Sunshine

4 minutes ago, RobertI said:

102ED-R out this afternoon with BV at around 160x. Lovely detail visible on Sol before it disappeared behind the rooftops. Bino-bandit is a great addition for solar viewing. 

Wow that looks like a super clean and sharp view through that WL wedge.

These are fantastic but my fav is the third which looks like a negative, I have never seen that before.

My 102 awaiting sunset and my new Lunt.

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Tak is out for a few little sessions between painting. Seeing ok, not the best, not the worst.

Wow what a beautiful back garden you have! 

7 hours ago, gajjer said:

Actually, just searched and couldn't find it. However, it does seem to be available on BBC Select, which looks like you have to pay for.

Not seen it, but it looks interesting.

gaj

It is a great series, i will look into BBC select, maybe it is available in Canada and if not I will try changing my VPN location and pay for a subscription if i have to.

update: just looked into the BBC select app on my firestick and saw a variety of programs and documentaries but this one is nowhere to be found! Arghh.

Just recently I have discovered this BBC production and I am absolutely smitten with it, has anyone seen it? I need to know how I can own this series but I cannot find it for sale on dvd ans such. It is such an engrossing series and I simply must have it, I would like to know where I can stream it as I can only catch one every so often on television but I have already missed several episodes.

A big welcome!

Welcome to SGL!

You may have captured the Aether! huge discovery!

1 hour ago, TheycallmeRiver said:

Tell her it's imperative that you do it right now, because the objects you're going to be photographing are moving away from us at an incredible rate and they'll be gone soon!

That won’t work with my wife but it would with my neighbor. While looking up at the moon once and asking me questions we watched an airplane about to fly across the face of the moon, he wondered if it was going to pass behind or in front of the moon, he was dead serious.

After seeing so many galaxies this past weekend I developed a sudden interest in AP, somebody please smack me. If you don’t my wife certainly will when she sees the bill for AP gear.

4 hours ago, josefk said:

Sadly (and frustratingly) not a recent picture (cloud, cloud, cloud at every turn). Here viewing Venus in the daytime sky at Easter.

This location is in a nature (bird) reserve so i probably made quite a strange sight sat behind this with a blanket over my head (to cut out reflections at the eyepiece). What's he looking at?

Wow what a supreme scope!

3 hours ago, Ags said:

Which underlines how bad the below scenario would be.

Funny, I want that on a T-shirt!

On 12/05/2023 at 13:55, pipnina said:

My SET Optics 130mm triplet after a night of imaging

Cable management is hard, but at least it works!

I seem to always end up with scopes comically oversized for my poor abused HEQ5, those two 5kg counterweights don't come close to balancing this!

The pretty and well manicured green space caught my eye, the telescope is also nice!

22 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

The Chain is just cool.  I was trying to see it the other night but the clouds were killing me.  

Which scope do you usually observe galaxies with? bummer about the clouds ruining your session.

Wonderful images!

It just so happens that every time I have set my sights on the wealth of galaxies in the coma cluster it was with small aperture telescopes and red dot finders (which i love) but they aren’t exactly the best choice for such faint, small objects. Markarians Chain has always been something I have heard others describe while using large dobs but I have never really enjoyed this region, it was something I thought I would one day see under truly dark skies with a large dob. Starsense with my 8” dob changed everything this night, what a superb piece of tech it is. 
 

Seeing conditions were good, while searching through the provided list of highlighted targets for this night I ran across the Sunflower galaxy, a tiny smuge which then led me to the whale, needle, and black eye galaxies. All very faint smudges but now I was on a roll, working my way down I eventually found myself in the middle of galactic nirvana and the amazing wealth that is Markarians chain. Starsense never led me astray or let me down, not once, putting galaxy after galaxy dead center in the eyepiece one after the other. 
 

This was something I had never seen, let me be frank, I saw no spirals and galactic cores from my bortle bad skies, but I did see multiple fuzzies within one field of view and it was awe inspiring. Some so faint that I had to slightly move the scope to detect the galaxy against the backdrop, as counter intuitive as this may seem I have noticed this helps when spotting something so faint. So many galaxies passed through the 70 degrees offered by my 9mm morpheus that I lost count, without starsense and using a red dot finder with my 4” refractor I would have been lost, probably wouldn’t have even bothered. Markarians chain would have continued on as lore, how starsense put some fuzzies barely on the threshold of what my vision, bortle scale, and mirror size would allow, dead centre (and i mean center) of my fov blows my mind.  A memorable night this was, I thought thess galaxies were out of reach from my location and scope size, starsense proved me wrong.

A beautiful image!

It's me again, back here admiring those images of your 128, what a wonderful refractor.

Canada’s claim to astronomical fame the David Dunlap Observatory (where black holes were first confirmed) is just 20 min from my home and has many days throughout the year where they do telescope tours and public observing events. On this day they called out to members of the RASC to volunteer solar scopes for outreach and can you guess who screamed “oh I’ll go!!” yes your very own Sunshine! cause I’m just a ray of sunshine!. 😂

Outreach where large numbers are present is hard, everyone asking questions, children tugging on diagonals for a look, long lines and on my part a shortage of saliva from constant talking under the sun left me parched. A good time was had and peoples minds were blown when they first saw promonances, I love it.

2 hours ago, jetstream said:

@StuCongrats!!

The Tak lightning strikes again!

This telescope is rumoured to be among the best 130mm class telescopes in existence.... super cooling and with great presentation on the planets. What a sharp telescope.

Now I want one.

Gerry

 

 

 

 

Of course you do, you want them all! Gerry, with your skies I don’t blame you!

Amazing to hear your new 128 is performing so well @Stu now I am counting the days to hear about lunar and planetary views through that beauty!

7 hours ago, MalcolmM said:

Thanks @JeremyS and @Alan White. It's not too bad a break and rather than big Naglers, I got a tiny Tak Abbe 4mm today 🙂. Amazing the difference 1mm makes! That's what I keep telling my partner 🙂 now I've got the proof 🙂

And thanks to an extremely light G&G setup I can still observe one handed, so all's good!

Malcolm 

Sorry to hear about your wrist, and is there an eyepiece between the two caps on the right? 

My gosh what a beautiful find! congratulations and I can't wait for your first light report, all while my jealousy meter is in critical overload! 

Here in southern Ontario it has been very cloudy for the last month or so, maybe one clear night a week and even then the smoke from Alberta wildfires has been an issue. You are definitely not alone, hang in there, better times on the horizon.