Knighty2112

Drat! Spacex ‘eh? I thought we were going to get Mulder and Scully on the case?

Hope someone took a video of it! Spooky!

Great image. Well done! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

We think the skip was a big give away!

Yep. Use it after been outside when dewed up and the desiccant inside will soak up the moisture inside your scope overnight.

Nice work. Been looking at one of these too to mod onto a larger scope. So the phone doesn’t sit parallel with the scope then, but at a slight angle upwards is that correct?

Arrived today via 1st class postie from Radders on here is a Geoptik cover, which I am testing out as I type for later on for some lunar and doubles observations. A little breezy, so keeping an eye on it just in case. 😉

After planning my lunar observation for tonight after a a quick session yesterday looking at Thebit/Straight Wall/Birt area in the Mare Nubium, I came across an oddly named crater named Wurzelbaur whilst checking the area out in the “21st Century Atlas of the Moon” which only showed an image of the odd looking and named crater but no other details on it. Been a child growing up in the 70’s I knew this crater obviously wasn’t related to a certain scarecrow played by Jon Pertwee, or any group singing about Combine Harvesters back in the day. So I whipped open my copy of “Craters of the Near Side Moon” which explained that this crater’s main feature was the quote (sic) ‘rubbly clump of material on its floor.’ This was evident in the pictures in both of the above books, so it was marked down for definite observation later on. I set up my Celestron 6/8 SE goto mount early on in the evening at around 7:30pm, and put on it my recently acquired Bresser Messier AR-102S OTA. After doing a solar system alignment using the moon, I set the mount to lunar tracking and used my Celestron Ultima Duo 8 and 5mm EP to view things with. Later on I would also use my Explore Scientific 2x focal extender with both these EP’s when viewed allowed a closer look. As it was still bright daylight out the contrast on the Moon near the terminator wasn’t great, so I got myself aligned in the Mare Nubium area looking at Thebit and Birt initially. Rupes Recta was just about visible in the light, but would get better later on. Looking further west from Birt I could see Nicollet, and further west also the oddly shaped Wolf crater. Right on the terminator I could just see the emerging crater wall of the crater Bullialdus. To the south of the sea of clouds I could make out the trio of craters that Wurzelbauer sits in; Pitatus, Gauricus and of course Wurrzelbauer itself. Straight away I could see the rubble in Wurzelbauer, which was obvious even early on in the evening. After a while between breaks from the scope, cups of tea etc, when the sky darkened a little more and the terminator moved slowly westward my mind started to play that old pareidolia trick of trying to make sense of what my eye was seeing in the floor on Wurzelbauer, and for the rest of the observation session this rubble looked like a grinning face. Later on looking back at the pictures in the books I could see this face still also. Maybe the old scarecrow was looking back at me after all. Either way I observed the moon until it went down behind my roof, and then finished off looking at some double stars, and the odd planetary nebula that could be seen in the twilight skies. Next time you get a chance see if you can see the face of Wurzelbauer too! 😀 BTW: I later learned after checking in on my copy of the “Atlas of the Moon” by Rukl that the crater is named after Johann P. von Wurzelbauer who was an early German solar observer. 🧐

The moon behind the clouds, and the 2 stars look like aircraft lights as they are in front of the clouds given that your location is in the busy air corridor in that neck of the woods.

Well done. Very detailed and atmospheric image too. 👍🏻

Well spotted! 👍🏻

Great work Reggie. Nice shots! 👍🏻

Thank goodness all is OK now for you. I’ve had a few floaters since my teenage years. However thankfully they’ve never got any worse than when I first noticed them, but if I do notice a sudden upturn of them I’ll get to the hospital straight away. 👍🏻

Mine has two locking thumbscrews, and both approx 4mm thread. Not sure if it is metric or imperial size screw though.

Maybe I should have said when I win the jackpot, not just a tenner!

Maybe when I win the lottery!

I can’t. What’s going on? Are the Monoliths collapsing into the sun, increasing its mass and making it form into a black hole possibly?

Sadly missed it, so I’ll catch it up on BBC iplayer tomorrow. 👍🏻

Nice to see solar activity again. 👍🏻

Excellent shots Reggie. Well done! Didn’t manage to get any of it as it was early in the morning here in the UK, and cloudy anyway. Glad you got clear skies for the event. 👍🏻

There we are! Cheers!

I use a small green pen laser rather than look through the hole to get it close to Polaris (although I rarely use this mount now). I put the flat end of the laser (after unscrewing a lens part which gives a speckled laser pattern, which I am not sure what that is used for) flush against the bottom of the sighting hole on the mount, then activate the laser beam in shorts burst to align with Polaris using the adjustments on the mount for this. With care you can get it to shine up out of the hole OK. Obviously if you use this method make sure there are no planes/helicopters etc in the air as you do this, and only keep the laser on for very short bursts to align in on Polaris. You would need to check in your country as to what the laws are for using a laser pen just to make sure you don’t fall foul of the law though if you do use this method.

Great, but where’s the bar?

Copy of vol1 on ebay for £16. Might be worth checking out.