Sunshine

that’s a great wide field image, we dont see many Jupiter wide fields with Galilean moons all present, nice work.

Nothing to do with the scope itself in terms of quality, but I would have to nominate my CPC1100, I owned it for a short six months and in that time it tried to kill me twice while navigating stairs. We all know about aperture fever, but I was consumed by aperture stupidity considering I had to move the scope up and down two flights of stairs for sessions. It had to go before my wife would find me at the bottom of the stairs, dead and under the thing. 

2 hours ago, DirkSteele said:

It is my 180mm LZOS triplet.

Wow, I simply cannot fathom having such a scope and not using it! 

2 hours ago, Paz said:

Look forward to your reports, you have lots of good times ahead!

What effect does the lake have on seeing I wonder? Some of the best seeing I've had has been on holidays looking out over the sea and big patches of open water.

Thanks @Paz I’m not sure about effects to seeing due to lake/ocean proximity, good question.

It’s been two weeks since my wife and I moved into our new home on the shores of Lake Ontario. Although I was aware I was moving from bortle six to bortle four, I haven’t had a chance to step out into my back garden and have a look up as renovations left me exhausted and the skies were not clear.
 

My sister in law lives on the next street and as my wife and I walked back home from their home I couldn’t jelp but notice how dark and clear the sky appeared. Once we arrived at home the first thing I did was step out into the garden and to my amazement and joy I noticed I could clearly make out the milky way!. Like a faint thin cloud snaking its way right through Cassiopeia and Cygnus, above, the hairs on the back of my neck crawled.

This was a surprise as I was not expecting to be able to see the milky way, the sky was dark and filled with so many more stars that what I was accustomed to at my previous home. Another very pleasant surprise was the fact that my neighbors all around me do not have any intrusive lights, their own back gardens are dark save for the odd little solar powered and dim garden light.

For a full hour I stood in amazement as I was able to see M31 and the double cluster naked eye! Andromeda naked eye was a revelation for me, I have seen it naked eye many times but never from my own home, impossible from where I used to be for the last fourteen years. Even though it was midnight, I decided to take out my 8” dob for a short while, the double cluster was just magnificent! awash with stars, so many that the double cluster seems to have been lost in the ocean of stars in which it sat. This view of the double cluster was far better than what I could have hoped for from my previous home, it was such a pleasant surprise, it left me stunned.

Clusters were brighter and richer than I have ever seen from my previous location, scanning the milky way at low power with my 14mm XW was an adventure, the points of light were endless. It seems that in the coming years I will be boring you all to death with overly excited reports from my new place. Soon I will have my sticky little fingers on an FS128, be ready for a tsunami of reports! 

Welcome!

You all may have heard me gush here on SGL about how awesome Starsense is, there are many who have stripped the module off the most inexpensive Celestron units and easily adapted them to larger dobs and such. Starsense is just plain awesome, best thing to come along in amateur astronomy since the eyepiece 😄

I think they're great eyepieces at their price point, I have had a few of them and the 9mm practically lives full time in my Lunt. Eyepieces in general are probably THE most subjective piece of gear we use, what works for me may not work for another, I have had nothing but pleasant experiences with them.

14 hours ago, IB20 said:

So as I have no finder I was just cruising with the 102mm trying to find M11 in fairly early night skies. I happened across a very eye catching double. A horizontal pair of perfect white orbs with a fairly generous separation but appearing completely symmetrical in size and magnitude. Had no idea what it was at the time but it struck me with what a great double it was. Just searching SkySafari now and it was Alya or Theta1 Serpentis; I love just stumbling upon targets at random. 😁

Me too! it’s great when I just happen to sweep across an interesting object because the fun then begins trying to identify it.

1 hour ago, Mike Q said:

That is going to be one hell of a view.  Which of the Great Lakes are you on? 

Lake Ontario

7 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

That's a Lake fit for an FS128!☺️

Dave

Coming soon!

