Swoop1

All you have to do now is get Big Bird and The Count to relay this to the smalls on Sesame Street.

Another book that is heavily indebted to Hasselblad is Full Moon by Michael Light. I found myself reaching for my copy of this for much the same reason. Gorgeous images with the sort of atmosphere that wet film is fantastic at conveying.

I think Gina is wise suggesting that you consider the effect a roof would have on your pier plan. Looking at threads on this forum it seems that piers get infected and sprout walls which, if left unattended develop a bad case of the roll off roof disease.

A beautiful sketch Ruud. Thanks for sharing.

A nice and easy modification to a shed that seems to work perfectly for you. I just wish I had the room.

Fantastic detail in there Wouter.

Not sure if this has been seen on here yet but, the attached video could oerhaps guide us on easier ways to excavate the foundations- guy was trying to erradicate cockroaches so filled their nes with petrol......

I was out earlier grabbing a bit of lunar and then wandered over to Orion. I sa a stream of satellites evenly spaced moving west to east through Orion. After that i did a bit of naked eye casting about and, a little south of the end of the Big Dipper handle I saw in one glance 6 satellites moving in 3 directions on 4 different tracks. 2 of the earlier train, one in the same direction but a little north, one heading soutgh to northe and one north to south. Madness.

I was sat in the garden with Dearly Beloved yesterday afternoon, enjoying a beer after mowing the lawn and, during conversation about what we would get then Rich Brothers or Charlie Dimmock to do in our garden if we were that way inclined I mentioned that whatever we did, I would have to be careful about where to position my pier. Dearly Beloved asked where it would need to go and I explained where the best position was likely to be an why. She said that my chosen location wasn't a problem in a way that sounded like it wasn't just a pipe dream! Now to work out what I want.....

I'm not too familiar with the current crop of Canon kit as my last experience was 7 years or so ago when I used Canon DSLR's for covert surveillance work. I would say that folk on here will have good experience of what to get to mod for Astro stuff. Then have a look at what's works well for you for terestrial stuff that's takes the same lenses as the moded astro body.

For portability, the Star Adventurer kit is hard to beat. I have a Skywatchers EQ5 Pro and even that takes some lugging. For your remaining £1980 you could get a Star adventurer, two Canon bodies and a reasonable lens to go with them to fulfil your needs- one moded to remove the filter that loses Astro image detail and one that keeps it. I currently image with a mirrorless Sony a6300 and this works well on my scopes but I have found that even on a reasonably small scope (6") I am losing a lot of the scope of things like the Andromeda Galaxy. I am learning that size isn,t everything in Astro imaging.

Films will always play with the facts for entertainment value however, the film Hidden Figures did something very important despite any artistic licence. It brought to the public consciousness the invaluable contribution made by Katherine and her colleagues and the injustice they had to deal with just because they were not white. RIP Katherine and thanks for all you did.

You are building your obsy using all the right techniques but not necessarily in the right order.... (Sorry, couldn't resist a Morcambe and Wise reference). Nothing wrong with what you are doing. Building the walls in place works as well as pre assembly. Your available space dictates what is best for you. I would leave the bracket in place until you are ready to install the door frame then, remove bracket, install frame which you fix to the base and the upright and the door frame becomes the bracket.

Gina, I have been thinking about your problem for a few days and am a bit stumped for an easy, low cost option. The nearest I could get was a decking path. This could be raised a few inches on decking risers or you could perhaps use fence post spikes driven into the ground as a mean soldier to getting above the waterlogged ground. You would need a few spikes or risers though as I think about 1.5m centres would be best to support the path and users. A bit like building a long, narrow floor twixt home and obsy.

Love your avatar Baz. I'm off to Gib for a few days next week!

NASA have reprocessed the data from Voyagers Pale Blue Dot image taken 30 years ago today, using modern processing technology- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51491471 I love this image. It is so powerful and Carl Sagans writings and speaking around it gives me goosebumps.

But Leopards are nice cuddly kitties- if you avoid the teeth and claws.

You've go to love FLO. Not their sale so not their problem but they are stepping up with advice and help😀

If you have had ray problems, nibbling cables is the least of your worries. Best call a plumber! (Sorry, couldn't resist😉 )

It may be worth trying a bit of drilling to establish how hefty the slab is. You could also later consider cutting out a squarer from the slab and excavating a pier foundation hole.

Send em to NASA!

IWOOT!

How did you get the histogram to look like that? Matt

At the moment, I am limited to 30 sec maximum exposures- my cameras longest timed exposure (as far as I know). I can do Bulb exposures but this would involve getting a remote shutter release whereas I currently use the wireless release via iPad.

Some cracking images there Grommet (sorry, I mean Mick!). What you will need for astrophotgraphys is a driven equatorial mount which will track the movements of the targets accross the sky as well as keeping the orientation of your telescope consistant with the target. I don't know wheter your mount is an EQ (equatorial) or ALT/AZ (Altitude and Azimuth). The issue with ALT/AZ is that the telescope and therefore the camera stays on the same plane in exactly the same was as panning and tilting on a camera tripod. The movement of the styars accross the sky follws an arc so the telesope needs to move from east to west and also 'twist' so that the target remeains orientated the same way for the whole capture period. A basic EQ mount would be a EQ3/2 like this which can be motorised-https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq3-2-deluxe.html Other optios are available with bigger capacity and slicker drives such as the HEQ5- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-heq5-pro-synscan.html many options exist either side of the HEQ5 price point. For straight DSLR astrophotography there are mounts like this that fix to your tripod- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-star-adventurer-astronomy-bundle.html Good luck and enjoy.