JOC

The only thing I think you might make a little cash out of is possibly selling merchandise with images on, like mugs, calendars etc. For example, I used to regularly buy a calendar for my son with lovely false colour images of the night on, which I used to assume had been taken by some flashy deep sky satellite. It was only many years later that I discovered SGL and found out these highly impressive images were probably taken from 'little old planet earth' with kit that some folks had in their 'back yards'. However, I did buy images of the night sky, but not the images themselves it was more what they were printed onto as they were cool things for an interested kid to have in his room. I even used to cut the old images up off the calendars and stick around his walls. I hope this helps.

You can see the moon move in front of the sun at about 38-44 seconds IMO. However, what you are looking for is the tiny sliver of sun and being obscured by a moon right in the dark area at the foot of the lighter bank of clouds. It is not the whole lit and illuminated area of clouds which I think are distorting the view somewhat - it is easy to miss the tiny sliver of sun in the video and think that it is the larger area of light. It is also possible that between the zoomed and non-zoomed sections of video some time elapsed between settings where it has been edited together as you can't see the act of zooming between one frame and the next which suggests that a certain possibly blurred section of footage between zoom settings is actually missing. Since the degree of zoom change between around 38 and 44 seconds I am going to suggest that there is a little editing there as the view changed just to make it look a little tidier which might account for a very small time period. I think this guy is the one that posted the video and wants it to have as many views as possible.

If you haven't already visited it the SGL challenge 2024 number 3 - night sky and foreground is worth minutes of anyone's time. We can't comment within the thread, but I just wanted to acknowledge what a pleasure it was looking through the images so far. What a talented lot of photographers we have on here - the entries would make a superb calendar! Durrr........I might as well add the direct link LOL!

Here we go, I've fished out a photo already uploaded some time ago - The old alphabetical sort is handy when it when it was one of the few I named and V is near the end of the alphabet. If you zoom in you can see I unscrewed stuff almost back as far as I could and then added adapters back into the system.

The above 'solution' looks somewhat similar to what I have to do if I want to use my baby Vixen. IIRC though I didn't have too many problems finding adapters to fit 1.25" EP's into the system - it's been a while since I played with it, but I've got vague recollections of possibly taking apart a barlow and getting a suitable ring that by chance screwed into that odd 0.whatever it was" fitting and then I seem to recall that a 1.25" diagonal then fitted without issues and onto the EP. Glad you finally found a solution and hope that the view is worth the wait. It's really interesting that you can cover the lens chip over with black tape like that and not disturb the view, I guess it's like popping that aperture reducing plastic insert with the 4" hole into the centre of my 8" Dob and it not making any difference except to the brightness - however, to see it work is completely counter-intuitive.

The Star-trek telescope above is also setup correctly and being used the correct way around - which is rare in TV shows.

