Paul M

There is some utterly spectacular high definition video of Apollo launches on YouTube. Nothing will ever tingle my spine in the same way as a Saturn V launch. Fill your boots, while remembering 3 blokes were sat on top of this thing!

Looking good so far! I guess there is no 1 stage recovery because so much of the vehicle is taken up by a large second stage to gain Geostationary orbit as compared LEO vehicles that don't need so much, err...ooomff!! So smaller 1 stage?

I've watched that a number of times. The contrast between characters of two brilliant minds is very prominent. One a very British eccentric, often alone in his ideas, the other a very different ecentric, a true genius. Yet often distracted by his very human frailties. I sometimes wonder what Feynman would have/could have discovered if he had focussed his entire being on Physics.

I was aware of this issue when I bought my NEQ6 Pro because it was a very hot potato here on SGL at the time, with various mods being shared and offered. So I was well prepared for taking it easy on the dec adjusting bolt. I circumvented the risk of bending the bolt by backing off the unstressed bolt and physically lifting the strain off the loaded bolt then just turn it half or quarter of a turn before letting the load rest against it again. More or less using it as an adjustable stop, never moving it while under strain. I set up and break down after every session and don't find it too much of a chore (then again, my polar aligning is dog rough! ) Let's remember that it's been one of the most successful and affordable goto/tracking mounts ever in amateur astronomy. Compared with my old Fullerscopes MkIII mount, it's a stunning piece of kit!! Having said that, I fully appreciate the OP's point. It's a bit of a bother that such a long standing design issue hasn't been corrected or improved by a factory installed mod. In his position I think I'd be talking nicely to the vendor about changing it for the newer mount.

Oh darn it!! Do you know that I spotted that so deleted that image, squared the cap up and took another picture. However, I composed my post on my laptop having took the pictures with my phone which is set to upload them directly to my OneDrive. So it looks like the bad picture got uploaded before I could delete it and the re-try hadn't yet been uploaded when I composed my post. I attached the wrong one! Oh the shame of it!! I Just nearly fell into that huge yawning gap between the 28mm and the 11mm. Gonna have to bring home the 20mm from Cumbria or do some more buying Edit: here it is!

Now then, I can play too now: The 5 on the left are my newly acquired eyepieces (thanks JOC!) alongside my other two randoms. I do actually still have the 3 eyepieces that came with Ye Olde Fullerscope last century but they live up in Cumbria at our luxury villa with said same Olde Fullerscope. Hactually I think it's a lovely family portrait

Oh dear, what a scruffy assemblage. I'll give you £90 for the lot. Set you up for a fresh start ?

Burnham's are a rare delight. It's many years since I looked through them but I suspect that as an observer's guide they are timeless. They look impressive on any bookshelf too!! Some books I've felt honoured to just hold and thumb through. Burnham's and Cosmos are among them. Others have blown me away. I've maybe mentioned before, a book by Hoimar Von Ditfurth; "Children of The Universe". Perhaps it won't stand up to modern science so well but back in the day it struck me with cosmic awe.

Prior to 2003 I had over 100 astronomy books but donated them all to the local library when we moved house and my interest was on the back burner. I only kept two that I can find (three if you include the observing log I kept as a boy), Moon, Mars and Venus (Anton Rukle??) which was a collector's item even then and Sky Atlas 2000 (Tirion). I really should have kept my hardback copy of Cosmos (Sagan) amongst others...Burnham's Celestial Handbook (3 vols) .. Star and Planets Spotting (Peter Lancaster Brown) which still had my 1970's pencil marked planet positions for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on the star charts... I wonder where they are now.

That's a nice, simple "grab and go" permanent pier! I'm heartened by your enthusiasm for this scope. A while ago it was my good friend's 60th birthday and his good lady asked me to recommend a nice telescope for him. She told me about how much he enjoys me showing him the night sky up at our rural Cumbrian get-away. Even so, he'd never looked through either of my scopes and I know it can be difficult for a newbie to develop the skills. So I recommended the SW 127 mak on the alt/az goto mount. Wish I'd recommended a Dob now. We've had a couple of sessions with it and he's really not taking to the setting up procedure. I'm hoping that this winter something will finally "click" and he'll be on his way. Either that or he says "here, you have it"!

