Rusted

The sky has been overcast or raining for days. Struggling to post here at times. I thought I'd been banned! First capture of AR2860: Early, mid and late morning. To show the changes in this very active area. Seeing quite transparent and fairly steady this morning. Gone bad this afternoon. It might be better later.

Thanks. Tension on the etalon adjustment bar to cause tilt.

No you wouldn't. The Celestron 150/8 would almost never allow more than 120x on the planets even with the permanent Baader "Fringe Killer" aboard. After that amazing night on Saturn I started buying [secondhand] Meade 4000 eyepieces. A complete waste of money until I finally bought an iStar objective and built a better telescope. After years of staring at a hopelessly fuzzy Jupiter the iStar 180/12 R35 allowed me to instantly double the powers I was using. The Celestron became my PST H-a mod. Until I replaced it with a much better iStar 150/10 H-alpha objective. Despite being surrounded by fields my seeing conditions must have been normally very poor over two decades. Only by raising my viewing platform did I finally start getting fairly decent seeing far more often. That didn't stop the iStar refractors performing far better from the ground. Even they were completely eclipsed by my 10" f/8 Newtonian.

That leading smoke ring must have reached the northern limb pretty quickly. 865/2 = ~432.4k miles in a little over an hour. Quite some blast!

The term for long telescopes causing major, mounting distress is moment. Mass x distance from the axis. A refractor has to be balanced, is usually quite long and has heavy bits on each end. Which often means twice the moment, or much more. I put a 7" f/12 refractor on my Fullerscopes MkIV and found it exceeded its comfortable limits. Yet it had been used by an astro club with a 15" Newtonian before me. If you don't need an equatorial then I might suggest making a plywood "Richard Berry" style, offset fork. It is like a Dobsonian, as far as the box and bearings go, but raised on a post, pier or solid tripod. For a couple of pounds in materials you can be the envy of all refractor owners everywhere. Silky soft movement in all directions. Lest thee scoff at such money saving: There are some very posh APOs mounted on a "couple of bits of plywood" out there. Google for: Richard Berry offset fork mounting. [I made one from scrap materials back in the '80s.]

Well done Steve! The soft seeing was a nightmare! Hours of frustration over two days so far! I couldn't focus properly myself despite having an ultra-slow, DIY electric focuser. I put it down to thin, high cloud causing a haze over the sun. The weather has broken now and the sun gone into hiding. Probably ashamed of itself.

https://youtu.be/hOwVDwBlJss What an amazing catch! Congratulations! It just goes to show the raw power of animation. I was staring at a small patch around this AR for hours yesterday. Completely unaware of anything unusual. The flares I saw were all on the eastern side and long lasting. Would you care to share some of the details, please? Exposure, frequency of capture, total elapsed time, period of capture? Have you posted this on SolarChat? This must be worth a SPOD! Thanks.

I used to test how low a magnification I could use to see the Cassini Division all the way around. An "expert" on an astro forum denied me the right to see such detail at low powers. From memory, 46x was my best effort but it felt like having my eyeballs sucked out. Second-hand Celestron CR150HD f/8 x 26mm Meade 4000 EP. I had one night where Saturn was high overhead and there was snow on the ground. An inversion layer produced stunning seeing conditions. 120x clearly showed the bluish Crepe Ring, Encke, graduated Polar shading, countless belts. 10mm No-name Plossl EP. 120x was my maximum power back then. Saturn looked pixilated it was so incredibly sharp. Satellite orbiter sharp. That was years ago. Only once and never again.

I owe it all to a rubber band. To pull the PST etalon sideways.

Nice images! Get well soon!

Thanks Dave. I presume so. It was a spectacular prom. The AR is still very active judging by the bright spots. Shame the seeing wasn't up to much today. It deserved a much better image than mine.

A frustrating day with mushy and shaky seeing conditions all morning. Towards the end the transparency improved slightly but the image was boiling furiously.

Struggling with cloud and high up mistiness. Poor image but shows the relevant details.

What a superb image! Congratulations!

Lots of cloud and wind again today. Surprise? Added a spot of colour for those who like their marmalade.

Another attempt pushing ImPPG really hard on Sigma Amount.

Lots of cloud today. So I concentrated on the big prom at 11 o'clock. NE limb. Swapped the Lunt BF for the PST B5 and avoided a GPC on the camera nose. The prom is too large for the small fields of view of my usual set-up.

Late afternoon with thin, high cloud.

90% cloud cover! Oh the torment! Best I can manage so far.

My Eclipse No.77 saw setting pliers. "Made in England." Sharp point saws were just taking over in the 1960S. That was back in the last century for those of an immature nature.

Forgive my confusion but a 500 km thick fog layer above the H-alpha layer would give a clear advantage to Calcium. Not the reverse. Perhaps you meant to say the H-alpha atmosphere is 500km thinner?

Turn the lights on and they are easily visible.

I just lean my elbows on the roof of a handy car. The higher the viewing angle the taller the car needed. Stop sniggering at the back!

A magnet? Best check whether one of the screws are affected by the magnet first.

My Zeiss 10x50 Zeiss Jenoptem went out of collimation within days of purchase, decades ago now. Dealer not interested. "Must have dropped them!" I hadn't of course. Faced with instant dizziness and wasted expense I could ill afford, I loosened the objective lock rings. Then I put the binos on a firm post and fiddled with the second ring rotation. Slicing a card across the objectives gave me a blink comparator. The images were vertically challenged. Human eyes are poorly designed for such misalignment. Your mileage may vary. I had assumed the inner rings would be "wedged." They were. Aligned the images and relocked the outer rings. Job done. Decades later they remain perfectly aligned. What this has to go with your binos I haven't a clue. I just like dropping terms. Like: "Zeiss" and "Jenoptem" and "misaligned" and "user dizziness" into the same [long] sentence. I'd start looking for a skilled binocular repairer. They may be Nitrogen gas filled. The binos not the repairer. Though you never know. Gas purging would seriously complicate your messing about with them. More likely to do harm than good anyway.