Paul M

And here's the GOES West 1800 UTC satellite image nicely showing the Moon's elongated shadow making its way across the south pacific.

Hope he's got a good spot. My fear would be of cloud on the west coast of South America but it should be better over the Andes, but then it's getting towards sunset for totality. Great photo opportunity though.

Not an easy one to get to. Not sure if I'll get to see another. Saw the 1999 eclipse under perfect conditions on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and saw the 2006 eclipse from a beach in Turkey also under perfect conditions (wearing nothing but Speedos and eclipse glasses, stylish!) . Not that I'd done that much advanced planning

Unfortunately if you aren't in the South Pacific or Argentina you're gonna miss it! http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2019_GoogleMapFull.html

Knowing such stuff was a very important job historically. Astronomy and astrology were indistinguishable only a few hundred years ago and those that studied and could predict the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets had great standing in society Predict an eclipse and you were a king maker. And during a total solar eclipse it was possible to confirm just which constellation the Sun was in. It still kind of connects to modern times. The point in the sky where the sun's path, the ecliptic, crosses from south of the celestial equator to north of it is the spring equinox and because it used to be in the constellation of Aries it was called the first point of Aries. However, just to complicate things the vernal equinox is now in Pisces due to precession of Earth's axis. Indeed all the Zodiacal constellations are out of step with the misguided and deceptive offerings of astrologers. So no, we can't usually see what stars the Sun is sat amongst but for much of human history its been a very important thing to know.

I agree, this is, after all, Stargazers Lounge! That's what I am too, a stargazer and enjoy other's accounts of their observations. So keep up the good work!

Very well done! Right now Jupiter looks like the overhead view of a pan of boiling custard from the UK

Great image. People occasionally ask me if I can see craters on the Moon with my scopes. Of course I can, but showing them some fancy image won't impress them so much as the quick snap I took with my phone. They can relate to that. They understand it's showing what their eyes would have seen at the telescope!

I'd not be inclined to think of the lifespan of the coatings as an inherent property. Most important is how the optics have been stored and cleaned. Unadulterated coatings of any age aren't going to suddenly deteriorate for no reason other than their age. So if this scope's optics have been looked after, no unnecessary cleaning etc then they'll remain serviceable for plenty more years. If the scope has been sat in a damp shed for years and/or the mirrors abused by rough cleaning then it may already be past its best. So as others say, if its ok now then its ok!

Erm.... I think you nailed it!

I'm home now and can download my efforts of this here EOS 1200D. Not too bad, just hand held in full auto:

Indeed. Cracking display but my nocturnal activities are mostly reserved for my night shifts from which I'm currently recovering so I'm monitoring the rest of this display from my bed courtesy of SGL!

Nice! Took some shots myself but no means of getting them off the camera here. Picked the camera up enrout to Cumbria so no leads or car reader here. Really spectacular detailed area SW of polaris. High up and bright.

So I'm at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa for one night only and was outside playing with my new to me Canon 1200D DSLR and noticed some very high cirrus that was brighter than I'd expect. NLC thinks I, not unusual up here this time of year but this looks like a very bright display in the making. High up and bright. Still not dark enough to be sure but one to watch! Maybe christen the new camera tonight

I'd have to look and I'm (happily!) not back in until Sunday. We have a number of the same units across the site, I think they are all the same. We are a big energy user and have our own 132kv substation so our mains is usually good. The UPS units are battery backed and for control systems only. For critical heavy current equipment we have a couple of big diesel generators. They don't need to kick in too fast just so long as we can make stuff safe if needed down the line. There is some stuff that will just crash even if we keep the PLC's alive, big centrifuges for example. Where units have gone into fault and also failed to by-pass we've had the manufacturers in to investigate. Not sure of the outcome of the investigations or whether a solution was found. I seem to remember a component failure was to blame.

My experience of UPS is purely industrial. We have some large units at work intended to support the PLC's, servers and clients during an outage. They do work as advertised but they cause more problems than they solve. When they develop faults (as they seem to too often) they disconnect the good mains supply too. So even though there is no failure of the mains we loose everything!! There is a by-pass function but that doesn't switch during fault modes!

Makes a nice change to see purely stellar subjects being imaged . And a very nice image it is too.

I'm baffled then! There is no indoor method of testing actual star alignment. Once the 1st star is accepted the mount should just move the prescribed angular distances to the next object. Synscan drives the motors until the encoders arrive at the correct spot, so unless that object is in entirely the wrong place...., which makes me think of issues with your location and or time data. That was my motivation for getting the GPS mouse, remove a layer of potential errors on my part!

I continue to struggle to understand how the Home Position can have any meaning on a mount that has not actually been parked there from a known position, i.e. already fully aligned when parked. But anyway, my method seems to upset a few people and here it is My mount is stored away after every use and often gets disturbed so I don't use the home position. 1. plonk the mount and tripod out on the grass roughly aligned towards Polaris. Look through the polar finder. Get Polaris somewhere within the etched hour angle circle. Anywhere within does me fine. Mount the scope/counterweights and re-check that Polaris is within the finder circle, anywhere within 2. power up the mount, I have the GPS mouse which plugs into the handset and inputs time and location info automatically...Soooo lazy 3. select 3 star alignment and choose a nice easy star as first alignment star. Wait for the drives to stop. It's rarely anywhere near the object but Synscan thinks it is so make it so! Undo the clutches and manually move the scope to get the object in the eyepiece , tighten the clutches and use the handset to center (use the handset all the way if you like, but don't undo the clutches in that case!). The mount now has a fix on the sky. 4. select the second alignment star and the scope should now land quite near if not very close, it might just need the handset to center the object. Accept that. 5. select 3rd star. This should land virtually central in the eyepiece. Use handset to fine tune. Accept that and Synscan should (hopefully) congratulate you on successful alignment I don't level the mount, no need with EQ mounts. I don't bother with Hour Angle, Synscan is very robust and for visual use HA is not needed. My polar alignment is exceptionally rough but Synscan is very robust and for visual use is very forgiving of Polar Alignment. I think I've only ever had one failed Synscan alignment and that was after trying to rotate the scope in the tube rings so I could get to the eyepiece during the process. Of course, you can refine the process and add whatever steps you so wish as your observing progresses. You'll be building on experience by then rather than foundering in over complexity. Final note; don't undo the clutches and move the scope manually once the 1st star is aligned; thereafter make all adjustments and movements via the handset.

Lovely, I really like the "flow" of your sketches. Very easy on the eye and they convey something of your time at the eyepiece.

It looks like a different scope to the one I saw there last. I'm guessing this one is also a custom build, putting the eyepiece in a sensible position. It'll never catch on!!

I seem to remember seeing them with Ye Olde Fullerscope shortly after the first impact scars rotated into view.

He's at it again this evening. For a few Lira you can see Jupiter higher up in a clear sky! It was probably Jupiter in the eyepiece last time I looked through his scope (different scope maybe, I think (might be a different bloke (I think it was Marmaris I went to)))

Jupiter's atmosphere or outer layers as we might call them, are very dense. So just like meteors burn up high in Earth's atmosphere, any object impacting Jupiter at interplanetary velocity is going to convert entirely into thermal energy. Bigger objects will likely just generate more energy. Remember the Chelyabinsk meteorite a few years ago. It exploded with great energy high in the atmosphere with only fragments (some quite large) making it to the ground.