Paz

I had a couple of solar sessions today, a bit of white light and a bit of Ha with a nice easy going set up. There's still quite a lot going on.

I was out briefly at 11.20, with a 72mm refractor and 4.5mm Delos for 96x and an 0.75mm exit pupil. The background sky was bright grey but I could see around mag 9+ directly and around mag 10.4+ with averted vision.

I checked out struve 2474 amd 2470 in Lyra, Albireo, and M13.

I've been slowly refining and improving my grab and go set up by trial and error in the field and I'm close to getting it as good as I think I can.

I've been on exactly the same journey, have had a dark one for a long time, found it too hot for solar, have tried innumerable ideas to keep cool and dark doing solar with varying degrees of success and recently got a white hood  which does help.

Oooh that's clever. I'm currently trying to configure my 72mm refractor with a 6x30 finder and a rdf or rigel both in perfect positions but so far I'm having to compromise the position of one or the other or both. I am inspired to think differently and possibly make some kind of contraption.

Thanks for the heads up I've put these in my calendar. The last moon/planet meet up I saw was Venus, a fine sight and worth the effort it to to see it. Saturn will probably be even better.

Congratulations on the new arrival!

I didn't get into astronomy until I was in my forties and my boys were around 6 and 4.

I would recommend firstly being prepared to let astronomy go and come back to it when you can if need be, which I think you are.

I can't comment on photography but visual astronomy can be done in a way that can fit around young family life. I had a grab and go set up that I could pick up and walk out of the door with, and I could pick it up and put it inside and be back to doing other things within  a minute or two.

If you keep a mental note of what's on in the sky you can observe all year round day, night, and twilight. I was out last night with that kind of set up, with summer twilight and light pollution raging, but I had a fine time on doubles. I was observing for 10 minutes then had to pack up to go and do taxi duty which is my main purpose in this world at the moment now the boys are older, but it was no problem as it required no effort to set up or take down.

If you get a small simple set up your daughter can use it hands on from a young age.

I do this sometimes. I find the following...

- filters that block blue light I find can help, I find green, orange, or yellow useful, but red is too dim.

- A polarising filter can help to clear atmospheric scatter.

- At small exit pupils filters that dim the image a lot become counter productive and I'll switch back to no filter.

- A colour filter may not reveal more detail but they often bring different features to my attention.

- sometimes I'll use a colour filter just to dim the image and I don't mind the fact that it's a colour filter rather than a ND filter.

- If you happen to have deep sky filters such as UHC they can be fun but they go a bit closer to blue.

I've been out tonight doing more testing of various grab and go arrangements to get the best set up out of the kit I have available lying around at home, something easy to take out in one go and observe straight away.

I think I am almost there using my 72mm refractor and Porta 2 as the starting point. I had a great time cloud dodging and doing doubles in Lyra, Cygnus, and Ursa Major.

14 minutes ago, Space Hopper said:

.....if only the weather here gave us that chance to improve. Tough when you only get one or two chances per month.

That is a good point, I think I could do a great video on how to observe through clouds and in between clouds given how much practice I get at doing that. 😀 

Thats the best astronomy video I've watched in a while, hearing from such an experienced observer.

Lots of insights for anyone inclined to listen, particularly the last one about observing skills getting better with practice.

1 hour ago, Chaz2b said:

 

question, is ND 5 the same strength  as nd1000000?
chaz

ND5 means one divided by 1 with 5 zeroes after it  (thats how I remember it!) so 1/100,000. 

This is a useful thread to read, I haven't though much about mounts for a while and there's quite a few options out there I had not been aware of.

My smallest/lightest set up is a neewer carbon tripod and AZT6, it isn't hugely stable (the tripod that is) but in its favour it packs down small, is very light, and I can raise a scope to head height. This can take small refractors.

I use a Vixen Porta 2, which is more stable and has slow motion controls  but it doesn't pack down so small and it can't raise a scope to head hight. This can take scopes such as a 127 mak or ST120. I use this mostly if I'm observing away from home but don't have to pack down small.

I use a Skytee 2 on 1.75" steel tripod, which is quick easy to use, and much more stable. This can take up to things like a C8 or 125mm refractor. This is mostly used for grab and go sessions at home.

Then I use an EQ5 on a 1.75" tripod. This is more stable still and I use the RA motor for tracking, but is more hassle getting set up. This is used for longer sessions or if I know I'm going to be at higher magnifications and looking at faster moving targets.

I've got an extension pier that I'll use sometimes with the skytee 2 or eq5, mainly if I'm observing things at high altitude with the SM125, but it means more vibes.

This site does podcasts....

https://actualastronomy.com/

2 hours ago, Second Time Around said:

Rather than the expense of a big Dob I've spent the extra money on a night vision device. 

I have an eye on this as a potential future option in the long run.

I think big dobs are at the more specialist end of the spectrum, you have to be fairly dedicated to own one, and home made dobs all the more so.

I still have a VX14 but it has seen less use the last few years for health reasons and then cloud reasons. It's not easy to want to set it up when I might only get 5 minutes (or zero minutes) at the eyepiece before the clouds roll in.

I had a good look at Schickard last night, and I had made a note to have a go at 86 Virginis, a 1" double nearby, but I got fixated on the moon and ran out of time to check that out.

My heavy set ups use Delos and Naglers and my light set ups use SLVs and NPLs.

