Stub Mandrel

Take a look at this excellent thread to give you an idea of what sorts of things you can expect to see. May I suggest you start with the middle 'star' in Orion's sword which is well placed for viewing at the moment. One of the most spectacular sights in the sky the Orion nebula will show as a complex grouping of young stars lighting the swirling dust clouds which they formed from. In my 10" Newtonian I can see plenty of detail as long as the moon isn't too bright and on a moonless night it is quite spectacular. Last friday at our astronomy group meeting the chair found M94, a galaxy, in the same scope. A more typical sight this was a circular disc with the hints of a brighter rim and clear central core, despite the moon and persistent thin cloud.

Presumably the final result is what those of us who voted can see? Is there any news on Competition #19 (or even Competition #20?)

Your are correct and I am a silly billy! I suspect the detail depends on where it is in the sky and time of day.

This web page gives an explanation, the chap calculates daytime sky has a magnitude of about 3 per square arc-second. At the moment Jupiter has an apparent size of 0.35 arc-seconds or ~0.1 square arc-seconds. Its magnitude is -1.97 or -1.97 per 0.1 square arcseconds = (very roughly) -4 magnitudes per arcsecond. -4 to 3 is seven magnitudes so jupiter is about 600 times brighter than daylight sky(!) https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2011/07/10/how-bright-is-the-daytime-sky/ This page has a shot of the Ring Nebula taken at 8:32 on a July day in Canada in a blue sky! http://mallincam.tripod.com/id46.html

Chapeau!

You are printing that flange overhung with no support?

The cooler will produce as much heat as a 40W light bulb. You MUST ensure it is properly ventilated at all times or face disaster. Take darks with a light-tight cap, not by putting the camera in a closed box.

Probably exaggerated by a poor setup. This is from when I was learning using the 130P-DS so guiding was atrocious, but you can see the peaks in RA are also dips in DEC. Looking at better sessions, the relationship is not obvious.

If it is too far out it leads to RA and DEC being slightly out of true, so corrections to errors require a movement in both axes. I've noticed this as the RA and DEC traces appearing to 'shadow' each other, especially when wind or poor balance is causing larger errors.

Just to prove I'm not totally insane then... " William "Billy" Sheehan (born March 19, 1953), is an American bassist known for his work with Talas, Steve Vai, David Lee Roth, Mr. Big, Niacin, and The Winery Dogs. "

Cor, I thought he was just a bass player!

Good point! Perhaps it wasn't? I have used it wide open. It does suffer a bit of CA with blue stars getting small haloes, but easy to process out.

There is also a very good PDF on the PHD2 site that gives a lot of useful advice. It's also worth experimenting to see which algorithms work best with your kit.

Should have had about £3 worth of microphone inserts inside... looks like the sewing machine ran out of cotton! (They were only wireless in the sense of no wires...)

You will need to lightly file the tapered square on top of the pointer part until it gives the fit you need. I think teh compass is 25mm and the level is 32mm Sight.stl Upper Body.stl Main Body.stl Pointer.stl