Roy Challen

I don't do imaging, but I do use the solarquest for visual. Take it outside, turn it on, it does the rest. Cannot get any easier than that.

Hello from Watford.

That was a good read, I vaguely remember doing a similar tour of the Virgo 'Ms' with my ETX 70 15-16 years ago. I was in a nice, dark spot in the Chilterns, and remember being surprised at how much I could see with that little scope.

Sun was a bit quiet today, cloudy here too most of the day.

Looking forward to your images, Nigella.

My Skylight hasn't made an appearance in this thread for an age, and seeing as I picked up a nice mount for it this morning (thanks to @wormix), here it is. It's light enough to be grab-n-go, mainly for lunar observing. The tripod is a little on the short side, so I'll put some bricks under the feet until I get around to making some longer legs. The finder scope bracket needs improvement as it keeps falling off, not that it's needed for finding the moon.

I love that looping prom animation, I watched it happen in Ha and was hoping someone got a shot of it. Nice one!

That's really not good. QA aside, there's something wrong with the whole manufacturing process if that is the final result.

Yeah, this kind of alloy usually has high zinc content.

Completely agree with this. I had an ETX 70 for the best part of a decade, it got de-forked in the end.

Enough moons for two per month! There ought to be some balance though: Good News Moon, Money Moon, New Baby Moon, and... erm...Xmas Cake Moon😄

What @mikeDnightsaid. If its lens is in good condition, it'll be a very nice lunar/planetary scope, exactly the sort of thing I'd buy especially for £40, but not really for imaging. Nothing to stop you trying though.

I don't think you'll get anything new at this price point. If that's your budget then second hand will be your only realistic option. I'd probably go for the zoom Louis D mentioned above. It'll cover what a set of eyepieces will in one unit.

I have the exact same set, bought s/h from SGL, for £20. Quite good in a slow scope, but probably not so good in a fast one.

Lovely afternoon! Get the Daystar out! Warmed up, let’s see what’s happening. There’s a nice AR roughly central, three spots immediately obvious. A nice filament down south, pointing to a small but bright prom. Several proms on the western limb, one looking like it’s looping over. The Transit prom from the past couple of days looks like it’s devolved into two smaller proms. There’s also a large triangular prom up north, but it’s quite faint. Tuning to the right helps a bit. But what's happening to the Transit? The two ‘horns’ are starting to join up! OMG, they’re forming a huge loop! Right in front of me! I’ve never seen this before, and it’s truly amazing. I even had to get an eraser to change my sketch. Surely someone else saw this happen, I didn't just imagine it. Did I? That's not something I'll forget any time soon, I actually saw something move in space, millions of miles away!

After an enjoyable solar session this morning, I felt an evening session observing the moon was needed (for universal feng shui - term borrowed from someone on here). The seeing was mainly good, although there was a prolonged session of bad seeing halfway through. I chose the Crater Schiller as my main target for the evening. It is a distinctive shape, being very elongated. It actually looks like two craters that impacted at very low angles, and managed to overlap each other. Perhaps it was one object that broke up close to the surface, creating two impact craters. I made a quick sketch, noting the small craters around the rim, and the two small mountain ranges at one end within the main crater. I then looked at the crater Plato. I attempted to count the craterlets within. At first, I could only resolve the central craterlet, but gradually I thought I could make out another roughly halfway to the rim and not quite directly south. Checking a lunar atlas later, I found that this was a genuine observation, so I’m happy with two craters resolved. I also had hints of rougher terrain to the north of the central craterlet, which are actually two craterlets close together. I couldn’t be sure of these though, and only found their true nature by checking the atlas. Lastly, I viewed the Alpine valley. It was fully illuminated, and very low contrast. It is best viewed with lower illumination so I’ll have to revisit later. I was using the zoom and barlow combination at between x180 and x265. Schiller, just right of centre. The view was much better than shown here. Nice to get two scopes out for two sessions in one day. This is turning out to be a good year for astro (for me at least!).

Seeing was so so for me, plenty of time yet, looks like it's going to be a nice day

Very good morning session. After warming the scope up, I saw the AR roughly central to the disc. Two spots were immediately obvious, with the third (actually a pair), less obvious, forming an approximately isosceles triangle. During my observations, the region formed by the shortest edge of the triangle seemed to develop a ring around it. Roughly oval, with the spots at either end, the central region seemed to grow brighter over the duration of this session. If this is true, then that is amazing - to witness real-time change over a short timescale, from 150-odd million km away. Checking on GONG afterwards, the feature is distinct on the image from Learmonth, but less so on the image from Udaipur taken earlier. The Shark Fin Prom from yesterday has evolved into what looks to me to resemble a Ford Transit van. Very pleased that my drawing closely resembles GONG images.

Prom looks a little like a Ford Transit! The 'rugby ball' in the AR is also very interesting this morning, seems to be getting brighter.

It looks like the Shark Fin Prom to me😄

Even my Tal shows a huge amount of detail using cheap eyepieces. On a night of good seeing, it's amazing. If (and it's a big if) I ever upgrade, it would have to e something like an ED120. Gotta try binoviewers in it first though. Great account, btw. Nice images too.

Amazing detail, it's the towering inferno!

Very variable seeing in Watford today, but in the good moments, what fantastic detail especially in the big prom.

Just had a very nice 40min session in Ha. Counted 5 spots in that AR, the filaprom really gave a nice 3d effect too.

Very good image.