JOC

I think I'd be approaching local scrap metal merchants - that's very distinctive to sell 'as is', but they'll scrap anything these days and I bet that weighs a fair bit.

I live in the middle of arable farmland. At harvest time the combines chuck so much dust into the area that we can taste it for weeks. This certainly will impact viewing and if things are low in the sky you will already be looking through more atmosphere to see them. Also, don't forget last year was very hot and there would have been even more dust in the air than normal as it was so dry.

We got one like this several years ago https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PROFESSIONAL-WEATHER-CENTRE-WIRELESS-N25FR-MAPLIN-BRAND-NEW-IN-BOX/114051149047?hash=item1a8dfa6cf7:g:uc4AAOSwB05eEgIy I don't think we paid quite that much for ours - I think ours was a recon, but it has really been excellent.

Yes, absolutely completely honestly - I have a somewhat overdeveloped sense of fair play - even if it doesn't always work in my favour!! OK true gazumping is offering more, but the outcome is the same - you make an offer to buy something 'off the main grid' for want of a better term and your private negotiation ends up trumping people that are only responding to the inital advertised price. It's fine if a lower price is advertised to all, then it should always be first enquiry gets priority and then it's down to keeping an eye on the 'for sale' board and everyone knows how the game is played, but it seems somewhat unfair to be able to buy an item by underbidding esp. where the item is still being offered for sale at a higher price in full view. OK, since it was suggested that I was missing out on a legitimate route to buying something at the price I want to pay I've put in offers offline and have had them accepted so I have taken advantage, but it still feels like cheating. Maybe if someone will take offers it would be better to say reasonable offers accepted until a certain date when the highest will be taken, but then that starts a bidding war and there are all sorts of things that involves which is why it's probably not a good route to take. However, despite benefitting myself I still feel strongly that items should only be sold for the price advertised on the public boards when everyone can compete on the basis of first come first served.

When I started to buy 2nd hand gear on SGL for a long time I just paid the asking price - if the price was more than I wanted to pay I didn't buy the item. It was only after a PM'd comment that I'd made to someone and they had suggested to me that maybe I should have made an offer by PM that I even considered that it might be an acceptable thing to do. Since then I have made the occasional request to a seller (on the basis of what I have paid for other similar items) and on some occasions I have been sold an item at lower cost than that advertised and on one occasion someone said that there was no budging and that was fine with me and I didn't buy the item. Mind you somehow it still doesn't feel quite right to request a sale at a lower price - it's almost as though you are not being fair to the other readers of the advertisement who might still be thinking like my initial sorties that a requested price is non-negotiable and therefore you almost gazzump the other readers, by suggesting a lower price and I am not sure that is entirely fair. However, that might just be my sense of fair play at work.

Ah, OK - I'd posted in the forum foibles section as this seemed the correct thing to do, but I've just spotted the response here - glad it's in capable hands 🙂

Mine was the thought that these here useful mobile phones could be used to carry scans of all your store cards so that you always would have your points barcode handy no matter what store you went in and wouldn't have to carry all the various cards around. Turns out there is already an ap for that

No, this is the winners thread

Well note that I didn't state what the image has to be of, there is scope for a scenic image if light pollution is your enemy, also the use of software or not. The type of image is not specified only that it has to be from within your own house or backyard. There is also scope for stating where the image was taken from location wise and for the judges to take this into account.

I have and because it said 'public' I had...err..........just assumed (correctly!) that 'public' meant a message that could be seen be everyone. The other message button obviously being a private message. However, I've never sent messages from within someone else's profile I just usually click the double speach bubble icon at the top left of a standard browsing page which quite clearly drops me into private messaging territory. TBH I've never seen point in these personal profile feeds, I can't see what they are for or why anyone would want to use them so profile messages that can be seen by all are a bit of an anathema to me since I'd need to visit everyone's profile to see them and I can't see that's how a bulletin board like SGL is supposed to work. Hence I'm a bit baffled by it all, but I do know that my messages go privately when I send one.

