paulastro

Like many people, if it wasn't for the used market I'd have hardly any kit at all. My two telescopes were bought used and most of everything else too! I have sold more equipment than I can remember over many years, so feel confident I know enough to know the value of equipment and what is a fair price. I have never made a bad purchase that I can recall, and never dealt with anyone in anything but an honest way. If you buy good used kit at a good price then it's quite possible to get all your money back after many years enjoying using it, so effectively you've had years of use of it for nothing! The exception to this is probably electrical high-tech items which can be outdated within a comparatively short time and then you can't sell them at any price. The reasons people sell equipment are many and varied. I usually sell stuff if I need different equipment for a particular purpose or because I just need the money for non-astronomical purposes - alas this has happened over the years a few times. If I had limitless money I would probably have never sold anything and would now be the owner of around a hundred or more different telescopes! Regarding items 'hanging around for ages' (not being sold quickly) I think people can read too much into this. Anyone reading this is probably an astronomer of some sort, but the market is much smaller than we might think, particularly for higher price items. Whilst many people may like to own a Takahashi six inch refractor, not many people will be able to afford 2/3 the price of a new one however much they might want it. Hence such a telescope could actually 'hang around a bit' if there doesn't happen to be someone in the position to buy it when it is first offered for sale. On the other hand it's great news if you are after a SW eight inch dob as so many of them are purchased they frequently appear at bargain used prices. However good the item for sale is, if no one currently wants one then it won't sell for a while. I personally reckon that about 2/3rd of the new price is usually a fair price, and am guided by this myself when I advertise. However this can vary for a number of reasons: 1 If something needs to be sold quickly then I may ask a lower price. 2 If I bought something well myself (that is at a relatively bargain price) I sell it for around what I paid for it. 3 I there any 'issues' with the item, I will state clearly what they are and adjust the price downwards. 4 If the item has been enhanced in any way the price may be adjusted upwards. 5 If the item is a rare or particularly desirable item its' second hand value may be more than 66% - top notch gear tends to keep it's value better. 6 If I am willing to consider an offer, I will state this in my ad. 7 I always offer used equipment at a price I would consider a good buy, and is a price that I would pay if I was looking for the item myself. 8 If anyone offers me a ridiculously low amount, I will tell them (usually politely!) that I think they are taking the mick and refuse to sell it to them for any price! 9 If people ever try and argue for a reduction I politely point out that they are free not to buy the item from me, and to try and get one cheaper elsewhere. At the end of the day, people can ask what they want, it's up to the individual to decide if it's a price they are willing to pay.

I was delighted when there was a brief clear patch on the first day of the new decade to enable me to start off the year on a high. Single frame at 5.41 pm with SW 80ED, Olympus E-M5 Mk11, 1/40 sec at 250 asa. Moon 36.5%, 6.52 days. A nice view with the binoviewer too, Theophilus Trio very nice and plenty of other nice terminator detail.

Top notch, that's a beautiful photo, great sharpness, brightness and contrast spot on. Thanks for posting it Gordon.

Out to catch the Moon again late afternoon. There was a strikingly red and hazy sky after sunset,. It made the sky look rather strange, almost like a painting. Took some pics with the SW80ED and Olympus camera. All pics taken between 4.16 and 4.25 pm. Moon 3.47 days old and 12.1% Illuminated.

Many thanks Mike. As you know I've been trying to take views of the different phases of the Moon for a couple of months now when I have the chance. This evening was the narrowest phase I've managed to obtain so I'm very pleased.

Posting these as some of the most pleasing views of the Moon were through cloud, rather than the Moon when it was clear of cloud. SW80ED and single frames as before. Taken between 4.20 pm and 4.23 pm.

Thanks Mike, though it wasn't so clever me 'dashing' up the hill with the telescope, my poorly foot feels just a bit more poorly now. It's a good job I'm such a brave chappie 🤪.

Went out to look at the thin crescent Moon around 4pm with my binoculars, but couldn't see it from the back of the house. Walked out of the driveway and about 100 yards up the road and it was then easily visible with the better horizon as I went uphill. Thought there may be a chance to take a snap so rushed indoors, put the Olympus on the SW 80ED on the AZ5 and dashed up the hill with it as fast as I could. Set it up between two houses on the pavement and had a fabulous view for about an hour with Venus about 6 degrees to the NE of it making a fine sight, particularly as it got a bit darker. I took the single frame below at 4.35pm, 1/100 at 800 asa. Moon 2.47 days and 6.4% Illuminated. Included a colour version to show what it actually looked like - only 8 degrees altitude when I took the picture. A young chap out walking with his girlfriend came by and asked what I was doing. I told him and showed him a magnified image of the Moon on my camera screen at around x140 and he was really thrilled to see the craters, and more thrilled when I told him the bright star nearby was Venus. They showed a lot of interest and went off very chuffed. I should have taken their names in case either of them ever becomes a famous astronomer 😄. Tomorrow night at the same time the Moon will be a little further away the other side of Venus. EDITED 22.42 pm Pictures replaced - found a sharper one taken just before the original version.

