Owmuchonomy

I have used both. I moved my Lunt 50 on for the 60 for a few reasons. It depends a lot if you are visual only or intend to image. The stock helical focuser on the 50 is dreadful in my view for an OTA of that level and as result partly of efforts from folks on this forum a Feathertouch upgrade is now available. There are well documented issues in focussing a camera chip with the stock 50 focuser. In my case it was lack of in-focus and the only way round it was to image through a Baader Hyperion EP connected directly to my DSLR. The 60 package although more expensive is a much better option. You get a better focuser and the option when purchasing to have the B1200 (12mm) blocking filter which improves your imaging options considerably. With the B1200 BF the views through the 60 are much better than the 50. Whatever you choose make sure you get the PT version for superior contrast performance. Another point, getting such scopes is often a bit difficult and I would imagine the upcoming eclipse may have affected that too. Always check items are definitely in stock before parting with your money. Good luck.

Here is a selection of mine from 2016 all with either the Lunt 60, 130PDS (now sold) or ED80. 28 April 2016 26 July 2016 Mercury transit 8 x 15 minute intervals 30 July 2016 8 August 2016

I wouldn't say the chances are none. Here is my first ever DSLR Ha image in 2015 using my original Lunt 50 and eyepiece projection.

This is the focuser upgrade https://www.firstlightoptics.com/moonlite-focusers/moonlite-cm-mini-125-crayford-focuser-for-lunt-ls50-solar-scopes.html

Hi and welcome. There is an issue with using a DSLR directly with the Lunt 50. If you have the standard helical focuser then it probably won't work because it is not possible to reach focus. It is now possible to upgrade the focuser to a superior version to overcome this. A cheaper option that worked for me was to use eyepiece projection. I connected my DSLR directly to my 10mm Baader Hyperion EP using the Baader M43/T2 adaptor. This worked ok but it does add a lot of weight to the already poor quality helical focuser. If you have a budget of 200 Euro your best option by far is to buy a mono planetary imager such as the ZWOASI120 mono. If you use a DSLR with an H alpha scope don't forget you are only using a quarter of your available pixels.

Yes, the 290 I recently acquired hits that sweet spot.

Well Charl you have set the bar very high! Here is my Copernicus 'splash zone'. Taken with my ZWO ASI174MM though my SW ED120 at f/15. I think it was on the 10th Feb 2017 but not too sure.

As Steve says, plus flashing LEDs on SW mounts usually means a low voltage issue in my experience. What power supply are you using?

I don't have the AZEQ5 but rather the 6. The AZ mode is so convenient and I can have two visitors viewing the same thing with different scopes. I can also view/image the Sun in WL AND Ha at the same time! I think if you are mainly a visual observer and fancy imaging the Moon or Sun then it's an easy decision. Go for the AZEQ5. As Alex correctly points out, you don't need a polarscope to do polar alignment when you have a Synscan handset to do it for you. The only thing I don't know is what the load limit of the 5 is in Alt/Az mode?

Hi John Thanks for your comments. A snapshot below that I constructed at the time from AAVSO shows how quickly the variability changes. It was noticeably different using subjective visual observations an hour apart. I think its incredible we can do this from our backyards.

