Captain Scarlet

Just looking at Plato … I can get a few craterlets, what do you think?

Duplicate post

At the moment I’m unable to tell. Because of the very short eyepiece adapter, the eyepiece sits on the internal lip which prevents the nosepiece sitting atop the prism face. So it turns out that the critical dimension is the distance from the open end of the nosepiece to the eyepiece focal plane. As it happens, the Pan 24 has a very short nosepiece*. Those on all my other eyepieces, every one, are significantly longer. It’s lucky the one I really need to work, does so. But it does give me an excuse to take 10mm out of the middle of the tube at some stage. M * edit: the shortest of the whole TV range, it turns out, lucky coincidence for my 10x50.

Just under a year ago, I picked up an Evoguide 50ED, intending to use it as a super-luxury finder to go one better than the APM 50mm finder I already have, itself no slouch! It would mean that I could dedicate each to a scope and avoid too much re-alignment fiddling. Assigning the APM to my 200mm newt and the Evoguide to my 300mm newt. In theory, with my 24mm Panoptic, I'd get a 68-degree 10x50 finder. Of course, I knew in advance that this scope is designed as a guidescope not a finder, and it comes with warnings that it will not reach focus with a diagonal attached. This didn't deter me. If necessary and in extremis I could perform some surgery on the main aluminium tube and shorten it, though that would be saved as a last resort. Initially, I removed the green helical-focus unit and simply shoved a spare generic 2-inch SW star diagonal up the tube, taping it in place. I added my 24mm Panoptic. To my surprise, in daylight I did appear to be able to reach focus JUST ABOUT, but there were four problems: 1. it was UGLY, with a 2" lump jammed in to one end; 2. I had no convenient focus control, as I'd removed the helical unit; 3. Something I had not anticipated: severe, really severe, field curvature. A 16km-distant target (effectively infinity for a 242mm FL scope) at centre-field was lovely, easily the match of, say, my Leica 10x50 Ultravid binoculars. At the edge of the field, it was extremely blurry. If I re-focused to bring the edge into focus - crudely, by simply manually lifting the eyepiece out a bit - the edge became superb too, ruling out edge-aberration. 4. I only discovered this later using the Ugly Ducking on the night sky: it hadn't really come to focus during the day: my eye was highly stopped down, of course, being daylight, and I had obviously accommodated a bit - something I'm less able to do with my pupil fully dilated at night. I'd been following @markse68's very similar project, and seen that two modifications could solve all the problems. i. Baader T-2 prism diagonal, to screw directly onto the back of the OTA; ii. Starizona Field Flattener, made specifically for this scope, which also increased total available back-focus to 55mm, AND of course does what it says: flattens the field. The new diagonal and its low-profile eyepiece adapter arrived yesterday, I assembled it all and have just daylight-tested it. So far I couldn't be happier. I can achieve focus with an extra 5mm to spare. The field is now truly flat, an amazing difference, actually. Most importantly of course, it now looks the business. I can't wait to get it under the stars, and combine my 1830mm 300mm scope with a mega-wide-field well-corrected 242mm alongside. Cheers, Magnus

Two diagonals and an adapter. Dare I say it but sat next to the BBHS 2” mirror diagonal, the T-2 looks “cute”. The small diagonal plus adapter are the final bits for my SW EvoGuide 50 to make it into a luxury finder. And see what passes for delivery around here - some of them can’t be bothered to go up my lane. It was pouring with rain and luckily I saw the van down the road from the house. Magnus

Yes that’s true, but all told less diffraction though. A 4-vane spider in fact produces 8 spikes, but in 4 pairs which overlap/“double-up”. With a planet, for any given point on it the total amount of vane-induced-diffraction-softening from that point’s neighbouring “pixels” is reduced both by the one fewer vane and the fact of thinner vanes. I’ll probably start off by adding one vane with the original spider still in place, to compare spikes side by side

My own effort to reduce spikes/help local contrast has seen me buy some 0.2mm thick stainless steel sheet and I’ll get my local metalwork company to guillotine it into 15 or 20mm wide strips. I’ll also reduce the number of vanes on my 8” from 4 to 3. These will replace my current 4-vane spider whose vanes are 1.2mm thick. The idea is that fewer vanes will reduce total length of diffraction edges, and the thinness will make the spikes longer and fainter, throwing most of the diffraction far beyond a planet.

