Les Ewan

28 minutes ago, L8-Nite said:

A couple of Skywatcher eyepieces for the 150P dob I bought the other day.  A Super 10 long eye relief, and a Super 20 wide angle long eye relief.

Judging by the ripped up packaging you were really eager to open these!😀

HI John,

You've heard of pre historic and pre cambrian era,well these are the pre digital and pre Skywatcher era!.😁

My whistling postie delivered these this morning.I really pushed the boat out with these three books from Ebay-under a tenner for the lot including postage.

I first saw Saturn back in 1972 through a rickety 40mm telescope on a tabletop tripod,the image was poor and tiny and wobbled about but I managed to discern the the rings(luckily they were fully open at the time and Saturn was high in the sky). Of course over the years I seen it many times with good telescopes but I always most vividly remember the first view,that's the effect Saturn can have on you.

2 minutes ago, dph1nm said:

Probably the secondary dewing up. I have had that problem (and those exact symptoms) with both Newtonians I have owned. Solution - a hairdryer, but I do have mains power available.

NIgelM

A hair dryer is actually a indispensable piece of equipment because otherwise a observing session can be ruined by dewing in less than a hour sometimes,however its amazing how much racket they seem to make in the middle of the night.  

The trouble is good nights are too damn rare to miss. I'm lucky I have a sliding roof and equipment set up ready for use  just a few yards from my back door.

If tired after work why not have a few hours sleep in the evening and set the alarm clock for say midnight and get 2 or 3 hours observing then.Its a bit of a risk if its a starry winters evening and it clouds over before the alarm goes off ,but if it works out you often get the best observing conditions  after midnight,and in the early hours.

That's some scope,congratulations ,and just in time for winter too.😎 I suppose the next step will be a shroud to keep the dust and dew off the mirrors. Even with the ultimate telescope your never done spending.

I always have problems getting precise focus with my Canon 1100D. Even when a subject appears to be in focus in the viewer the end result is not. That's for both astro and ordinary every day photography.It may be because I always use old M42 threaded lenses and a M42  adapter ring. Through the screen digital focusing is often more precise but its not really viable for faint astro work.

I bracket the focusing back and fourth until I get some decent images but its all a bit of a guddle.

No I haven't, and I've not gone out  walking  with a cane, wearing tweeds and a top hat either. BUT  I may consider them all  if I ever win the lottery...old bean! 😆

Thanks for all your comments. Sorry so many were clouded out, I was lucky as it clouded over here too about an hour after the image was taken.

Conditions were ideal for imaging the close conjunction of 4th magnitude Psi Aquarii and Neptune. The image doesn't show this  well but visually the golden Psi really brought out the blueness of Neptune beautifully, a bit like  the Albireo effect. The event was made even more interesting by Triton  laying between the two. Although easily imaged I couldn't see 13.5 magnitude Triton directly even though I was using a 16" Newt.

Image details;

The bright star is Psi Aquarii with Neptune to the left with Triton in between.

The image was taken with a Canon EOS 1100D DSLR attatched to a 21mm Celestron Ultima Duo eyepiece.The telescope is a 406mm f 4.4 Skyliner Flexitube on a driven Dobsonian mount.

10 second exposure at 6400ISO. 00:08 BST 

A few years back I bought a cheap 70mm refractor from Lidl which was supplied with a 4mm ultra cheap Kellner. The scope itself is long gone but I still have the 4mm,very surprisingly it gave beautiful views of Saturn(when it was high in the sky)when fitted to my 200mm f5 Helios Newtonian giving a power of 250X.

Best to loosen the 3 allen screws first. Regarding the knock if there are no broken mirrors and all the adjustment screws are working freely then things are probably OK.

As far as collimation is concerned the best method in my opinion  is to press the eye as squarely as possible against the empty eyepiece holder and look down the tube and if the reflection of your eye is central to the centre ring of the primary and centred in the secondary and you can see all the clips of the main mirror with slight movements of the head that's close enough. 

This is the second time I've seen this. When I first  saw Saturn through a telescope( 40mm refractor)back in the winter of 1972 it was just south of the Pleiades. During the same time Jupiter was starting to get higher in Aquarius /Pisces which was lucky as at the time I lived near the centre of Edinburgh and the rooftops extended to -3 declination.I got a 60mm refractor in 1974 so had several years of great views of the 2 great planets. Luckily I moved to my present rural location in 1979 just as the two moved south of the equator and got my first reflector.The late 80's and early 90's was a lean time as it is now with Saturn scraping the southern horizon.When I acquired my first equatorial in 1993 Saturn rising through Aquarius and by the early 2000's was again riding high in Taurus. I well remember in the early hours of January 4th 2003 given the chance to see Saturn directly in front of the Crab Nebula. Having said that through my 150mm Newt the Crab was rendered invisible due to Saturn's glare.