Chris’s Backyard Astronomy. January 2017. A view beyond Earth’s lifetime Happy New Year to everyone. This month I am going to concentrate upon one topic only; something that came to my attention at New Year. The item in question is described as a QUASAR and makes a year in my life appear extremely insignificant. Eyewitness report: “Almost Older Than Time. Would we be able to see it? On Monday the 2nd of January we gathered in Chris's back garden observatory to spot a tiny pinprick of light that had been travelling 8 billion years, yes that's right 8 BILLION YEARS to reach us! Chris had done his homework, mapped out its position and identified a few pointer stars to help us in our search. The bright moon and lovely Venus stayed handily behind the house so a reasonably dark, clear sky helped us in our search. Our luck was in, the pointer stars in the shape of a triangle were in the (telescope) field of view and using averted vision I spotted our faint target, impossible to grasp the enormous distance through space and time the photons from this QUASAR had travelled. Once spotted it was easier to see it again as we all took turns to look at this black hole in action; a successful night, thanks Chris.” Susan Feist Quasi Stellar Radio Sources (QUASAR) The name was adopted originally because such objects were first observed by ‘seeing’ their radio waves and so they were assumed to be stars. Remember, telescopes are not just available to see things with your own eyes but some are capable of detecting lots of other forms of energy. The Jodrell Bank telescope near Manchester for example was once the greatest radio telescopes in the world. Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope: Image credit mattbuck Up until the 1960s a multitude of radio wave sources out in the sky were listed and catalogued. Critical to identifying these objects were to accurately log their precise position and then try and get identification too with a powerful visual telescope. This proved possible in some cases and as a bonus it was possible to catch the light and determine the spectrum of the object (see my previous column). Once you have the spectrum you can find out a lot of important information. However, visual recognition and thus scientific interpretation of some of these QUASARs eluded astronomers. 3C 48 I quote a lot of numbers and acronyms but really it’s not that complicated. QUASAR 3C 48 was the 48th entry in the 3rd Cambridge catalogue of radio sources. In 1960, using a huge 200 inch telescope, astronomers Sandage, Matthews and Bolton finally pinned this particular radio source to a 16th Magnitude star. Mount Palomar 200-inch telescope. Image credit: Coneslayer at English Wikipedia A refresher on magnitude Remember, the magnitude scale works counter-intuitively in reverse. Each step is a change of about 2.5 times in brightness. For example, to us the full Moon looks about 60,000 times brighter than the bright star Vega. On the other extreme QUASAR 3C 48 is about 10,000 times DIMMER than the dimmest star we can see with the naked eye! Object Magnitude Brightness we see on Earth The Sun - 26 Midday Sun Full Moon - 12 Moonlit sky Venus (now) - 4 Bright evening ‘star’ (now) Jupiter - 2 Yellowish star like Vega (bright star) 0 5th brightest star in the sky Yildun + 4.5 Star just visible with your eye Neptune + 8 Farthest planet appearing reasonably bright in a 10 inch ‘scope 3C 48 QUASAR + 16 At the limit of a very large amateur ‘scope Capturing the light from the QUASAR to enable a spectrum to be examined was some feat in those days but they did so. Sandage though was quoted describing the spectrum as “exceedingly weird”. What followed was a 3-year period of doubt and false reasoning because the spectrum just could not be interpreted within the range of known objects. In 1963 two other scientists, Schmidt and Greenstein, re-examined the spectrum of 3C 48 from 1960. Schmidt had previously examined a spectrum of a similar object (3C 273) and was thus experienced in these matters. What he immediately concluded was not weird but that object 3C 48 showed a “redshift of 0.37”. So, now we need a recap on redshift. Hearing an ambulance Recall the last time you stood by as the ambulance sped towards you and then away from you. We are all familiar with characteristic change in pitch of the siren. As it approaches you the pitch gets higher then as it leaves you the pitch gets lower. The lowering of the pitch as the sound source moves away from us is due to a ‘stretching’ of the wavelength caused by the speed of the ambulance relative to us. This is the Doppler effect and applies to all types of radiation including light. Normal spectrum above and red-shifted spectrum below. The tell tale absorption lines are moved to the right. Credit: Georg Wiora (Dr. Schorsch) via Wikimedia Commons So Schmidt was saying that the spectrum of QUASAR 3C 48 told us that it was (and still is) moving away at truly phenomenal speed! As we have discussed before, the painstaking work of Edwin Hubble in the 1920s enabled a connection to be made between the speed that an object is receding and its distance. On doing the maths 3C 48 was located at 4 BILLION LIGHT YEARS distant. Ancient photons hit Bishop Monkton This dramatic distance estimation created disbelief in the astronomical community. Knowing how bright the object looks to us (Magnitude +16) and also knowing its distance, enables us to quite easily determine its true brightness close up and thus its power. The calculation for most QUASARs shows they have the luminosity of 10 Trillion (10,000,000,000,000) Suns, easily one of the most energetic objects in the Universe! As you may imagine this stimulated a decade long argument as to whether the observations were true or were these QUASARS just objects in our own galaxy that demonstrated weird physics? In more recent times, advancements in technology have enabled astronomers to study ‘normal’ galaxies in the region of these QUASARS and confirm that indeed they are very distant objects. On the 2nd January 2017 a group of villagers and friends congregated in my humble shed known as the Observatory and eventually, one by one caught a glimpse of light that has taken 8 BILLION years to get here. I stumbled across a reference to QUASAR 4C 11.69 also known as CTA 102. It is in the constellation of Pegasus looking west from the village at the moment. The old 9 inch SCT telescope used to spot the QUASAR This particular QUASAR was originally falsely classed as a magnitude +17 variable star. Variable stars are quite common but are usually quite regular in their variability. Not this one! Recently its magnitude has changed from +17 to nearly +11, which is an increase in brightness of 250 times. Think about this for a moment. This is an object that is TWICE the age of the Earth, more than half the age of the entire Universe as we know it and visible in my 9 inch telescope. Surely this is the most powerful and most distant visible object any of us will witness. Its brightness currently varies quite substantially on a daily basis so what is it? CTA 102 was discovered in the early 1960s from its varying radio source but was laughingly thought to be signals from an extra terrestrial intelligence and American folk rock band The Byrds wrote a song about it in 1967 called ‘Younger Than Yesterday’. It is in fact a giant black hole at the centre of a distant elliptical galaxy and its brightness is determined by what it is currently consuming. So the recent huge increase in brightness is a burp of cosmic proportions quite possibly as it gulps in stars or even other galaxies. I write this in the present tense but it is highly likely this object ‘died’ eons ago and no longer exists. A QUASAR; a disk of stellar material feeding a huge black hole and artist’s depiction of data via NASA’s Spitzer and Chandra telescopes. Credit: Nasa JPL The village group found it a challenge to observe but with careful attention to excluding all other light sources and using averted vision I believe all present witnessed the 8 BILLION year old photons. Retiring to the kitchen to consume a well earned cuppa, some of us had another peek about an hour later and it had significantly increased in brightness in that time so obviously it had done similar to us. What next? A few days later, from the observatory I captured a star field image to show the QUASAR CTA 102 here in the centre of frame against known reference stars. This is a stack of 20 x 30 second exposures. QUASAR CTA 102 approximately Magnitude 12. 8th January 2017; Chris Higgins CTA 102 is now going out of reach. If it is still belching at the same rate in the Autumn we should check back then to see if it has satisfied its hunger. Feel free to join me. Follow my Twitter feed for regular updates on this and new topics from the backyard observatory. Twitter: @owmuchonomy Astrophotos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blue5hift/sets

