Ruud

What a lovely quaint chart! I had some trouble identifying everything in it, so using Stellarium I went to London in 1869. It looks like the old chart is off by a few hours, and the brightness of the stars is quite arbitrary at times. Delphinus is missing entirely and I couldn't trace the left arm of Hercules even though I think it is there. In order to get a level horizon in the Stellarium screenshot I had to place it halfway the screen, which made a very wide view necessary, so that the screenshot too is distorted. I zipped the full size view: stellarium-000.zip It is a magnitude 5 chart. It may have its flaws, but the 150 years old chart easily beats the Stellarium chart when it comes to charm and beauty.

I get that when I don't have an image open.

This image has character. It's wonderful.

Louis, what an effort this must have been and what a great result you have here! I have a question regarding kidney beaning. Do you still have EXIF information for the images? It would allow calculating the entrance pupil (= camera lens effective aperture, "focal length / focal ratio used for the picture") for each photograph. Most of us use our astronomical eyepieces with observer pupils of around 5 mm or larger. For an observer, a messy exit pupil causes kidney beaning mainly when the pupil of the observer is only slightly wider than the exit pupil of the eyepiece. Especially the Nagler T4 12 mm and the Meade 4K UWA 14mm both show severe kidney beaning in the second of the two images you post for each, which may have been caused by an entrance pupil that is only slightly wider than the exit pupils of the eyepieces. In that case, even the mildest SAEP would show as kidney beans. That being said, both of the first images for each of these eyepieces also show kidney beaning, though very much milder. I wonder how big the exit pupils of these eyepieces and the entrance pupils of the camera lens were for these four shots. The Nagler T4 12mm and Meade 4K UWA 14mm may indeed have particularly messy exit pupils. I actually tried the NT4 12mm in a bright daylight test. From the dealer's shop it showed a strong tendency to kidney beaning so I decided against it. My pupil must have been pretty small at the time, but since it is also small when I observe the Moon I thought this eyepiece was not for me. Thanks for the thread. I think it is epic and deserves to get pinned.

Neat sketches Rob, very clean and well presented. Thanks for sharing.

Okay, it's a nice image though, well composed, good tones and so on. Even the print is well placed. But there is way too much jpeg compression! If you save as .png you get much cleaner results in the first place, and it will show up here in its original quality. An image as good as this deserves that!

I go here. When low, mid and high clouds are absent, and when the seeing is 4 or higher the night is good. You may have to set the dark theme if you don't get it by default. The light theme is terrible.

Thank you Alexander!

Hi Steve. It's amazing. I'm speechless.

Thanks Agnes, I had no idea. So I searched and I found this video. I haven't seen it yet, but I already know it'll carry me well into the future. It's an hour and twenty five minutes long. I hope it's a good video.

It looks like you found a bug. I think we should alert@alexwolf. See what he says.

The eyepiece is a magnifying glass with which you study the image from the telescope's objective. A magnifying glass magnifies more when it allows you to study an object from a shorter distance. Thus the shorter the focal length of an eyepiece, the larger the magnification it provides.

TeleVue makes some of the best eyepieces, their Delos line being the best according to many (me to). They also make good Barlows and powermates, but I've heard that the Siebert and Dakin Barlows are better. I just have TeleVue Barlows (4 of them) and I think the 3x is truly awesome. Some say that the TV Delos 17.3mm is the weakest of that line. Instead of that eyepiece I think you should consider the Morpheus 17.5mm, which is extremely good.

Hi, I just visited the Unistellar kikstarter page. There was an update on September 10, 2019, but I can't read it. Is it good news? I'm mainly curious about how the beta testing went.

Welcome Martyn! Thank you for joining the SCL.

I'm glad you like it, Avani. I used a screenshot from Quickmap which I simplified to black, white and a couple of grey tones, and then I recreated the scene in Painter using the workflow I describe here (in reply to Rob's question a few posts into the thread). The problem with this LROC painting is that it has way too much detail for my technique. I am a one-trick-artist and my trick works best on simple scenes. Estou feliz que você gostou, Avani. Usei uma captura de tela do Quickmap que simplifiquei para preto, branco e alguns tons de cinza, e recriei a cena no Painter usando o fluxo de trabalho que descrevi aqui (em resposta à pergunta de Rob, algumas postagens no tópico). O problema com esta pintura LROC é que ela tem muitos detalhes para minha técnica. Sou um artista de truques simples e meu truque funciona melhor em cenas simples.