I believe @Stu got one, like the one in fig7 on that linked site, and recently inadvertently blind-tested it by being terribly disappointed by poor views he was getting of Jupiter in his 8” newt. He then remembered he’d left this mask on from a previous session, removed it, and Jupiter was suddenly much better. I’m sure he’ll tell the story more faithfully when he reads this, but that was the gist that recall. Magnus

Just ordered one myself on the strength of this thread. M

For a change it seems I’ve had a reasonably good run of clear nights lately, even if the last one a week or so ago, which I didn’t bother mentioning anywhere, was excellent transparency but terrible seeing. Last night promised something similar, and checking the Jetstream forecast I saw red/yellow just where I am at just the time I was due to observe. So my expectations were low. As it happened, seeing was rather good, excellent even, towards the East. Less good but still not bad to my West. I had planned to inspect Plato and its craterlets and see if I could spot the rille running down the centre of the Alpine Valley just nearby. I was able to see the craters lining one side of the Vallis Alpes, but the rille escaped me. I tried hard at various magnifications from 156x to 586x (mostly at 313x which seemed the sweet spot) but no joy at all. Plato similarly, although enjoyable, only gave up one of its internal craters, near the middle. I have seen 4 or 5 before but I can’t recall through which scope. I understand that there are plenty more tiny cralerlets that can show under perfect seeing and perfect scope? I vaguely recall @PeterW mentioning it. I run ahead. I’d set out my stuff, AZ-EQ6 and Stellarvue 140, whilst still light around 8pm. After dinner I went outside and noticed there was not a small amount of dew, all surfaces were wet. Luckily the scope has a very long dew-shield and the objective was, and remained, clear. I aligned the Nexus DSC on Capella and Algieba – Algieba is good because you know you’ve got the correct star as it’s an easy double – and decided to start off by going to my seeing-quality-meter, Epsilon Lyrae. My session a few days previously was so terrible I could not even nearly split the Eps Lyrae doubles. Tonight, though, was different. The Double-Double was EXQUISITE at 94x. Seeing to the East was clearly very good indeed. And my Nexus DSC didn't miss a beat all evening. I hopped over to the Moon, to the West, and as described above, couldn’t get full satisfaction, though it was enjoyable enough. That direction takes me over Baltimore village and harbour, and beyond it Sherkin Island and Clear Island, both inhabited. I wonder if turbulence in that direction will be a permanent “thing”. I could see transparency was slowly deteriorating and cloud blocks were starting to move in, so I decided to select some doubles from my SGL-gleaned list. First was Izar, easily split at 156x with the Delos 6 and more so at 313x with the DeLite 3. Next I chose Zeta Herculis, and again at 313x, dare I say, was also an easy split. Orangeish and smaller blueish IIRC. Nearly finally I went for Mu Bootis, aka Alkalurops. I’m not sure I’ve seen this system before, in some ways it resembles Epsilon Lyrae, except one “end” of the pairing was a single star, brighter than Eps Lyrae’s, and the other end was very similar to the Northern double of Eps Lyrae, an in-line double, the same separation at 2.something arcseconds, except dimmer. Very nice. For some reason I decided to finish off with the Ring Nebula, M57, to see if I could see a particular dim star nearby. Well, not only could I not see that star, the Nebula itself was extremely dim, to the extent I had to search hard and use averted vision to detect it as a Polo. I’m sure I’ve seen it bright and clear in a small scope before, so I put it down to increasing foggy haze exacerbated by a 78% Moon at 40-50 degrees up. That was enough, by now it was 1am and getting seriously cloudy. Normally I try to add pistures to illustrate, but last night I forgot. A very nice session, though, and the overall impression of “stars” through my scope was really something else, so I was very happy. Thanks for reading, Magnus.

For the recent strong display, last Sunday, I was ready and waiting outside once it had got dark and when my eyes had adapted was seeing very little, and about to give up, when the northern sky erupted into bright shimmering quite high-contrast vertical curtains of grey. I involuntarily swore out loud. Occasionally there were distinct hints of green. And this was from the very south of Ireland, my first ever view of the phenomenon. Being half Finnish, West Cork was not the place I expected to see it first. I grabbed my camera and took some 3-4 second exposures. The contrast to the naked eye seemed higher than in the pictures, but in grey. Magnus

Just in from what I expected to be a failed session. I’d checked the jetstream forecast and it looked as bad as it could be. Gratifyingly, seeing was quite good, better for various doubles to the east than for the Moon to the west. Good enough for zeta herculis to be an easy split at first glance through my 140. But not good enough for Plato to give up more than one craterlet. It just qualifies for a separate report tomorrow. Magnus

A perfect example of the concept of “critical mass”. Keep everything apart and separate, you’re fine. Inadvertently bring it all too close together … 💥

This arrived yesterday morning. 10l of lab-grade water, optics-rinsing for the purpose of. Slightly cheaper than petrol, much cheaper than beer 😁.

