CraigT82

Theophilus and Cyrillis last night (my first  sketch 😃) I tried to capture the view in the centre of Theophillus which caught my eye. There were the two largest central peaks in bright sunshine and then there three three tiny, white, star like dots which represented the third, more irregular peak. Must have been the three highest points of that peak just about catching the sun. 

Outline sketched at the eyepiece and shaded/ finished indoors. HB & 4B pencil and white colouring pencil for highlights,  on regular white sketch pad. Picture of sketch taken on my phone and boosted contrast of the image to hide the shading lines (hope that’s ok) 

Last night I discovered that if I hold the 2x teleconverter up to my eye whilst looking through the RDF I then essentially get a 2x54 finder which for me was very useful, as with LP I struggle to make out stars fainter than mag 3.2 ish with the naked eye. I think with the converter I get another couple of mags maybe which makes star hopping much easier. 

Finally managed to see Hind’s Crimson Star, after reading about it in the other thread. I’ve already had one unsuccessful attempt at observing this star, and last night looked like it was also going to be fruitless.

However once I realised I could use a newly purchased Nikon 2x teleconverter as viewing aid to see more stars whilst simultaneously looking through the RDF (the main star hopping guide star Mu Leporis was not visible naked eye), I was able to confidently place the scope in the right spot and it was then just a case of watching and waiting and eventually the very dim but unmistakably red star popped into view. 

Nice work! Motorising focusing is the best upgrade you can do to pretty much any scope, once you do it you never look back.  

2 hours ago, andrew s said:

Well this did happen to me. My observatory burnt to the ground. Luckily, my house insurance paid out.

The up shot was I got a better setup as rather than incrementally adding and changing things I could get a balanced setup in one go.

Regards Andrew 

If you don’t mind me asking, what was the cause of the fire? Perhaps a learning point for the rest of us? 

18 minutes ago, andrew s said:

I love that the video has a cheap ASI camera rather than an up market 40k sCMOS camera.

I thought the same thing. Actually I’ve seen quite a few images recently of professional and high end amateur/educational observatories containing tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of scope and mount and sure enough there is a bright red ZWO camera right there at the business end…. A good advert for ZWO perhaps?! Or maybe they’ve spent so much on the big ticket stuff they have to go budget on the smaller items?! 

5 minutes ago, andrew s said:

For my interests this would do nicely 

Spectrograph on one side, photometry on the other.

Dream on.

Regards Andrew 

I see there is an integrated adaptive optics module that can be purchased as an add on to the PW1000 system too. Would be a rude not to.

https://planewave.com/commercial-pre-integrated-adaptive-optics/

Downloaded and donated. Very interesting and nicely presented with the black background so I can view on my phone without destroying dark adaption. Thank you!  

On 19/02/2023 at 21:09, Geoff Barnes said:

Hind's Crimson Star is perfectly placed for me in the evening to observe, and I do recall seeing it a few years ago. I spent about an hour last night scouring the area of sky equidistant from Mintaka and Rigel in a straight line and do you think I could find it, nope not at all.

Very frustrating as I know where to look for it. I can only presume it is a lot dimmer than the last time I saw it. 

Will try again tonight, fingers crossed. 

I used the same starhopping technique (Mintaka > Rigel and repeat) last night and failed miserably.  Mind you all I could think about was how cold I was having hideously underdressed so that didn’t help. Will definitely try again, hopefully tonight. 

Custom built newt for me… probably 12.5” f/6 with Zambuto mirrors, Aurora cell and CF tube. Oh and at least an EQ8 and an obsy to house it

Got a nice black aluminium handle from WDS in honour of @johninderby. Very quick look at Jupiter and the moon before the kids bathtime and will have a little tour of some open clusters later. 

15 minutes ago, John said:

I think my observing skills peaked a while back......... at a level someway below what my scopes are capable of 🙄

I think I will remain a large man of small observational capacity, but still enjoying the hobby 😀 

 

Same here, and I’m perfectly content with that! 

9 hours ago, Mike Q said:

Because at some point he will end up doing it anyway.  Buy once cry once.  Secondly its an excellent eyepiece that, according to the reviews, compares well against one of the TV 20mm.  Lastly..... 30 percent more light.  Why choke down if you dont have to.  

It’s the field stop diameter you want to look at. Generally they are around the same number as the focal length or a few mm more or less. If you have a two inch 14mm EP and it’s field stop is 18mm let’s say, then there’s no point in it being a two incher, it’s just more weight. Any EP with a field stop of less than 31.7mm might as well have a barrel size of 1.25”.

Essentially If you have a 2” EP and a 1.25” EP, both with the same FL, then the two incher will show more sky only if it’s field stop is larger than the 1.25”

Nice one, don’t need an autofocuser right now but tempted to give this a go just for the hell of it. Never done anything with arduino.

5 hours ago, Kon said:

Thanks for the generous and kind offer on borrowing the camera (I will follow via message).  Your UV images are outstanding! So much details.

I remember Neil telling me that colour cameras are not very sensitive for UV imaging. Looking at the ASI site, the QE drops at around 40% at 400nm. I am not sure if you have seen the post from @JokubasJar who is having some nice IR and UV clouds (https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/406428-venus-irguv-feb-10th/) with a similar setup to mine. I will look into the filters he used for his UV imaging. The Astromania is giving a bad ghosting as expected for cheap filters; regarding gain i had 300 (50%) and exposure of 33ms so if up my gain it should give me a slightly faster fps.