So I guess in common with many other families who may have planned a day outdoors yesterday for Mother's Day the weather interceded (when in the UK doesn't it?) and we were left trying to fudge a more clement experience in place of the planned outdoor walk. Googling for indoor activities locally we chanced upon a Planetarium in Southend-on-sea of all places that I had no idea existed. The website said they did a 2pm showing of 'Introduction to the night sky' for 1 hour. Well, never having been inside a planetarium, and currently having a knackered hand (karate injury!) and unable to do anything right-handed like bowling, son called up the planetarium and found that they had at least 2 seats free and we could join the group at quite reasonable cost - £6.80 per adult. So along we went. A small, but perfectly formed dome with a circle of 18 seats apparently built in 1984 with one of only a handful of star domes at it's centre and an illuminated moon model to approx. the correct scale alongside. We had a brief slide-show on the earth, sun, moon and the solar system and then they lowered the lights and all the stars were projected onto the curved roof (and no clouds!!) and the presenter showed us the current night sky some of the constellations and demonstrated by the spinning the array how the pole star stays still as everything moves - obviously I knew it did, but spinning the constellations around it was quite emphatic proof - I'm still not entirely sure why that particular star is the only one not to move - it must be down to where it sits in the sky, but to see it sitting still like that was very reinforcing of the fact that it does and of what I knew - Edit found out why https://byjus.com/question-answer/why-doesnt-the-north-star-appear-to-move-like-the-other-stars/ it must be purely by chance that one star is aligned with Earth's axis, but the explanation diagram on that page plays right into the spinning start field explanation. Obviously a lot of what they showed wasn't new to me, but it was a novel experience and well worth the trip out, esp. if you have done a planetarium before. It is also worth commenting on how much the kids there knew about space - it is obviously being well covered at primary school which is good to see. When the Planetarium also shares its site with a small interesting and rather smartly laid out museum of artifacts through the ages including a whole section dedicated to the remains of a burial of what is thought to be an Anglo-Saxon prince that was discovered as a road was being built and which we knew nothing about before visiting. Additionally it is literally next door to quite a large free art gallery - I don't often do art galleries, but we then had a nice mooch around there discussing the various merits of the pictures with each other. Also, if you are interested in the basement area of the gallery is a large exhibition dedicated to Jazz music - not our scene so we didn't bother, but looking down at it there seemed quite a comprehensive compilation of Jazz memorabilia and various headphones. I was most impressed with both venues and here are their websites if you fancy a wet afternoon out somewhere dry in Essex at any point. https://www.southendmuseums.co.uk/ https://www.southendmuseums.co.uk/beecroft https://www.southendmuseums.co.uk/planetarium FWIW we also did the Maldon military museum some years ago and that is also unexpectedly decent https://cmsm.co.uk/?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkq2Q1avshAMV4Q8GAB1qAwKuEAAYASAAEgLr1vD_BwE I thought I'd post in Astro lounge because of the planetarium which is what we really went for. I hope the above review is of interest.

I was wondering about the functionality of the finderscope too. In fact the whole screen shots look like AI, including the actors!

Sounds like the makings of small business offering observing holidays that does!! In some places that might be deemed a little OTT LOL! However, they do all look fabulous all sitting there.

My goodness those are two stonking great big telescopes!!

Well that could take off and land without falling over, but then look at the design - low and wide! Just saying! Well done the ingenuity team.

Next time I'm out on a starry night I'll check, but given that I know it's up there and can use it to find polaris I suspect I can see quite a lot it it's stars.

My baby vixen and it's special folding tripod all fit into a cheap solid plastic tool box stuffed with bits of foam padding - that's real grab and go! When I got my large Tamron zoom lense I bought a special camera body just for it so I wouldn't need to keep swapping it around. It made a rather long sort of telescope shaped package. I bought one of these for it https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/193487278023?itmmeta=01HQNA19XS2ZE2BG279EJZDVMQ&hash=item2d0cbd8fc7:g:RUYAAOSwOj1ggs2U&itmprp=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwLP3xJG8lk1QEHsBQNjT9Hx%2BT9wddMnPFwpbOYvMJuAcXYvFqBVmMKeZkzT6Etwj6xoaOo6ZYqt80MywqZkl630xAG6y4nTLKmI%2B2AvSAaQEAF3H1YK09Y7LuBIrAgB1bQOZnf4HqK20vuvDREHlLYSsvIWeQvm7Pb8YAbXE2MVXB1BjOq1JL%2FvVp%2FfyEWMb6GilZZup%2BRvKCDeBPr1dcho%2FrUHJGxNY0doj2k9G6ii52a12rspqBAY%2FsI5F9kAkyQ%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR_6ehaq9Yw and it carries the whole lot admirably in one piece. Very securely over my shoulder on my back until I need it and whilst not over the top in padding it certainly provides a certain amount of protection.

I must admit cloud probably trumps Bortle any night of the year in the UK!

