Barry Fitz-Gerald

Sounds more like a Sect than a Society..............do they have a dress code?

They are a bit agricultral but they function OK, I have them fitted to a SW reflector, a SW ED80 for solar viewing and a 140mm refractor. I do not fit them as per the instructions, but via different home made brackets, and use a small cam belt to run from the pulley on the focuser onto the fine focus knob on the scope. BIt Heath Robinson, but then again I can just slip the belt off and revert to normal focusing if I switch netween EP's or camera. The battery compartment is too small and getting the cover to close over the battery is a faff. Overall it is a good low cost way to eliminate focus wobble - I guess they may not last as long a a premium unit - but they have been in use for 4 yrs or so with no problem.

I really wish you hadn't said that, I can see that I am going to have a lot of trouble resisting one now.

Yes, remarkable images! The CC has intrigued me - looks like a perfect lunar telescope, how do you find it? Is collimation a nightmare?

You might find some useful stuff in the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology published by Equinox Publishing.

This sounds like the same system as on the SW250PDS I have, and it is quite useful. It is surprising how far off the focuser can be, but this allows quite precise alignment with the OTA. I bought a handfull of those small magnetic bubble spirit levels to get the OTA completely level by mounting them along the tube and on the horizintally orientated spider vanes, then used a tightly fitting blanking cap in the focuser with a circular bubble level on top of that. In this way I could ensure everything was level, and usually confirmed it by using a plumb line dangled down through a hole in the blanking cap to check if it was lined up with the vertically orientated spider vanes. Keeping the polystyrene cradles included with the packing helps as this provides a good base to hold the tube horizontal. Fancy for a fairly basic focuser.

Orbiting an M7 Dwarf might be a bit of dodgy place for complex life to evolve what with all those nasty flares, so I am not too concerned about a Mars Attack scenario from that direction. It is nice to see DMS getting some attention after all these years, but of course the detection of Methane, which is a biomarker but unstable and needs to be constantly replaced to be detectable, is also interesting - rather like its detection some time ago on Mars that provoked a bit of a stir. But methane can also be produced by non biological pathways so less exciting than DMS - if it has in fact been detected, which is still up in the air.

You do not an oxygen atmosphere to produce dimethyl sulphide, anaerobic bacteria as well as other others can synthesise it quite happily. If you went back to the early earth say 3billion years ago there would have been dimethyl sulphide in the atmosphere but not a whiff of oxygen - which would have been toxic to most life forms.

.......................probability based on more Statistics https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/abiogenesis-the-carter-argument-reconsidered/BBA3D5F057C5212D76E01F1A0570AB0D

.......................probability based on Bayesian Statistics https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1921655117

Well spotted.......... but, Hypothetical means based on possibilities and not reality - not quite the same.

If you are talking hypothetically you explore any possibilities you like - its hypothetical!

It is probably true that we should not expect our familiar biochemistry to crop up all over the universe, but then again maybe the RNA/DNA world was just the most succesful out of many different forms that populated the early Earth, and our microbial ancestors ate all the competition. By the time procaryotes appear in the fossil record, the Earth may have gone through several different forms of life with slightly different biochemical pathways, only for these to be wiped out by impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment (or the equivalent) and each time life sprang up again and went through the same evolutionary process until only the most succesful solution to replication became dominant. I imagine that on most exoplanets minerals such as olivine, pyroxene, quartz and so on have the same crystallographic configuration as those on Earth, and even more complex hydrated minerals are the same there as here, as there are only limited ways to achieve a stable form with the atomic constituents available. If life also has a similarly narrow range of stable formats, and lets face it life is just another natural process and probably an inevitable one, then maybe the same or very similar biochemistry may be widespread - hence the significance of DMS, if the observations are shown to be correct. The down side of this would be that other worlds may also inevitably give rise to bipedal primates with an overwhelming sense of hubris through converent evolution.

Yes - the 45 degree ones are a pain in the neck, literally for anything over say 50 degree elevation, getting your eyes square on the the EP's becomes more difficult with higher elevations. For terrestrial though they would be more comfortable than the 90's. The 90's are ideal for astro due to the better eye placement at high elevations - for terrestrial they would be uncomfortable. Optically I think they are the same - and I have never had a collimation issue with either the 45's or 90's, but I paid extra for the collimation service prior to delivery. So, if you are just interested in astro use - I would suggest the 90's as the best fit, if you are mixed astro and terrestrial use such as birding then the 45's would be better.

45 degree on a central crank tripod then......................

Well, if DMS is confirmed it would probably make James Lovelock smile, (wherever he is) as it played a significant role in his GAIA hypothesis as a cloud seeding molecule and planetary climate regulator.

