paulastro

I looked at the temperature in our garden at 1.59pm . The thermometer is in the shade and it's 38.5 deg C, 102 deg F. Could get a bit warmer yet, what's it like with you? We're more used to snow up here!

Nipped outside around 2pm to catch the well spotted sun. It was rather a brief session as the garden thermometer indicated 35 deg C when I went out! The single frame and crop below was taken at 2.21pm, Altair 80ED-R, Olmypus E-M5 Mk11, 1/400 at 200asa.

Thanks Andrew, it was a shame we both had milky skies and moonlight. If we had dark transparent nights it would have been a lot more impressive.

I went out at 11.00pm with the Celestron Starsense 8 inch dob and observed a few deep sky objects and waited to after midnight to look for the comet as the sky should have been darker by then.This turned out to be a mistake. By midnight there was quite a bit of thin patchy cloud and the wanning gibbous moon was low in the SE. I quickly got onto M10 using Starsense which looked noticeably lacklustre using my ES 24/68 eyepiece in the poor conditions. I knew the comet was within a degree of M10, but there was no sign of it after several minutes of searching around M10 - I wasn't aware of exactly where it was supposed to be. I changed to my Morpheus 17.5, which gave a field if just over a degree, so the comet should still be in the field as M10. After a few mts I thought I could see where it might be, it looked dull compared with M10, a rather diffuse small spherical shape which kept coming in and out of vision. I did a quick sketch of where I thought it was, as I wasn't at all sure it was really the comet. As soon as I came indoors I checked my sketch against the SkySafari field and was delighted to see it was exactly where I thought I had seen it, relative to a triangle of stars and M10. Not a spectacular view, but I was very pleased to have seen the comet in the same field as M10.

As below, around 8th mag?

Thanks Alan. It was cloudy up to the time it started to peek out between clouds for a few minutes.

Single frame taken through some cloud. Altair 80ED-R, Olympus E-M5 Mk11, 4.41pm, 1/320 at 200 asa.

As title.

Thanks Andrew. Though, I'm likely to be losing a lot of sleep with the Starsense being such fun to use. It's just a shame it wasn't invented when I started in astronomy over fifty years ago 😊.

I was out this morning observing Mars, around 2-3 with my Celestron Explorer 8 inch dob. The seeing wasn't bad for the altitude. Used my binoviewer, x2 barlow and x2 Vixen NPL 30mm eyepieces giving x160. The giibbous phase was immediately clear and there were a couple of albedo features which were easy to see. Current size only 7.5", 17" at opposition in December and a much better altitude, around 40 degrees. I have always looked forward to Mars oppositions. and it never disappoints- unless there is a large dust storm at the wrong time 😂.

Thanks Magnus. At the moment Jupiter is mag -2.5, Saturn mag 0.5 and Sirius is mag -1.4 of course, so Jupiter is currently around x2.5 brighter than Sirius. (a difference of one mag equals a brightness difference of x2.5) It's well known by observers that Saturn 'takes' higher powers better than Jupiter. There are several reasons for this. The brightness doesn't help, but there are other reasons. Jupiters detail on the disc is different as seen from earth than Saturn as it has less well-defined detail anyway, Saturn's rings have sharper edges than the disc of Jupiter and the disc of Saturn being roughly twice the distance away and will give a harder edge too. This morning, Jupiter looked markedly less sharp than Saturn and is affected more than Saturn by poor seeing. I could easily have used higher power on Saturn, but Jupiter was at its limit in the prevailing seeing.at x160 this morning. I've only just bought the 8inch and so far have taken one pic of the Moon at prime focus, I use an 80mm ED refractor for solar and also lunar. I am a visual observer and apart from batteries for my camera, if a pic needs electricity, a driven mount or an equatorial mount, I won't bother 😊.

Went out around midday (yes, it was a bit silly in this heat wave) to catch up with AR3055. Lovely detail visually. Less detail in my single frame taken at 11.59 am, Altair 80ED-R, 1/320 at 200 asa.

I was out from 11pm observing deep sky with my Celestron Starsense Explerer 8 inch dob. Just before 2am I was intending to go to bed - but as mainly a planetary and solar and lunar man, I couldn't resist having a 'quick' look at Saturn with had caught my eye. For a mediocre morning it took me by surprise, much sharper than I thought it would be. For a few minutes it looked like an engraving, with hardly a shimmer. The major three rings, and Cassinii's division, were very clear with their contrasting colours and the rings crossing the disc really enhanced the 3-D effect. Despite the ight hazy sky as well as Saturn I could see Titan, Iapetus and Tethys. Jupiter further to the East showed a lot of belt detail, though as usual it was less sharp than Saturn - I was using my binoviewer x2 barlow and x2 Vixen 30mm NPLs giving x160. I was aware Neptune was nearby and I quickly located it with the Starsense. I looked in the binoviewer to see the distinctive small bluish disc, m7.9 and only 2.3". A lovely sight. By now I could see Mars which had just risen over a nearby bungalow. At m0.4 and currently 7.5" it was easy to see its gibbous phase and a couple of albedo features. I'm looking forward to its opposion on Dec 8th when it will be m - 1.9 and 17", and occultation by the Moon on that same morning. By now it was gone 3 am, but we'll worth missing some sleep.

