Ruud

Here's another vote for removing any filters, and clean the eye lens with a few cotton buds lightly moistened with alcohol.

I love bold sketch of Maurolycus with its deep blacks, but the Baco sketch seems more 3D. Both are excellent in their own way.

It's a magnificent image. I like the second version best.

Hi Reggie, congratulations on the observation of Sirius B. One day I hope to spot it myself. Fortunately there's a few good years for Sirius B coming up. I'll need them: even Sirius A is elusive here. ☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️ 🔭🎅

I think the images are great. That's a lovely little scope you have.

This is a 5 inch refractor from the 1932 catalogue of William Mogey & Sons, inc. In 2019 money this telescope (with electric dive) would cost $21,366. There are many more telescopes in the catalogue: Mogey 1932.pdf Multiply by 18.742 for 2019 prices.

Those are wonderful and very subtle too. Thanks!

I have a Chinese tripod, a COMAN made by INNOREL. It is nearly identical to the RT85C here: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32836039382.html (scroll down a bit for info in English). I bought it in a camera store for €280. I wanted to see it before buying because I was a bit suspicious about the quality. Normally tall, quality carbon fibre tripods are very expensive and the ball head on this one alone already costs €134 - see here. It turns out that sometimes too-good-to-be-true is nevertheless true! I was immediately impressed by the tripod. I bought it and tried it out with a 5kg refractor which it carries as if it is nothing. It's incredibly rigid and vibrations dampen in less than a second. The legs are 33 mm thick and made of 8 layers of carbon fibre resin, the metal parts are machined aluminium-magnesium alloy, and the ball in the head is 44 mm in diameter. With the central column extended it reaches 187 cm high. One of the legs unscrews for use as a monopod. That is 196 cm tall with the central column attached to the leg. INNOREL sells their tripods under the brand names Coman, Xiletu, Innorel, Jieyang, QZSD, Cayer, Sirui and no doubt many more. They come in various sizes and are all clones of each other with minor variations. Just wait till one goes on sale. For my WO 73mm refactor I use the tripod with a video head (one with a poke to point it with). This is my super birding scope set up. With my binoculars I use it as a monopod together with a light weight binocular head. It reaches high enough for me to look straight up while standing. I find the included ball head too heavy (522 g), though it is a good one. It may prove handy for my camera. So +1 from me for a tall Chinese carbon tripod/monopod from China..

Or you could get a nice, wide TS f/4.5 - 274 mm FL flatield APO. (If you want to find out more about it, it's the Sharpstar 61 mm F 4.5 APO flatfield.)

Hello Dan!

Yes Carole, your yellow arrow points to the private message button. Such a message can only be read by you, the addressees and the moderators (I assume).

I think it's this:

For months I’ve been waiting for good light on Snellius and Stevinus, and when I unexpectedly found last evening’s sky clear of clouds and free of fog I hoped I would finally succeed, but the good conditions had come a day too late: the terminator had already left them behind. So instead I focused on this mid-sized crater just greeting a beam of sunlight between long shadows. I looked it up: it is Santbech, a 64 km wide crater with a depth of 4.5 km. Wikipedia says Daniel Santberg was a Dutch mathematician and astronomer. In 1651, Riccioli named the crater in his honour. Thanks for viewing.

Four winners, is that a record? Congratulations to all of you!

Here is a member offering a used Star71 https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/335282-sale-wo-star71-atik-490ex-astronomik-cls-zwo-uvir-cut/?do=findComment&comment=3748360 see the last post from 6 hours ago

Awesome winners! Congratulations.

Hi Henk, welcome to the SGL.

I had a 10-20 x 60mm zoom monocular for a long time. Although it was about 30 cm long, even when holding it with two hands (one close to the eye, one at the far end) it was not easy to keep it steady enough for use at higher magnifications. With the short tube of the Orion 10-25 x 42mm, higher magnifications will require at least a bean bag to rest it on. With my monocular, at decreasing magnifications the true field of view got a bit wider, but the apparent field got narrower. At increasing magnifications the view got ever dimmer and duller toward the maximum. I ended up using the thing at 13x for almost all observing. My zoom monocular was better than nothing, but a decent 8x42 monocular would have beaten it hands down, so I think you'd be better off with an 8x42.

I would. Before you start, please look at this series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tZ58AVVyuQ The link is to part one of "How to SUPER TUNE the Skywatcher EQ-5 mount". There are a few more parts. Browse through them to see where the man does interesting things, like take apart, remove old grease, apply new grease and put together again.

It certainly is an excellent image. Congratulations Pete!

Hi Jim, I much enjoyed the video - great job! Excellent presentation and narration, and the owl in the soundtrack made for a marvellous ambience.

We're all fine here and it's good to have you back. It was great to see the transit images here because most of us weren't very lucky with that ourselves. I was under five kilometres of very leaky clouds. Hope you're fine too! I remember you were busy writing new music. Have you and the band started performing the new material?

That's an amazing observation Mark, NGC 1931 is quite dim. West Norfolk must have nice and dark skies. Congratulations on the observation!

This telescope looks like a rebranded Sharpstar 60 mm f/6 ED. Searching for the Sharpstar may provide you with more info. My guess is that the telescope will be excellent visually, especially for observers whose eyes can adapt for a little field curvature. When used as a spotting scope you may notice no field curvature at all. For astrophotography you'll likely want a field flattener. For nature photography most situations won't require one. I have a small refractor myself (WO 73 ZS) and found that balancing it is tricky - it is back-heavy even without camera. I need to put it all the way to the front on its long dovetail to deal with this. With the TS you'll probably have to turn the L-bracket (so that it points back) to improve balance, like so.

Hi Reggie, that's a pretty one. Mercury is lovely and your Sun really shines! Thanks.