I have a Nexus DSC, which I use in push-to mode for my AYO2 with encoders, and for my AZ-EQ6 where it drives it in goto mode. It's a verstaile tool. You can use it theway @Stu uses it, as a WiFi link to SkySafari and then using SkySafari as the main interface and controller, or you can use it the way I do, which is as a control unit in its own right. Just to add some detail to what was mentioned before about brightness, you can turn the brightness right down to extremely low levels, to the extent that testing it in daylight I thought it had a glitch by appearing to suddenly power off after 30 seconds, where in fact it stays in "bright mode" for 30 seconds then reverts to whatever setting you've specified for your dark observing. I thought it was shutting down whereas I'd set its illumination level such that it was invisible in daylight. It goes that low, which is very good. As mentioned, I use it as a stand-alone controller in its own right, effectively a super-high-spec replacement for, say, a SynScan handset. I have tried it briefly as a link to SkySafari, but I find I have to use my phone with bare fingers, and I lose feeling in them after only a short time at 7 degrees! So I use the unit itself to directly control. It has around 60 separate object catalogues that you can select-in or select-out, even during an observing session if you like. Every conceivable catalogue you can imagine. You can select a _different_ set of catalogues for its superb "tour" feature, again mid-session if you want, such that you can ask it, say, to provide all PNs within within 4 degrees of where you're now pointing. You can set that angular range yourself, again "in the field" if you like. It's got lots of lovely features like that. You can store the individual encoder-resolution settings and "arrow-direction" preferences for several different mounts, so if you change mount you only have to select that mount in your pre-loaded settings. Very nice. That's the good stuff. Unfortunately for me, there's quite a lot of bad stuff too. Bear in mind my experience here is for the Nexus DSC, not the Nexus DSC pro. But I believe the pro is the same in principle but with more memory and a faster chip. I bought mine in March 2020 IIRC. It came with firmware 1.4.39h , which has a few bugs, none fatal. However newer firmwares do have many more bugs which are fatal, at least to a user trying to control an AZ-EQ6: - Buttons are rather small and close together, therefore near-impossible to use in anything other than very thin gloves or bare fingers. If you press a wrong button almost at any time anywhere, which is fairly common in the dark and with buttons so close together, you inevitably ruin whatever it is you're trying to do and are forced to start again from scratch, i.e. re-align. - without warning, during a session, push-to or driven, it'll suddenly decide it's pointing somewhere completely else, and say that what you're currently pointing at, having got to it courtesy of the DSC, is now 180 degrees away! Time to switch off/on, re-align. Most push-to sessions at least once. - in driven mode for the AZ-EQ6, when you've slewed to something, it should then continue to track it. However, it only randomly does so for me. Mostly it gets to the object and stops there. I press "goto" again, and it'll move to where it's drifted (it "knows" where it is). So I keep pressing "goto" to keep up, and then, randomly on, say, the fourth "goto" it'll start tracking! Random. - It occasionally just goes berserk and you have to rush for the mount's power-off before you get tripod- or ground-strike. - Several iterations of new firmware have been released since my 1.4.39h , possibly to address some of "my" bugs. I've tried them all, but actually they have introduced even more problems to the extent that with any of the newer firmwares, for driven mounts, it's impossible to get through the alignment process, let alone any observing. Fatal. The new bugs introduced in the newer firmwares are too numerous to mention. So I've had to revert to the firmware with which it was originally supplied, which luckily I saved. I've probably flashed firmware into my unit fifty times, I've tested it so much! It would be temtping to suggest the problem resides with my mount's circuitry, but these new serious problems go away when I revert to my Nexus' original firmware. - After about a year, my GPS functionality stopped working. It never acquires satellites anymore, and never syncs the precise time. Its menu permanently says "number of satellites acquired = 0" The time on mine drifts as per any standard digital clock and I have to reset it every few months by a few minutes. It says it's using "last provided location = {mine]". Which is actually good design, but it does mean it's only OK for my current location: I can't take it anywhere. - I constantly read about Serge's famed customer service. I've sent him many emails listing all these problems, and none of them has been fixed. On the occasions I have actually managed to speak to him, the conversations have been friendly helpful and no doubt well-intended. However he never answers (my) emails, he prefers to actually call. If you miss a/the call, you've lost your chance for weeks/months it seems. I think he's a one-man band or close to it and seems overwhelmed, so problems/involved cases like mine seem (to me at least) to get put into the "too hard box" and procrastinated for ever. Notwithstanding all that, it's still very powerful to use even in goto mode for my AZ-EQ6 but only with my original firmware, and better and less buggy in push-to for my AYO, and is still my preferred option over all the other ways I have of controlling my mounts. But it could be so much better. Cheers, Magnus

