michael.h.f.wilkinson

In my work I am involved in the SUNDIAL ITN, an EU-funded consortium of astronomers and computer scientists looking for better ways to extract useful information from the huge amounts of data produced in moderns surveys like the Fornax Deep Survey, KiDS, and the upcoming LSST and other telescopes. As a computer scientist I have been working on methods for faint object detection, which should combine sensitivity and low number of false positives. The problem is we need better ground truths for objects we detect in the survey. We are therefore setting up a Zooniverse Labs citizen science project to classify the stuff our methods find. Before releasing the final project we need volunteers to test drive the current version of "Space Fluff", before the official acceptance test by Zooniverse Labs. Here is the link: http://sundial-itn.com/index.php/2020/05/24/space-fluff-help-needed/ I will of course keep everyone posted when the final project is released.

This is what I get in APP followed by boost in saturation in GIMP. There is some subtle colour there, along with more trails

I had a go in GIMP and got some colour (the red has a satellite trail by the look of it). As even, colours are subtle, and boosting saturation gets more pronounced. I will also give APP a go

Managed to find Venus low in the north-west, first with Nikon Monarch 7 10x42 bins, and then with the Helios LightQuest 16x80s. I don't think I have ever seen such a thin sliver of a crescent of Venus. I had hiped to be able to find it from our frot garden, but no luck, so I walked to the end of the street where the horizon is less cluttered, and found it. I also admired the (clearly fatter) crescent moon. I then walked back to the house, and did manage to spot Venus from just outside our garage door, but so low over houses I just didn't bother setting up the scope for imaging, because that would take long enough for the planet to dive behind the houses across the street. Still, very nice views with the binoculars.

So far I have mainly worked with OSC cameras, but in the rare cases I captured separate L, R, G, and B captures, I did everything in APP (apart from a little postprocessing in GIMP).

Basically, this uses the known distribution of the colours of stars to adjust the colours of the whole image.

I had some really nice views of Venus and Mercury between the clouds, using binoculars. I then grabbed the camera and rattled off a series shots. This is a crop of a single, hand-held shot taken with my Canon EOS 80D and 100-400 mm L IS USM zoom at 400 mm. Quite staggering that the crescent of Venus can be captured so easily.

They are costly, but second-hand SkyWatcher 80mm ED scopes come up quite often

There are various colour balancing tools. I often just use "Calibrate Star Colours" in APP, and then perhaps subtle tweaks using curves in GIMP.

Very sorry to see that. Hope you can get it fixed

Apart from the magenta cast, it is really nice and detailed.

I started out on my deep sky imaging with something fairly short, in this case an APM 80mm F/6, usually with focal reducer. I have more recently been using a Meade 6" F/5 Schmidt Newton, and that is considerably more difficult to handle. I did get some good results, but it is not a scope I would recommend as a starter scope. The 130 can be quite a handful itself.

Just spotted them. They easily fit in the FOV of the Helios LightQuest 16x80 bins

Despite yesterday's cloud, I managed to see comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) though binoculars. At first I just explored the clear skies overhead, using the trusty Helios LightQuest 16x80 bins to pick out several Messier objects, and track the ISS as it passed overhead. I had some nice views of globular clusters M3, M5, and M13, and galaxies M51, M65, M66, M81, M82, and M101. The latter was surprisingly easy, indicating pretty clear conditions overhead. Not so to the north. I patiently waited for the cloud bank to the north to budge, and by 0:30 I could make out Algol (beta Persei) and two fainter stars above it, but a dark tendrils of cloud in between kept blocking the view of the location of the comet. Finally, around 1:00 I repeatedly spotted a little fuzzy ball, exactly where the comet should be. That's my 28th comet bagged.

Just spotted Venus and Mercury through binoculars. First I used the big Helios LightQuest 16x80 bins, in which Venus clearly showed up as a beautiful thin crescent. Just a bit lower and further northward Mercury could be spotted as a tiny crescent. I then got out the Nikon Monarch 7 10x42 bins, and could readily capture both in one field of view, although Mercury was no longer resolved. Rare glimpse of a planet not often seen easily.

The HEQ5 tripod is 5.6 kg, so over twice the weight of the EQ3, and 2 kg heavier than the Vixen GP. I would indeed try the EQ3-2 tripod first.

The taller of my two wooden tripods weighs in at 3.580 kg (7.9 lb), the EQ3-2 aluminium mount weighs 2.550 kg (5.6 lb)

It is rather a lot, but you could sell the SP mount on with the flimsy aluminium tripod (a bit risky, I'll admit). The Super Polaris has the same mounting flange on the tripod as the Great Polaris(-DX). The EQ5 is a clone of the Great Polaris, and the EQ3 can be seen as a clone of the Super Polaris. Any tripod capable of mounting a Super or Great Polaris can also mount the EQ3 or EQ5. BTW, the HAL-130 tripod is also pretty expensive, and the current model is intended for the newer Sphinx mount, which might have a different mounting flange.

There is a Super Polaris with wooden tripod for sale on ABS-UK https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/propview.php?view=161480 Not sure about the state of the tripod, no photo included

I think Vixen discontinued them quite a while back. My Vixen Great Polaris mount came with one, later they prelaced this with the HAL-130 aluminium version (which is probably more solid than the EQ3-2). The GP-DX I bought from Stu came with a lower version of the wooden tripod (as can be seen below). I have seen the wooden Vixen tripods come up second hand occasionally, but they are quite rare (I guess owners down't want to part with them).

I always use my EQ3-2 on the aluminium tripod, and it works well enough for 384 or 480 mm focal length. My garden is very sheltered, however. If you can get your hands on a Vixen wooden tripod for the Great Polaris, that should work well too. They are quite light but very sturdy

I have a Velbon Geo N543D Carbon tripod with a mini-giro mount on it. Excellent travel tripod, handles two scopes with ease

I really enjoyed the 25 mm Ortho I used to have way back when (0.965" barrel), but the Vixen-made Celestron-branded 26 mm Plössl that replaced it was clearly better (fully multi-coated for one). One EP I regret letting go was the TMB Paragon 40 mm, shown next to the Vixen LV 9 mm and Celestron 26 mm Plössl below. The Paragon was my first 2" EP, and so incredibly comfortable, and orthoscopic in the sense that it has little or no distrotion over almost the entire FOV. I sold it after I noticed it wasn't really used that much since the arrival of the Nagler 31T5 "Panzerfaust". I later regretted selling it and got a Vixen LVW 42mm, which is excellent, but not quite as comfortable, and has quite distinct pincushion distortion.

That mount is a definite step up from the EQ3-2 I used for the images posted earlier. I would probably stick with a scope no larger than the 130DPS, given the difficulties I have had getting a 6" F/5 scope tracking reliably on the much beefier Vixen GP-DX mount. For telephotos and telescopes up to about 400-500mm it should be fine.

Very interesting comparison. I wonder whether there is a difference in collimation in the two sessions, given that the TAL won on points on the doubles, which should have been a pushover for a refractor. Regarding photon efficiency of the optics, I do not think the Zeiss Telementor had top of the line coatings like the (Zeiss Oberkochen, West Germany) T* coating. I seem to remember many optics from that period in Eastern Germany having the distinct blue reflection of MgF2 single coatings (which were invented in Jena in around 1935). When comparing transmission, the losses in the optical glass itself should also be factored in, especially when considering older optics. With the thin lenses of a 63mm objectives, these are probably not huge, however