From what I have experiences with the APM 82 Semi Apo's, which are essentially posh achromatic binos, the view through them is much much better than a dedicated pair of fixed eyepiece straight through binos. I would suspect that the objecctives of the 82's would be superior to say the usual big bino offerings in the 15x70, 20x80 category of instrument, but of course you pay for the difference. And with the APM type you can use quality eyepieces - the ones that usually come with these APM's and their clones (but then again I guess the APM's are themselves clones!) are the 18mm UFF's with a 65degree FOV, and these give you a very wide and immersive view that makes using ordinary big binos a bit like looking down two toilet roll tubes - use better EP's like the Delos range and the views are even better. Being able to use different EP's gives you great flexibility. If you stepped up to ED or SD the optical performance is just a league above normal hand held binos. So from my perspective normal straight through binos like 15x70's would be out classed by the semi-apo version (great on DSO's and star fields abd no slouch on the Moon) of these BT's and far outclassed by the ED's and SD's (which are great on everything). But buying optical equipment is a bit like buying shoes, some things look great in the adverts, but for some reason they do not fit your eyes, your face or how you like observing.

I have owned the APM 100mm binos and wanting a bit more aperture got the APM120SD's. They were/are both superb instruments for deep sky and lunar observing and are fare more comfortable to use than a telescope because of the two eye effect. Both had the extra collimating service that APM offer and performed brilliantly. The 100 was a nice size - large yet portable and well balanced for use on a sensible tripod. The 120's magnificent both in terms of light grasp and resolution but are extremely front heavy, just about portable and better suited to a semi permanent setup. Both are 90 degree eyepiece. As an experiment I got an APM 82mm Semi Apo 45 degree - the collimation certificate states they were collimated up to x100. These were a big surprise, they are physically a bit like a miniature version of the 120's so quite long tubes, but very portable, and easy to mount on a Manfrotto Tripod 475B Pro tripod with a central crank. Being 45 degree ones central crank is pretty essential to view anything above say 60 degrees elevation - some may be able to manage it without a central shaft but not me with my dodgy neck. I did think I would manage with the 45degree ones - I could just view stuff low down or wait until objects rotated to a lower elevation, but for some reason all the good stuff turns out to be high up! Being semi-apo, in other words achromats there is some false colour around brighter objects, but even on the moon it is not really distracting or to my eye all that apparent. But if you are a DSO hunter then this is where these binos come in to their own, either with OIII or UHC filters or without. The Veil nebula for instance is conspicuous without any filters, but with the OIII's a lot of detail can be seen. On open or globulars the view is again spectacular, and any CA there is is not really apparent. I use the APM 15mm or 18mm EP's with them and they are very good eyepieces, but I also use 12mm, 10mm and 6mm TV Delos (for some reason the 17.3 will not come to focus) and these provide more immersive views than the APM's. As another experiment I got the APM 70MM SD's (90 degree) - these are very light, compact, and easy to mount, and the eyepiece placement is perfect for use at the zenith. Using the EP's mentioned above the views on the moon and brighter objects are noticeably sharper than the 82's, though on DSO's and clusters the difference is not hugely pronounced. I was rather surprised that with 6mm EP's the double double Epsilon Lyra was resolvable in moments of good seeing - not bad for a 70mm. Putting this all together an 82mm SD version with 90 degree eyepieces would be the perfect compromise and hard to beat for astro use, superb light grasp, uber portable and if the SD optics on the 70's and 120's are anything to go by capable of sharp high resolution views on everyting including the brightest objects. As mentioned above QC could be an issue with APM, but I am happy that what is stated on the collimation certificates that came with them is accurate (x180 on the 120's - but not that I ever venture in to that sort of territory with binos). Use at high power is more probably limited by wobble and settling of the OTA's and mount as you adjust the helical focuser as opposed to optical performance. One of 82mm Semi Apo unit I got needed to go back to APM because of a bulge in one of the optical tubes (which did not impact the optics) but the vendor I used dealt with this in a very pro-active manner and the replacement unit was collimated to a higher standard than the original. Once you go down the bino route there is no going back - they make observing so comfortable and immersive that reverting to single eye use is a bit of a chore.

I suppose the obvious candidate is birds, but at this resolution I cannot see any obvious wing flapping. However if they were large birds migrating at altitude then they could be soaring on air currents and not actively flapping. If they are birds they would have to be at a reasonable height ( a few thousand feet maybe) as on most nights I have seen birds transiting the moon (Swifts, Gulls) they do so a lot faster as they are a lot lower. Being elongate across the direction of travel also suggests outstretched wings though the profile changes slightly as they pass upwards, but this could be a result of changing perspective.

