Sunshine

Nice report! good to hear you had a great time with what seems like a great scope.

Amazing! I have also had an incredible two months of clear night after night and weekends with 10hrs total observing, unreal.

That is beautiful!

3 hours ago, Simon128D said:

Here in Ireland we had a mighty heat wave in July last year. For a few weeks it was in the mid to high 20C and then went up to 32c for three to four days. I remember on the hottest day of them all - near the end of July - it was clear and I set the C11 up at 22:30 for some imaging of Jupiter and Saturn, anyway when I went out at midnight I was literally only wearing my underpants and slippers and the outside thermometer was showing 27c, being almost naked, at the scope and feeling perfectly comfortable was a fabulous experience for me. 

Seeing was useless but I still got okay results on Jupiter and Saturn was passable enough to not get Shift+Del 

Have you thought about a YouTube channel? you could call it ‘The Naked Observer’ you never know! with all the astrophotography channels out there no one is representing visual 😂

Madness! I came back from my in laws tonight at 11:30 and put my scope out to cool, I mean warm as it sits in my basement where the house is air conditioned and it gets even colder down in the dungeon. 

Once I was ready to observe it was midnight and I couldn't do it! wiping sweat off my forehead in 36 degrees with humidex factor, at midnight! my eyepiece would fog up from the heat radiating off my face.

This is crazy! I cant recall it being so hot at night, I know in Europe there has been some awful heat waves recently, has anyone else had their observing session ruined by the heat? unreal. Summer days can reach into the high 30's here and I'm ok with that but nights usually cool off, usually.

These last three weeks with my new dob have been a whirlwind, this season has presented a staggering number of clear nights so far, almost one after the other for weeks. This is great when testing out and getting to know my new scope but it’s been so much fun and 5hr sessions one after another that I’m so caught up in this observing frenzy I can’t put a report together!. 
 

Starsense combined with the light gathering capability of an 8” over my 102 has been presenting so many targets I have never seen before, a bit overwhelming! just when I begin to take notes for a report I get carried away tapping on new targets on the starsense app and quickly forget what I wanted to write down. This is what a child in a toy store for the first time must feel like, last night I have seen the cats eye nebula for the first time with its faint central star, a plethora of globulars, a few so faint and challenging they barely looked like globulars and more like faint fuzzie patches without individual stars resolved and many others. Each time I would press the audio description while observing the object which is wonerful! i can’t recall having seen so much in single sessions. Maybe when the Frenzy wears off I will be able to put a report together, for now it is like my scope and starsense are taking my hand and rushing me off every night, amazing.

6 hours ago, powerlord said:

Forgot to snap a pic last night, but managed to get some good subs last night from campsite with redcat and asi2600

 

You’re definitely camping, the dog is most certainly glamping.

A good ole bucket of concrete saves the day, welcome to SGL!

Welcome to SGL!

😅 Seriously, does anyone know their rocks well here on SGL? my friend threw a stone in my lap today and said “here, I found you a neat rock cause I know you like them” he found it while walking along a shoreline of Lake Huron. After looking at this rock for a while I am curious, it is unlike any stone I have seen in my years of occasional fossil hunting. It resembles Martian rock, imagine that!

2 hours ago, Ags said:

I built a pretty wooden eyepiece case with slots for 12 eyepieces

You're fixing on fitting twelve eyepieces in there? 

Wonderful image!

Welcome to SGL!

26 minutes ago, paulastro said:

You're welcolme Sunshine.  You are right, it is difficult to see stars on the screen at first during night mode alignment. When I first did it, I couldn't see any stars at first, like yourself, it was only after I zoomed in that I started to see them.  Its made worse if the sky is fairly light or you're looking g down toward the horizon.  Once you're zoomed inthey are much clearer.

Thanks! Now I’m all charged up about trying that!

14 minutes ago, paulastro said:

Sunshine, the accuracy you already have is actually very good, better than some goto scopes I've used.  My own accuracy sounds very similiar, and I'm more than happy with it.  Though, you can align it at night of course, or re- align it.

When you first swith SS on, choose 'needs alignment' and it let's you align it with the crosshairs.  I've done this myself and it works  fine. Just choose a bright star or planet to align on and zoom in to do the final alignment at the maximum mag.

