DaveS

Having looked through this thread I see plenty of elegant or beautifully engineered telelscopes (The Great Weatherall being the best), but no telescope that I would call "pretty", apart, possibly, from the Porter Garden telescope.

And a lot of posts showing off all the telescopes people own, which isn't the point.

When I saw the title of the thread I read it as "Those pesky telescopes" 😱😂

Thanks Adam. I had to be very careful with the saturation as it was very easy to make the image clown like, yuk.

Thanks Geof.

And still not entirely convinced

This is:

25 x 900 sec Hydrogen Bin 2

44 x 600 sec Luminance Bin1

16 x 600 sec Red Bin 2

18 x 600 sec Green Bin 2

16 x 600 sec Blue Bin 2

A lot of work in AstroArt 8 including DDP, Deconvolution, Selective Colour Attenuation, Saturation Boost, and a light Unsharp Mask to finish.

I don't know about the luminous haze running from top right to bottom left. I had thought it was another gradient, but @geoflewis has looked at earlier versions and thinks it's the outer envelope extending beyond my F0V.

In any case, I could probably do with more data, but not sure what would make the most difference for a one-night sequence. More Luminance seems a good idea, but any other suggestions?

You won't find true adaptive optics for amateur level telescopes, at least not yet.

The units sold as "adaptive optics" are more like "active optics" that can take out first order errors caused by gross star movements, but won't correct for wavefront errors as the professional equipment found on big telescopes, which also need laser generated artificial "guide stars" as a reference.

There have been threads in the Imaging section, which basically say that they are only of use for matching flexure in tandem telescopes.

Unless your mount has encoder guiding, then you *will* need some form of guide camera, either with an off-axis pick off, or else a separate guide 'scope.

Encoder guiding means 10 Micron *minimum* and 4-5 figures.

2 hours ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Jeremy you may have opened a can of worms.

Please Dave don't start posting pics of yourself draped across your latest dob in suspenders, clutching a cigarette holder in one hand & in the other a Martini with a lemon twist.

I don't have a dob 😆

Another glass bowl

Yep, vintage Art Deco uranium glass from Bohemia, and yes, it's very nice. Unfortunately I don't have a geiger counter to put on it, but you'd probably get a bigger dose living in a granite house on Dartmoor.

Another photo / hint.

1 minute ago, markse68 said:

🤔 it’s a bowl for fruit? 

It's what it's made of 

Really just speculative, but I've been looking at / thinking about a larger sensor than my current 16200 for my ODK 12.

The options seem a bit thin, vix:

KAF 16803, Moravian, SX, FLI

On Semi 4040 FLI, QHY

Sony IMX 461 QHY, ZWO

Of these the first, S/H looks the only option that I could remotely afford, while the IMX 461 is too big for the ODK imaging circle. A look on ABS shows a FLI 16803 with filters for £4000, which is the ball-park figure I was expecting.

I'm not interested in the 24 x 36 mm sensors as I prefer something square or close to.

Comments?

At least it's not a Dob, yuk.

36 minutes ago, niallk said:

Could see this scope design being unmercifully ripped to shreds over on CN 😂😂

Lack of provision for rear cooling, that focusser (yuk!), secondary collimation, looks like vibration suppression would be a nightmare, no provision for a shroud for body heat elimination from light path, etc... It would want to come with a Zambuto 🤣

Give me a SW 250px anyday!

 

Just tell them, it was designed by Russell W Porter. 'nuff said.

For sure, considered as a 6" telescope the cost is downright silly, but for someone who has loadsamoney and is looking for an unusual garden sculpture, it could be very attractive.

I'd buy it, even at that price, if I had the money.

As I said, if you have to ask how much...

Good question. I couldn't find a price either which puzzled me, hence "If you have to ask how much..."

If I had the funds I would buy a Porter Garden Telescope, I wouldn't even bother to ask "how much". As they say, "if you have to ask how much...".

If you want pretty

https://www.gardentelescopes.com/

Well, it turns out that MO was right. Clear all night, but massive amount of dew everywhere, and the first frost of the autumn.

Unfortunately I had all kinds of problems with Cetus A, Pinpoint just would not solve for it, and I have no idea why.

The sequence ran until right into nautical dark, longer than I intended.

Not directly astro, but rather nice all the same

I'm sure y'all know why it's a bit special.

Hoping that the MO forecast is correct, as I have started a long sequence that could run pretty much until the end of Astro dark.

I saw that, and posted in the JWST images thread.

As she says, this needs to be got underway while the engineers who built JWST are still there.

There's already plans for a successor to JWST and Hubble