Moonshed

You didn’t hear it from me that there are some excellent tree destroying chemicals available, and black ninja suits.

Now look here, there’s no use you complaining because as we all know from our first day of astronomy, whenever you get some new kit the sky will be completely clouded over for at least the next 8 weeks. Sorry, but that’s just the way the universe works. Any complaints take up with the boss.

I agree to a point, but I find it worth tolerating dumb & dumber just to watch that narcissistic, self adoring, aren’t I wonderful ladies, pain in the rear, Shane Richie, suffer in the trials.

You’re right! You can! Saves me the bother of setting up tonight. Bring on Ant & Dec I’m staying in tonight!

I have two very reliable systems that I use. 1) https://en.sat24.com/en. This gives an infrared satellite view of Europe. It doesn’t give a forecast but shows the cloud cover and which way it is moving, starting from 90 minutes ago and every 15 minutes to the current time. I find it very useful for gauging if it’s worth while setting up if the sky looks clear at the moment. 2) Sticking my head out the back door! There have been two occasions in the last week when all the forecasts have said it will be cloudy all night but looking outside I have seen a break in the clouds and was able to record images of Mars for the best part of an hour. I always stick my head out the door and never rely exclusively on forecasts, cloud cover is not accurate down to individual villages!

That would have required an unconventional viewing stance. 😄

I wish it were so, I would go in a heart beat!

Very true 😄, or when looking through the top mounted rectangular viewing box and getting lots of closeup prints of your fingers two weeks later from Bonus Print.

I think I may have done something wrong? Any ideas anyone?

It’s so sad to see, as you say an iconic structure, collapse to the ground, like saying goodbye to an old friend.

Me too, it looks so real and solid it’s as though you could lift it off the screen and roll it around in your hands. I’m not envious, absolutely not, not even the teenie weeniest little bit envious. 🤥

I’d be surprised if you were able to get much better quality images unless you were able to sweet talk Elon into taking you there so you could take some snapshots out of the capsule window as you entered lunar orbit. Worth a try, think of the quality!

I hope you were careful coming through re-entry because as my wife asked me recently “Why do they always go through the hot bit?” Sigh...... I have also just purchased a ZWO and looking forward to trying it on the moon. Keith

I’m no expert but that really is a fabulous image!

After giving the matter some more thought I have decided to hold off purchasing a new dew heater system, instead I’m going to do a test run without switching my dew heater on, something I have never done in the 28 years I have had the Celestron. I will take my scope out of the shed and place it on the concrete base and just leave it there for an hour or so to cool down to ambient temperature, with dew shield on and tilted down a little. When ready I will fire up the laptop, do the PA, focus with the Bhatinov, no need to bother with star alignment, and straight away run some recordings of Mars. From start to finish, ignoring the standing time, the whole thing should only take a max of 10 min before I start recording so no chance of any misting forming on the corrector plate. I will probably take 4 or 5 recordings of 1 or 2 minutes and see how it goes. I am quite hopeful that I will get a better result than I have been getting with my on/off dew heater. I will let you know how it goes. Keith

Funny isn’t it, that image had around 70 views before you pointed out that it is in fact M51. Yep, nothing gets past us experts 😂

It does make sense not to use a dew heater because I can’t help thinking it simply has to cause air currents as it’s applying heat. I tried using my trusty hair dryer, as I have done so many times over the years while observing, but after around 20 seconds of using it I returned to the screen and was amazed to see Mars jumping about so much it was actually forming stretched blurred cylinders of itself as it danced around. I was amazed at how much disturbance the dryer had created, that was my imaging over for 30 minutes before it once again settled down to its usual gentle bobbing about. It was this extreme heating that got me thinking about the dew heater.

I have checked Telescope House and they have a Revelation Pro dew heater for £21 for my 8”SCT , I figure no harm in getting a new one, and a Revelation Pro dual channel dew heater for £46. The prices look very reasonable and I have long traded with Telescope House, but have other members any experience with this particular make? Or are others better although dearer and are to be preferred? I always consider the old adage buy cheap buy twice.

Hi Freddie, thanks for that advice. I should have said I always fit a dew shield because as you say it reduces stray light as well as helping with keeping dew to a minimum. Regarding the settings of the dew heater I do not have any, I just run it off a Meade 12v power supply. Is it worthwhile to invest in the type you use and which one do you have and recommend? EDIT. I should add that if I place my hand at the top of the scope after an hour or two I can feel it is definitely warmer than at the bottom. Is this how it should be or is it too warm do you think? Keith

This may seem a strange question and I would not be surprised if it’s a really dumb one, but I’m prepared to risk it. Although I have been peering through telescopes since a boy, I’m now retired, I am new to imaging planets and new to using a ZWO ASI 224MC, having only started this month, so it’s been a steep learning curve. I have always used a dew heater as it’s pretty much essential when using an SCT, and for observing purposes it’s proved great, it’s also been great when imaging galaxies and nebulae with my Canon. The focussing is good having using the Bhatinov mask on a star just before and the tracking and PA very good as well, Mars stays in the centre of the screen for minutes on end. Now here comes the ‘but’. I find that when looking at Mars on the FireCapture screen, although staying in position, it is always squishing in and out, and I am wondering if the seeing conditions are causing this or perhaps the dew heater, or a combination of the two? I can’t help wondering if the gentle heating around the top of the scope builds up over a couple of hours and causes large enough air currents to create distortion. Any thoughts on this?

Be honest now, you cheated, you took that from lunar orbit didn’t you?

I live in a Bortle 4 area and there is a huge difference between a 4 and a 5 so the few minutes it takes you to get there will be well worth it. I don’t know if your EQ mount is driven or not but if it is you will of course need to consider your power source while away from home, if not driven then no probs. let’s hope you get clear skies when your scope arrives. Sadly though I have to tell you now that it’s a law of the universe that whenever you get any new kit the sky will immediately cloud over for at least a month unless you transfer a huge wad of cash over to me in which case my monastery contacts can arrange clear skies for you. I am a well known and trusted Nigerian banker, I was very careful with the spelling there!

A tip that often served me well is that when trying to find feint DSOs while looking through the scope try giving the top of the scope a very gentle tap, the resulting judders will help the moving image stand out more clearly than it does when still.

I think software could be in a category all of it’s own as we depend on so many different programs. For example I use all of the following, in no particular order: 1) FireCapture 2) Autostakkert 3)Registax 4) Sharpcap 5) APT 6) Deep Sky Stacker 7) Polemaster Photoshop 9) Stellarium 10) European Weather Satellite 11)Clear Skies Outside 12) and last but by no means least SGL!

And waiting and waiting and waiting......