Captain Scarlet

Ah yes I’d forgotten about those extra holes I had to drill. Baader’s instructions specifically state that the mounting plate matches existing SW holes, but they lie.

The skywatcher native focuser with Lacerta dual-speed upgrade is very good, I used one for a while. I’m not sure if they do them anymore though. I upgraded that to baader diamond steel track, which I now have on 2 newts, plus also an SCT one. Very nice. Magnus

A relatively early night for me tonight, but I thought I’d have a quick look and get a comparison before zzzzz. But at 2245, it was still too bright to really see! I could just about find the Nova, but nowhere near dark enough for anything more.

I have also plotted and published on my own site some reckoners for various planets for the near and medium future. My one for Venus is http://www.slidingseat.net/stars/stars_local.html#Venus As it shows, Venus isn't good for we Northerners for a while... Cheers, Magnus

… just going out to have a quick look … Was able to see it easily enough but moving scalloped clouds prevented any comparison with anything nearby. m

Haha I did almost exactly the same … directly as a result of the same post I bought the same case. Very pleased with it too, for all my eyepieces, paracorr, diagonals, filters and most-used adapters.

A small aeroplane appears to have crashed into your workshop…

Same brightness to me tonight as HD 220057, making it 6.94-7 I reckon. Zeiss 15x56 bins. Also discovered a top tip. With these fancy eyepieces which have both 2” and 1.25” nose pieces, it really helps to remove the 1.25” end-cap to be able to see things. Cost me about 10 mins tonight 🙄 trying to work out why I couldn’t see anything.

yes his website indicates when he doesn't have any active orders on the go, he makes "stock" anyway. I've been eyeing the 20" and a 24" on his site for a year or more. It seems they both went lately within days of each other. Very different from the 12" I ordered in March 2020 which took 7 months.

20” f/3.5 … there was a 24” available too but that’s a little too far for the time being. I seriously hope it doesn’t make my 12” redundant though

Now I’m committed to the Dob build! (Courtesy of John Nichol)

I think a difference with this too is it’s ordinary people doing the complaining, not just the astronomy tiny minority. M

Tonight, for me, with my usual 15x56 Zeiss, impossible to separate in brightness from HD220167, so 7.1-7.2 by my estimation. M

My problem with getting views and readings for this is that I have to go along a side-alley off my street and view from there, which has two problems: 1. It’s regularly used as a dark place for late-night pub-returners to, er, let’s say “make themselves more comfortable” against the alley wall; 2. If one were to choose a place to be able to look directly WITH BINOCULARS AT NIGHT into the back windows of the houses in that direction along the street, my Nova Cas spot would be it. So if I suddenly go quiet pleas

I think I tried that but the “scope view” circle then also gets pushed away. I might try to show you what I mean next time we or WAG meet up, I'm pretty sure I’m basically misunderstanding something about how it works, I’m not very experienced with SS.

Not really yet, I did cruise around a bit and it was good, especially close to Cygnus. But at low power, brightish stars at the moment appear a bit "spangled", due to my observing eye's astigmatisms. I had an eye-test and updated prescription a week ago though, and my new glasses arrive imminently, it's been three years since my last. To say I'm excited would be an understatement. ( I did manage to get the optician to admit surrender though at all my questions ).

Thanks @Stu and @wookie1965, I have tried a few times to use SkySafari in conjunction with the WiFi dongle, mostly with my heftier AZ-EQ6 in ireland and in Alt-Az mode. SS will connect easily enough with the SynScan App once aligned (using the Synscan app). But I've had a problem in that I will then tell SkySafari to go to, say, the Moon, and it will indeed go there, and the scope will indeed end up pointing where it should be. But the SkySafari App on-screen will show "not the Moon", but slightly offset. So if the object in question happens to be an unfamiliar Open Cluster, and I want to make sure what the pattern of stars actually looks like, I can't because the screen is showing somewhere else. I haven't yet fiddled around to try to work out how to correct such an offset. A job for my next session, I reckon. There was a software update for SS recently where I vaguely recall it describing a fix for a problem that sounded like this, so it might be OK. M

I got the EQM-35 as a medium-load mount to handle my London-based scopes which are all below 9kg; it was deliberately an EQ one to keep my hand in for that style of mount: all the others I have I use in alt-az mode. It's fine for visual with the frac and a Mak 150, for both of which I can easily rotate the diagonal when the position goes awkward. I also sometimes put my 200p newt on it, and for that I can't (as yet) easily rotate it within its rings while mounted and yes sometimes it does get awkward, but I can generally manage it if the focuser starts off when I'm setting up in a particular position. I do like the mount though, it feels "friendly".

