Helen

Thread revival time 😁 I have an Obsession ultra compact dob which also has 3 sets of poles. When I was in the States a couple of weeks ago I took the opportunity to pick up an Astrosysytems shroud - ordered as designed for Obsession UC. So have got it home and it is just a standard tubed shroud 🙄. So have been looking at ways to keep it out of the light path. I thought I'd share here was looks promising (waiting for first light...). Another thread on here about dewshields mentioned Proplex. At £4 for a big sheet in Wickes it is cheap enough to experiment with! It turns out it is ideal when cut into strips. It is really lightweight and easy to cut. It seems to be keeping enough shape too. At the moment I've got two ribs, but will see how it works in practic Helen

No silly questions 😉 it's all about learning 😁 I'm assuming you currently power your mount from a cable that looks like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/lynx-astro-mount-power-cable-for-sky-watcher-mounts.html - so has a fitting to go into a cigar socket. There will be nowhere to plug that in to the celestron powrertank. The celestron does come with a cable, but for a celestron mount, and the size is slightly different and so it may not work. Hope that helps 😊 Helen

It's a different bit of the same website 😉 but I thought it explained wavefront and RMS a bit 🤣🤣. We like graphs 😁

This might help a bit more https://www.telescope-optics.net/aberrations.htm (rms = root mean square is a measure of the average error/uncertainty and expresses statistical deviation frpom perfect reference) Helen

A nice battery 🙂 Just note it doesn't have a standard cigar socket outlet, so you'll need an adapter https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/lynx-astro-silicone-21mm-dc-jack-to-female-cigarette-socket.html or different a cable https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/lynx-astro-silicone-power-cable-21mm-dc-jack-to-21mm-dc-jack.html to use it (if you get from FLO just email them to check the connections 😉 ) Helen

Sponsored by our significant others 🤣

One more thing to think about is field of view. The eyepieces you have are all relatively narrow field. So you may be able to still get the framing you like but at higher magnification with a higher power, wider field eyepiece. And for manual then as you say wider is easier. I love my 24 Panoptic in all my scopes. My favourite 16mm is the William Optic/Nirvana UWAN. I also like the 13 Nagler. May be an idea to play around with FLO's five calculator. Enjoy the hunt! Helen

...and me 🙂 I also found the case that my william optics 123 came in works well too when I'd like a bit more protection (eg when I want to be able to put things on top of it without worrying). It looks like they no longer make them though.... https://www.astroshop.es/bolsos/william-optics-bolso-de-transporte-para-fluorostar-98-110-123/p,22230 Helen

LCO take twilight flats at the end of each night but other observatories use dome flats - some do have huge light panels for this purpose 😎 Helen Ps what are you doing with LCO? Is it FT? I work with the FT team 😉

Groupie territory...😎

It is this Evening 😁

I'm heading to York Wednesday to listen to Guy Consolmagno (who wrote Turn Left at Orion) in York Minster. Should be a fascinating and thought provoking evening! https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/events-calendar/events/ebor-lecture-series/the-ebor-lectures-brother-guy-consolmagno-evening-lecture.html Big question..... Do I take my copy of TLAO and get him to sign it???🤔 Helen

I don't know if this will help, but there is a synscan version just for the Allview http://skywatcher.com/download/software/synscan-v3-hand-controller-firmware/ 3.09.26 Also you may need to make sure the scope is facing the right direction relative to the mount (the scope to the left of the mount) - the AZGTI is picky like that too. Helen

I've got mine in parallax rings and use a standard vixen dovetail. I also use a telrad which is currently attached to a ring via another vixen dovetail and an ADM small vixen dovetail holder (like the ones used for piggy-backing a guide scope. Seems to work well 🙂 I'm actually not that impressed with the finish on the parallax rings, given their price, and I think the WO rings would be nicer and cheaper 😉 The Tak 100 and azgti is a nice combination. Helen

I thought this might interest some people - particularly given our current weather challenges!! https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/astronomy/create-stunning-images-the-universe Helen

Just add alka selzer and water (and stand back!!!) 😉 The cable is may be a snap cable to allow you to control a dslr camera from your mount 🙂 Have fun, they are neat little mounts! Helen

It is astro related - honest 🤣 Getting ready for the Star Party 😉 Any guesses?? Helen

I did that once and it turned out really well 🙂 I was afraid I'd peaked too soon and haven't tried again 😋 Helen

I use a Borg 71 as my travel scope. It has the advantage of splitting into to smaller pieces - so I can just take the lens in carry on and pack the other pieces in suitcase. It is also light so works with a lightweight giro mount on a photo tripod. Helen

@Fraunhoffer lovely images 😊 can you start a new thread for each please? Thanks Helen

We were somewhere in northern France. We travelled the day before, not booked a hotel (not realising how busy it would be!!) and ended up spending the night (I couldn't say 'sleeping'!) in the car in a small town square. We used the facilities at the local bar (which thankfully opened for breakfast 😄 ). When it got light it was raining - we thought we'd spent an uncomfortable night in the car for nothing. So we just drove north following the brighter weather until we found mostly broken clouds, we parked on a track in a field on hill. The only kit was a camera and a 2 bits of card with a pinhole! W saw parts of partial, but we were lucky with totality - seeing and feeling the whole thing! I remember most both the darkness travelling across the landscape towards us and the cheers doing the same. Another car was parked about 100 yards away, and at the end we felt compelled to go to them. They were Dutch, we didn't undertsand each other much, but the need was there to just share the amazing thing we'd seen. We then tried to get a hotel room near Rouen that night and failed again - I insisted we keep driving until we found somewhere (2 hours later we avoided another night in the car and without facilities!). It was an amazing experience - and definitely got us hooked on eclipses. I was in China and USA for totals, we were due in Turkey but Mike got taken ill in the airport hotel and so we didn't get there 😞 Thinking of Chile next year, and certainly the next US one. It was film only in those days, and Mike hadn't done any prep on settings etc. So we were interested to see what he'd got. We grinned a lot when these came out! (sorry about the reflections, but you get the idea 🙂 ) We then cntinued down to Annecy and had a lovely couple of weeks holiday (we had booked that bit 😉 ) Helen

@SimonS start swotting 😉 Helen

You could start with the moon 😊 Helen

The ASI usb3 cameras can be used directly with a tablet (you may need an OTG ) with ASICap. I used a 224 with an asus 7 tablet and a solar scope at a school recently and it was easy for the kids to see what was happening and take pictures (the 224 was too small a chip for a full disk, so next time I'll use a bigger camera). I haven't tried stacking and processing with the tablet though. Helen

A quickie from the start (focus was tricky 🙄) Helen