Sunshine

That's neat! 

That is so pretty, it looks like an airbrush painting, mystical look about it, beautiful!

That star is up to some strange shenanigans, lopsided, i wasn't aware stars could develop enormous appendages .

After mucking around with lasers, caps, cheshire, i always found that they don't really agree with each other, some may disagree with my method but, it saves your hairline. Using the cheshire, i will check to see the secondary is entered and, looks like a nice circle, chuck the cheshire in the door after that. Then i'll just align the primary with a cap, once i'm out in the field ill use a high power eyepiece to fine tune the out of focus star into a neat circle both plus and minus ends of focus. If things look great to you, don't fuss anymore, i have lost sleep over collimation, its not worth it. Your first image with the cap looks pretty darn good to me, i would check it under good seeing with a high power eyepiece, it is the ultimate test.

Unless there is a comet passing, then it certainly looks as if you may have captured a small meteor. Then again, it is characteristic of a comet, a meteor burning up would look much brighter.

Beautiful, congratulations to the winners!

Amazing detail!

That is a really nice capture!

I stopped watching those people, it angers me, i don't know, i guess i have an anger issue for stupidity.

Is it true color? or has false color been added to highlight features? amazing detail.

Trevor at AstroBackyard put up a very informative video on filters for deep space imaging, shed much light for me.

An image to be proud of! I would buy that.

unless you catch the astrophotography bug, a 10 inch dob as mentioned above, or, SCT lets say for the sake of options will make for a lifetime of fun.

Welcome to the Lounge!

16 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

Thanks.

No primary collimating holes for my 603. I would also assume @Sunshine’s analysis, but I vaguely recall reading that on some Russian scopes the adjusting screws are the tiny ones and the locking ones the big ones, but I can’t find where I read that!

You may find out for sure on this CN Link of a guy who did a complete teardown.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/580999-intes-micro-alter-m603-dissection/

It would appear that those larger screws are for moving the mirror, the tiny ones for locking it in place once collimated and, the third in the middle i would assume is the main screw that anchors the mirror or holds the bracket where the mirror pivots on. I would bet that in order to collimate you'd have to slightly release the three small screws then use the larger ones to move mirror, once collimated, gently tightening the small screws again to keep collimation. Don't hold me to it, its my educated guess based on the way my mak collimates from the primary end.

wow that's pretty, love the framing.

Welcome to SGL!

Hello! Ron, welcome to the lounge! from southern Ontario, you've come to the right place for advice and inspiration on everything astronomy.

I am thinking about putting together an entry lever deep space starter kit, it seems to me that a good choice for a scope would be a 130pds which i am not sure is even available.

Is the 130 pds a good choice, from my inexperienced POV i can only rely on what i see others have done with it, seems like a very capable little scope for AP. I think i would like to

start with the DSLR route first, then, maybe after i gain some experience i will graduate to Cmos/CCD. Are there any particular cameras in the canon line which work well with 

this scope, tried and tested performers? i have a tracking mount, though, not a computerized tracking mount, it is the Vixen GP with motors, i can polar align accurately enough

to keep it dead centre on a target for a good while, is this enough? or, should i really be looking at a better mount?.

Looking at the full (not full) moon shot on my large screen, gives me a sensation as though i want to stretch my arm out like superman and fly to the moon lol.

its just that lifelike and raw.

From what I gather, this person is saying that an explanation for Betelgeus' high rotational velocity would be a past merger with a smaller star during its bloating stage?. They have done computer models demonstrating this merger and, the end result was Betelgeuse having an uncharacteristically high rotational speed?

I am not a physicist but, my issue with this is, do we really know what b's rotational speed is?? its distance is up for debate to within 500 LY's or so. I would like to know if it's rotational speed has been measured and, to what accuracy?

I have a 60mm Lunt pressure tuned, great solar scope, i would not spend too much for tracking if the mount will be dedicated for that scope, unless the mount comes with it.

That first shot is Epic!

Roger that, once you're polar aligned, simply move the camera on the ball head to your target, the drive will follow the target.