Luke

I was lucky to have some views this morning. Very nice proms! Worth a look if you get the chance.

Welcome to SGL! Enjoy the 200P! I would have picked the same. Wishing you some clear skies soon. They do pack a little cloud in all astro packages, alas.

Wonderful image! I'm missing the moon. I need a good lunar session!

Nice report! I was lucky to have some clear last night. I chanced looking at the Orion Nebula when it was not much above the rooftops, and was surprised how good it was considering! I returned a little later with a bit more mag and popped on a UHC filter. Wow! Really good, still very low down. Took the UHC off just to see how much of a difference it was making. It was still a nice sight without, but it really had some zing and pop with the filter in! I'll have to try a variable polarising filter on Mars. I think I have one somewhere! I did try a Tele Vue Mars Type B, I think it was, and it was still fairly bright but I much preferred it versus no filter.

That's a good point! My "wishlist" could cost £5k to £10k. It's more of a dream list, not sure I will actually be able to add any of them. I'm currently out of work and the astro budget stands at £0.00. I have to sell first to buy anything, and there's not much I fancy selling. On the plus, I am lucky that I am very well set up for all my hobbies. My astro gear works pretty well for my needs, I feel very fortunate to have it, and I am delighted with most of my gear. Thinking about it, what I would most benefit from currently would be a right-angle finder. I am struggling with the straight through finder on my dob at times, performing various yoga moves!

I used a Kendrick dew heater (plus a dew shield) with a C11 many times for imaging and never had problems with dew (apart from when I forgot to turn the heater on!!!). These days I have an 8 inch SCT and always use the dew shield. I don't bother with the heater for shorter sessions.

You're not the only one who regrets selling a solid tube dob. They are made for UK weather! For a period I tried doing astrophotography with a C11 - that was kinda the opposite of the dob in convenience. Such a pain to set up. And so demotivating if the clouds rolled in swiftly after all that setup (I had no obsy, alas). With the dob, if you think it might be clear, just pop it outside. Cloudy? Just bring it back in. Very little hassle. Easy to move. I was thrilled to grab a bit of observing last night with my dob. I wasn't sure if it would be clear, but it was for a bit. Out went the dob. The Orion Nebula looked fantastic considering how low it was early in the night. We took in Pleiades too, always a welcome sight! I joked to my wife during the session that I would observe Pleiades in the finder we couldn't quite see all of it at the eyepiece. Actually, it was decent in the finder! 😄

Thanks for the heads up. I caught a nice meteor about an hour ago.

A convenient setup is a wonderful thing. My 10 inch solid tube dob is such low hassle. I woke up early a few weeks ago. Clear outside. Pop the dob out! Our dob is stored in a metal shed so already cooled down. And it is easy enough to move around. I also use a giro mount a lot, especially with fracs for solar. Quick and easy. And our 8 inch SCT goes nicely on it. The SCT does need some cool down time, we store that one indoors, but use is still encouraged on iffy nights as there is so little investment in setup time.

Nice! Which model ZWO is that, Dean? They all look tempting!

Dear Santa, 3. Solar scope / filter We'd like to replace our Quarks. Not sure with what yet and it depends on funds. Lunt 50 or 60? SolarMax 90? Solar Spectrum? Ideally, 90mm upwards, but a 50mm would be lovely too. 2. Skywatcher ED150 Feels like it would complete my frac lineup (60, 85, 100, 120), and I really like my Skywatcher ED100 and ED120. If a HEQ5 mount would be sufficient for it, that would be a plus. 1. 12 or 14 inch dob We sold our 16 Inch Flextube goto dob as it was very heavy for me and I had a knee injury. We currently have a 10 inch dob with okay optics, that is very easy to handle. We'd like more aperture and better optics and a much lighter option than the 16, with a solid tube. The short Orion Optics UK 14 inch might fit the bill, though price new is difficult. I wish they still did the Skywatcher 12" solid tube!

Very nice! If you fancy converting the still images to a movie file, you could run them through PIPP - I find it a useful little program: https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

Thanks for the alert! We've had so much grey cloud here lately that I think my eyes now work in mono. Good luck with the new camera, Steve, that 178 looks a nice one.

Welcome to SGL! I actually saw some blue cracks in the clouds yesterday, so I will attribute that to the solar flare!

Very nice! My favourite is the top one for general appearance. I think I find details easiest to see in the second one. The George Washington one has a nice calming feel to it, to my eyes! Always a treat to see your anims!

Very nice! I like some colour, mono can be nice and dramatic and clean but colour seems to increase the depth. I know some folks prefer mono. I'm always amazed when you see very old photos converted to colour in the press, it really brings them to life for me.

After my experience with our cloudy skies, I swore my next hobby would be weather independent, and it was: board gaming! I always loved playing board games as a kid and sort of got into modern board gaming by fluke. Our son was fascinated by Monopoly but he was only about four and it seemed far too long a game for him, so we got a quick card game version: Monopoly Deal. We enjoyed it and tried a few other games. Then Amazon had a big board games sale, and we got games like Carcassonne, Stone Age and Puerto Rico, and were soon hooked! I find it a very convenient hobby. I also love computer programming. I am learning Kotlin currently, for Windows and Android. I took more or less a break from astronomy for three or so years, partly because it was solar minimum plus I was a bit disheartened about problems I'd had with my solar filter. Anyway, I decided to come back to night time observing for this winter season. And I have had half a session with patchy thin cloud so far!!! And several solar views. I would definitely recommend trying solar, especially if you have a nice frac that can be used with a Herschel wedge. My little Lunt 1.25 Herschel wedge was not that pricey and gives lovely views in my 85mm and 100mm scopes and I have used it many times. And the sun is hopefully picking up now and should give us lots of spots over the coming years. For the night time stuff, I figure, my eyepieces and scopes should last many years, so I am sure I will get some great views sooner or later! Wishing you all some crisp, clear skies soon.

Maybe one day! We would like to get something at some point to replace the Quarks. I'm out of work currently and any funds now would have to come from selling first. Not sure I have enough to flog currently that I could bear to let go! Maybe a Herschel wedge :D (we have three).

A fond farewell to the spot! I didn't get to see it at the weekend. It was partially cloudy here but I didn't fancy the cold and possibly hanging around for a while until it cleared in the right area!

Very nice images, Bryan! re: frame rate, in general, the faster the better, but I think it also depends on the camera's other properties. I slightly preferred my Grasshopper 3 ICX687 (26FPS) to my ZWO ASI 174 (120FPS) for solar h-alpha, but I felt they were very close, and if doing it again, I would probably have chosen the ZWO, as it cost far less, and was less of a headache to get working. I found movies recorded at 16FPS with the ICX687 were very usable too, though faster was preferable.

For me, the surface detail looks real, the prom is hard to tell. I have seen stacking software produce some prom-like artifacts, though I think it was usually when the sun was drifting quite a bit over the chip. Nice to see you getting back to astronomy. I've sort of had a few years off too and hope the sun waking up will help fire up the enthusiasm again!

Lovely shots! My favourite is the third one.

Very nice! I was close-ish to getting a solarscope at one point, I should have gone for it! I have very rarely regretted buying quality.

Very cool, well caught!