Paul M

7 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

I'm perfectly happy for Pluto to be 'demoted' on this basis, but perhaps a little sad.

Yes, it's a cold,  almost heatless reality.

What saddens me most is that Pluto had already been demoted before I tracked it down for myself.

By the time I had a scope big enough, its declination and distance had put it beyond visual observation.

So I've got a few grainy images to call my own.

2 hours ago, Ags said:

Imagine a binary system consisting of a sunlike star and a red dwarf orbiting in the habitable zone... there could be a habitable planet caught in one (or both!) Of the lagrange points. The red dwarf would be a spectacular permanent morning or evening star!

There's a whole universe of ideas here!

I'd design the system with my planet in the Red Dwar's L2, I know, I know not stable enough, but this is artistic licence.. 😁

So the Red Dwarf would be permanently superimposed on the primary star. It would make for some interesting imagery.

I wouldn't want the planet's rotation tidaly locked either. No, a habitable planet with sun(star)rise and set. And butterflies, any alien world worth inhabiting would need butterflies.

Excellent!

I'm amazed how much imaging of Uranus has evolved in just a few years.  No longer a boring green/blue disk! Well, it is to me. I haven't got the nack of planetary imaging. I have terrible rows with Firecapture. It's like we are from different planets. 

5 minutes ago, drdre2030 said:

So, now clearly need to get a proper way to mount the DSLR to it and get some clearer/better shots.

Ha! Welcome to the slippery slope... 🤣

That's a very nice Moon shot by the way. I've only ever had junk from holding my phone camera to the eyepiece.

There are bespoke phone carriers for exactly that purpose. There are cheaper options available but this one looks "nice":

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/celestron-nexyz-3-axis-universal-smartphone-adapter.html

RC's are usually described as an experienced user's scope.

I got a 10" RC this time last year. I'm no expert but quite comfortable with collimation Newtonians. But still, I was cautious of the RC. They have a reputation!

There are some good tutorials on line for collimation of these things and I watched them all a few times!

Mine was out when I checked it using one of these: https://www.365astronomy.com/ts-optics-2-led-collimator-for-rc-telescopes-and-all-other-types-of-telescopes?path=119_416

I know now that such a fancy peice of equipment wasn't necessary but it was easy to use and reassuring.

It's not easy to diagnose your problem remotely, for me anyway. But you have confirmed that back focus is not the issue.

Normally the inside and outside focus images would be quite different if there is significant tilt or off axis aberrations.

I'd recommend watching a load of YouTube guides. This is the route I followed:

It's only half a halo up here in Cumbrishire.

No chance of seeing an aurora so settle for this:

Wow! Just Wow!

Out on an afternoon walk today and I grabbed a few phone shots of the Moon in different poses.

This one shows a good spot for an observatory.

Positives are: plenty of electricity for a modern imaging rig!

Negatives: ugly great power poles to the immediate north and south!

This is overlooking the Eden Valley, the Warcop Range in the distance and Appleby hidden in the valley bellow.

What did I see tonight?

"The kids". That triangle of stars alongside Capella. I've known them for decades but their collective name is something I picked up here on SGL in middles age.

Anyway, arrived at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa at 23:30, after a long day. The sky is pristine but, expectedly, awash with skyglow form the glowing  cheese ball. 

Orion, majestic, as ever, Sirius rising over the cow field, and Capella with it's kids. The same kids that I'm slowly losing in my home sky. 

The whole vista took me back, along time!

We have ayoung lady with us who has a fixation with zodiac nonsense. As we arrived I pointed out Castor and Pollux, the twins of Gemini. The response was, to the effect, " wot do stars got to do with the zodiac?"

Or sumfin...

On 22/11/2023 at 02:14, scotty1 said:

01.00 GMT

I didn't actually see this , as I was looking north at the time. But the camera picked up either a satellite flare, or possibly a northern Taurid. It looks white, usually meteors leave green or orange in the trails. 

13s ISO 1600 f3.5

That's really nice!

Orion is spectacular but Sirius looks surreal!

We could pop down to our place in Alicante and view this from my rooftop observatory, but we don't have one and I don't have one!

Not a bright asteroid at 14ish so not even a telescopic conjunction. Anyway, from my home location SkySafari has it passing 1.1" seconds from Betelgeuse!

Indeed, What a bummer! I read somewhere that Betelgeuse is a distinct non-point source so there may well be some very worthwhile photometry to be done along the eclipse path.

Providing everything else is in order you can fix this easily as said above.

This is a popular telescope and I'm sure a member here who has one also will be able to advise on what size screws they are. 

Once you've got the screws then you can check the collimation  Lots of great videos on Youtube to show you how to do that. Just remember, you don't need perfect collimation to enjoy that scope. You can develop that skill going forward.

Good luck and keep us updated!

35 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

As you probably saw on Sky Safari, Ariel is now on the other side of Uranus between Oberon and Umbriel

Last night and tonight turned out to be spectacularly clear, though last night wasn't forecast to last. So I've been watching Uranus and it's moons on SkySafari for a few days.... drooling. And in the back of my mind is a vague idea of making a short animation showing, hopefully, some orbital motion over, maybe 6 hours or so. Right now is the window of maximum accessibility from my back yard.

