ollypenrice

Here's one, bought second hand in the UK several years ago. TEC140 triplet Apo. Great visually and a super imaging scope for full frame CCD which it covers effortlessy using the TEC flattener. It is, in every way, such a nice scope. 

Then there's the Tandem Tak, half of which belongs to Tom. This pair of old fluroite FSQ106Ns cost less than a single new one but they are both great. The dual rig is a treat, especially for guests wanting to work fast.

Why am I so keen on refractors? For imaging they are so easy and reliable. FOr visual I just love the quality of the image. I know you don't have aperture but I just adore that quality.

Olly

From what I've seen the SQMs which have been here have been remarkably consistent but, as Steve says, for my purposes and, I guess, his, it's being internamlly consistent that matters most.

In a break from the norm the whole of this month's dark time has been with visual observers. The Meter has behaved exactly in accordance with my night adapted impressions since it arrived so I'm more than happy with it.

I haven't had a significantly bad sky on which to test that side of things, though. A pleasant enough problem as problems go. I trust Per won't be imporitng too many clouds tonight! You can't rely on customs to weed them out these days...

Olly

It seems to be almost instananeous. Maybe a couple of seconds.

Olly

If it was flying via Charles de Gaulle then your out of luck, they have a machine there that all baggage must pass through, it is similar to the machines that they use to crush cars. At least that's my experience of flying through that place!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Good to lnow. 

lly

Well, the latest underwhelming news of my own 1.8 x 1 metre copy of the print is that it's gone off the parcel tracking radar just before midnight on the 14th at Heath Row and not been heard of since.

Disgruntled of South East France.

I reckon I could see the Las Vegas light dome from Dante's Peak above Death Valley so you have your work cut out lving near it!

Olly

It is on my wishlist

Will you be adding your measurement to the SQM project database ?

I should, I think. Thanks for the link.

Olly

What really gets me with your picture, Olly, is that beautiful wall in the background... I can feel it's warmth emanating from my screen. Looking out of my window, it's another damp, 'colder than average at this time of year', English day.

The SQM looks interesting too, but what is the lowest it can register? My skies might manage double digits on a really good night!

It's funny, I thought of the wall as I took the picture. It is very un-English, as you say. Lime mortar and the warm tones of the stones, which have no moss or other growth on them. Our walls are home to little rock lizards and we have redstarts nesting under the edge of the roof tiles at the moment.

Inside the house under natural light it reads 7 so it will read in poor observing conditions (which I think would describe our stting room...  )

Olly

Although I've seen these regularly in the hands of our guests, I've never had my own... until now that is, because two kind guests, John and Viv, kindly sent me one as a present yesterday. I was thrilled to bits because these devices are so useful, espeically to the imager. Many members will know of them, but for those who don't they look like this;

You simply hold them in this position, pointing to the zenith, and press the button. A sensor on the top measures magnitudes per square arcsecond. If this sounds a bit arcane, don't worry. It appears as a number on the digital scale. The scale is logarithmic so is highly compressed by the time you are in dark sky territory. A value of 21 is roughly where good sites begin and the best reading I've ever heard of was 22.1 in the Australian outback. Sky and Telescope suggest that 22 is generally considered to be the level found under a totally dark site on a moonless night. They discuss the use of the meter here; http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/rate-your-skyglow/

Last night, with twilight still clearly around, we started at 21.1 and were at 21.6 by midnight. The best anyone has recorded here is 21.9. If I ever see 22 I'll throw a party! (In the morning...)

One use of the meter is to scout around for the darkest site in your area.

For me its usefulness arises from the fact that, when imaging at the PC screen, it is impossible to assess the current sky quality until your eyes are dark adapted - and that takes ten minutes as a bare minimum. With the meter you can check the sky reliably and immediately and so decide whether the clouds have scuppered you or not.

The manufacturer's website is here.  http://www.unihedron.com/projects/darksky/

Very highly recommended.

Olly

if the print cost the same as an unreasonable car then what is the wall going to cost to hang it on. why not just use a projector and shine it on the clouds there is no shortage of them.

Clouds? Rings a bell. Aren't they a British thing?

lly

Now Olly, you really do need to define 'a reasonable car' to give this some kind of perspective. I'm thinking 'Fiat Panda', that's reasonable but then at a lower price, so is my old '1998 Impreza' :grin: .

All joking aside, I hope you and Tom get this going.

