FenlandPaul

Just round the corner from there right now. Beautiful part of the world. 👍

Amazing! Two of my favourite things brought together in one thread! 👍 🔭 🍺

Been observing with an ironing stool from a 12” dob for years, Martin - adjustable height is excellent. Very comfortable and relaxing, particularly important when at averted vision limit or waiting for that moment of still seeing to tease out detail. This is mine: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ironing-Chairs-Leifheit-Accessories/s?rh=n%3A3576374031%2Cp_89%3ALeifheit

Great to hear, Piero. Sounds like the fans made a big difference; I’ve never used mine, but I wonder whether it might be worth plugging them in. How did you find the Antares? I’m up north this weekend so unfortunately missed the clear (and finally dark!) skies!

Managed to get the shadow (and a beautifully coloured GRS) through some of the worst seeing conditions I’ve encountered for a while (and then cloud cover). I couldn’t make out Io on the disc though - I just wasn’t going to get such subtle contrast in those conditions. It was like watching the sky through a boiling kettle!!

Off to the very south west of Cornwall with my Altair Astro Starwave 70, which is a joy to use under dark skies. A couple of degrees further south should lift Scorpius and Sagittarius a bit further out of the murk, especially with 270 degree sea horizons. That said, I’ll miss the extra few degrees that the west coast of France can give.

It’s a bit perplexing. At that time and date, most of Orion will have been below the horizon at your location, so I wonder if you’d been imaging Orion earlier on and this was a frame taken as you packed up, or somewhere else in the sky? Betelgeuse would have been only 10 degrees above the horizon by that time.

👍 What date was the pic taken? Doesn’t immediately ring any bells.

Think you might need to reattach the pic! 😀

Nice report, Nick. I was out for a couple of hours it’s last night on Jupiter, Saturn, a few quick doubles in Cygnus and M13. Just a very casual session to unwind. I found the seeing quite shoddy though, and aside from some dark detail on the NEB, both planets were a bit underwhelming in the dob. M13 made up for it though, as did Albireo, and I even enjoyed the atmospheric appearance of the moon rising through the broken clouds. Nothing new, nothing in the least bit challenging, but some much needed relief for weary eyes!!

Speculative, but might have been a weather balloon, possibly faintly lit by light pollution etc? Just thinking about the bell shape. Your magnification wouldn’t have been particularly huge with that scope and eyepiece, so might account for it? Otherwise I’m all outta ideas!! 🤷‍♂️

Just saw a tweet from Damian Peach reminding us that it’s 25 years this evening since Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter. What a night that was! Who remembers where they were / what they saw? I remember going out with my dad and my little 4.5” Tesco reflector, not really having a clue what to expect. We sat peering at the planet for a good few hours, hoping maybe to see some flashes or some pockmarks by ultimately never seeing anything (probably due to the rather shoddy optics on my Argos- purchased entry scope). Here’s an extract from my notebook at the time: I remember seeing the HST images on the news later on (or possibly the following morning) and being blown away. It was great to be part of the event, despite no useful observations!

Just a couple?! I try to keep mine restricted to my study and shed, but work has to take priority in the study so it often spills over, which rarely goes down well. @Pieroglad you had a good session; it was wonderfully clear through the night. I was hoping for a repeat tonight but looking unlikely.

Great stuff, Michael a will be interested to see the pres. That’s a nice NLC pic you’ve got at the end there! I assume that was a sight for sore eyes after all the faint stuff!

Congrats from a fellow VX12L owner / lover 😍😍😍.

Looks like a lovely location, Jeremy!

Just to complete the thread, it’s 822g including caps, eyepiece and mount / footing.

Hello Jon I’m very sorry to hear of your father. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to sort through and carefully and thoughtfully dispose of / sell his belongings. I think you’ve come to the right place here; there’s a wealth of knowledge and experience on this forum. I think the first thing to do would be to examine the For Sale board on here, and specifically the “sold / closed ads” section. You’ll get a guide to a lot of prices on there and you could even private-message some of the vendors to ask what they actually got for things; I’ve found people here overwhelmingly helpful and pleasant so I’m sure no one would mind. There is a Meade 16” light bridge currently for sale here: Yours appears to be in mechanically good condition from the pics, and the mirror might clean up nicely from someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s also surprising just how well a grubby mirror can perform. So you might look at a slight discount you Mark’s scope above, but probably nothing drastic. Mirrors can also be professionally recoated - Orion Optics UK have a “hilux” coating service. Selling big scopes at this time of year can sometimes take a while because of the light nights - people just aren’t thinking about astronomy as much (can you believe that?!). Finally, a useful site to compare prices is https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/ . It’s not the easiest to navigate but there’s a large archive of sold stuff and so you can benchmark your prices there. I’m sure others will have much more specific advice for you. All the best with things. Paul

Sorry everyone I realised my comment about 0.965” eyepieces in the Versascope is wrong. It takes 1.25” eyepieces. You just can’t get the staff nowadays, can you? 🙄

I think there’s a lot of merit to that approach, Gerry, especially with your skies. I use published Deep Sky magnitudes solely as a rough guide to “might be possible” vs “definitely impossible”. If it falls into the former camp, I give it a shot.

Ah, that’s the Versascope out of your shortlist then because it has a 0.965mm eyepiece so not really interchangeable unless you start investing in a different barrel size! I believe the Maxifinder that @Littleguy80 has referenced takes 1.25” eyepieces though, so 👍. And it’s 80mm! 😃

The 60mm really packs a punch, and RACI means I don’t have to do mental gymnastics with a star chart (usually Interstellarum). My telrad is really a glorified red-dot the way I use it; I rarely use the circle diameters ⭕️ for anything. Using the TV60 for a finder would be incredible!!

What a cracking first night, Piero! Sounds like you made the right choices in getting familiar with it. I’m sure you’ll warm to the telrad/RaCI combination soon; I find it brilliant (I have the Antares versascope 10x60) and so intuitive. It won’t be long before you move “as one” with your scope. Roll on the dark nights!!

Superb, Mark - really looking forward to reading of your adventures. Apart from 20”, what do you know of the specs? Paul

Very exciting indeed! Breeze is dying down. What have you used to collimate, Piero?