laser_jock99

Nice to see this new Dark Sky Trail - the .pdf brochure can be downloaded here

Milky Way as seen from the first location- Star Inn, Dylife.

Another vote for skiing salopetes- plenty of second hand pairs around from people who go skiing just the once......

Liking the narrow gauge railway at bottom of your garden- Talyllyn?

Excelent images for unguided.

Stunning.

Rain or cloud - my obsy now doubles as a radio shack. Lots of interesting signals out there.....

Pozidrive screws are okay so long as you use size 3 (or larger). The smaller size 2 is prone to rounding off either the screw or the bit. Torx is good though too- but again, the larger sizes are better for this kind of work.

Panorama from my observatory in Mid Wales

Southern horizon- late summer evenings.

Very nice- the dark skies there help a lot!

Never seen that one before- nice!

Good to see some progress.

Remember the Bow Street Tornado- just down the road?

If it helps- I leave an EQ6 outside all year round on a permanent pier. It survives severe mountain conditions under a few layers of plastic bags and BBQ covers....

Canon 40D - self modified to full spectrum sensitivity. Plenty on E-bay <£100.

NGC7000 taken with GSO 8" F4 Newtonian telescope, 0.7x ASA Keller coma corrector/reducer, modifed Canon 40D full spectrum camera @ ISO1000. Stack of nine images totaling 38 minutes of exposure

Nice. Worth sending to the campsite owners to see if they'll angle the light down a bit?

On 04/05/2019 at 09:40, Trikeflyer said:

Hi, I’m looking for some dark sky camp sites to stay at this year.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to get to any star parties due to timing. Can anyone recommend any good camping sites to stay at. I live in the West Midlands so Scotland is probably out due to distance but most other places will be do able.  If you know of anywhere and ar3 happy to share the details please can you post a link for me.

Thanks

Steve 

North or Mid Wales- no too far from Brum. Llyn Peninsula is worth a look too. Brecon.....bit near the LP sources in the South

Great project- wish I had access to a digger for my build. The gradient was too much to be safe though, I fear.

Looking good so far.

If you stretch the budget to use armoured mains cable- then the metal shielding will surpress any RFI coming out of it.

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/products/0379126/?grossPrice=Y&cm_mmc=UK-PLA-DS3A-_-google-_-PLA_UK_EN_Cables_And_Wires-_-Electrical_Power_And_Industrial_Cable|Sy_Cable-_-PRODUCT_GROUP&matchtype=&pla-394215423796&s_kwcid=AL!7457!3!243856868087!!!g!394215423796!&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImZvJmJzu4QIV1ITVCh2bPwzwEAQYAyABEgLrXvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

It would be better for burying and more resistant to rodent attack too (a big problem for me).

York city centre, Stoke On Trent, North Shields- to name but a few, are also good observing sites.......

....and a bit baffling!

The first three 'Truely Dark Sky Sites' I checked were in towns........

Clearly the 'data' is not being checked.

If you can bring youself to re-check the collimation once after a couple of hours cooling down during the night- then you'll save yourself 600 Euro's............

I've looked at buying this lens as a possible replacement for my ageing Nikon ED180 F2.8 which was the recomended fast widefield AP lens in its day.

I don't want to hook it up to a CCD- so has anyone got any unprocessed, full frame DSLR images at F2 to post? I'd like to see if it is an improvement on the 'slow' old Nikon! And also how well it handles CA- one of the Nikons failings (on my lens at least) was issues with CA wide open. I found I had to stop down to F4 and use a Lumicom Minus Violet filter (almost half the cost I paid for the lens!!).

Lets hope your neighbours don't a mind your scope peering over their houses!

5 hours ago, old_eyes said:

In my design, I have the roof sitting over the warm room to allow for lower side walls,

I got round the need for having lower side walls by parking the scope in the 'upside down' position- I think I'm unique in doing this!

On 08/04/2019 at 20:54, old_eyes said:

I am thinking of using polyester coated corrugated steel as the cladding for as much as possible - I like the low maintenance aspects and it fits with the rural environment. There are sheds like that all over the place! Not sure of cladding for the asreas where the roof runs as corrugated steel would stick out too much. Possible half-timbered?

Any immediate thoughts, particularly looking for the stupid mistakes that more experienced eyes immediately spot.

Cheers!

I used plastic coated, galvanised steel cladding on my obsy build- dark green to blend into the landscape. It seems to have weathered the storms okay and to be honest looks as good now as the day we put it up- no rust or detoioration to the finish. I'm in the process of planning another shed with same material.

Timber frame

Dark green, sheet metal walls fitted to frame.

Finshed off the two visible sides in waney edge pine cladding.