Heheh, a reasonable car could indeed be anything. A full size 8 metre high print would, I think, buy a car we would, as confessed petrol heads, both consider reasonable. Maybe not new, but reasonable enough to scare the pants off us. Maybe it would be better to describe such a car as unreasonable...  Ah yes, that's more like it!

lly

So far, no. Tom has organized some big prints, two for people who've asked to buy them and one is currently on its way to me in a large cardboard tube. These are 'only' 1.8 metres high. I haven't yet broken this news to Monique's picture framers but I'm sure they'll be able to deal with it. Tom will be here next month and we'll get down to discussing how to propose a big one to museums during his stay. I do hope we can find an interested party but Tom and I can't afford to get a full size print done. It would be the cost of a reasonable car.

Olly

I think it inconceivable that taking half as many lights and dark subtracting them would give as clean a result as taking twice as many lights and not dark subtracting them, especially if a small dither were built it. The dither wouldn't even need to be activated between each sub. The occasional movement would do.

I share Michael's disapproval of gadgets which think they more about what I want than I do and I also share Ronin's view that there are too many holiday snaps in the world. (Why do so many people bother when they could just look at mine??  )

Olly

Agreed, a first class account. We don't often read what you say in your opening paragraph - that a dark site is not apparently dark at all. The more you adapt, the easier it is to move around. We have even debated whether or not Jupiter casts a shadow. What makes moving around impossible is the arrival of mist. Living at 900 metres (3000 feet in old money) we are sometimes cut short by rising valley mist from temperature inversion and at this point finding anything, even at arm's length, becomes near impossible.

When imaging, one problem is assessing the sky, which you cannot usefully do withing ten minutes of looking at a screen. This is whee a sky quality metre comes in. We are usually between 21.6 and 21.9 on clear nights here. In the outback I gather that you can hit the low twenty-twos.

Olly

Good stuff. Hope it all gets going nicely! I still watch in bemused wonder as the Per/Yves/Grinde/Jeff/Woodsie shed suddenly springs to life in our back field. On occasion it scares the life out of me when I have my back to it (I don't know exactly what a wild boar contemplating a charge really sounds like at close quarters...)

Olly

I had it bookmarked at -

http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-gt8kQnZ/0/O/ORION%20400%20HRS%20HaLRGB.jpg

but now that seems to have disappeared...?

We can't have young Mr Goodricke so upset after all he's done for eclipsing binaries!

Larger one is here;  http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-LgK642h/0/O/ORION%20400%20HRS%20WEB.jpg

Smaller one is here;  http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/i-LgK642h/0/X3/ORION%20400%20HRS%20WEB-X3.jpg

Olly

Tom and I are not expert tattooists (perhaps with no direct hands on experience whatever so far...) but I have a Dremmel Tool and Tom has some inks he drained from disused ball point pens and we'd be delighted to have a go. If SGL members would care to form an orderly queue we'll start drilling straight away. Once the survival rate hits 70% we'll try to set up a deal with Steve at FLO...

Olly

Nicely moderated. Thanks Auspom. I only mentioned the print in the first place as an explanation as to why we worked at this focal length, creating an image that is too large for PC screens.

Cheers,

Olly

Very good. Both galaxies have high dynamic range with cores which eadily blow out but here they are nicely controlled.

Olly

Do you know the horizontal and vertical subtended angles of you epic image Olly?  If I get my widefield rig working in time I would like to cover a similar field of view including Barnard's Loop (think it's called).  Very low res compared with yours, of course

I haven't looked at this at all carefully, GIna, but it looks like about 12 degrees by 22, which is a very rough guesstimate. The large loop on the left is indeed called Barnard's Loop or SH2-276. The Loop may have been created by successive supernovae centred around M42. Thought provoking stuff...

Olly

What can i say thats already been said !  just amazing , and the work put into this is not easy, so my hat of to you guys for producing this work of art

Paul J

Keep your hat on in this weather, mate! Thanks Paul.

Olly

Hey guys,

This image is 10 likes behind the 45 hour andromeda. 

http://stargazerslounge.com/best-content/

Surely 400hrs deserves the top spot !

Come on like it if you like it! 

Thanks for the thought but it's not a competition, especially since Jonas and I are friends and I host some of his kit here. The Andromeda mosaic was, quite rightly, the subject of huge appreciation - and it was a one man show. Ours is a double act!

Olly

Again, thanks folks. Your kindness does matter to both of us and is deeply appreciated.

Olly

It's such a stunning image, Olly, I was wondering if it would be ok to share the linked version with credits to you and Tom? Does it have a formal title?

Louise

PM'd

Olly

Good question. My own Lunt LS60 was damaged in an accident so I'm wondering about the 50 instead. It's a lot cheaper! On the face of it I wouldn't expect a huge difference visually and the shorter focal length of the 50 would make it easier to capture full disk images on smaller chips - and most of them are small.

I hope someone will have tried both and comment.

Olly