Good idea Andrew. It's a great system and will no doubt become more well used now that its available on the two larger aperture dobsonians. As Celestron is owned by the owners of Skywatcher, it would be surprising if the Starsense Explorer system doesn't appear on some of their scopes.

ITS WORKING !!!! What a relief. I tried it out last night and it worked fine! Though there might be an issue with those two screens lighting up (or not) it doesnt matter anyway as you can bypass it by doing a night alignment which I did last night when cloud briefly intervened a couple of times. It was also completely clear last night for the first hour or so, which it hadn't been on my previous attempts, so perhaps I had not understood what sky conditions it should work in. Whatever the reason its fine now. I was out from 11pm to just before 3am. It started working immediately, exactly how it does in all those videos on u-tube, I couldnt believe it. It's bit embarrassing, but I wonder if there may never have been anything wrong with it at all! Though the mirror/camera and crosshair alighnment screens to me didnt seem to be lit when I thought they should be, perhaps I was wrong. Also when the screen kept coming up with 'cannot find your location', instead of me thinking it wasn't working properly, it was and the conditions were really just not good enough. I may be wrong, but it may be that I'm not the only one who have reported errors when really there's nothing wrong. I always thought that it's such a simple system, (a phone holder with a mirror stuck on the tube, and an app) that there really shouldn't be a problem. Except perhaps people like me me who tend to overthink things and create a problem for themselves 😂. Many thanks to all those who have tried to help with my dilemma and offered such good support and advice, especially DaveL and Andrew.

It was a typo Andrew, I meant to put SE of course.

It's the iphone 5 ES which was also called the 6 something at one time for some reason Andrew. Supposedly a 6 in the guise of the smaller 5 because some folks wanted a smaller phone - hard to believe nowadays! It may possibly be on the list under its other name, 6 something.

That's great Dave, thank you. Hopefully with a clear night I will have time tonight to try various things on both cameras. Thanks again, Paul

Thanks Dave, not yet. Do you know I'd actually thought of starting a thread regarding phones that work well and those that don't. I may do it in the next couple of days. Thinking about it, I'm spending so much time communicating with both FLO and Celestron Id be delighted if someone else is willing to do it, Dave? 🙂 It's also been suggested to me already that an iPhone (6,7 or8) might be a better bet and I'm thinking of buying a used one if I'm not very soon up and running with what I have. In fact my wife has come up with a 5 ES today which I'm going to try when a charger arrives from Amazon and I can work out how it works. (Apparantly it's a 6 in disguise 😊)

Thanks Dave. I'd thought about this but I don't think it is picking up the starfield ok. In the few attempts I've managed (due to the weather) its never managed to find it's stellar location. After a number of attempts it takes a couple of long exposures, (8 seconds at 1600 asa if I recall correctly) and they don't work either. It them comes up with along message saying it has failed to find it's location and I should contact Celestron. In all attempts I aligned the camera to the mirror and the view to that of the scope via the crosshairs in the daytime. After a week communicating with FLO I had my first communication directly from Celestron yesterday. All this is with the A52s, more or less the same thing happened in my one attempt with me A40. Its hard to believe it doesn't work witho ne of the cameras, never mind both?! Forecast clear all night tonight so I'll be out again. Not very optimistic, if it hasn't worked up to now I can't think why it should be different.

Thanks Andrew. No, it was sunny all day, and then clouded up before it was dark enough to try it out. Will try again as soon as there's a chance and report back. I can't try both phones on the same night as they require to be aligned with the telescope beforehand of course in daytime.

Thank you Roy, that's very kind of you.

I love the detail in J Herschel. One of my favourite craters. 😊

Out observing early last night with my Celestron Starsense 8 inch dob. Seeing rather poor unfortunately, but I couldn't resist taking my first pic with it of the 38.4% waxing crescent. It was a single frame taken at prime focus at 9.51pm, well before dusk. Used the Olympus E-M5 Mk11, 1/200 at 200asa.

Thanks Andrew, though I'm not so optimistic re tonight's weather. From midnight to 4am, AccuWeather indicate 45% cloud cover. Fine if it means there's a large clear patch of 55%, but it's quite possible it will be a covering of patchy cloud such that the StarSense won't work anyway 😁. Mind you, I'll still be checking on it 😊.