For what it's worth, I wouldn't have identified the presence of an Aurora in that photo. What I see is some distant cumulus clouds illuminated by moonlight, some general lunar sky glow and the orangey glow on the left looks atmospheric; a thin layer of cloud illuminated from below by urban light pollution. The Moon is quite bright as it's casting obvious shadows in the foreground..

That's a nice looking set-up. Congratulations. On the negative side, the colour of the sideboard clashes with the scope. It'll have to go! Just how understanding is your wife?

That's a very attractive looking combo! Are there any beauty pageants for telescopes?

I like the alignment, but the picture is ruined by the refractor on the far left end. It's out by a good few degrees

Lovely image. It looks like the centre of a spiral galaxy taken from somewhere in one of its spiral arms! Oh, hold on...

Expecting visitors?

Well, I think it's worth 15 quid and I'll even collect for free! It seems that Fullerscopes supplied Barbell weights as standard. My MkIII mount was supplied with 1 x 5kg flavoured one.

Now we're scopin' ! That there Mk iv mount doesn't seem to be struggling either.

I think I found it: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/158904-a-brace-of-skylights/?hl=%2Bskylight

I enjoyed both films because I like escapism. At least now, if called upon, I think I could manage to get home in a Soyuz lifeboat "Gravity" did absolutely flout the laws of physics. Whereas with "Interstellar", well, you just don't know what you don't know. It would be a physical impossibility for me to fly off through some black hole and return to find my daughter is 50 years older than me. But only because I don't have a daughter!

This tracker here might help: http://www.isstracker.com/ The circle round the ISS icon represents the horizon of visibility. So in theory, ignoring the observers local limitations, anyone on the ground within that circle should have ISS above their horizon. I just had a look at tonight's late evening pass with SkySafari and it tells me that when ISS is about 15 deg above my west horizon its' just under 1200km distant yet at 5 deg elevation it's 1800km distant! Which puts it way off over the Atlantic.

ISS is a great one to watch for this effect. Take last nights high pass, potentially visible from horizon to horizon. When it first appears in the west it seems almost stationary. Most of it's movement is towards you (radial). As it gets closer more of it's motion is across your line of sight (angular). When overhead or "abeam" (ISS never goes overhead up here) all its motion is angular. You see the full effect of it's 17000 miles per hour orbital velocity. As it recedes everything is in reverse. Until eventually it's almost stationary as it fades on your easterly horizon. The change in apparent speed is smooth and steady. Nothing to do with flight dynamics or anything. It's entirely a visual perspective effect. Should an object change its apparent speed abruptly or change it's path in any way it is almost certainly within the atmosphere under powered flight. The only orbital parameter that the space shuttle could change significantly whilst in orbit was it's altitude (and thus its orbital period). To rendezvous with ISS the shuttle had to be launched in a fairly narrow window as ISS's orbital plane passed overhead. The shuttle was then effectively fired at it like a bullet. All the directional adjustments to ensure correct orbital insertion were done with the engines while in the atmosphere. Once in orbit all the shuttle had to do, and could do, was play catch up and dock. Then to come home, it would turn blunt end forwards and fire its thrusters in the direction of travel to "de-orbit" . Again, no significant directional control was possible until back in the atmosphere when aerodynamics came into play and the wings did all the work. These limitations (on any orbiting craft) are why the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia could not take refuge on ISS even if they had been aware of the damaged wing on that fateful mission. That flight was not in ISS's orbital plane and there was no way of getting there.

Here is my contribution: Another 250 PDS, seen here at it's unboxing ceremony in my back yard. Taken at local midnight. The light pollution casts shadows round here And here is Ye Olde Fullerscop. 6.25in I still have a great fondness of this old girl. She's got charterer! I know, that Mk III mount is in a sorry state. I don't suppose I'll ever get round to fettling it. It lives outside under a tarp in the Cumbrian countryside but that's not how it got in that state Anyway, it still holds the scope very securely.