pbyrne

Can someone please hide the Clearasil from the sun. Paul

PM on the way.

Hi all Last night, around midnight, I popped my head out the back door, the sky was clear, went back inside and grabbed my 10X50 bins. A chair from the shed was setup in the corner of the garden, streetlights blocked by the walls and had a most enjoyable couple of hours. The seeing and transparency were very good. The true glory of the Milky Way was diminished by my urban location and the fact that the sky never gets truly dark around mid-summer. Sweeping down the spine of Aquila I came across the Wild Duck Cluster, looking like a globular in the bins, further south the concentration of the Milky Way was evident in Sagittarius and sweeping across to Antares I was able to locate M4, M80 remained hidden. Jupiter revealed a pair of moons, it is very low, Saturn showed its unusual shape. Heading back north, M13 was magnificent, as always, the Cygnus starfields sparkled, the Cygus Rift apparent, tried for M57, no joy. More success with M27 and the Coathanger. Delphinus was on its side when I observed it and it looked like a smiley face. M81/M82 were glowing faintly, M51 remained unseen. Just sweeping the bins across the sky slowly revealed so many wonderful sights, even the satellites were not a nuisance. The weather was warm, the night still and being so relaxed it was one of the better nights I have had in some time. Normally I go out with a plan, this impromptu session showed what no planning can do. With the fickle weather we have in this part of the world, it is not hard to be jealous of those lucky enough to live in warmer climes were such warm nights are more frequent and not needing five layers to observe. A night of simple pleasures.

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Hi all I am currently working my way through the Herschel 400, 81 down, a long way to go. When it comes to a challenge such as this, what you can pull in really depends on your location. Last weekend I was under rural skies and was observing 11th and 12th magnitude galaxies with ease in my 200mm Newtonian. Last night, in my urban back garden, where the streetlights like to meet for fun, I was out observing again. Boy, what a difference. I attempted to begin with the observation of NGC 5466, a 10th magnitude globular in Bootes, hah! no chance. There was nothing there, no hint of a globular. OK, the seeing and transparency were not perfect, but I believed that a 10th magnitude object would be visible. Wrong! I next went for NGC 5195, the companion to M51. It was there, well, the core was there, and nothing else, any sight of a halo was washed out. Knowing that such bright objects were either invisible or next to impossible, any thoughts of going for 11th magnitude galaxies were quickly put aside. In the end, I settled for observing familiar objects such as M81, M57 and M13, even these greats suffered. Standing beneath blazing streetlights, the council recently replaced the old sodium lights with LEDs, and boy, are they bright, it makes the yearning for country skies stronger. I wonder can I persuade the family to move to the middle of nowhere? I doubt it. Paul

Hi I will take the pads off your hands. Can you pm me with payment details. Paul

Hi Tony I attempted to screw it into the nose piece of the wedge that enters the scope. It appears that the filter is just a little too small, therefore, the threads will not engage. I can move the filter side to side in the nose piece with ease. I tried to attach the camera nose piece to my Baader Hyperion zoom 1.25" adapter with the same result. I can't understand it, there is no information online that says the filter will not attach to the camera. Ah well. I will attempt some imaging without the filter and see how it goes. Paul

Hi all With the sun out I decided to attempt some solar imaging. I have the ASI 120MC, I was using a Herschel Wedge and Baader Solar Continuum Filter. I thought that I could attach the filter to the camera, but it was too small for the threads on the nose piece. Do I need an adapter or is it not possible to attach the filter? Thanks for any help. Paul

Hi all I was looking around for an eyepiece to fill the gap between my 4.7mm and my 8.8mm Meade S5K UWAs, something in the 7mm range. Then I saw a Televue 2.5x Powermate for sale, with my 18mm eyepiece this will give a magnification of 7.2mm. Perfect. I hummed and hawed and debated about purchasing it, I was never a fan of the Barlow lens, and after reading online reviews, I just jumped. I reasoned that the Powermate will also prove useful when it comes to my early adventures into lunar photography. I would be interested to hear what any experience anyone has of the Powermate.

Hi all I am looking for either a Meade Series 5000 UWA 14mm. An Explore Scientific 11mm or 14mm. If you have one unusef, let me know. Paul

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I want to give the entire list my best shot. Even if galaxies are not my favourites, I will get around to observing them and there is that sense of achievement when spotted.

At the turn of the year I set myself the challenge of bagging the Herschel 400. The winter constellations are filled with open clusters, my favourite deep-sky objects to observe, nebulae and the odd planetary and I made a good start, ticking off 50 objects from the list. Now I am moving into galaxy country, and I have to be honest here, galaxies are my least favourite objects to observe. With the odd exception, galaxies are ellipticals and show nothing more than an amorphous blob. However, the majority of objects, 231 of them, which make up the Herschel 400 list, are galaxies. So, it's a matter of getting on with it until the summer arrives the clusters, globulars and nebulae come back. I have set myself a time scale of summer 2021 to finish, knowing the great weather we have in this part of the world. Wish me luck.

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Got to processing the images and these are the results. I still need to work on my focusing and improve my post processing techniques. Still, I am quite pleased with my initial efforts. Any tips or critiques are most welcome.