought that the sky would have been too bright at 4am. Maybe tomorrow.

Jupiter, saturn and the moon looked great huddles together. Mars was errr bright and red (i hate Mars).

Ant

It was a fantastic talk, I learnt so much lol

Wish I'd known it a few years ago

I saw the same display Fozzie. I was amazed at how similar the displays were... considering we are a few hundred miles apart.

Ant

3 hours ago, Fozzie said:

Yep North West Leeds...  A few people i follow on twitter have had 7 or 8 nights straight, one lives on the norfolk coast, so no excuse not go have a look...  just after 11 and from around half 2 in the morning seem to be the windows at the moment.

I've not done an early bird yet.. and its been total cloud for a few days on an evening.. but it looks a good season for them!

I was amazed how similar my image was to yours.  Was expecting the few hundred miles to make more of a difference.

Mine were poor images as they were taken with the phone, but for interest I might find you thread and post one up for comparison.

It only lasted about 45 minutes, then it was gone.

Ant

hey all, just a quick heads up, there is a nice NLC display happening right now.

I'm in North Cambridgeshire, but the last one visible that I saw, Fozzie saw from Leeds (i think), so get out and have a look.

Ant

Yes, that was excellent. Especially the part on the sliders.

I ALWAYS use slider 1 the most, and I've always used all the sliders. Lol

How wrong could I have been

Wow, my first thought was you were powering it with a V8.

That is without doubt the best mount I've ever seen!

Seriously top notch.

Ant

Really looking forward to these, I've heard of this 'observing' before and always wondered what it was about. 

Seriously though, always liked double stars and having tips on planning a session will be useful lol the last observing session I did, was amusing - looked at M13, M57 then went blank... so encouraging me to plan targets will be great.

Ant

Welcome to SGL Khalid, It's nice to have you onboard.

Ant

Good idea Russ, ill try astro buy sell.

I do look through our sale boards, but nothing like that comes up...

Ant

Thanks @russ, yes there is a significant size difference between the EQ3 and HEQ5. 

I recently bought a new (to me) car, its a decent size family car (Ford Mondeo). But I wanted to go for the hybrid, Ford made a couple of really odd choices when designing the car. First they made the hybrid available in the estate and saloon only, and they placed the battery in the boot. The estate version was/is really rare second hand, so I bought the saloon. It's a lovely car, but one carrier bag of shopping and the boots full.  I stand absolutely no chance of getting anything astro in the boot when we go on holiday. Why did Ford not use the hatchback....

Just need to get hold of a EQ3 counterweight and an accessory tray and my mount will be complete.

Ant

I recently decided that I fancied trying to get an image of the Comet Swan. Little did i realise this would mean getting up early...! Which is something I just don't seem to be able to manage.  lol

So I bought the enhanced EQ3 Drives from FLO - the EQ3 is the only mount I have since getting rid of the HEQ5 a few years ago. Well they turned up pretty much as soon I clicked buy, which is typical of FLO, so I wanted no time installing them. 

It took a few days for the motivation to actually try them out on the stars. But of course being the end of May, its never dark, so I wasn't expecting awesome results - especially as I'm at my desk working at 7:30, so being up for the darkest hour isn't really doable (I've recently learnt just how important sleep really is). 

But I did manage 90 x 30 seconds, with nothing more than a rough polar alignment and turning in the mount :). 

I have to say that I was rather pleased with the result, this image is a stack of course, with minimal processing of anything. There is movement over the 45 minutes duration, but looking at the image its all in Dec. 

All in all very happy, looking forward to darkness (haven't said that in a few years...)

Ant

I'd forgotten how hard it is to take AVIs of the moon without drives So I bought a set of drives from FLO and after the initial test decided to have a go at the moon.

My scope, ED80, is not ideally suited to lunar imaging, but I think it did a decent job.  Along with the old DMK21 I captured some early evening AVIs, it was still daylight when I took these as I could see cloud coming in from the West, and wanted to capture something. So I did struggle a little with detail, as the contrast wasn't really there during daylight. 

Again not perfect, but I had a ball. The close up shots are ED80/DMK21 with a barlow. The other just the ED80 and DMK21. 

I can see a join that doesn't look right in one of the shots, so I'll revisit that at some point. But I was quite pleased with these !

Hope that you like. 

I thought that I'd take the opportunity of a clear warm night and head up to the fishing lake, hoping for a bit of peace and quiet. 

So armed with just a camera, tripod and an audiobook, off I went. I got accosted by the local fishermen asking if I had a permit. "I'm not fishing, I have a camera and tripod"... "Well what are you going to do with that"?. Errrr "take some pictures"!

The sky deteriorated over the course of the hour I was there, as you can see in the image. But the bright star to the right is Altair (along with the relfection). Top left is Cygnus and in the lower left is Delphinus - and if you look closely its reflection in the water too  

Lots of hot pixels, for some reason the dark frame subtraction didn't work. But I'm not letting that bother me, the years of chasing perfection, worrying about every "wrong thing", and getting annoyed.

I like this image, I enjoyed sitting in the dark for an hour looking at the stars, listening to the adventures of Ishmael Wang. That's what counts  Saw a couple of rather nice meteors too!

Good luck Adidaz. I do recall myself that my HEQ5 was quite fussy with the power supplied. Never had an issue with mains supply though. 

Ant

and look at what you got with astronomical twilight and only 7 subs.

I love that image, I really do. Lovely colours and composition.

Ant 

I didn't see it / capture it (I was in the land of nod then).  But that's a cracking capture. Love the train dissipating
 

Nice.

Ant

Took a little trip out to the local fishing lake last night as I noticed a few days ago that there was a really good west horizon and this wasn't on the side of a fairly fast road.

Took a load of shots as you do.  Haven't had a chance to look at them all yet. But I liked this one. 

Taken at 22.25, Venus was 1.5 degrees above the horizon when this was taken. 400D ISO1600 1/4sec.

There are some other cracking images of this conjunction - particularly like this one.... 

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Very nice, lovely gradient in the sky running from a deep blue to pinky brown. 

It looks lovely a peaceful  

Ant