Seriously, I guess in terms of what's the point of the Bortle scale is that once you have a measurement at a location and a scale of anything you can pictorially represent it esp. on a map. No different to height contours, bicycle or telescope ownership numbers, numbers of potholes, where an eclipse will be seen, what the weather is like etc. on a map. Give the numbers colours (esp. lighter to darker colours as appropriate to the scale) and you have an effective tool for communication of the problem to other influencers (i.e. planners or people with projects) who might not otherwise easily and quickly grasp A) the problem and B ) it's magnitude. OK, exchanging the information may not help with a solution, but at least quantifying things at least helps with the explanation of a problem and they say a picture paints a thousand words. Well that is one good reason for having a scale at least 🙂

Nice, but given the cost I think I'm happy living in ignorance LOL!

Is there a way of easily taking a SQM reading - do mobile phones do it - is there an app for that? They seem to be quite ubiquitous these days 😄

Sounds like you focussed in the wrong direction. With only a 28mm I doubt a planet is going to appear much bigger than almost a star. You should be resolving a planet as a very small but sharp mini circle of light. I suspect you needed to make the circle of light smaller not bigger! You were making them less focussed not more so - turned in the opposite direction I very much expect you would have achieve a pin sharp, though much smaller focussed dot on a black background. With Saturn you would probably have seen the ellipse shape of the ring system - unless it was tipped square onto us, However, with Jupiter you should also see a lovely set of moons around it at the right time and these will move night to night, as in the thread below. Even if you don't read - look at then pictures on the first two pages here and lower your expectations. If your Skymax 127 has a 1500mm focal length (which seems to be the case online) and you use a 28mm that is only 56 times apparent magnification, which is far less than in the pictures in that thread, which, if memory serves, are at about x 200-250

I've always been vaguely interested in the figure as before I logged onto SGL I thought I lived somewhere fairly dark (notwithstanding four socking great big security lights that appeared about 4 years ago on an industrial estate about 1/4 mile away which didn't do much for my horizon view south). However, although I saw lots of stars I was amazed to see the views of the milky way that some folks get, I don't think I am that aware of the Milky Way here. Then I discovered that I was under Bortle 4 skies - about at the halfway point on the scale and assumed that all you wonderful telescope people were probably taking your photos under much darker skies than I have and since discovering I was only Bortle 4 I have been less satisfied with my views of the stars.

Yeah, but given the lack of gravity in space there is surely no reason why it couldn't have been packed on it's side and been made wide and short rather than narrow and tall. Just because launching rockets tend to be tall and thin to make them streamlined through the atmosphere, there is nothing that really dicates the orientation of what they carry.

OK, so why make a lander that is taller than it is wider? You only have to look at the sheer number of red wine incidents on record to know that things at are taller than wider with often heavier tops (like wine glasses) are not the most stable things on the moon. Then I cannot imagine it is not possible to make some sort of self righting device - an extendable arm to push it up, something inflatable perhaps on ring fitted around the craft, like roll bars on a car - similar tech to car crash bags might even be useful to push it upright. Even build the whole thing within a cage set on a set of gimbles that would then orient the payload upright on arrival. Or inside an inflatable ball on a similar self righting system and which then falls away when the craft is upright. Yes, you will all say but it all adds weight and cuts down on instrument loads, but wouldn't it be better if you are going to spend millions to get few items there an working rather loads of semi effective items lying on their sides. Seems to me that we need some common sense based engineers on the case, perhaps scientists that are used to working at sea on less than flat surfaces. A think a cage that can sit in any direction carrying a payload hung within a series of rollers that would just sit upright with gravity - like a ships gimble compass system would work best.

I don't know what those mounts connect with, but you might find the easiest investment is in a long external quality extension lead - that way you won't have to worry about voltage fluctuations as any battery drains.. Failing that I've got on well with a decent quality car jump start box with my electrical Dob mount.

and then someone posts something like this^^^ and you wonder what on earth has gone that you've missed 😕?

I've actually never visited a planetarium - all the ones I've ever looked at were closed when I was there - they sound interesting places.

I suspect many like me are drawn by a question (often - I feel I want to buy a scope, but which one?) and then we stay once we discover that 'community' aspect. In fact there is a lot of discussion about meeting up for star parties which are difficult to organise, but I bet just as many would gather for a SGL summer BBQ just to meet up with all those online names.