I've never seen the Aurora before, and never really expected to from the very southernmost point of Ireland. But incredibly, tonight, having received a warning from my Aurora App, I went outside once it was suitably dark and waited for my eyes to adapt. After about 20 minutes, I was thinking skeptically "is that a greenish tinge? Can't really tell", when suddenly the northern sky erupted into vertical streaks and there was absolutely no doubt. I could even see the colours naked eye from time to time on especially bright moments. I rushed inside to grab my camera (6D):

Well done for having the luck actually getting some clear nights at such a dark location, also not noted for its calm weather! Skies like that feed the soul. Magnus

I’ve recently learned that here In the West of Ireland, there’s an in-between month that bears a resemblance to Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾, called “Scaraveen” (an anglicization of garbh mí na gcuach, obviously). It translates as “the rough month of the Cuckoo”, runs from approximately mid-April to mid-May, and is characterized by unpredictable squally weather coinciding with the arrival of said bird. To date, it’s been accurate on both counts: I heard my first Cuckoo of the season a few days ago, and we’ve had this bloody bitter East wind for ever, it seems. So it was with surprise that Thursday, a very rough day weather-wise with that nasty Easterly wind, was due to calm right down and to clear up to reveal clear evening skies. We were “out” that night, but quite early, and sure enough when we got back around 10pm the sky was clear, there was only a little wind, and it was evident that Transparency was unusually good. By the time I’d finished observing around 2am, my SQM-L measured 21.9 . There was no dew at all. If you read my previous report from a few days earlier (Stellarvue saves the day, or somesuch) you’ll be aware that I’ve been less than fully happy with my 12” mirror lately. Lacklustre, dull views for which I’ve suspected the primary of dewing up prematurely, but in fact I think the real culprit was a layer of extremely fine dust on the primary, aside from the normal dust I’m used to seeing and ignoring. Whenever recently I’d look down the tube with my headtorch, there’d be a grey-blue milkiness that I’d not noticed before – it was that that had caused me to abandon the other night it in favour of my 140mm refractor. So on Tuesday I removed the mirror (no small task with the otherwise superb OO cells) and cleaned it, and sure enough there was a dirt layer the like of which I’ve only encountered once before (on a SW 200p I bought that looked as though it had been exhaled on for years by a smoker). I cleaned it my usual way it by swooshing in warm water, soaking in for a while in warm detergented water, then used the fingertip method with detergent, finally rinsing in distilled water and drying. On subsequent inspection, the fine dust was mostly STILL THERE. I repeated the whole process with similar (null) results. Finally, after testing on a small section near the centre, I used swabs of kitchen towel and a solution of household ammonia to mop the mirror, and that worked! The sight of the “clean lanes” forming when dragging the swabs was quite satisfying. And “in the field”, what a difference! Looking down the tube with the headtorch was a totally different experience from before, and through the eyepiece suddenly the stars were high-contrast, sparkly and prominently diffraction-spiked again. Hurrah. So, to the observing. I used my Nexus DSC to control the AZ-EQ6, and for once the Nexus performed without any glitch. After alignment at 100x, I only used two eyepieces for the whole night: my Nagler 31 giving me 59x and 1.4 degrees, and my Delos 10 giving me 183x. Recall that in my few-days-prior session I had abandoned the 12” owing specifically to terrible dim views of the Leo Triplet Doublet, and that my 140 refractor saved the day by providing immediately-following superb views of the Triplet. Naturally, therefore, M65/M66/NGC3628 was to be my first target for tonight. Wow. The SV’s view had been very good, but from this 12”, it