I don't have the gear or skill to make any realistic attempt on the disc, but I do have some experience of stacking on over exposed planets to reveal their satellites

Sadly, this evening the flesh was weak and the clock was way ahead of me.

That's really nice. I spotted the rather nice spacing of the moons on SkySafari and thought about setting up just to try and capture them. But this is a working weekend for me, late home, early up in the morning, so a non-starter.

I feel happier now that the alignment wasn't wasted!!

The Crab is by far my favorite DSO as an object to ponder and admire in images, not at the eyepiece.

Although it's some time since I looked at it visually, I seem to remember it being easy ish  in my old 6" Fullerscopes Newt. 

Anyway, as a boy I remember reading about it and admiring it. It looks exactly as advertised, an exploded star! 💥 And with the added excitement of a Pulsar!

What's not to like? Well, yeah I can see why it underwhelms at outreach...

My avatar is one of my own Crab images. I don't do it justice but I like to try every season.

26 minutes ago, Debo said:

Tried my camera with a wide angle lens (38mm) pointing in the general direction and found it (only just).

Nice job! Though without the strong colour it could have been mistaken for a star.

I'd have expected a diffuse glow, given the difficulty of this comet in bins.

Weird, the executable has gone missing!

Try a file search for "astap.exe" . Maybe it's in a weird place but, from memory, ASTAP requires the databases to be in the same folder as the executable. 

If it doesn't show, I'd reinstall ASTAP.  Providing you point the installer towards that folder it should leave all the database stuff there. Though perhaps if the config file is missing, astap won't know the databases are installed.

I upgrade ASTAP frequently and the installer simply replaces the executable and presumably updates a log/config file. 

So maybe start again. If you kept the D50 etc database install files it's not a huge job to reinstall.

That's a nice. honest, image. A pleasure to peruse

Hmmm, I suppose to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.

That maybe comes over more crass than intended. But I work for an employer that prides itself on safety. And a good record is easier to achieve when you don't actually do any work. Just sayi'n. 

I imagine that SpaceX is a bustling dynamic organisation. As we know it gets things done. I don't know whether their accident rate due to rushing or just related to high productivity. If you have one group of  electricians that work, on average, 1 hour a day* and another group that work, say, 6 hours a day, one group will have a much higher accident rate. But no one was rushing!

I hear Musk doesn't suffer fools, but most industrial accidents are caused by people being foolish; Ignoring rules/procedures/protocols/common sense. 

Of course, there may well be incidences of employees being rushed/intimidated/poorly trained/incompetent...etc. Those would be the real news.

*I could name names! 🙊 😂

I don't use NINA but have installed ASTAP numerous times in Windows and it defaults to  C/ Program Files/ASTAP 

Try pointing Nina there.

I just failed on this with my 10 x 50's. There was a good sized break in the passing cumulus scud and I star hopped to the right area but nothing. 

I've picked up fainter comets than mag 6 with these bins, but that's comets for you!

It didn't help having someone firing late season rockets directly into the bit of sky I was looking at. Unfortunately the dogs were outside keeping me company at the time.  They have now grown to dislike comet hunting.

It's been one of those days, beautiful, deep blue sky. Looking across Morecambe bay, the high peaks of the Lake District fells had their first wintery dustings. A day that I just knew wouldn't last, and it didn't. As dusk fell, the clouds began to scud along in the west, slowly encroaching.

No point in setting up in the hope of it clearing, the forecast is for overcast. Groundhog Day, allover again.

8 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

I'm looking at all the resistors on that heater PCB and wondering why they didn't just use copper track instead of a bunch of expensive resistors. It's only 2.8 W and a PCB track of the correct width and length for the desired supply voltage could easily be accommodated.

Good point. I guess it makes the operating current more repeatable on a production run. Etching such a fine copper track would be more problematic?

Anyway, was planning on using PoE for this project and have ordered Poe injector and splitter. But the splitter is 5v out for the Pi supply, and this heater is 12v. So more thinking needed. Maybe it'd be adequate on 5v because the Pi makes plenty of it's own heat.

11 minutes ago, uhb1966 said:

how are you going to keep the plastic dome clean?

I'll keep it in the box! 😁

But seriously, I'm hoping for it to be low maintenance as it will, hopefully, be sited 70 miles away from home in Rural Cumbria. Providing that dew isn't a problem, the dome will reach an equilibrium of everyday grime and the odd bird poop. Copious rain will do the cleaning and I guess the dome will eventually tarnish and weather to the point of needing a replacement.

So, my all- sky camera project is finally getting some traction.

The enclosure kit, c/w dome, heater and ASI camera cradle has arrived from Dew Control Ltd. Looks like good stuff.

The project is still held up by the rate at which Raspberry Pi 5's are being produced, because I'm waiting for one of those to free up my Pi 4 for this project.

Anyway, this can sit here like test card, probably until early next year as a place holder for future deliveries..