michael.h.f.wilkinson

Very nice. This kind of image is REALLY bad for my latent aperture fever

Great report. I have considered getting or building an 8" F/8 Newtonian, but somehow could never fully justify such a bulky scope next to my C8. I would love to have a peak through such an instrument, to see what I have been missing. I have some clear skies heading this way, so I hope to have another bash at the red planet

It has turned quite sunny here, so I trotted out the Coronado SolarMax-II 60 I have in my office at work. At first I thought the activity had died down a little, but then I spotted a prom roughly at the 10 o'clock position, a small filament could be spotted near the limb closer to 11 o'clock. I fiddled a bit with the tuning, and then spotted a sunspot with associated plage coming round the corner around the 4 o'clock position. Detuning showed the spot (s(?)) a bit clearer, whereas double stacking the filter showed the plage with more contrast, at the expense of a much dimmer image. The forecast here is looking quite good, so hopefully I will be able to follow the new AR across the disc for a while

Very nice result. I wonder if I should have a go with my C8

Just realised my trusty old Celestron C8 and the venerable Vixen Great Polaris mount turned 25 five days ago. I have upgraded some bits, but the core is still the same old system that has shown me some 500 galaxies, and many planets, moons, comets, nebulae, gobsmacking views of globular clusters, my first solar eclipse in 1999, transits of Venus and Mercury and several lunar eclipses. Wonderful instrument

I am in the luxurious position of having H-alpha, Ca-K and WL at my disposal, and whereas H-alpha is certainly most spectacukar, both other wavelengths have their own charm. Ca-K is hard to observe with older eyes, or wearing glasses that block UV-A.

Ordered these a few days ago, arrived neatly packed, and nicely printed Very pleased indeed

Lovely report!

www.bestecanvas.nl

Just had these delivered Quite comfortable, and can be sterilised in the microwave

Very nice indeed. Not one we often see

Spotted the big AR and the prom just now, along with a long filament and separate bright plage area on the northern hemisphere (another AR developing). The big AR in the south is putting on quite a show, with a quite a bit of bright plage and dark whorls showing around the sunspots.

Activity is really picking up again. I had a quick look at the sun with my Coronado SolarMax-II 60, and apart from a sizeable AR on the southern hemisphere, below and a little to the left of centre as viewed through the diagonal on my mini-giro mount, a bright plage area showed up above centre, (also to the left). Also on the northern hemisphere, but to the right a very long dark filament showed up. Finally, a prom could be seen at roughly the one o'clock position. Things are looking up for us sungazers

Just ordered a couple of calendars with my DSO images. Finally got a sufficient number of different images that are good enough (previously I would end up with M31, M31, M45, M45, M42, M42, M31, M31, M45, M45, M42, M42 ). Made a solar one a few years back, but never got round to another attempt. The new ones should arrive end of the month

I have frequently not used any star alignment on my Great Polaris mount with Synscan GoTo upgrade, because finding the target was easy by star hopping. As long as the PA is good, the scope tracks solidly, and guiding is easy.

Here in the Netherlands it isn't much better. I only really set up the DSO imaging rig when there is hope of a few hours of clear skies, The planetary imaging rig can be used for shorter sessions but for the little gaps I just go for visual, preferably just with big binoculars

Brilliant. Getting aperture fever again

I have cylindrical astigmatism, so need to keep them on. If you don't have that problem, short eye relief is not an issue

I think the Hyperflex is the same EP as the Lunt zoom EP of the same specs. I had the latter for a while, and the views through it were good, but the eye relief was just a touch short for me with my glasses. I now have the William Optics Zoom II 7.5-22.5 mm which is very similar, but has an eye relief of 18.5-19 mm, which is a lot more comfortable for me. It is no longer sold by WO, but clones are still around (NOT the Seben of the same specs, but Opticstar and Omegon have good ones). If you don't need to wear glasses, by all means go for the Hyperflex

Much depends also on the sky background. Where I image the sky background is a worse source of noise than dark current even in an uncooled camera

For the Andromeda Galaxy, I would first try to locate it using binoculars, as it is a huge structure in the sky. With a telescope of your focal length, even the 25x gives you 36x magnification, which given the Huygens design of the eyepiece is going to give a 45 arcminute true field of view (0.75 degree). The galaxy is a few degrees across, so you can only see the core. Whatever you do, do not up the magnification by inserting Barlows or the 9 and 4 mm eyepieces. Those make matters worse for most deep sky objects. Personally, I would replace the Huygens eyepieces with equivalent Plossl eyepieces like this one: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p3960_TS-Optics-1-25--Ploessl-Eyepiece---25-mm-focal-length--50--apparent-field-of-view.html Which will double your field of view, and don't cost very much

Interesting, missed that one

I have been using a second-hand EQ3-2 (just tracking, rather than guiding) and it works well on comets and larger DSOs, I find This was taken with a Sigma 50-100mm F/1.8 zoom, 20 30 s exposures stacked, Canon EOS 80D (unmodded) This was with an 80mm F/6 scope with 0.8x reducer, and modded EOS 550D (very many 60 s exposures, totalling about 7 hours) Same rig as above, about 3.4 hours of data. The EQ3-2 is nice and affordable, and allows slightly beefier lenses and scopes to be used than the Star Adventurer (which from all reports is a very nice piece of kit too)

Just caught a fairly substantial crack in the cloud cover, and set up my Coronado SolarMax-II 60 mm to have a quick peek at our sun. AR2776 took centre stage (or just below), with a clear sunspot, and some lovely dark whorls and bright plage surrounding it. A tiny prom could just be made out at the 9 o'clock position, and a lovely large arcing prom was visible between the 2 and 3 o'clock positions. I found that today single stack gave much the better views than double stacking (tuning can be finicky, I find). Still, great to see some activity on our nearest star once more.

+1 for Astro Pixel Processor. It is my main tool for DSO work