Great thanks! I actually did choose the needs alignment once during the night but was discouraged when I didn't immediately see anything on the screen and figured the app was designed for daytime alignment only. 

Maybe I wasn't aimed at a bright enough object like Vega, I will try again at night but you are correct in saying its good enough, I shouldn't chase perfection. 

thanks!

10 minutes ago, Rodd said:

Thanks. I had trouble with flats. I don’t understand it. Before, if I changed filters there was often an issue with filter wheel position accuracy. But I did not change filters. I took flats and shot. No issues. But a dust bunny remained. Fortunately I was able to remove it. But it pisses me off. Is it the camera or the filter wheel. 

Not being an imager, at all! I gather there was a flat bunny in your image? 🤣

4 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

so far we don't believe you can tweak when you're using the app so a lot seems to be down to how well you can align it at the start. I tend to align at night onto a bright object, either planet or star if I can so you know it's at a good distance since there's not much I can see from the garden that is any great distance away.

I assume you're doing the pinch-to-zoom bit to expand the view to get that bit more accuracy?

Never tried but if you can't quite get the cross-hair onto the on-screen target I wonder if its also possible to make a little tweak on the XY control wheels to get that last little adjustment?

OOHH!! great point, I did alignment during the day with the pinch and zoom so as to get on a pointy land target as best as possible but there always seems to be a discrepancy. Aligning at night in the same fashion 

I haven't tried, maybe Vega would be a good target for that. My "oooh!" is in response to your idea of making a fine adjustment to the XY wheels while target in entered in my EP, this seems brilliant! it must I would

assume, as long as the adjustment remains minute as the app may interpret it as motion of the scope but well worth a try, thank you!

Plenty of detail here, great job!

The combination of starsense module/phone/dobsonian has been revolutionary for me. Starsense on a push to dob just seems like such an intuitive and fluid way to find objects, I can’t ever recal having this much fun and seeing so many objects in one night, it’s wonderful. So much so that I can say my 25 years of observing are divided between pre and post starsense. I’m not sure how this tech is used on a computer with the optical eye I’m used to seeing mounted on other starsense enabled scopes but having it on a phone as a complete system is just wonderful!. In the last two nights I have had back to back 5hr sessions lasting into next morning and witnessed countless objects, the entire time starsense hasn’t put a foot wrong, just a small discrepancy between target being centered in EP and APP accurately but close enough to get me on target consistently.

Does anyone know if it is possible to fine adjust starsense on target while in use at night? even though it does get me to the objects without issue time after time, I find that it is not aligned precisely so that when the target is centered in my EP it is also centered in the starsense target but is on the outer edge of the small center bullseye. I find that such discrepancy occurs no matter how well I try and align during the day, does anyone find the same discrepancy? if not then how do you achieve perfect alignment? it would be great if the AP had a fine adjustment option where the target on the app can be moved up or down to match the EP, I’m sort of surprised it doesn’t as this seems perfectly intuitive.

3 hours ago, cajen2 said:

Well, I finally received my Morpheus 6.5mm, so here it is along with its stable mates:

Probably won't get any more as I'm already sorted for other Morph f/ls. Now all I need is a clear sky....🙄

 

Great! my 9mm morpheus is my workhorse eyepiece in both scopes, they’re just great EP’s.

Every night around the globe hundreds of objects enter the atmosphere looking like all manner of things, space junk, space rocks and such. Vancouver Island is beautiful! I lived in Surrey as a wee lad.

Patiently waiting.

On 28/07/2022 at 13:40, powerlord said:

Getting ready for first light with my new asi2600mc.. What's that you say? Pixel size, 300p 1500mm FL gives 0.5" per pixel.. madness? Pfft bring it on.. Laws of physics are just suggestions imho. 😛

p.s. 300PDS makes the asi2600mc look tiny.

A monster! 

A mystery JWST hat! I’m a little puzzled as I did not order this or know of its existence. Maybe I have a secret astro admirer? certainly not my wife or so she claims but I believe her. oh well, I’ll do a little more research and be happy as it is a nice hat.

UPDATE: it was mom! Lol a few phone calls revealed the truth, I do have an astro admirer!