Finally moved, but the immediate renovations my wife and I chose to start are leaving me burned out at night, after next week I will be more or less settled and ready to fall back into my astro routine. Though a have ample bortle 4 skies in my back garden, just a block down the street i can take my scope in a small dolly for outreach by the lake. Just three days in my new place and I know all my neighbors, they know all about my astronomy passion and I invited them all to what I call “astronomy at the port” nights where I will enjoy doing outreach from the lakeside walking trails. Looking forward to being here, looking forward to writing my first report from lakeside.

2 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

I understand your feelings. I think the best way to observe the Moon is to decide on a little project. For me, I love the challenge of tracing rilles at the limit of observability, and find that using a binoviewer greatly improves the sensitivity of my vision. I do like to sketch what I see but find that with the Moon, even the simplest of targets rapidly becomes a formidable task even in a small scope. So I decided to study crater floors and try to ignore the terrace walls. It's amazing what fascinating detail is visible throughout a lunation. And another pet interest for me is hunting ghost craters. These are craters that have been largely or even totally submerged beneath the basalt lava planes. Their ghostly outlines can often be seen when the high Sun lights up the plane, and you get an idea of how the surface appeared before the region was filled with lava. The Moon is not monotone in colour either, and at low power when near to full, the subtle differences in colour tone can be nice to observe. Also, around impact craters with bright ejecta you can at times see an orange hue depending on the lighting, which is apparently caused by tiny glass beads which are a product of the impact. And then there are Clangers!! 

Here are some of my observations of crater floors -

As with this observation of Cyrillus, it can be helpful to ignore the surrounding terrain as the task can become too daunting. I'm not skilled enough or fast enough to draw several features at once.

Keeping things simple is difficult as there's always far too much detail to draw. Here I set out to record the basic outline of the Alpine Valley but the real purpose of the sketch was to show the central rille along the valley's length, and Elgar's rille crossing the valley width.

Rays can be fun to trace under full Sun.

And interesting shadows can offer spectacular sights as well as reveal the caldera pits in many of the lunar domes.

Wow, your lunar sketches are inspiring! I must start looking at the moon in more detai and TRY sketching my observations.

Beautiful, so rich with stars!

Do you find the moon still holds your attention after having examined it’s features over decades? having observed the moon so many countless times, I find that it tends to fall off my target list. If I am observing through a new scope which could reveal details another scope could not, then it becomes a new moon, a new challenge. Maybe I should learn how to sketch lunar details, this would add a whole new perspective on lunar details. Am I making any sense? as this could be said of any object, yet I never seem to loose interest in most other objects, I can marvel at the same planets and double stars over and over yet the moon with it’s wealth of features sometimes feel like more of the same. Maybe it is too easy a target, taken for granted.

A big welcome!

Hello and welcome to SGL!

Welcome! looking at planets for the first time is exciting!

On 19/08/2023 at 04:22, Peco4321 said:

I started this post years ago as a bit of fun, I come and go on this forum as I’m sure many others find I use other social media forums for different purposes. Anyway, here’s my current set up, same scope Skywatcher 150p on Heq5 pro / Altair 269c / SV Bony 50mm guide scope / ASI178mc guide cam.  
 

Quick question, I’m looking at buying a 150pds and seen one second hand, the fittings near the focus wheels are gold as is part of the finder, he says it’s 3-4 years old but not seen them before. Is it even older?

Almost eight years on and a hundred+ pages it’s still going strong! a great thread we can all thank you for!

That’s a great M31!

So much detail, stars are beautiful pinpoints, amazing!

Wonderful! a target I rarely see imaged.

Beautiful image!

Hello! I once had the CPC1100 for a short period before I realized it is more scope than I needed considering it’s size and weight. This scope is a great, 11 inches of aperture (size of mirror) and a long focal length (distance the light travels within the telescope before it is focused at your eye). It has GPS which allows you to find and track objects, has many options for accessories like cameras and such and from my little experience with it I was happy with the optical quality. Have you heard of a gentleman on youtube by the name of Ed Ting? Ed is a very well know. Amateur astronomer and reviewer of telescopes, I recommend you have a look at this video where he basically sums up the CPC1100 in detail.

Welcome home to SGL!