@Neil H when you twist the big knobs near the eye piece does it go up and down? If so this will be adjusting the focus. If twisting the big knobs doesn't make the Eyepiece (EP) go up and down there maybe a locking thumb screw somewhere on the focusser which is done up - if this is the case no amount of twiddling the big knobs will drive the eyepiece up and down. So find the thumb screw that lets this happen and try undoing it a little and try again. Once you know the EP is going up and down with the big knobs, then see if you can focus the telescope with an EP in it - the 20mm will do - during the day (being careful to point away from the sun) on a distant object (aerial, tree, church spire - anything will do) turn the big knobs until it drops into focus. If you can't get focus you may have not placed an extender in the kit into the eyepiece holder - some telescopes have a part that gives some extra distance. Remember that once you have focus with one EP this will need readjusting if you put any other EP in the holder. If you can focus clearly on a object during the day (don't worry if its upside down) you should be able to focus on the moon at night by moving the big knobs in a similar way whether its full or otherwise and within you current collimation you should get a passably decent view even if the collimation is a bit out IMO. If you can't even focus on something during the day, come back as there might be something else wrong.

That's an excellent explanation - thank you. So part of the skill in this sort of thing is choosing colours that are complimentary to the desired effect of the artist. Here you have an image that predominates in Umber/apricot/blue, but if I understand correctly you could just as easily chosen pink and purple or any other combination. Thus, a number of images of the same area of space by different artists whilst all being of the same objects can all look different! I think that makes it a lot of fun as a concept - You could almost imagine something like those pop-art image where you have a montage of the same image, but all done in different colours!

How is the colour in such images obtained? Is it the application of coloured filters to generate an artificial colour range with a little 'poetic licence', or if you were close enough to the object and could look at it for long enough would those actual colours be present in 'real life' as it were.

It seems quite staggering that images like this and many, many others that I see on SGL can be accomplished by dedicated amateur astronomers without the aid of space ships, statelites and probes.

Great photo's I sometimes have a bash, but I'm just not in the same league as the best on SGL.

Are they too tight?

I suppose what you need is a turntable on a flat roof on flat roof is a little heated room with a small hole with sliders adjustable for height and width with little doors that close behind the adjustment. The the telescope sits on the rest of the turntable outside and is automatically controlled to point where you want, then your little heated room automatically matches the position of the EP and you peer into the EP through the little hole the sliders have made. Thus you sit in the warm and the scope sits in the cold!!

From what I've read on SGL to see Sirius in a calm and viewable state is actually the exception rather than the norm. If everything else you are viewing looks OK, I would venture that the temperature of the tube must be OK and its just Sirius being monster raving looney Sirius?

It might be worth just changing your thought train if it's proving impossible. Once you know how far out it is to the object you can see through the telescope view and you should be able to determine this (with care that you don't point the sun) during daytime. You should be able to quite easily apply this in your mind as you use the scope. I have a finder that I can align, and sometimes I just use that alone applying that method.

That sounds like Sirius all over and might be a factor of the amount of atmosphere you were looking through rather than anything to do with your tube not being cool enough. In fact Sirius is notorious for looking like that. In fact my son and I call it the monster raving party star for that very reason - it looks like a spectacular disco ball. It is entirely possible that you might change the tube for nothing.

Is a coma corrector really necessary? I have this telescope's big brother (200P) and just manage with a T ring on my Cannon.

One of the best things up there IMO is the ring nebula in Lyra constellation (between the two bottom stars) - needs a bit of averted vision to spot it, but once you have it in sight it's as clear as a bell and amazing to think this 'smoke ring' exists up there, and just by chance we are at the right angle to spot it. However, I don't know if you can see it at this time of year, as I read online it says that Lyra is a summer constellation. Well worth remembering for next summer though.

Well if it entered the light path of a reflector it would strike off my mirrors, I don't know if that would damage them, would heat be generated, would that melt things, what would happen when it got to the EP etc. even if you ran a projected image onto these home-made screens you can make, would bits in the light train be damaged - I don't know enough about it to know, but I do know that if I slap a 8" lump of solar film across the end of the tube that I am safe from square one and need not worry about anything.

I've got a reflector, but I am not confident enough of it's construction materials to want to whack concentrated sunlight about inside it. At least when you cover the end of an OTA with Baader solar film you know you got it all locked out the correct side of your optics

FWIW I have a motorised mount for my 200P Dobsonian. It will stay on a star for up to about 20 minutes though won't absolutely track forever as the big EQ mounts do, However, the computerised Dobsonian mount should be quite long enough for some decent length exposures - I have had good fun with up to about 12-15s exposures.