was as much better as it should have been at such a dark site. What a change from the dirty mirror. I decided that the first part of my session would include all the crowd-pleasing objects, that had looked so good through the ‘frac. So I moved on to M51, and this time I did actually say “Wow” out loud. So much detail, the obvious spirality and the cores so bright. This mount set-up allows me to get the tube perfectly vertical if necessary, so M81/82 was next, and the difference again especially on M82 was obvious. Mottling along its length and that diagonal shadow-gap. Superb. Not especially a crowd-pleaser, but I wanted to see what M101 looked like, as I recall being underwhelmed before by M101 even through this scope. I regard M101 as a more difficult version of M33, face-on and extended as it is. Well, even at 183x the core was obvious, even if the galaxy itself was larger than my field of view. Even so, faint mottled shading was evident as I panned across. I put in the Nagler 31 to triple my field of view and max out my eye’s pupil (5mm), and sure enough it was actually an impressive object in its own right. Before, it’s been enough simply to detect it. There was a bright core and extended shading, and perhaps with a bit of imagination, spirality. Rather pleased, actually. So, obviously, my next target had to be what’s become my Nemesis: IC 342, the Hidden Galaxy. I like to think of this as a yet more difficult member of an M33, M101 progression. Suffice to say, it remains my Nemesis. Not a sausage, either through the Nag 31 or the Delos 10 or even through my 15x56 Zeiss bins. It’s possible I was looking in the wrong place, but all my GoTo’s so far had been on target, and even a 1.4 degree field hadn’t shown it to me. And this night was a highly transparent 21.9 night by the end, so I’m puzzled. Anyway, for some reason I selected M102 next, although I was not familiar with it. As yes, as I type, I remember. I had been perusing SkySafari on my phone trying to ascertain the star-patterns near IC342, and I noticed one of my “Observing List” objects on the App was an object called “Spindle Galaxy”, aka M102. I found it, but didn’t know to look for its eponymous-ness (the dark dust stripe along its centre). Next time. I had wanted to see some Coma galaxy-cluster members, and headed over to that area. I did find, I think, NGC 4889, one of the less-dim ones at magnitude 12.9 (!), and panning around there were tantalizing hints of smudges all over the place. I need a bigger scope for this area. Markarian’s Chain beckoned now, the second time this season, and M84, M86, and the various other bright members did not disappoint, at either 59x or 183x. I fancy I saw more detail in the galaxies than the last time I pointed this 12” at them a few weeks ago: the cleaner mirror and/or better transparency no doubt. Also M87 nearby plus plenty of other dimmer galaxies around. I was thinking about packing in now, so I intended to finish off with Epsilon Lyrae to check the seeing. At the time of first slewing, I was only at 31x. I sort-of-nearly was able to split them at that low power, but the view was more disappointing than I was expecting. It was only when I swapped in my Delos 10 and saw, before re-focusing, the out-of-focus diffraction disc that I realized the problem: the star “discs” were in fact D-shaped. I was mostly observing the corner wall of my house! Idiot. On the point of dismantling, I suddenly noticed Hercules and realized that I haven’t observed a globular of any description for months. Rejuvenated, I went to M13 and reminded myself why it truly is one of the magnificent objects in our sky. Utterly, jaw-droppingly impressive. I spent quite a while on it, then moved a little to M92. Also hugely interesting. I returned to M13 and remembered that you can’t see M13 an not try to get its little companion, the galaxy NGC 6207. I found it, and was surprised to notice both a core and a nebulous elliptical haze, a completeness to it that I can’t recall having noticed before in this scope. And now, finally, 2am, after four hours, it was time to call it a very worthwhile night. Thanks for reading, Magnus.