I couldn't resits having a quick look at SGL this morning before my day gets completely out of hand. I then checked to see how many of us were on line - expecting perhaps one or two, after all it is Christmas. And blimey, over 67 if I counted correctly. I'm quite relieved I'm not the only astronomy nerd this morning who needs an astro-fix. So to all my fellow nerds, a vey happy Christmas to you all. And, if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you also have a great day and are spending it exactly how you want to give you the most pleasure.

Took these pics whilst watching the Moon/Mars conjunction this morning. SW 80ED, AZ5 and Olympus E-M5 Mk11. Both taken at 7.01am, the one with earthshine through cloud on 1.6 seconds at 800 asa and the other at 1/3 sec at 800 asa.

Set up outside with my SW 80 ED (to photograph the Moon) at 6am and waited in a mostly heavily clouded sky. Despite heavy cloud and frequent heavy showers managed to first get a look for about 10 seconds with my 10x50 Nikon binoculars at 7.09 am. Between heavy rain (during which I sheltered in my car) I had a l longer view at 7.25 and again at 7.40 before the cold, rain and complete cloud cover finally drove me indoors. Looked beautiful with ruddy Mars about four degrees to the right of the fine waning crescent with beautiful earthshine, fantastic. Really well worth the effort. Pleased to get a few Moon pics also (planning to photograph the Moon was how I found out that Mars was so close to the Moon last night) and I'll post a couple later on Lunar Imaging.

Go for it Dave. My forecast is mixed, two out of three (Met Interactive Weather Map and the BBC Weather App) indicate I haven't got a dog's chance and the one (AccuWeather) indicating intermittent cloud. Forever optimistic I'll be up and giving it a chance anyway. If you don't buy at ticket............ Good luck to you tomorrow, let us know how you get on Dave.

The Moon, (waning crescent, 9.7% illuminated) rises around 5 am tomorrow depending on your location. Four degrees to the East of it, and slightly lower in the sky, is Mars (m+1.6, 4.2 arcseconds ). Civil dawn is at 7.41 am and by then the Moon is around 16 degrees altitude. Don't delay too long as the thin crescent Moon will be harder to see as the daylight increases. Find the Moon earlier if you can when it is in a darker sky, it will make the conjunction more dramatic, and there should be earthshine also of course. A great opportunity to see a thin crescent Moon and perhaps have your first view of Mars as it marches on to its very favourable opposition next October, if you haven't already seen it since it came into the morning sky.

Thanks Mike.

Happened to see the Moon pop out between extensive cloud cover this morning, and couldn't resist popping out to see if I could get a picture. As it happened, I only had six minutes once I had set up before I lost it completely. Pic below was taken at 7.49 am, SW 80ED, single frame with the Olympus, 1/25 sec at 800 asa. It was taken through thin hazy cloud , so be warned - it won't hold up to close scrutiny! Moon 17.4% illuminated, 25.7 days old. In fact, it looked quite looked like this - 🌘,

Many thanks for your kind comments folks

What a nice Christmas present Garry, even if you did have to buy it yourself - I hope you're going to wrap it in Christmas paper and leave it under the tree until Christmas morning

I was up early this morning to observe the waning crescent Moon. I had about thirty minutes of cloud dodging before it clouded over completely, but enough to take a few snaps. Very lucky to have seen it. Montes Carpatus and Montes Riphaeus were both prominent near the terminator. The photo below is a single frame taken at 04.55 am, SW 80ED and Olympus E-M5 Mk11, 1/80 sec at 800 asa. Alas seeing was poor but it's nice to have a record. The close up is a crop of the same photo. Illumination 28%, Lunation 24.8 days.

