Kev M

I doubt you'd notice to be honest.....imagine the impact of a secondary mirror and 4 supports in front of your main lens ( ok mirror ), yours will still be sharper than any reflector. The impact of minor lens damage and the effect on the final picture is much overexaggerated.

Managed to get my guiding sorted last week, APT, CDC,EQmod & PHD all working in harmony. Gave it another go this week ( during a brief interlude between the clouds ). First thing I noticed was some spots on my guide camera pictures ( probably some dust or dots of moisture ) so took it out to give it a clean.......( OK... who knows whats coming next ? ). Made sure that it was still perfectly in focus when I put it back. Tracking went mad...PHD threw a complete strop, started ok for a few seconds and then started getting wider and wider on its adjustments until after about 20 seconds it threw the toys out of the pram and shouted at me on the screen. After persevering for about another 20 minutes with the same results ( tried swearing at it, didnt work but made me feel better ), decided to read the instructions.....( which I see as the first sign of defeat ). Hmmm, might have been best to run the calibration after inserting guidecam .... as what was left/right and up/down was no longer the case as it is highly unlikely that the camera had been inserted in exactly the same orientation. Obviously immediately upon rectifying this.....the clouds rolled in ( think they were deliberately waiting and laughing for a while first ) Now I know to RECALIBRATE after moving the camera.....IDIOT.

A young lady such as yourself still has many years left.

Must clearing from the East as I am the same but it starts clearing at 21:00

Clearing up here as well, but as John said , a bit windy

ClearOutside ( which is always 100% accurate....Hmmm ) shows it being clear from 9pm tonight through to 11am tomorrow morning. Its overcast and raining at the moment here though.......

Try and find an excuse to pop round and see her.....tell her your car broke down thats why you didnt turn up till 11pm and youve brought a tent 🌚

Solid cloud & drizzle up here but forecast says it will clear tonight , looking for an excuse to be late for work tomorrow.....

Thats nice, I would be more than happy with that.

Looks like a great idea, adding it to my ever growing shopping list Cheaper on Ebay , search for XL4015 ( and LED if you want that option ).

Are you sure it was water, has been known for grease to drip on them if stored face down. Cleaned my ED80, still didnt work through 2 miles of cloud....🙁

Lets see.....I am about 40 mile north from you...I will try and open my obsy quickly and suck the clouds away from you...🌤️

I have found that the change in air pressure caused by opening the roof on my obsy causing a low pressure effect that sucks over the nearest clouds. 😉

A stunning example....

This statement is not correct, and again one has to be careful when working with infinities. True, but I think it shows a point. The above example shows that if you treat infinity as a number it becomes nonsense. Infinity is not a number... so you cant think of it as such, you cant perform mathematical operations with it ( its not a number ). Hence the universe cant be infinite because there would be an "infinite number" of something ( maybe Apples... I like Apples ). Can't have an "infinite number" as this is meaningless... might as well have a " red number" or a "fluffy number" again meaningless.

If its rational it cant be Infinite......therefore you cant have infinite density !

We have to be aware of infinities and there place in the real world...to take an example highlighted upon before and look at it differently. There are obviously more non-integer numbers than integers.... I think this makes sense. In fact there are infinitely more non integers than integers.... again look at 1 & 2 and count the non-integers between them ( might take a while ). Statistically Integers do not exist ! It can have weird effects when you move from reality to imagination. It would seem to make sense that infinities do not exist in the real world, ie nothing you can observe can be infinite. ( or be part of anything infinite ).

Isn't density a ratio.... and hence by definition....rational ?

If the universe was infinite the sky would either be infinitely bright or the same brightness level overall ( there are 2 equally valid but disagreeing theories on this ) . However both agree that the sky would be a uniform colour whatever its brightness. There are no other sensible theories on this for an infinite universe , ( plenty of different theories for a finite one ). "Olber's Paradox "

Quantum Field Theory by definition cannot be continuous. Newton's theory of gravity has been more successful ( in use for longer and contributed more to science ) than this but was eventually proven to be incorrect . Just because something is successful doesn't mean it is correct.

Also by observation the Universe is clearly not infinite...

You can divide an imaginary line an infinite number of times but not a real one. It is dangerous to make generalised physical assumptions that at first glance seem obvious but on inspection are less so. For example..... a real line can be divided into an infinite number of pieces....this seems common sense but upon inspection we realise that distance is a function of time. Consider measuring a length of a line A to B, whatever measurement system you use it takes an amount of time to say "point A is here" and then move to point B ( not just physically but abstractly as well ) and then say "point B is here" the time taken between these two measurement ( or even just statements ) cannot be zero. Therefore this suggests that there is a Finite smallest measurement. A real world example of this would be to say that to get from point A to point B you first half to get halfway and to get halfway you have to get a quarter of the way. This would go on for ever and it would be impossible to move in any direction. We know this by observation to be untrue therefore this again proves that there is a Finite smallest length and a Finite smallest amount of time.

Sorry didn't notice you had Bortle 8 skies.

It should have been easy enough to find last night, I could see it with my 50mm camera lens on 30 secs. I am assuming you are looking for M101 ?

Probably might attack natural rubber... which like myself you are much too young to remember. But the synthetic "rubber" commonly used today is fine.