Thanks for the drawing – that is really useful. Firstly, the angular size of what you saw seems quite large, which probably rules out a lot of things! I checked the FligtRadar for the time of your observations, as I note that you are just south of the eastern approach to Gatwick, and aircraft would be visible passing to the north of you and heading from east to west. I guess you are pretty familiar with these and their noise anyway, and what you drew is nothing like the size a passenger plane would appear in the distance. In any case, all I could see was a stream of short haul aircraft from the continent such as 737's and similar size jets – nothing exotic or military. I did wonder whether an aircraft experiencing engine problems and smoking from one engine might be an answer, but those flashes of those light which might have indicated a fire would have probably resulted in a lot of scary videos from terrified passengers, and something in the news. As to it being a smoky military aircraft, to chuck out that much smoke it would have had its throttles up against the stops and would have been very loud – was there any noise you recall? So I think that option may be unlikely but worth considering. Your description of the flashing lights reminded me of something called the 'random flashbulb effect' described by Prof. Harley D. Rutledge of Missouri State University in his 1981 book Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena (don't be put off by the term UFO) to describe sightings of randomly flashing lights that he likened to flashbulbs going off, that he and others observed during a 1973 investigation in to anomalous ariel sightings in Missouri (though not within a smoke trail as yours was). It is an interesting read (again difficult to get hold of but available to browse at https://archive.org/details/rutledge-project-identificationand) he even recruited a local Astronomy club to assist in his research, complete with their new Celesstron C8's. Whatever you saw was quite unusual and I look forwards to reading any other possible explanations. Do you have a gut feeling as to what it was?

Yes, some jets are EXTREMELY dirty and chuck out a lot of black smoke, especially the Russian ones like the SU29's that apperar to run on 2-stroke oil.

Whatever you saw sounds extremely odd - it does not fit the usual suspects of Starlink train meteors, space junk and so on, but of course might be some rare atmospheric phenomenon - a possibility that must be explored before more exotic explanations are considered. William R. Corliss catalogued many bizarre things in his book HANDBOOK OF UNUSUAL NATURAL PHENOMENA including atmospheric ones that appear to make little sense in terms of known phenomena. Copies are hard to come by even second hand, but you can access an archive copy at https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-892 I do not like stuff put out on the net as it is usually unverifiable but the following is a cloud with lights you might like to compare with what you saw https://www.phillyvoice.com/video-sighting-ufo-really-mysterious-cloud-philly/

I recommend UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean, the same journalist responsible for the 2017 NYT story. It is an old book now, but the accounts by extremely credible witnesses of structured craft in close proximity are compelling. Unfortunately it does not include the accounts by the likes of Gordon Cooper, Deke Slayton, Clyde Tombaugh or Kelly Johnson (the chap behind the blackest of black projects at Lockheed and designer of the U2 and SR71) - individuals who reported sightings despite the clear threat to their credibility posed by such revelations. Again, based on credibility, technical knowledge and experience I know who's accounts I would tend towards. You may find this a slightly more comprehensive analysis as most of the rubbish you find on the internet is inaccurate: https://www.explorescu.org/post/2004-uss-nimitz-strike-navy-group-incident-report .........this incident is also worth considering as an example of intelligent control: https://enigmalabs.io/library/10e25512-d52e-4ea2-97dc-7a93eecd4cd9 ...........make of them what you will. Yes, it does leave you wondering whether British Leyland had a hand in the fabrication of some of these things, but then again if UFO's don't exist, they cannot crash and the whole problem goes away.

There are very many credible accounts of UFO's approaching and matching the course, altitude and speed of aircraft, maneuvering with them, as well as having an effect on the avionics - you can look for examples at https://www.narcap.org/ or read some of the literature on the Foo Fighter phenomenon where unknown objects interacted with allied aircraft during WWII. None of these appear to be random but guided in some way and responding to their environment. I didn't make it up - it's documented. You are incorrect in your assessment of what was between the lines, I draw the clear distinction between the UFO phenomenon, and the hypothesis that they are piloted by ET's of some form. They are unknown but their specific behavior implies some form of control, it is the nature of that control that is the deep question. The Tic Tac encounter, demonstrated this piloting, intelligent control, input or whatever you want to call it, they were not flying around randomly bumping in to things - but does that imply I am saying it was aliens? I think not. However bearing in mind the outrageous performance of these things I could quite appreciate someones view that they might be.

Fair point. You could use the term 'intelligent control' as these things appear in many cases to respond to their near environment, but of course that might then imply a control input from some sentient being - which takes you down the Alien route which we are trying hard to avoid. This would however be indistinguishable from a fully automated vehicle controlled by advanced AI with no biological involvement at all which would get around the Alien problem - phew! The inconvenient factor however is that some boffin needs to have created the automated systems, if that is what is operating them, and as they have been around since at least the early 1940's - they are not our boffins. Fun to speculate.