Captain Scarlet

Around 8 mins past 11 apparently

Not tonight it won’t! I live on the south west tip of Ireland, perfect place you might think. But current solid cloud and pouring rain is forecast to continue until about 4am 😢

Weather forecast not looking great. I wonder what level of bad weather is enough to cancel launch

Oh no! How annoying. What are you going to do? Live with it? It should be reparable and most likely won’t materially affect stiffness or performance. I have two of his tubes, an 8” and a 12”. And did you get him to drill holes for you or will you do that? I got him to do mine for the 12” but on inspection decided I could do better myself and have done all my own on that and the 8” since. I pilot with a finger-held 1.5mm to start and move up the bit sizes to end up with really nice accurately-placed clean holes. And a hole-cutter run backwards for the focuser-hole. Magnus edit: down Brighton or Lymingyon way there must be some boatbuilders who use carbon who would easily be able to effect a repair. Near Staines in Middlesex I know of Carl Douglas Racing Shells who would be able too (Carl is a good friend of mine and repaired a cracked carbon bike-frame for me a few years ago).

The 80ED is in astro terms quite a short focal length, good for wider-field observing, ie starfields clusters and nebulous regions such as the Veil, and in itself not a bad scope at all. The skymax 150 is quite a long focal length, good for high magnification, ie for planets, double stars and planetary nebulae. The latter should not replace the former, rather it should complement it. Have both, if you can! Cheers, Magnus

Indeed. Having looked at the links and maps I’m now actually pretty excited. I could not be better placed. And luckily it’s mid summer so very little chance of cloud

I went out to get rid of the cat detritus and saw the Moon covered in a thin layer of cloud, and a distinct Moon-Rainbow, which I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed before with all the colours, normally the ring is shades of brown. Anyway, a poor iPhone shot which just about shows it:

"The rocket will be released off the southwest coast of Ireland". I don't recall them asking my permission? Nonetheless weather permitting (unlikely) I shall be on the lookout. Magnus

Courtesy of and many thanks to @CraigT82 , a secondary-mirror-boss small enough to take my new 50mm secondary mirror for my 8”. Magnus

Graff’s Cluster is a favourite of mine too, half of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, another alternative IMO to the Double Cluster. Great list, I shall be stealing from it Magnus

I have an M603 and have had it completely apart to rejuvenate some of its fittings. On that, the dovetail on it is bolted through the tube to internal baffle-rings or nuts inside, so mine certainly is up to the job (it's also too narrow and I've glued flat shims to each side to increase its width). Cheers, Magnus

Thin socks: Falke Airport. Thousands of colours, lots of wool so your feet don’t get shredded by overly high cotton content by the end of a day. I swear by them. Magnus

I made an attempt this evening at all-planets-in-one-session as soon as twilight allowed. Weather was more or less perfect, clear, but my worry was Mercury at only 12%. A well-founded worry: I didn’t get it. Venus was obvious though heavily CA’d and I knew exactly where Mercury was, but it was not possible. Damn. I had my Skymax 180, first light since being completely flocked including home-made flocked secondary baffle. Jupiter, in twilight, showed the most detail I’ve ever seen, by a distance. Subsidiary belts quite clear. But while changing up magnification to 160x 220x, dew started to intrude and from there it became a race against it. Saturn was not bad but too low for the best view. Uranus, still a distance from near-occultation by Luna was easy to find. Mars was quite extraordinarily orange, more so than I can ever recall. Not my best view of Mars, that was with my then-new OO 300mm two years ago, but not bad nonetheless. But so Orange! Neptune took a while to find. I had a dewed-over Telrad and then straight to 160x 220x. Telrad got me to the right area (three fingers at arm’s length = 5 degrees) and panning around finally got me there! Nearly the full house but no Mercury. Cheers, Magnus

Zeiss Conquest HD 8x56 off the other end of the scale? I have their 15x56s and they’re great. Or wait for a pair of Zeiss Victory 8x56B T* P* to come up on eBay, they do appear from time to time. I have a pair of those (got from eBay) and they’re also superb. Magnus

It clouded up just as the moment approached from what had been a clear day grrr

As others have intimated, 3 should suffice for one scope or one session: 1 for very wide field, one for utility and one for extra high power. My shortest focal-length scope is 510mm and it only accepts 1.25" eyepieces, my widest being 24mm giving me a reasonably-often-used 21x and 3.2 degrees FoV. My silly-high-power eyepiece for that scope which I might use for difficult doubles, is a 1.6mm giving me 319x. Just one other eyepiece in between leaves very large gaps. So for that scope alone more than three is useful. My largeish newt, a 12", quite happily accepts very heavy eyepieces, and I love the extremely wide 100 degree field of, say, an Ethos. I have an E13 which is sometimes the only one I'll use all night. But it's far too big for some of my other scopes, especially if I'm taking it somewhere, so I also have a Tak 12.5mm which is small and light. Also, for widest-field in that newt, my 82-degree Nagler 31 fits the bill perfectly. Plus a Paracorr, of course, without which wide-field views through the newt are nasty. I have a Skymax 180, whose focal length is around the 3000mm mark, necessitating a completely different range for the "ideal three". And so on. Such considerations, without even talking about collectoritis or comparisonitis, quickly lead to a fair-sized collection. Cheers, Magnus

Well done. I had/have an intention to try for the same but the weather is making it unlikely. By the time it’s scheduled to improve I think Mercury will be too difficult annoyingly. Magnus

The article itself gives the answer: [in the dark] best eyesight resolution is 15 - 20 degrees off centre* i.e. well away from what might be considered corner of the eye Cheers, Magnus

Thanks for the reminder! I'd have completely forgotten. My forecast says I may just about have a window in the weather around 5pm tomorrow, which for my location will be the optimum time. Magnus

You could also use those hole-cutters for wood without a drill, simply turn them by hand

Out tonight briefly as it was unexpectedly clear after a rainy afternoon and evening. I only took my 15x56 bins, it was too windy for anything more elaborate. As my previous post suggests, I first looked at the Pleiades and of course Ally’s Braid. M81/82 were found quite easily, but M101 and M51 eluded me, they were still too low over the main light dome over Skibbereen, with some haze still around. M31/32/110 were easy (M31 naked eye too) and while up close to zenith I found Kemble’s Cascade. M33 was quite evident, perhaps even a bit of structure, so on that basis I returned to M101 and eventually _just about_ found it. I thought about going for M1 Crab, which I have seen through these bins from this spot before, but for stability I’d’ve had to sit in the garden chair I keep there, and that was still slimy wet, so no. Meissa was lovely (I call it the “Luger” asterism), as was Mintaka’s S and of course M42. Impatient now for a proper scope session before Luna reappears. Magnus

I believe it does, it’s called “Ally’s Braid”, as in “Alcyone’s long hair”. Personally I call it “B2 Bomber” as that’s what it reminded me of when i first found it and didn’t realize it had a name. It’s one of the first things I go for when I’m out with binoculars ( like tonight!). Magnus

I believe @PeterW has actually looked through a pair of these…

I saw about 15 in 45 minutes last night, two very bright with visible trails. Magnus

A brisk and freezing north-easterly meant no scope but I did dress up to spend 45 minutes trying to see some Geminids. Two really big long ones, one the second I stepped outside, and perhaps 12-15 more smaller ones. The best display I’ve ever seen.