Paul M

The conversation went something like this: Wife: What on Earth are you making? Husband: It's a new speaker cabinet! Wife: Where on Earth is it going? Husband: in the lounge! Wife: !!^@@$**@!!

Here's a link to an existing thread. Sounds very exciting but no idea if it will be widely available to average amateur scopes. Initial solutions for the "orbit" are so hyperbolic that it's really just a straight through path that the Sun will put a kink in!

I like the wide view too. I think something of the nature of the thing gets lost in close crops, unless it's intentional to pick out particular features. It's a lovely natural image.

Maybe they'd let you work from home!

Ok, I say you can never have too many but maybe you're getting close?

You can never have too many pairs of bins. I've only got 5 or 6 pairs. I'm holding out now until I find something like this at a boot sale: https://www.altairastro.com/Altair-100mm-90-Giant-Astronomy-Binocular-18mm-UF-1.25-eyepieces.html If they don't come with a reasonable tripod I'll not be offering more than £25

Unfortunately, from mid-northern latitudes at sea level, objects at lower elevations will always be difficult. Our clearest skies, giving the best transparency are often spoiled by atmospheric turbulence. Cold crispy nights with beautiful twinkling stars being an example. The stillest air is often much less transparent. Summer high pressure systems with inversions retaining a layer of moisture and particulates often give poor contrast views near the horizon. High elevation deserts are the best observing sites

I don't think I've ever seen an image quite like the last one above. Two comets similar in appearance in the same narrow field. Great work!

Last year my Ying and Yang never aligned themselves for the Mars opposition. I never got one single telescopic view of Old Red. I did feel a bit down about that. Mars oppositions are something that have always (usually (sometimes)) motivated me. But at at the back of my mind I was cultivating the excuse that the next one will be so much better anyway! Likewise most clear nights that I don't feel up to turning out for. I'll find fault with it. It's a bit hazy or there is a bit of scud about. It'll be better next time. Much of the motivation for acquiring the 127 Mak is that I can take it to work on night shifts and make some astronomical use of my downtime.

Indeed, I've found Neptune an easy enough target with bins in the past. The sky was good and I doubt that moonlight was a factor. I'm certain of having the right target, it was a straight forward star hop. Weird.

I had a go with the 10 x 50's last night. Good clear sky notwithstanding the moonlight. It's not an area of sky I know well. It's washed out from home but in Cumbria I have a good S horizon. I star hopped from the Coat Hanger and found the target easily enough. I couldn't separate Neptune from the star; it looked singular to my eyes. I really expected it to be quite easy. Maybe the 5 pints of Carlsberg in the hours previous didn't help with my visual acuity!

As a guesstimate, I've turned out for less than 10% of the clear skies I've been available for. My biggest obstruction to setting up a telescope these days is shift work. The fatigue just kills it. Hopefully we'll have a few good nights coming up. I'm off for 2 weeks!

The tag line from one of the late, great Richard Feynman's better known anecdotes: "I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something". So long as we know Pluto we don't need to classify it ( or is that "them") Pluto, for me, has not lost any of its wonder. I still want to hunt it down one day, preferably visually (!) But more likely digitally. Re live the excitement that Clyde Tombaugh felt when he first identified it.

Did it look like I knew what I was doing? That is the first time I've ever plate solved! I really just worked it out as I went along. I'm an armchair astronomer first and foremost and love playing with planetarium software. My intention was to identify the field visually but when the DSS image option popped up I got an idea... The first thing I got from the DSS image was an indication of the field size. After that anything seems possible!

And just to help orientate, I've highlighted the same triangle of stars in each image:

Full size:

Try this So how did he do it? I found Aquitania in Sky Safari at the time you stated. Highlighted a nearby star in the field: HD251604. Nothing in the SkySafari field looked light your image but Sky Safari has an option download DSS images of the area of a selected object. So I got that DSS image and could immediately identify your field. I cropped the DSS image and plate solved it. You'll see it's rotated about 45 deg counterclockwise to your image and is mostly the right side of your image. Should get you there though.

Ah! Found ya! I zoomed in on the plate on the triangulation station photo and looked up the number http://trigpointing.uk/trig/4064 Some short "reviews" from other walkers on that link.. There is no way I'd spend a night there on my own. The awesomeness of the night sky would be drowned out by my wayward imagination! 👻👽🦊🐫🦄

Great report. I don't know that part of the world so I looked at Google Maps. I smiled at the view:

I used to have a chimney mounted Turnstile (crossed di-poles) antenna for VHF sats. It worked a treat. Other than an expired eBay item I can't see them available anywhere. Used to be easy to find. Not a difficult project for home brew though!

Not astro related but I'll recount a story that explains how some things "disappear". Some 40 odd years ago, as a young boy, my father used to smoke roll-ups. He used to lay on the couch and periodically put his hand over the side to pick up his lighter to re-light the same cigarette time after time. One time he was half way down yet another roll-up, he picked up the lighter to re-light the darned thing and found the sparky wheel/flinty part missing. He'd only just used it minutes before and he'd not left the room. We turned that room upside down looking for it. Then turned it upside down again. Even as a young boy I did my bit. Lifting furniture, getting my small hands right down the back of the couch into the lining. That sort of thing. It never got found. A real mystery. Well maybe not. I neglected to point out that when he'd nodded off I decided to take the lighter outside to see how it worked, as I did with most things... Unfortunately I dropped the sparky wheel/flinty part and couldn't find it. What to do? So I quietly put the remains of the lighter back besides the couch and continued watching TV.

I share a young lady's first view of Saturn last night too. Little Celestron 127 SLT. I'm not new to GOTO but this SLT mount is a bit awkward in some ways. Couldn't be bothered doing star alignment so used the Solar System Align routine. Just leveled the thing roughly and centered Jupiter in the eyepiece and clicked "align". Single object align, good enough to Keep Jupiter in the eyepiece for the duration, even at higher mag. Then later selected Saturn and it slewed over to Saturn and it was near enough! Just a bit of tweaking required. Sometimes is nice to not get too bogged down. Luckily on this occasion it paid off nicely.

I was wondering how you got that multiple exposure trail of ISS tumbling diagonally in the upper left...and with Cassiopeia in the same frame?? Must be 'shopped I thought, then I pegged it as some kind of Clothes Encounter Sorry, my brain really does work this way!

It's for masochists!! Most of the post-processing tools that make digital astrophotography both productive and accessible just aren't available or are not easy to achieve with film and printing. Some are, and their digital equivalents get their name from darkroom activities such as stacking and unsharp masking. You wouldn't want to stack and register tens or hundreds negatives though!

Just come back in from a quick session with my new-to-me Celestron 127 SLT. The main purpose of the session was to take advantage of what might be Junior's (13) last chance before back-to-school to get a look a Jupiter and Saturn. The sky here was cloudless but humidity was making it a bit "soft". Jupiter looked steady enough naked-eye but was boiling through the eyepiece. Still, Junior described what she could see without prompting; bands on the disk and 4 moons, all bunched up on one side. Saturn stood up to more magnification than I expected. No idea what focal length this cute Mak is ( could go and find out...) but I'm guessing the 8mm BST was giving somewhere towards 200x. Not sharp but impressive enough for squirt to be still jabbering on about it all the way to bed and beyond! And no Junior, you couldn't see the rings of Jupiter with your bare eyes....