After what has seemed like an age, I was finally able last night (Saturday 29th May) to get a proper observing set-up outside. After such a long gap, it seems like a huge effort to get going, but the routine quickly set in. I didn't have an especially long or exotic session, it was more a case of getting familiar again. I used my LZOS 105/650 on my EQM-35 mount, controlled for the first time in a long while by a SynScan hand-controller: normally I use my WiFi dongle. The WiFi dongle is very convenient, and allows for 3-star Alignment, but its catalogues are woeful. Messier and a very restricted selection of stars and doubles only, IIRC. The Synscan has the NGCs, the Yale Catalogue (HR) and most interesting SAOs. Not that that was a factor in my super-simple session last night. I merely "did" a few doubles. I wanted simply to get back into the routine, and to have a first proper play with my two new latest acquisitions: my Nagler 31mm and my Ethos 13mm. Neither disappointed. I had my shortest eyepiece in reserve too, a DeLite 3mm, as the session was mainly gawping at wide-field and revisiting a few old-friend doubles. First up was the Mizar-Alcor system, lovely as ever and especially so in both the enw eyepieces (21x and 50x). I wear glasses when observing, and my only worry was eye-relief for these two, but in the end no problem at all. I could even more or less remain aware of the Ethos' 100-degree field-stop as well. I dropped to Cor Caroli, a double which I always eschewed in the past. Next was Izar, my first attempt at it this season, and having located and centred it at 50x, the 3mm at 217x gave me an easy split, the minor sitting more or less on the first diffraction ring, but plain as day and a big gap the the main star. Quite pleased. I moved across to Epsilon Lyrae (Double-Double) and no real split of the sub-components at 50x, but easy at 217x. Lovely system again. I decided to randomly select a double from the SynScan list, and chose 24 Com, a reasonably wide 4 & 6 yellow/blue combination that reminded me of Almach and Albireo. And having said that, I noticed Albireo just proud of my house parapet, so finished off the night with that, beautiful and colourful as ever. Back in the grrove, hopefully, next up a more planned and deeper session, Cheers, Magnus PS ... Oh, and I finished off finally finally by going up the road with my binoculars (15x56) to check on the status of Nova Cas, which I estimated at 7.3 , a little brighter than others around the same time.

I had it just now through 15x56 bins (after an actual telescope session!) as a bit dimmer than hd220167, I’d say 7.3 to my eye. Magnus

Presumably you could also use the heat from that resistor to help prevent dewing? Whenever I've used my Telrad dew has been a problem

It’s a question of perspective. A building (or person or tree or… ) if it’s far enough away can quite easily “naturally” be the same apparent size as the Moon. Taken with a telephoto lens you can fill the whole frame with that perspective. There’s nothing wrong or artificial with that. It’s the same with a wide-angle lens (including your eye) but the “Moon bit” just occupies a smaller section of the whole image. Personally, I love telephoto-perspective Moon pictures. M

It will make a difference at the eyepiece but not because of reduced mirror reflectivity. It’s because of the reflectivity of the dust particles causing stray scattered light, plus the extra diffraction from all the edges of the dust particles: both will reduce contrast at the eyepiece.

Thanks for reminding me. On that prompt I nipped out just now with my 15x56 bins and deemed it just as “bright” as HD220167 which is 7.16. So I estimate 7.2 Magnus

I’ve been on the lookout for a case of a particular size to re-house my recently-expanded eyepiece collection, specifically my monster Nagler 31, and this fits the bill perfectly. Just ordered, thanks for the link. M