Stub Mandrel

There's a photo SOMEWHERE probably on here as well, but I can't find it..

Works on both these examples for me, especially impressed with the lizard...

I have read, and subsequently prooved to myself, that it's possible to see colour in the moon IF your eyes are totally non-dark adapted, forcing you to view it only with the colour receptors. You can make out just very faint tones to the seas.

I printed the NASA Saturn V, about a metre high with 0.5mm nozzle. Looke great when painted but kept falling over and breaking so I ended up recycling it 😞

Show them that photo of your scope pointed near the bathroom and they will probably draw the curtains... 🤣

The chair of our Astronomy Group got this pic of me failing to get my guidescope to focus on Friday night. Luckily the dual rig included a DSL that didn't need guiding.

Hi Grant, that's even weirder behviour! Up until the actual time of 11:59 the top line displays the hours either side of midnight yesterday/today. At the stroke of noon, it changes to displaying the hours either side of midnight today/tomorrow. But the labelling on the left does not change. This is confusing as in 'centre on midnight' mode the midnight displayed can be either the one before or after the day indicated. For consistency it should be displaying the day name for YESTERDAY against the top line up until the change at noon to make it clear the weather on the top line starts on the day that has passed. Also all the days below need to be moved back one when in this mode (and the time is before noon).

Single frame. Showing the effect of no astro dark & no cooling on a hot night (28 June). Just shows you the difference that stacking makes - the result of piling up 135 of these was almost passable!

I'll be dead before I use up enough cheap ones at £5 a year!

Minor bug... centred on Midnight Saturday it's highlighting 11:00 am on Sunday as the current time, but it's 11:37 am SATURDAY. I normally use centre on Midday so I haven't noticed this before, but it appears it gets confused when the current time is before when the display starts.

My ability to douse keyboards and mice with coffee/tea means I always have Trust or Advent ones...

Hah! I had an identical mouse in my paw when I saw that pic!

In the absence of a truly independent test I'm not going to lag mine - I suspect rapid cooldown is more important.

My 150PL busy imaging away after a RAG meeting at Rosliston. A bit of a galaxy fest on 29 March.

It's definitely cheating when your trunks stretch the whole length of the pool.

Is it any less meaningful than having a 'boarding pass' and my name burnt into a memory card that's being sent to Mars? Probably not, although Mars ticket was free I had to print it out myself.

This is definitely in my long-term plan list!

I got some aluminium U-channel, fitted to the top of the rings at each end using 3D-printed adaptor blocks, held ina 3D printed bracket so very similar to @Susaron's approach.

The Redcat is a Petzval lens. Some frantic googling suggests that the design lacks a flat field, whioch can be corrected with a field flattener, at the expense of introducing coma. As the Redcat is marketed as being flat full frame, perhaps some residual coma is an inevitable consequence of the design? This is a 'pixel peep' of the bottom right corner of one of the (stunning) example Redcat images on the Williams Optics website. The coma looks worse than some examples above...

The ASI294 looks good... but not available as mono!

We had a professional survey done of our electrics. He said the best bit was my workshop, which I wired up myself - ring main, spur lighting + spur for the heater, all off a dedicated distribution box with RCB.

This is the camera that tempts me, but it is quite a lot smaller than a DSLR sensor. I would like the ASI1600 sized sensor - as that is the biggest that works with 1.25" filters and I already have a filter wheel and filters (but not narrowband ones) for planetary. But it is even more expensive and there are horror stories of strange things happening to bright stars. That said, at £1000 it's still a lot to invest when my biggest purchase so far has been a secondhand HEQ5 at a third of that.

Nice one. You do realise the lifetime cost of starting astrophotography at age 10...?

Cripes! Does it get over the horizon up there?

If the scope is balanced, or nearly so, it should be easy to get it tight enough to keep it steady while still allowing you to move it by hand. It is on the HEQ5.