Knight of Clear Skies

Lovely site and some excellent pics in the gallery, I had the same thought as tingting though.

Thanks for the comments everyone. @tingting44,JB80 - I'll find out and add something to the lodge page. I do know the last visitor made extensive use of the 12" dob.

ohhhh sounding good knight :D :D :D keep us posted, you should even make a thread on it, get more viewers :)

Well done :-)

Brilliant! I was only reading that article yesterday and was admiring the image. Good work sir !

Thanks everyone.

nice one mate! you know your have straight clouds for a month tho....typical lol, can not wait to see your 1st light :)

Thanks both of you. Yes, the weather is pretty dire at the moment - karma for the clear run I had when I first got my tracking mount...

I'm looking forward to seeing the results!

I bought loads of old lenses for as little as £3 each if i find a good performer then i look out for a more pristine example.

Can never have enough.

very nice

28mm, thats going to be very wide.

Well, I was aiming for M51 but got M101 by mistake! It's dinky, 5 mins in total with my 50mm lens, but it's clearly a spiral. :-)

nice, i cant wait to try M101 when i get another mount.... you got a link to your pic :)

Wayhey! Fab... I've yet to see the ISS :(

Bad luck. :(

looking clear: great joke, im rolling around on the floor laughing ;)

Well, it was on the 18th May when I lasted updated my status... ;)

Does Cornwall count? ;)

Ah, saw your location as Herts, you must be at the observatory. Still lousy here I should stay there :)

We've been really lucky down this way for clear skies recently. 3-4 clear nights every week for the last month. :)

Neat ! That's my travel 'n go.

It is a great little mount i`m sure you will enjoy.

Thanks. The plan is to use it for widefields, but I can think about getting a small scope down the line. :)

oh no hope everyone is ok

Yeah, all fine thanks, although I had been standing under it 5 minutes before it came down to position some buckets and towels. Insurance will take care of it, it's just a pain.

Like you say, at least no one got hurt. All the best with getting sorted.

Not tonite punk!

Too much chance of a random shower to risk it.

It is clouding over, looks like 10-15% of the sky is clear patches.

Not the most satisfying session, but did get to check my modded camera reaches infinity focus and could make out the Sadr Region in a 30 second test shot.

m33 this time round for me i would like :)

double figures in the season would be great, i only managed 8 hours last season on M31 :(

just some cloud free time would do me when the nights get darker.

He will soon learn that if wants a decent xmas pressie he must resist the temptation to beat you at Mario Cart!

Gosh, why everybody is better than me at this game...even the 4-year-olds.. :)

I gave it a miss, the sky looked well dodgy. Its a shame the forecast for the next week or so is dire as I really need to get my skates on for the 2018 IAPY.

Fingers crossed for you. I didn't have much success last night, couple errors and equipment glitches, but still had a fun session and have a couple quick images to show for it.

I hope so still waiting for it to clear in lincoln

Happy hunting! (im on the search for some dark stuff tonight)

Glad you had a nice break, what part of Spain did you go?

Thanks. Was in Catalonia, about 30 minutes drive north of Barcelona.

Are you trying to get rid of or trying to photograph them?

Photograph. ;) A local wood has a huge number of squirrels living in it, must have seen two dozen.

They are a great sight,

I remember one shooting across the FOV in my binoculars and I managed to react well enough to follow it as it faded. It left a nice dark purple blue smoky tail that took quite a while (10-15 seconds) to fade away into black. Keep up the imaging !

I saw one too. Nice bright with a good tail. Moving N to S. Ish. Around 11.30

welcome to the eq3-2 club

Thanks, I'm looking forward to putting my camera on it. Maybe further down the line I can think about a small scope.

Look forward to seeing you results. What are you thinking of going for?

I'm imaging for the first time tonight, may just stick with the 50mm and 135mm for now.

Lucky you.

I have my Star Adventurer set up in my living room ready for to grab it for when there is clear patches.

Good luck if you do. If it's not one thing ruining clear skies, its another.

It's either too windy to do anything or there is a full moon.

just been looking around the country and somerset way is ad in around 2 days, were not far behind. feel sorry for people up north though

Cor blimey! Thats one hell of a gap!

"thats a cracker"

This is me in 5 years time, lol.   Hope you get on well with it though!