DaveS

Depressing. The nights are getting shorter with no clear sky in sight for as far as the forecasts run ☹️.

Is there really any point in astronomy from this wretched island?

According to CO (Using the LP map data) I am 21.66 and the dark end of Bortle 4. On the "Good To Stargaze" app I have on my 'phone it's 21.7 (Rounded up) and Bortle 2.8. From the appearance of the Milky Way plus visibility of several nebulae / clusters I would put it mid Bortle 3, certainly not into the Bortle 2-3 range.

I don't go by limiting magnitude for the reasons I posted above.

Yup, it's a folded off-axis reflector. I remember there was quite a "thing" for them back in the day. Seen a number in old S&T ATM pages.

Realistically I have all the telescopes I'm likely to need, but still have a hankering for a fast astrograph. A RASA 11 with QHY 600C would get me the whole of M31 at a decent 1.2"/px. Unfortunately floppy mirrors don't play nicely with ASA mounts.

I do actually have my Megrez 90 still for a bit of Mk1 eyeball, and a few eyepieces.

I know I have wonky eyes, with probably the beginnings of cataracts, a few years ago my then optician said there were pinhead cataracts. I find extended objects are visible to a fainter level than stars, possibly because point source stars are being "fuzzed" slightly so losing brightness compared to, eg, the milky way which is already "fuzzed", if that makes sense.

I see jagged spurs, dust lanes and glitter in the Milky Way here, with structure down to the southern horizon, though it is taking longer for my eyes to dark adapt now, roughly since I had some severe eye drops in the local hospital to check my vitreous humour (I had bright halos around any light source for hours afterwards).

One night a few weeks ago when I went out to close up the 'scope the sky was spectacular (Helped by my eyes having dark adapted while in bed), Auriga glittered with clusters and I'm pretty sure I saw (Glimpsed?) M33 with direct vision. But won't put my hand on a bible to it 😆.

We need to be able to send people out to L2. Can you imagine the debacle if the HST had been launched to L2?

A great capture @Stu.

I saw the ISS pass too, but couldn't frame it in the 'phone.

Jupiter to Moon just after sunset with my smartphone looking south west-ish down my road.

And later, just Jupiter to Venus as it was getting properly dark using the "Nightscape" setting.

One Plus 8 Pro.

Still a fair bit cheaper than Chroma or Astrodon.

Just had a look on the FLO site and saw 

These

Seems like everyone is jumping on the ultra-narrowband bandwagon. Just hope they don't fall off .

AstroArt +1. Now at version 8 and more powerful than people think.

Make sure that DSS is saving as 32 bit FITS to preserve your data.

Good old (Or more importantly *young*) mk1 eyeball, from a very early age (Certainly in single figures), then a pair of 8x30 bins (Which I still have somewhere), an ill-advised zoom spotting 'scope and the inevitable 60 mm 'frac, a Prinz 550 from Dixons., which I still have. Way back then even in London the milky way was visible at night, before we became obsessed with turning night into day

Couldn't afford anything bigger, so bought a 6" mirror set and some bits from Brunnings and built a 'scope with a mount built by dad using some taper roller bearings. Eventually I built an 8" f/8 Newt from wood, which went through various iterations. I still have the mirrors but the structure is long gone in a house move.

There was then a long hiatus before I bought my next 'scope, the Megrez 90 in my sig and HEQ5 from FLO.

I made a tighter crop and added a touch of noise reduction.

Edit: It's still very noisy when looked at up close. *Definitely* needs more, a LOT more, data.

Made up from 6 hours H-alpha in 600 sec subs captured in Jan this year and stacked in AstroArt 7 and 4 hours (After DSS chucked out duff subs) [OIII] in 900 sec subs. A lot of application of the Heavy Hammer and cropping to get rid of alignment edges ( I had some camera rotation problems). Processing in AstroArt 8.

I need *A Lot* more data all round including [SII].

7 minutes ago, saac said:

I'd say his contribution is also several orders of magnitude greater than many of those big buck presenters, but then I'm biased. 

Jim 

I'd have to agree with you there.

41 minutes ago, 900SL said:

Not current but from the BBC:

Other presenters

£450,000 - £499,999

• Matt Baker - The One Show co-host

£400,000 - £449,000

• Alex Jones - The One Show co-host
• Andrew Marr - The Andrew Marr Show

£250,000 - £299,999

• Brian Cox - Forces of Nature & The Entire Universe

Which makes Prof Cox's remuneration pretty much small change compared with the big-bucks of other presenters.

I still have my Prinz 550, and the simple equatorial that my dad (A toolmaker) knocked up during his lunch breaks.

My next 'scopes were semi home-built 6", and then 8" Newts with mirror sets from Brunnings of Holburn, though the latter got re-worked by David Hinds when he was actually making mirrors. Think it says 1/8 PV on the back.

I now have my "dream scope" in the form of the 12" ODK in my sig. That cost me an arm, the mount cost both legs 🤣.

On 26/11/2021 at 22:27, ONIKKINEN said:

You might enjoy Scott Manley on YouTube. He does general space related videos and uploads regularly.

Yep, +1 for Scott Manley

Surprised that nobody's mentioned Dr Becky. She usually has a new video every Thursday and does a monthly "what's in the sky" vid.

Then there's Sabine Hossenfelder who does general science. She had a multi part series on quantum mechanics, went into Hermitian operators and Dirak Braket notation.

Also look for The Everyday Astronaut and The Angry Astronaut, though the latter might not be to everyone's taste.

1 hour ago, JamesF said:

I'd agree.  Whilst he may come up with (some of) the ideas for the programmes and write some of it, I'd imagine the choices of location and visual style are down to others who have a target audience in mind.  I suspect that whilst many presenters with a physics background could do a good job of fronting most programmes relating to physics, those responsible for commissioning and planning science programmes contribute to what is almost "typecasting" of science presenters depending on the style of programme they want to make.  They get Brian Cox to do this sort of stuff, Jim Al-Khalili does a different style that's much more down to earth, Helen Czerski is a bit of an "action scientist", Mark Miodownik does more materials science type programmes and so on.

And ultimately, as he's the Royal Society's Professor for Public Engagement in Science, people are presumably paying him in the expectation that he will get involved in this sort of stuff.

As has already been said, many SGL members are probably way outside the target audience for this type of programme and shouldn't expect too much of it, just as many people with a strong interest in, say, horticulture, are outside the target audience of Gardener's World and somewhere on the net there's probably a forum for people who are really into cooking where they slag off whatever the latest celebrity chef is doing

James

And don't forget Prof Alice Roberts *sigh*.

2 hours ago, 900SL said:

Wholeheartedly agree. If I paid a licence fee I'd be spitting feathers. Cox is a self promoting freeloader. I find the PBS Spacetime stuff on youtube to be far more informative and way better presented

 

In case you had missed it, Prof Cox's day job is as a scientist working at CERN and lecturing at Manchester Uni.

As for the soundtrack, TBH they can keep it, not remotely interested.

2 hours ago, johninderby said:

There are many fine scopes that you never seem to hear much about in the UK. Has anybody actually used a Planewave? One of the unaffordable scopes I would like to own. 😢

https://astrograph.net/epages/www_astrograph_net.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/www_astrograph_net/Categories/Shop/"Telescopes %26 Binoculars"/Corrected_Dall_Kirkham

Heh, I'm more of an ASA bloke myself .