Sunshine

It seems very strange, but the correct procedure is you barely just touch lips to the rubber while leaving gaps for air to rush in. One must remember not to exhale otherwise you fog up the glass more, then you sharply suck for a second which draws a vortex of air across the glass which clears it. It may take two attempts but it works!. Note, unless you are Mick Jagger, objective lenses are too big for this procedure.

It seems I will have to do a demonstration on youtube even though I risk having my youtube account cancelled. That way you all can see exactly what I mean, and I will be at ease knowing my advice didn’t end with someone inhaling their tiny little Tak TOE eyepiece, @JeremyS 😂

We have tripod sniffers, handle lovers, and now an eyepiece sucker, me!. We are a sorry lot, but it works! when my eyepiece fogs up I carefully put my lips to the eyecup without touching the glass and suck while leaving space for air to rush in and clear the eyepice. It sounds ghastly but it works every time!.

Welcome back!

Welcome!

It sounds like an amazing time, you sold me at home made soup! I am a known soup fiend, my love for soup is insatiable. Soup aside, what a treat to have an FC100 next to a stowaway.

Definitely the Baader solar filters, they are a film and several sizes are made to fit a variety of scopes, look into those. https://www.baader-planetarium.com/en/solar/whitelight.html

Welcome to the lounge!

Yes but you are unable to enjoy the night sky from inside the house! oh boy.

This would indicate to me that you use a Quark? I say this because they have been known for inconsistency in their filter quality, but if you happen to score a good one I hear the views are second to none.

Welcome to SGL!

I would agree that looking through H-alpha during solar minimum when the sun looks like an orange ball with a few dark spots can be underwhelming. There are those days (a lot recently) where there are no less than five proms, some are enormous. Those days are amazing, the beauty of an H alpha scope lies in it’s portability and ease of use, a scope small enough to keep right next to a door ready for a quick peek. One quickly finds that an H-alpha scope no matter how small it is, it will become a most used scope and one which will be greatly missed if sold. One more thing about HA scopes which is wonderful is outreach, it is much easier to draw a curious crowd on a walkway, park, or anywhere than night observing where less people are up and about. Curious folks are always blown away by the fact they are looking at the sun, almost everyone expects telescope to be for nighttime use but when passersby see me looking into the sun they cannot resist asking for a look, and the reaction is always the same “omg this is the sun? I see fire coming out!” this is great, I absolutely love solar outreach.

What aperture size are you looking at buying?

Interesting, I just have to ask, have you looked through an H-alpha scope? If not, you may change your mind once you do.

Wow what a beast! Sounds like you will be loosing sleep in anticipation of those summer sessions when the sun will be much higher. Imagine the views you’ll have then, considering how it performs at the moment.

A good spot would be the DIY Astronomer forum. It’s where we all post about telescope repair, restoration, making parts and such. https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/18-diy-astronomer/

Welcome to SGL! and best of luck resurrecting the Ultima 2000, I always liked the esthetics of that model, have never used one, though.

This is beautiful! call me weird but my fav part of DSO images are always the stars, the nebulous clouds are great but I am more drawn to myriads of stars and their individual colors. This is a beautiful example of a rich star field with perfectly rendered stars and their colors are sublime.

Nice work seeing the pup! not an easy task in a 4”.

How did i just quote my own post!?

Yes, but for planetary imaging one is not using a long exposure camera as in DSO imaging. With planetary imaging the cameras is taking a video clip consisting of hundreds of frames, software then picks out rhe best frames and stacks them. One can even track by hand with a dobsonian and achieve great images as I have seen some here do with hand tracked dobsonians. Lucky imaging is the term used, many hundreds of frames are taken, but only a few of the best, most steady frames are selected by software for stacking. In fact, one can do this without any mechanical or hand tracking at all, it just means that your bideo clip will be much shorter, and less lucky frames to choose from. With DSO’s where a single long exposure is taken, hyper accurate alignment and guiding is required to maintain a sharp image and pinpoint stars, not so with planetary imaging.

Tracking for planetary imaging doesn’t have to be accurate at all, I can literally eyeball polaris through the polar scope on my Vixen polaris mount which is enough to keep a planet pretty much centered in the FOV for up to 5 min. Imaging deep sky is another story, as you know it requires much lore accurate polar alignment and guiding.

Oh, I didn’t mean guiding, i meant tracking on one axis for short periods when polar aligned, switch motor on and off as needed.

What i meant to say is, even while using a much larger telescope I am unable to see Mars as much more than a tiny, orange dot at the moment as it is too far from us. As mentioned above, Jupiter and also the moon will make for more interesting targets which are within the grasp of your scope. There are two books which you will greatly benefit from, either one are considered the beginners bible and pretty much have set us all off on this hobby, “turn left at Orion” or “Nightwatch” by Terrence Dickinson. These are both available on Amazon, you will love either one. Your scope will get you started but it is important you understand it is small and has limited ability to gather light. A telescope gathers light from objects, the larger the scope, the more light they can gather and hence the more detais they show.