Oh wow, this is amazing!

Hi Avani. I want both: silvery light on the Moon and more images! As a matter of fact, I'll pay a visit to your account to see if the weather has meanwhile improved in Brazil. I love your images and hope that Spring and Summer will bring you many clear nights. Oi Avani. Quero os dois: luz prateada na lua e mais imagens! De fato, visitarei sua conta para ver se o tempo melhorou no Brasil. Adoro suas imagens e espero que a primavera e o verão lhe traga muitas noites claras.

Two things play a role: dew point and collection kernels. Dew point: For every surface at a temperature below boiling point, there is a maximum humidity beyond which condensation will try to form on it. Maybe the eye lenses of the Canon are cooler than those of the Olympus. Do you carry the Olympus closer to your chest? Also, if the Olympus allows more ventilation between the eye lenses and your eyes, humidity has less chance of building up. Do the Canon eye caps trap the air when held close to the eye? Collection kernels: Condensation has to start somewhere. If there is more dust on the lenses of the Canon or if their coating is less smooth, condensation will form more readily on them. If you keep your binocular close to your chest (and on colder nights under your coat) they have a better chance of being warm enough to prevent condensation.

Wow Martin, it's an astounding image! Awesome and amazing! And big too. Love it!

Hi Cary, looking forward to your sketches!

Thank you, Rob. I used my small SCT with magnifications up to 313x. The medium is pen and paper combined with "scanner, Wacom tablet, Photoshop, Painter and Topaz Adjust". I start off with notes on paper, draw crater outlines with the right relative sizes and for this one a thick T with a curved top bar to show the position of the mountains. I sometimes make a separate mesh of triangles for the relative positions and distances of all major features. After that I make a separate rough sketch for each feature. These sketches record the highlights and shadows. I divided the Apennines in several zones and did the rough terrain around Eratosthenes separately. I also marked wrinkles in the lava outside the main features. I scan everything, collect the lot in photoshop, invert left to right, resize and move the partial sketches. I warp, resize and position everything properly using a map as a reference. Then I add a number of layers. At the top I fill in the highlights with white and in a layer below it the shadows with black. Below that go the ridges and gullies. At the very bottom I use a grey-to-black gradient. Then I roughen up the whole with small scale distortions (from PS filter gallery), bump up local contrast with Topaz Adjust, save at 600% and move to Corel Painter. In Painter I use a charcoal, acrylic and smeary brush to push around pixels. It's like working with paint that never dries. The smeary brush has very hard, scratchy bristles. I've not been able to make a mixer brush like it for photoshop, so Painter is a necessary part of the workflow. My handwriting is ugly, so in Photoshop I prepare the text using Kalam for the font, which then also goes to Painter. Back in photoshop I bring back the image scale from 600% to 100% and combine the versions that I made in Painter. I retouch where needed. I tone map the painting to add crunch and drama (Topaz Adjust) and add the text. I also add a mask to hide the rough edges of the painting and a canvas texture. --- That's about it. I wish I could record a video of the process, but these paintings take between three and eight hours to make on the computer. That is of course way too long for a video. --- If you look closely you'll see that I have many artefacts in this painting. Especially the Moon's lava isn't nearly as chaotic and rugged as I show it. And I frequently have missing features. They never made it to my notes or got lost in Painter. Fortunately I aim more for effect than for realism, and I feel the artefacts add to the effect while any omissions hardly distract from it, so I am quite content. --- Thanks for asking, Rob. If anyone asks the same question I now have this post to refer to.

I really like the final result. It is awesome at full size. Well done! Many thanks for sharing. M27 is one of my all time favourites.

Thank you Mike, doc, Craig, I appreciate the comments! I didn't stay out all that late, Mike. Went in at 2 AM, and got up at 10, so didn't lose any sleep really. Making the painting was a bit stressful though because I really messed up the previous two. (Didn't post those.) I'm glad this one came out the way it did.

That's a great contribution, Radman. It would make a nice wall poster!