So if your young enough Saturn's currant situation is not that serious, the time will soon pass believe me. And it does pass quicker  as you get older.😣  Saturn really is the Bringer Of Old Age!

When the nest is quite small I wait until the late evening when the queen is  inside and dislodge the nest inside a jam jar and take the nest and queen a couple of hundred metres away and tip it out. There's no need to kill the queen, its easy to deal with wasps nest if caught early enough.

My area at the moment is being slowly covered in brown dust which I presume is coming from the Sahara. In the beam of my headtorch it can be seen drifting about in the air in the calm conditions. My car windscreen is covered and also my observatory roof and the tube of my telescope( as in the images). Its even crunching between my teeth and I have a cough.

I had to stop my observations early as I don't want any more of it getting on to my mirrors.

Taken at 19:35 using a Canon 1100D  and a telepho lens on a undriven tripod 1/25th exp at 400ISO.

Already been there.As with anyone else  starting out in the 70's we were spoiled really, when I got my first telescopic  view of Saturn in 1972 it was riding high in Taurus with its rings fully open(just as well as I was using only a 40mm refractor at 30X). Leading up the mid 70's Jupiter was rising through Aquarius and Pisces and getting better, and with a 60mm refractor and later a 6"Newt was rewarded with many memorable views of both planets as they glided through the winter constellations.There was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Spring 1980 in Leo and both planets declined.In the case of Saturn I didn't get another descent view until the early 90's.

Its great that Uranus and Neptune are getting higher but apart for the challenge of tracking them down theirs not much in them telescopically.

HI David L,

I got the main set from Ebay,and ordered the companion from Ebay at the same time but from a different seller.The companion took over a week  to arrive as the seller was  in Germany.

Les.

HI There,

Ive had my SkyAtlas 2000 for some years now and as I have used it in the field with the dew and winds taking its toll it was getting a bit dog eared to say the least. So I had a hunt on ebay and found these,they arrived about a fortnight ago.

It is the SkyAtlas 2000 paper version and the laminated field version, both seem to have been hardly used with two overlays which are spotless and still in their paper separators.It all came complete in a 2 zip leather case. The set knocked me back £120 which hurt a bit but it seemed too good to pass up.

To complete the set I got the SkyAtlas 2000 companion elsewhere on ebay for a further £20 which fits neatly into a pocket in the case.

The laminated version will be very handy (if I can tear myself away from my new GOTO that is)!

Regards Les.

Talking of ice this was my 90mm Skywatcher refractor last night after being exposed to -7C for a couple of hours last night.

A group of spots near Mercury during the transit on the 9th of May at 14:40BST and the giant naked eye sunspot on 22nd May.

I don't actually have a  case. My eyepieces are stored in a shallow cupboard that's part of my bookcase. I have a small aluminium  case which I use in the field to keep them dry and close at hand.

Many of my eyepieces are kept in canisters that were once chewing gum containers. The gum was sold a couple of years ago in ASDA for £1 a go and the little tubs with snap on lids are ideal for the purpose. The flavours had different coloured lids so I use green/light blue for low power,blue for medium power and red for high power eyepieces. Luckily the labels were easy to remove cleanly.Not bad cheap eyepiece canisters with free chewing gum!

 My first attempt at astrophotography was Lyra back in March 1976 when I lived in Edinburgh.Not bad considering I stayed less than a km from the City Centre. I used a Zorki Soviet Rangefinder SLR and Ilford 400 asa film. I did the processing myself in my darkroom(ah the good old days being overcome by the fumes of fixer and stop bath!) I used a old tripod I found in a skip. The exposure was 30seconds.I didn't do much more astro photography apart from a couple of comets until I became fully digital in 2004.  My first digital DSO shot was  of wait for it.....The Orion Nebula!  This time with a 4mp compact digiscoped on a 20mm Plossl and a driven Helios 200mm f5 Refl EQ5.The exposure was 8 seconds

Once split its worth while to try a image of Polaris and its companion because its virtually motionless its dead easy with basic equipment.