reezeh

If stars look hairy now, you'll know who to blame!

If you think M51 is tough to see, wait till you try M33! Even though you'd think it'll be easy, it's brighter on paper, it's a real toughie. Almost impossible in urban and suburban areas. Managed it once with 11x80 binoculars.

In time - honoured fashion it's been cloudy except for when I'm working or Moon been full or much too low down for me! ? I was wanting to enter too.

A mirrorless might be worth looking at. There's no mirror slap to cause shake. If Canon ones are like the Olympus ones, the shutter is entirely electronic, just like with dedicated astro cameras, but they undoubtedly have IR filters over the sensors. Then of course, there's the QE which isn't as good as dedicated, but newer cameras by Canon, and other makes have much better noise performance than your old 300D and 350D.

Didn't I hear on the news it was going to be the first optical light image of a black hole? Looks like a radio interferometer "image" mapped out on a screen to me! Or a doughnut fresh out of the fryer... You take your pick, but I'm pretty underwhelmed considering the hype and insane expense involved! Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age. I know it's one heck of a long way away, but that's what very long baseline interferometers are good at; sheer resolution power.

He played another beauty with planetary alignment affecting how fast you fall back to Earth when you jump. Can't remember the year, but it was about late 70's - mid 80's. He must have had quite a sense of humour.

I agree entirely and wholeheartedly

I got exact same one of those a few months ago. Work, low sun and weather here has conspired against me playing with it yet, not to mention that there's not much going on in white light on the sun right now ?

I wonder how good that'll look with a small LED light shining up from under the centre ?

I think I've all the telescope I need, want and can afford now. I went years with bad collimation after fitting the C8 SCT with a set of Bob's Knobs. Tried to collimate a few years back and made it worse. Last summer tried again and got it pretty damn close. Strange thing was that last summer it was easy whereas before no adjustments improved it, no matter how hard I tried.

March last year I pushed a galvanised nail I found where I'm working into the broken tarmac knowing that this year's is a work day, unlike last year. Then I was telling people that the path was in need of resurfacing this morning as the nails stopping the tarmac blowing away in a high wind were starting to get exposed and pointing to the nail embedded in the ground. Another one I was doing today was telling some of the staff and colleagues at the school that all three of the main roads near the school I work for are going to be made one-way; going out of the city only, meaning everyone would have to go miles out of their way just to make the return leg of their journeys.

Definitely planets aren't good for me this year, that's for sure!

How true, Dp!

What's been said above pretty much sums it up. Try out the scope on some distant landmark, align your finder scope on that and avoid the full moon. You'll not really see much that you'll consider worthwhile on the moon when it's lit up head-on. It's a bit like a stone wall that's been given a coat of paint - when the sunlight hits it dead-on it looks "flat" and featureless, but when the light is at an angle there's an incredible amount of detail. Only thing that is of interest when the moon is full are the rays, which are streaks of lighter material thrown out when the craters were formed - most obvious ones radiating from a southern hemishere crater called Tycho. As far as I know, that's one of the ways they date craters as it's (I'm presuming) it's material that hasn't been aged by the sun's radiation as much yet. If you're still wondering "SCT" is "Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope" ?

Got to agree that the softcase isn't much use for protection against knocks and a peli is probably the best thing there, but I've pretty much run out of room for yet another box and I'm reluctant to store anything valuable outside.