paulastro

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

A nice lunation in the early hours with the Aristarchus area and Schickard very well placed on the terminator. The snap below just to show what you might have seen if you had been observing, much better visually of course. Single frame taken at 01.01 am, SW80ED, Olympus E - M5 Mk11, 1/400 sec at 400 asa. The two close-ups are crops of the same frame.

Well done Nigella. A fabulous image, and if it really is your first published photo - that's pretty good going to make it with a full colour spread on the front of a journal! Well deserved. 👍

As others have said, different refractors do indeed have different colour casts. I've noticed this over many years, some are 'warm' (too warm to my eyes) whilst at the other end of the spectrum others are 'cooler', the best examples being Tak fluorite in my view. Of equal effect on the image is the colour casts of eyepieces. To evaluate the colour casts of optical systems you have to use a colour neutral (true colour rendition) eyepiece or the tests are virtually useless. Some (and that includes expensive ones) eyepieces have shocking colour casts. I did some extensive eyepiece tests of my own some years ago with eyepieces I owned at the time or could borrow. Bearing in mind that my tests took place before many of the comparatively recent eyepieces were available, Pentax XWs came out as true and neutral as you could wish for - vibrant and honest to life. I also recall that Hyperions were on a par with them if I remember correctly. The test scope was a top quality Pentax 80mm spotting scope. I would say the tests must be done in daylight and not very early in the morning or late in the evening when other factors come into play. If you have good selection of different eyepiece types, compare them on your scope in the daytime and depending on what you have you may be shocked and surprised the differences there are, and not always in the way you expect.

Brilliant Chaxastro, just the sort of pics I would have wished to take if I had been there 😃. Thank you so much for posting them.

Many thanks for all those lovely pics from FLO and everyone else who posted any - really appreciated as I couldn't travel down. Not quite as good as actually being there myself, but pretty darn good (and cheaper!)

AKB - Frosty up here in Yorkshire for us tonight, and in fact just about most places in the UK - no excuse for not having 2nd light tonight, and there's a last quarter Moon!

Many thanks Dave.

Thanks Daved, will they appear somewhere on SGL do you know?

Excellent Reggie, it's obvious you don't live in Yorkshire!

I wasn't able to attend the show myself as I had an operation at the end of October and probably won't be able to drive until well into January. I would be grateful is people who went could post some pictures they took. Anything that shows what gear was on show - and being selfish, anything particularly regarding refractors 👍.

I actually managed to get a view from 7.10 - 7.30, I also managed to get Aldebaran in the same field as the Moon. I used a 32mm/70degree eyepiece and 2inch erecting present to get a 'right way round' view with my SW 72ED. I'm not sure I'll be up to look out again at 3.08 in the morning though Stu .

Hasn''t worked for me, since I last posted here it's clouded over completely, can't see where the Moon even is

Hope it clears up for you John, I think they forecast frost up here - it certainly feels cold enough at the moment.

It'll still look quite nice though Peter - don't be such a killjoy. Grab your 15x70s and get yourself out there!! 🤣

PPS The Moon doesn't move away as soon as I thought it does, should look quite nice later than I thought.