 

 

 

 

I also got a reply from Paul who stated (this is an extract from our email exchange):

Your images of Venus do look very good!  Usually the cloud markings on Venus are best seen in UV wavelengths, however a few amateurs have recording cloud markings in IR wavelengths this past few weeks, so it does seem likely that this is what you have recorded.  I am a visual observer and I observed Venus yesterday evening with a W21 orange filter and I did notice cloud markings not to dissimilar from what you and others have recorded.

 

 

 

Well that settles it then! Very nice work Kostas 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 Yes I did see JokubasJar’s post but I didn’t really realise he was using an 8” scope too until looking at it again now. Fantastic stuff, conditions on Venus must be just right for it right now. 

9 hours ago, Kon said:

Thoughts on this

That certainly looks good to me but I’ll leave it to the ‘pros’ to critique… I’ve never managed to capture loud details in IR so I’m not qualified to! 

Yes with the UV you may struggle with a colour camera. Not sure what the QE curve below 400nm looks like for the 462mc as the chart stops at 400nm, but it looks like only the blue channel is letting anything through, as opposed to all channels at the longer end. The Astromania UV filter advert states it’s bandpass is 300nm to 400nm so quite broad and that’s probably not great for daylight imaging either. 

If you’d like I can send you my Altair GPCAM3 290mono to try it out with your UV filter? I don’t use it much anymore, just for guiding occasionally. I removed the AR coated glass sensor cover to maximise the UV signal and it performs pretty well on Venus.  
 

Edit: for info this collage was produced in 2020 with the 290m, Baader filter and my old 8.5” f/7.5 Fullerscope. All captured in bright sunny blue skies.

Edit 2: Just a thought, what capture parameters are you using with the UV filter and the 462mc? Checking my old posts the above images were captured with 9ms exposures at 75% gain and 90,000 frames captured, best 10% stacked.

Very nice image… gotta be honest I’ve no idea if you have captured IR details there as it’s quite rare to see and I’m not sure what they should like through an 8” scope - they’re usually seen captured with larger instruments under v. good conditions. For reference the most recent one I know of (included below) is by Antonio Cidadao in Portugal using a 14” SCT and Baader Sloan 820nm to 920nm bandpass and the 850nm long pass captured in early Jan. You’re image certainly has the brighter area in the centre of the disk just like Antonio’s! I think it’s definitely  worth submitting to Dr Paul Abel at the BAA and getting his opinion, would certainly be a great achievement if you have managed it.

Regarding the UV captures I always had my best results in bright blue sky, I have great memories of sitting out by my scope in the sunshine whilst on furlough back in May 2020, gin and tonic in hand and Venus on the laptop screen 😃 (I was unsung Baader UV filter btw not sure what you’re using or if it makes a difference?)

1 hour ago, markse68 said:

They’re great Craig- I’m sure you’ll like it and that’s a good price- they vary a lot. I  can send you a screw on eye cup if you like

Mark

That would be amazing thanks Mark, I’ll see what it’s like when it comes as it may already have one, couldn’t quite tell from the listing. But I’ll get in touch if not. Cheers 

Are car ports covered under building regs at all? Could be an issue if it was something he built himself, I.e not inspected and signed off. His insurer may refuse to pay out for his damages on that basis if so, although I’d like to think they’d still cover your damages (wishful thinking maybe).

Good luck and fingers crossed for a positive outcome 🤞

1 hour ago, markse68 said:

I bought the Helios constellation bins but sent them back as it felt like looking through toilet roll tubes. Not sure how the Vixen ones compare but the diy ones i put together afterwards using the Nikon teleconverters (ebay) have considerably wider afov and i enjoy using 

Mark

 

Have just ordered one of these TC-E2 jobbies off the bay for monocular viewing, only £20 so no biggie if it doesn’t work out.

18 hours ago, Philip R said:

I made a pair [image below] from a pair of photography conversion lenses I purchased from you where... eBay.... after I found that @Philippe LECA makes 3D printed frames for them. As the 'project' was not that expensive, I ordered a Batinov mask at the same time from him.

 

BTW... mine are all black! 

 

Would you be able to give us a link to which lenses you bought? I'd only need one as I can only see out of one eye, no point paying for binos when I only ever use one side!

6 hours ago, Ratlet said:

I forgot about this, but I get some farily pronounced diffraction spikes on Jupiter with my 130PDS.  Is that likely to be something to do with my eyepiece selection or could it be my spider isn't quite straight with the tube?

Yeah same for me in my newts with 4 vanes. At low mags the spikes are obvious but the higher you push the mag the dimmer the spikes get 

What the OP is seeing may just be the result of slight fogging or dewing of the eyepiece eye lens. Big problem in winter…. The eyepiece can mist up when you put your warm face next to the cold glass, or maybe breathe on it slightly. Also if it’s left in the scope or in a case for a while pointing upwards it will start to dew up.

When there is even a tiny accumulation of moisture on the eyelens you will get a  glow around bright objects. 

I think you’ll need to use shims or washers under the corners of the base to adjust tilt. I used to have one of these and it was a nicely made focuser but pretty basic with no tilt adjustment IIRC.

The 294 sensor is 4144x2822 pixels so printed at 300dpi it would be 13.8” x 9.4” in size. Double that for 150dpi.

72dpi is just standard screen display resolution