The first book on Maniek's post - The Fotographisher Mondatlas of which there are two pictures was translated by Storm Dunlop from the German and was published as The Cambridge Photographic Moon Atlas in around 2012 - not sure of the date. It is a really superb book in the same format as the Cambridge books on Comets, Galaxies and the Messier Objects. I recommend this highly if you can get hold of a copy. Long out of print it can be found second hand. Just checked on Amazon and the cheapest they have one listed used is £53. This is a lot less than most used copies, and I'd pay that if I didn't have a copy - and I had the money! I bought my copy at Astrofest when it first came out, there was a big stack of them on the Cambridge stand. There is a link below, and you can 'open' the book and take a look. I notice it's on Kindle, but believe me the Kindle version just won't do it justice, the book itself is well worth looking out for. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Photographic-Moon-Atlas/dp/1107019737/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=53928589675&gclid=CjwKCAiAluLvBRASEiwAAbX3GZuh9gq3bcnUyiKmp_WSwKzjOuNwdy7h-Inei-NRJtwjlv-LkzMkPxoC5-sQAvD_BwE&hvadid=259111411605&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9072512&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1o1&hvqmt=b&hvrand=13430592969180888212&hvtargid=kwd-345660739324&hydadcr=11462_1841672&keywords=cambridge+moon+atlas&qid=1576625249&sr=8-1 I have just about all the atlases that others have listed and wouldn't do without any of them (plus some interesting long out of print books). I do use the Virtual Lunar Atlas on my laptop, for finding out the current terminator position which is very accurate and the ephemeris.

Now edited to extend the enlarged section to the South limb.

Last evening I looked at the Virtual Moon Atlas in case should it should be clear later to see what was near the terminator. Delighted to see Theophillus, Cyrillus and Catherina were due to be right on the terminator, less delighted when I checked the weather to see it was forecast to be cloudy. Just in case I looked out at 10.30pm and I couldn't see even where the Moon was. Decided to have a last check at 11.30pm before turning it, and shocked to see there were large clear patches near the Moon. Set up with the SW80ED on the AZ5 with the Olympus E-M5 Mk11 attached. I was out by 11.45 ready to roll. Conditions not great but it did improve later before it clouded up completely by 1.15 am. I had one of the best sunsets I have ever seen over this trio of craters and watched the shadows slowly starting to envelop them, truly outstanding. I imagined standing on one of the slivers of the illuminated rim of Thiphillus and looking West, what a panorama it would be - and no one there to witness it. Managed to take a few photos and spent the rest of the time with the binoviewers giving x143, some jaw dropping views, much better than my snaps of course. Below is a single frame I took at 00.11 am, 1/400 second at 400 asa. The crop, taken from the same frame, shows The Theophillus trio of craters and going South, through the Altai Scarp, past Rothman and Lindanau and their dark interiors and further South to Maurolycus and Brocias. Luckily I escaped the cloud and fog early on as it was below me, thanks to being at an altitude of around 825 feet. Below is a second crop to the South of the first one, which it overlaps, and to approximately the same scale.

Many thanks geeklee. The focal length of the 80ED is 600mm, so the effective focal length at prime focus with the Olympus on the back focusing screen is 1200mm giving a magnification of x24 to focus with. (the Olympus is a macro 4/3 format camera which doubles the focal length because of the size of the sensor). In addition you can then increase the magnification of the image by up to x14 using the camera's focus magnification facility giving you an image of magnification of up to x336! It's of great quality too and with the fine focus of the scope it's quite possible to do this. This is really good for getting the correct focus, even though I use an AZ5 with no drive of course - though it does have slow motions. Of course at such a mag the focus changes a lot in poor seeing - which it was on this occasion. On such a night you do have to take quite a few frames and then go through them to find the sharpest. I quite enjoy it though. I tend to be fairly adverse to using any electronics at the telescope (except batteries in my torches ) and certainly don't want to spend much time processing video sequences - hence no stacking or high res for me, but good enough for records of what I am looking at visually. EDIT: Also when I have selected the best frame, I will use Photoshop Elements to process it a little, but this doesn't usually take more than 5 minutes or so.

Good terminator detail yesterday just before midnight. Langrenus, Vendenilus, Petavius and Furnerius right on the terminator. Took the single frame image below to record the lunation at 23.39. Taken using SW80ED, Olympus E-M5 mk11, 1/640 second, 400 asa. Alas it clouded up and started to snow just afterwards so I didn't have time to get my binoviewer in use. I hope some of you did manage to get an eyeball on it, the detail I could see on the focusing screen looked very good. The close up is a crop of the same photo.

I use refractors and always use an additional dew shield on the end of the one that's already on the scope. Dew shields supplied with refractors are nearly always inadequate - even expensive refractors come up short in this respect, literally! I generally would expect to be able to observe for at least two or three hours with no problem on even the most dewy nights. As for finderscopes, I just replace the caps when I have found the object I'm looking for if there is much dew.

I'm no great Meade fan, but have to say they did bring out some ground-breaking instruments in their time. The original LX200 8 inch SC and the original 90mm ETX among them. It makes me feel old that clearly so many of SGLs members don't remember what an impact they had on the telescope market - you have to go back a bit though to remember them in their heyday