Oldfort

This was visible on Wednesday (29 July) or if not something in the same place.  Likewise on Thursday.  Today it was noticably longer (about 1/10th Solar diam at 8am, but maybe bigger as the reticle I was using is a bit cruddy).  By 10.10 am the top end seemed to have detached from the base.

Looking at the NISP views, it seems to have vanished  (22.50 UT+1).

Great while it lasted.

Just a heads up that the viewing this morning is terrific, with a big spike prom particularly fine to the south east (hope that's the right way round), plus activity over the new sunpot that's rotating into view.

I  ordered a dual vixen/Losmandy saddle on Monday evening (ie after closing time), and it arrived on Thursday (16 July) - not bad for Italy to UK.  It's a sturdy but lightweight bit of kit.

DHL was the courier.  Excellent service all round.

It was amazing to see both the comet and the noctilucent clouds.  Here's my view (unprocessed) from Greenwich.

2 hours ago, The Admiral said:

Also worth checking that your mount is set to sidereal tracking and not planetary or lunar*. Leveling and inputting the exact time and location is also critical, including whether daylight saving time is being used or not.

I will second this.

The other thing to try is to do your alignment using a reticle eyepiece, which  makes it much easier to get the centreing right.

I find this site is very useful

https://gong2.nso.edu/products/tableView/table.php?configFile=configs/hAlpha.cfg

54 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Beauty in nature in a backdrop of concrete. Very nicely captured. Was this very late at night?

No, it was between 10.45 and 11.30pm.  After that they became less obvious.

In more than 50 years observing, this is the first time I have seen noctilucent clouds.  They weren't spectacular, but I'm happy.

Photos taken from Greenwich, looking north over Canary Wharf/East London.

Another good night, 21 June for these.  I will post some pictures tomorrow.

Some Canon ILCs have a setting to enable/disable taking a picture without a lens attached, and your set up would constitute "no lens attached".  I don't know about other brands.

When I was at (primary?) school, we had the delightful mixture of imperial weights and £/s/d.  This would lead to delightful questions along the lines of:

If X costs £1, 2shillings & tuppence halfpenny a pound, how much would 3 stone, 2 lbs and 5 oz cost?

5 hours ago, merlin100 said:

Should or shouldn't?🤔

Shouldn't.  Apologies for that.

My guess is that the wrong side was aluminised during manufacture, and when picked up on quality control, it was probably just sent back to have the correct side aluminised.  It should affect performance.  [EDIT  shouldn't affect performance]

Well, I'm making progress, with barlow optics screwed directly to nosepiece of T ring.  I have a shorter nosepiece on the way, so maybe that will help even more.

I agree.  For me the C8 hits a sweet spot. 

It's light weight, so it doesn't break my aging back to put it on the mount, and it doesn't require an equally back breaking mount to get good stability. Also being quite short, its moment of inertia is low, giving a lower damping time. 

It has enough aperture to see some quite faint stuff, even from bortle 8 skies, and doesn't cost the earth.  I got mine for £650, new, about 3 years ago.  Finally, the optics are pretty good, and in my experience collimation is quite robust.

I had some experience with the 6 last Summer, in a reasonably, but not amazingly dark part of France (bortle 4).  I was impressed with the pointing accuracy after a 2 star alignment, but more importantly every deep object we looked at was easily visible.  Admittedly, only looking at messier objects, but even so galaxies that that I can never see from my Bootle 8 skies with a C8, were just there.  And it's lightweight.  My only criticism is that the tripod is too low.

37 minutes ago, David Smith said:

I used to image with my PST connected to a DSLR via a barlow. Not ideal but it worked.

Do you recall what make of Barlow?  As I said, I couldn't get focus with the coronada one.  Equally likely is user error.

I have now tried the coronado barlow, but without success.  I will keep on experimenting.

2 minutes ago, NiCo10 said:

Have you tried with a Barlow as well?

No, not yet.  I will give it a go.

Thanks

I have a canon M camera, and I was trying to use it for some imaging with my PST.  I have the T ring so connection to the PST is not a problem.

Starting with the  camera my set up is

Camera -> EFM to EF converter -> T-ring -> T adaptor (1.25") -> PST

I can't get anywhere near focus.  Any thoughts on what I should try next or am I doomed to fail on this approach?

Thanks

Crescent Venus: Iphone 8 handheld, through TV76.

I got a good  naked eye view on Sunday night (24/5), although Mercury was barely visible until Venus was practically lost in the horizon glow.  It was a lovely combination with the 2 day moon.  Venus's crescent was unmissable in 10x42 bins and a great sight in my TV76.  I guess the skies over London have benefitted from the lockdown, and improved visibility.  Being to the east of the city, anything other than the brightest object is normally barely visible in the western sky.

I will post some iphone pics when I have transferred them.

If this is what you need, you can have it for the price of postage, although I'm not sure when I will be able to get to a post office.  It's missing 2 screws, but has the springy thing.

I'm trying again this morning, but really struggling with the focus.  I wish I knew what I did yesterday!

I wasn't expecting much this evening, as I'm better placed for morning viewing, but with only a few weeks to the solstice (where did this spring go?) I get to see the evening sun.

A bit of cropping, and tweeking.  This hand held thing is really tough.