I have no idea but going off topic Sakura is Japanese for 'Cherry Blossom' and thus is verging on the sacred.

What diameter is the thread on the rear cell? On my Celestron 9.25" I use a Baader Clicklock, 2" diagonal and then the 2" EP in that order.

I suggest you post examples of your light frames. In that way we can ensure that we are not missing something in your description. At the moment it is too much of a puzzle and the images will tell the story hopefully.

Ok, I had this issue in October 2014. This is how I solved it: -Make sure sigma clipping median combination method is selected for both flats and lights -Stacked everything EXCEPT flats -Stacked again with flats this time came out fine.

From what I understand stacking is the last process but I'm no expert. Just double checking you have carefully checked every sub for an issue. A rogue sub has tripped me up before. I will go and get my notes as I keep diaries of what I do to see if that throws anything up.

This very thing happens to me occasionally and I call it 'melt'. In my case it is always solved by re-doing the stack without flats. However, reading your thread it looks like you didn't use flats so I am a bit stumped. Also, as Louise says I always set the threshold to around 100 stars. That's plenty.

I shall be totally selfish and say that I am waiting to see how you get on with the 1600. I am so impressed with the other ZWO offerings I own (or have owned) especially as they run natively on my Mac.

Hi Michael how do you deal with different contrast/levels between panes?

We need a NB imager to come along but following the nice description above I believe some Deep Sky Objects benefit from attention with a Hydrogen beta as well as or instead of alpha. Supposedly, this is the case for the California nebula and the Horsehead. I imagine the distribution of those emission lines could vary through the gas cloud thus rendering depth to any image? Let's see what the expert imagers say.

Nice. Bit of a 'Beach Hut' thing going on there?

Here you can see a daytime and night time setup, the latter albeit with a Baader filter for a daytime white light view too. The first picture was taken during the recent Mercury transit.

I used the 130 PDS for the Mercury transit in tandem Alt Az mode with my Lunt 60 thus: ..and about 2 1/2 hours in I used it with my ASI 174MM to capture some 15 minute interval shots compiled below: Took we a while to de-rotate the individual layers to defeat the effects of field rotation! Full thread is here:

You are more than welcome to come here. Wall to wall Sun all day is forecast. I also have some Masham sausages and my BBQ to hand. Note my obsy view is restricted after about 5:30. Garden is ok though.

For once, looking very good here if a tad windy. Get those WL filters strapped on tight folks.