Swoop1

Waxing moon over a street in Valletta. 5th October 2023. Sony a6300 stock lens at 28mm. IS)100, f11, 1/250sec. spot removal only in Microsoft Photo.

A nice 'bodge' @Bugdozer and by 'bodge' I mean it in the way of an elegant diy solution to a vexing problem.

Very nice tale @OK Apricot! Congratulations on your pending nuptuals and well done for beating the house👍

My last tour of Northern Ireland was in South Armagh and one of my duties was spending a couple of weeks at a time at a mountain top observation post. Our accomodation was converted shipping containers with 4 bunks per container. The bunks were mattresses on metal platforms with a lip all round to stop the bedding falling off. Every couple of days we had to lift the matresses out (plastic coated) and mop up the pools of condensation gathering underneath in the tray.

For god's sake don't do anything to attract the attention of the police! If I was involved in a raid and saw those on bursting into a room, they'd get a sound thrashing before asking any questions- just in case 😉

Don't completely discount a wooden pier for your rig- you just need to choose the right solution. I looked at wooden piers when I set mine up. The twisting/ bending issue I pointed out above has been overcome by others. The way to do this is to decide what profile pier you need for stability at the height you want. Then you construct a pier by joining together 4 length of timber in a battenburg pattern. Using 4 sections of timber helps to keep the pier in shape and straight. Join them together with long coach bolts. See this thread from another forum- https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/397110-backyard-wood-pier/#entry5086111 I think a 12-16" a side pier should give you the stability you need. Good luck!

You know that feelin when you have waited for days or longer for an evening or two of clear skies for imaging? Well, imaging those evenings arriving to coincide with such a stinking head cold that the wooly feeling in your head would pose a serious risk to your equipment safety 😠

Keith, Someone like these- https://www.bigyellow.co.uk/reading-self-storage-units/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjeOB_bj9gQMV9wUGAB0AdwtDEAAYASAAEgJyHfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds Matt

Pop into your local self store facility. They sell boxes of various sizes in singles.

Ahem! Police Post I think you'll find. A facility to allow Joe/ Josephine Public to contact Plod before the days of widespread home phone ownership OR (more importantly) for Constable Dixon to shelter from inclement weather or report in to his (or her) superiors before the advent of the Pye Pocketfone PF1 2 piece personal radio.

I would say no. A telegraph pole erected by BT/ Electric companies still has a fair amount of movement (comparitively) so would not be stable enough as an imaging set up. Using a tree trunk salvaged by your brother will possibly suffer shrinkage/ twisting/ flexing as it cures.

I have one of these to mount my camera onto my C6 SCT- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/celestron-piggyback-mount-for-nexstar-5-6-and-8-se-telescopes.html Avoids the issue of trying to do up a bolt through the dovetail as there doesn't look to be a great deal of room between the bar and the telescope? Appologies- just re read your post and you are aware of the piggy back mount

A very nice image with plenty of detail, which can be hard to tease out in white light images (or at least in my experience it can be). Perhaps you should stick with Solar imaging as a sideline?

I would never have got away with fixing that membrane upside down. The project manager would have made me strip it off and start again. Tidy looking build👍

Astronaut Bowman was correct! If I had taken that image, my first thought would be that my sensor was borked!

Whatever you do DO NOT look at the little light......

I get a subscription to The Sky At Night and each month features an observing pull out section based on observing from the UK. This includes a Steve Tonkin binocular tour, a deep sky session, lunar, planetary, comets and asteroids. Not a huge number of pages/ targets but it is keyed to the coming month.

When you consider the distances trvelled and the time scales, they landed the capsule very clos to a road. Chapeau!

😀 Chanelling the inner Marvin 👍

Not used them myself but I have heard good reports about this type of resin/ epoxy capsule

Not me but a member of my society responded to an e mail from someone wanting to get rid of a scope and mount for free. He came away with a C11 SCT and a pier. I think the cost of setting up the pier somewhat offset the free light bucket.

1st Law of Astrophotography- if you have a full head of lustrously natural hair- don't start.

I think it is a bit harsh to paint the whole of humanity with the same brush. Teenagers however...... 😉

Images of stars don't really do a lot for me but, this image is very pretty. I like the colour defraction in the spikes.

A tad noisy it may be but scrap it aint!