Paul M

In the interest of inclusiveness, I assume that a minimum of bed and breakfast, swimming pool (heated in winter) and airport transfers will be provided for us visual only users?

Sooo, can you not pop an eyepiece in, sync to a known object(s) visually, check the GoTo quality. Ok? Then tell the mount to park. Will it not then take it self to Due South on the RA axis and 90 deg Declination? From there it's business as usual? That's how I'd set Home, if I used home, which I don't for my non permanently sited, visual use only NEQ6.

Indeed, supply overcapacity won't harm equipment but more current is available to cause damage if a fault occurs. Each item of equipment should be individually fused as per manufacturers specification. Still, most correctly rated fuses will likely allow sufficient fault current through for the equipment to fry its self!

Very nice! I just had a wander round your first image at full res. It's got great detail and contrast. So much in there!

Any book that shows a bright red star at the top left corner of Orion could be out of date soon...

Most of the intense radiation of the core collapse is screened from us by the outer layers of the star. Those take time to be disrupted and be ionized and eventually ejected into space by the core collapse. What does escape immediately is the glut of neutrinos created at that moment. They are effectively mass-less and beat everything else out of there. Don't worry. Apparently there are neutrinos passing through us in great numbers all the time. They won't wait to be focused by a telescope or captured by a CCD chip. They'll carry on their merry way, mostly!

Ah! Just popped back outside. There's still quite dense haze but I could definitely see a dimming at the 5 o'clock position. So all was not lost.

I'm surprised they aren't more popular as counterweights. My old Fullerscope Mk3 mount was supplied with 1 x 5kg and I bought another when I was doing some experimenting. Luckily the shaft was sized to suit the existing hole. I know they are a bit ugly but, well, we use them in the dark. I doubt the neighbours would be gasping and tutting with indignation for lowering the tone of the neighbourhood. Those on my Fullerscope are so old they must be old imperial kilos not the new metric type...

I notice the full Moon when I went out an hour ago but it's almost fogged out by high cirrus now. Not that I was expecting much anyway.

Very nice bins there. Congratulations. It's an itch I'll eventually have to scratch. I've spent many, many more hours looking up through bins than any and all of my telescopes.

There once was a mighty celestial hunter, steeped in mythology. Unfortunately he had a dodgy shoulder; it was always red and swollen. Doctors told him that one day his shoulder would fail him. Indeed, one day his bad shoulder both imploded and exploded at the same time. Now, without two good shoulders it's hard to be a hunter. So he changed careers. Some say he became a shopping trolley, others a pushchair. Here's how the news broke:

Just tried that with my 1200D and got: Your camera doesn't add shutter count information to images.Click here for an alternative piece of Mac software which can read the count from your camera body.

I have yet to spot a single Quadrantid, not that I've made any specific attempt in maybe 20 years. At lest your work demonstrates that it's still a shower worth looking out for.

That's nice and I like the wide view. I love the Crab; one of my favorite DSO's.. It looks just like what it is, a star that went BOOM!

I have my Mak 127 earmarked for this project already. It's its destiny