If I'm travelling I'll take 3 or 4 eyepieces with fairly big jumps between them, typically one for a large field of view  one with a good exit pupil for deep sky (depends on how dark the skies are) and one to give about 100x as the most magnification if I've got a light mount that vibes, or more if I have a sturdier mount.

I have one of those Baader MkIV zooms but I've gone back to fixed eyepieces as taking 3 or 4 of those doesn't take up much space and I'd rather have the longer eye relief.

I had a look at the moon in the StellaMira 125 at 169x with binoviewers.

Initially I was focusing in Sinus Iridum, and the Laplace side, then the south wall of Schiller, and then I noticed Gassendi but not long before I had to pack up. I agree Gassendi was well lit, if I had started on that I might not have moved on to anything else.

I've been mulling over the fairness of this comparison, and I think the SM125 had the benefit of going second as the seeing was getting slightly better as the night went on and the lighting of most of the lunar targets was only going to get slightly worse not better.

I also think the second scope gets the benefits of my eye/brain dialling in while I'm using the first one.

I thought the conditions meant that  the SM125 was giving a view closer to its best but the C8 had significantly more headroom to show better views if conditions were optimal.

I also realise I was using very high magnifications that I don't normally use, it would have been more sensible to compare at 150x-200x or so as that's much more commonly what I use.

I was observing this evening with the C8 and started wondering how the SM125 would compare when I was getting softer views at higher magnifications and when I tried a double with the C8 it highlighted quite poor seeing, I think a combination of local rooftop heat and tube currents although the C8 had been out for a couple of hours. So I swapped scopes and went back over the same targets again with the SM125 at similar magnifications to compare. Here's what I thought...

The C8 was at about 230x and 345x with binoviewers.

The SM125 was at about 254x and 317x with binoviewers.

• Porrima - when the moon in the C8 was looking a bit murky I moved over to Porrima to check out the seeing more objectively, and defocused it was showing poor seeing and constantly moving/breaking diffraction rings. In the SM125 the view was a lot more clean and still and with fewer diffraction rings. A straight win for the SM125.
• Hortensius Domes (Lunar 100, number 65), the dark/light contrast and resolving the domes was slightly clearer in the SM125.
• Copernicus H (Lunar 100 number 74), the crater was resolved about the same, but the dark halo was slightly clearer in the SM125.
• Pico mountains (Lunar 100 number 23) I thought I got slightly more detail in the C8 but a more contrasty view in the SM125.
• Plato craterlets (Lunar 100 number 83) it wasn't a good time to try but I was ticking off Lunar 100 objects so had a go. I thought I could (barely) make out 3 with the C8 (and they didn't look like craterlets, they looked like slight imperfections in the floor), I don't think I could see any in the SM125, but I wondered how much difference an hour might make as the lighting would have been slightly worse for the SM125.
• Lambert R (Lunar 100 number 78) - a ghost crater, I thought this was slightly clearer in the C8 but again I wondered if the lighting was slightly worse by the time the SM125 had a go.

In other respects the C8 is higher workload to operate, I have to put a separate dew shield on the C8 and it needs 2 counterweights rather than 1 on an EQ5 as the C8 is a similar weight to the SM125 but it is fatter so its centre of gravity is further away from the counterweights , the SM125 focuser is better, the C8 takes longer to acclimatise, and I don't have to think or worry about collimation with the SM125.

Overall I thought the SM125 did slightly better on the views today, and if ease of use is added into the equation it was clearly better, but the C8 is no slouch.

It would have been good to have them side by side in the field to eliminate some of the variables in comparing them but I don't have the facilities to do that.

On 09/05/2024 at 17:57, Paz said:

Having seen this thread I got a scope out for a quick look and took a measurement - about 14.5 ticks long in my Microguide eyepiece (the picture is much worse than the view was). Now I have to dig out the instructions to work out how big that is!

.

Just to follow up, the size I measured is...

Distance to target (km) x measured size in reticle (mm) / Focal length of scope (mm)

...so...

151,000,000km x 1.45mm / 975mm = about 225,000km or about 139,000 miles (ignoring foreshortening from it not being exactly square on).

In the SM125 scope each little tick on that scale is  over 15,000km across at the sun, so Earth would easily fit inside one tick.

I've seen a few reports  in the media that there might be more action when this spot comes around again, but how long can a spot keep going?

My white light setup has changed a lot over time, but currently it is...

Objective

2" uv/ir cut (with kg3 which absorbs any ir that is not reflected)

Wedge

Glass path corrector

Continuum filter

ND3 filter

Polarising filter

Filters are on a nosepoece that I can rotate independently of the wedge and the binoviewers to enable use of the polarising filter.

Binoviewers 

Eyepieces

The nd3 filter was previously "fixed" on the wedge but I finally worked out how to detatch it as I also use the wedge sometimes for observing Venus, hence the nd3 is how it is now.

I was out last night with the SM125 firstly testing 8mm BSTs with the binoviewer, making for 317x, which was far too much for the conditions but they tested out fine. I then backed up to 85x with 30mm NPLs and was observing Vallis Rheita, supposedly caused by secondaty impacts from Mare Nectaris, a nice target with lots to see.

It's nice to be able to observe in civilised temperatures!

I got another 8mm BST in the end and having tried it with my other one in the binoviewer all is well, without glasses on I can hover just off the eyepieces which is what I prefer and still see both field stops and merge the image.

I do visual solar sometimes with a C8 and baader solar film, it shows up and seeing conditions more but it also has the potential to show good detail. I use refractors more often for solar though, for their practicality.