I had a _superb_ night last night for a variety of reasons. Extraordinary transparency and a total redemption for my 12” after a thorough mirror-clean. Proper report to follow hopefully tomorrow. Mental-astro-health batteries restored 😄.

Yes indeed. I use an az-eq6 in alt-az mode for my 12” newt (strictly visual) and have done for about 5 years now. In current format, my biggest scope plus ancillaries weighs in at something over 20kg. I used to use the mount for my blue-steel-tube SW 300p which was ~28kg and even then it was perfectly happy, never a glitch. I think the az100 esp with goto/motors would be even more capable. I see you are, like me, in Ireland. Why don’t you nip down here to Baltimore and we can compare notes? Cheers Magnus

It’s been four weeks since my last proper observing session, so when last night’s forecast promised clear sky, no Moon and little wind, I had to set up and get a session in. That in spite of it being a Friday night and a date out with friends. Luckily it was an early evening date and I was back home by 9:30pm. Earlier, hours earlier, I’d set out my OO/Helmerichs 300 intending to collect a few more of the Leo and Coma galaxies. But come the dark, by the time I was half way through collimation, I noticed that the barlowed laser-reflection back to my Tublug screen was mottled and shady: a sure sign that the primary was covered in condensation. As was the secondary. I tried to ignore it and selected as my first target M66, hoping to start off with the Leo Triplet. I did see M66, but it was extremely dim, and M65 nearby was similarly right at the edge of detection. The third member, NGC 3628, was beyond detection. How annoying. I moved on to Eps Lyrae, and although I could just about split the two doubles, it was very far from the best view I’ve had. I texted a friend to vent a little of my frustration, and he suggested “throw your SV onto the mount”. Very good idea. I nipped back inside to retrieve my SV 140, plonked it into the mount, and carried on. The evening was saved! I immediately returned to the Leo Triplet and Lo and Behold! Compared to how visible the galaxies had been through the 300mm only a few moments before, through the 140 they simply smacked me in the face. NGC 3628 very bright. I switched to M51, which was again, to me and considering the only 140mm of aperture, extraordinary in the detail it revealed: plenty of structure around NGC 5194 and NGC 5195 really rather bright. I felt that had I the utensils, the view I had would have made a good sketch. Together with my view of M81/82 just next, I think this equalled the best views I’ve had of this object. M81 and M82 were next: so so bright. M82 in particular was showing its diagonal “gap” with AV, something I’ve never noticed before in anything below a 12”. I didn’t bother pursuing the fainter galaxies in Leo and Coma as originally intended for the 12”, so I chose instead various doubles and a cherry-pick of my constantly-updating list of objects gleaned from SGL observing reports. The useful list was quite short: most date from “Orion season”, and were well below the horizon. Izar was first, an easy split. I returned to Epsilon Lyrae, and now (admittedly a little higher than earlier) it was a lovely split of both and similarly the view of the whole system. Very pleasing. Tegmine, zeta Cancri, a nice double - and even lovelier triple in the right conditions - leapt off my list, and I found the wide pairing easy enough at 94x (Delos 10). One of the wide pair, of course, was a bit chunkier than the other, but at 94x I couldn’t split the close pair. I considered the Delos 6 for 156x but then remembered my latest acquisition: my Tak TOE 2.5! This would give me 375x in the SV140, perfect for such doubles in a medium refractor. And the split was made. It was quite interesting staring at them, how they would resolve into two really quite distinct white discs one moment, and merge into a fuzzy blob the next, coming and going with the micro-seeing. I was quite pleased, actually. I’ve only ever “got” Tegmine before in my (currently dustily-dewily disgraced) 12”. That was it. A session potentially ruined by our worst enemy, saved by my Stellarvue refractor once again exceeding expectations. I am so happy with this scope, “that” CN thread notwithstanding. Regarding my 300mm: I have no doubt the mirror and set-up are very good, I’ve happily persuaded myself of that many times before. But its last couple of sessions have shown an undue amount of apparent haze on the mirror itself. I _think_ it’s covered in a layer of extremely fine dust (in addition to the normal “bigger and brighter” dust I’m more used to seeing) which may be acting as an excessive nucleating agent for condensation. There is a potential culprit for this dust in the vicinity, in that our vacuum cleaner gets emptied into a bin just near where I keep the scope, and it releases some very very fine stuff each time. The mirror is ripe for a clean and close inspection, I think, and perhaps a change of vacuum-cleaner habits. Thanks for reading, Magnus

It be my 300mm OO mirror in a partially-flocked Helmerichs tube. Surprisingly light at ~20kg inc rings eyepiece etc, so less of a monster than it looks for a 12”. Still clear, and about to go out, though at 10:07 pm it’s still 30 minutes to astro dark.

Forecast looks good for this evening. First combination of low wind, no Moon and no cloud for a couple of months. So in anticipation:

Shhh! Don’t tell the clouds - they’ll get ideas!

Towards the top obviously is Venus, sitting between orange Aldebaran to her left, and the Pleiades. But the star planet of the show of course just above the cloud-bank to the right of the picture is Mercury, the best I've ever observed it naked eye. There's a huge strom approaching and just starting, but there have been startlingly clear gaps in the cloud, and I just went out to see Mercury just blazing. I ran for the camera and tripod. The "monster reaching for the stars" in the foreground is a dead Sycamore stump in my garden. Baltimore provides the glow behind the silhouetted house; the bright lights (LP) in the distance on the right are a housing estate above Schull; and the bright lights on the left are the former hotel on Sherkin Island housing about 60 Ukrainians, one of whom apparently is a top chef from Kyiv, but she cannot work in any of our fine restaurants here because the last ferry from Baltimore to Sherkin is not late enough! Not quite full consolation for being unable to observe for weeks on end, but very nice to see Mercury so clear. Cheers, Magnus