Fraunhoffer

Thank you. It was the best view ive had. Normally i get to see just a fuzzy middle band. So nice to eyeball some more details.

Super. Thanks for sharing this. Interesting find. Great sketch.

Superb. You are tempting me to trundle my dob out somewhere now. 😂

Have you checked the images earlier in the post processing chain?

I have BSTs at the moment and the 8mm and 15mm are my sweet spot for C8 and 305mm dob. I also have a 35mm SW Aero that I really like. Overall I Was trying to get my random and duplicated ep and barlow collection just down the best 3 that I really like. I was thinking about the 14mm and 6.5mm Morph to make take up a bit of wider fov (60 deg vs 76 deg) with slightly more magnification, -- but then folks say the 9 and 17.5 are v good. 🤔

First light using a ADC for visual observing and had the best views of Saturn and Jupiter ive ever had. Nice crisp rings on Saturn and 4 moons. Structure within Jupiters belts. The moon shadow and transit starting were an unexpected bonus. I could follow Ganymedes transit for a while until the sky got light as it appeared as a brighter dot over one of the darker bands. C8 and ZWO ADC. 15mm and 8mm BST eps, EXOS 2 mount. Wonky spelling due to fatigue 🙂

Ah, thank you. That's helpful.

Often thought about Morpheus. Question: if they go on a 2" diagonal, does the sticking out 1 1/4 nose bit hit the diagonal mirror ?

2 evenings with Luna this week and some lovely views. The filled crater Wargentin was new to me. Very interesting. Gassendi looked spectacular. My sketch doesn't really do it justice. I found a polariser filter just helped to sharpen things up a touch in the eyepiece. Pencils and charcoal. I think my sketching is slowly changing. When I started I was trying to capture everything (almost a photo you might say) and I think now I am just tebnding to capture things and features I have spend time looking at. So some features might be missing. (But then, as Bob Ross says - its my artwork, do what you want :-). ) Clear skies all.

Its been great to try out my Hershel wedge again this week. I lost my sketching mojo for a bit, and now its back. I've enlarged the sunspots in their approximate positions for these, which I prefer as otherwise I'm just doing small dots. For me, its all about taking some time to observe and look at some of the details. This week has been great to be able to follow the rotation and changes from day to day. I'm not sure I have the orientation the same on all of them - depended on my diagonal position. The original sketches have been inverted from the paper and a template colour applied (from a blank sun pastel sketch). Just as I was about to pack up yesterday I noticed a small dot on the Northern hemisphere, after checking for eye floaters and specs of dust, this did materialise into ar2819, which since has started to decline.

Lovely sketch. I love sketching. Thanks for sharing. I've yet to try pastels.

Great. I'll have to get my dob out to look for this next time we have some sky. Nice to see a photo with a dob too. I don't have a platform so i wait until target is towards the West to get a few seconds exposure without field rotation with alt-az.

Lovely sketches. Thanks for sharing.

I had one of those. 😁 I also had the Field guide to the stars and Planets, which was easyy beyond me at the time. I thought it had gone, so i got a replacement, only to find my original copy 1st edition a bit later.

well after playing about with a netbook running Xp and another running W10 (slowly) it seems that the windows SynscanApp doesnt like the non-standard display on these machines. The app runs but is not visible on the small screnn. Looking for another Astro use for a couple of netbooks now .... They seem to run Stellarium ok.

Whats the minimum windows spec needed to run the Synscan app (wifi or cable) please ? I have an old netbook sitting in front of me running windows XP (and some FTDI adapters in my box of bits) and I thought..... I know what I can do with this.... Little shelf on the side of the mount - bingo ? The app looks very lightweight and so Im not expecting much in the way of demand as long as it runs on XP. I did look on the skywatcher site ... couldnt find any info Thanks

My observing list has now run to 3 pages in anticipation of catching things whilst I get the chance 🙂 I'd better check the coffee situation.

I was thinking of the bright moon aswell. Moon for a bit and then doubles I think today.

Wow, thanks. Ive just also found a list in the back of 'Turn Left' and the link at Tables - Turn Left At Orion | Cambridge University Press Into Excel and sorted by Constellation so thats a great start.

I wondered is someone could point me in the direction of a list of double/multiple stars observable from UK ? Ideally, separation ,magnitude, colour, RA DEC. Or, if there is a list of the ones that are pre-loaded into the skywatcher handsets, that would be good too. Thanks

Theres a simple DIY dew shield design here: Home Built Astronomy - Telrad Dew Shield

Fine sketches. I like the textures across the surface. I missed the spots on the other side. Now ill have to get everything out again.

Observing Report 21-22 Jan 2021 The sky cleared as though a switch had been toggled soon after 9.00 and the Dob’ was already out cooling down. I had been tinkering with it in the week and this was another shakedown test. Id always thought the image from this (4th hand) scope could be better and had resigned myself to ‘maybe thats just how it is’ or I got a poor one . This week I checked the mirror clamps in preparation for a ‘lock down mirror clean’. Boy they were tight (2-3 turns of each crew before the clamps released!) so I loosened them up to the customary business card clearance. Collimation was a simple affair just using my trusty 35mm film cannister rather than the laser or Cheshire (long story here). My start routine is to align the finder and scope on Polaris and then drop down to make the scope horizontal before a 2 star align. Straight away I could tell the image was better. Polaris was a dead easy split. Next step the quarter moon (before it set behind houses). Wow, just wow. So much detail. The field was pin sharp to about 60-70% before starting to get defocussed (coma I expect). Starting to feel elated that my love-hate relationship with this scope was tending to the love. Sketch book out for a long look at the straight wall which was so clear and the multiwalled Thebit crater complex (sketch). I waited for the occultation of 38 Ari to start. Star there – star gone. Timed at 21:58:11. Mars and Uranus next. Mars was showing a distinct waning orange oval shape with a dark feature near the centre which I suspected was Syrtis Major (since confirmed). Uranus a pale bluish disk. Nice clear shapes. Gemini: Castor was a very clean split with the two, white similar magnitude, stars 4.3” apart and a clean gap between them, suggesting that I was resolving about 2-3”, which is quite good for UK skies after a heavy storm near west London. Wasat with a 5.7” separation was also a clear gap in spite of the much fainter companion star making this not so easy. (I could get into double stars). I dropped down to M42 and the Trapezium. Wow again. 6 stars in the trapezium (a first) and lots of wavy structure in the nebula. (Sketch) A tour of some star clusters and a look at some of the grey fuzzy galaxies against my grey sky (oh for lockdown to end and be able to get to a dark sky again) followed. The star clusters just looked amazing tonight with the stars small points of coloured light. To finish, I looked for the asteroid Vesta which was in Leo. There it was- so bright. Another first. Feeling well pleased with my scope tinkering. I guess sometime in the past of this 4th hand Dob’ the mirror screws got cranked up to the detriment of all. What a difference. Some new things seen too 😊 Now where’s that list of double/multiple stars gone? Clear skies…

Very nice. I just went to get my sketch book and the clouds rolled in here.

Clusters and the Eskimo I managed a couple of hours observing last night with big Dob'. There was quite a bit of high cloud which curtailed my plans and the seeing wasnt very good. Cancer was invisible to the eye. All the galaxies I tried around Leo and the nebulae on my list were just the faintest of smudges if they could be found at all. Ive seen more on better night with my small refactor. However, starting in the west around 1am (after lights out) I had some splendid views of the usual clusters in Auriga: M37, M36 M38 and NGC 1893. The red star near the centre of M37 looked very nice. M1 in Taurus was just a faint oval smudge this evening. M35 In Gemini looked super, but the small distant nearby cluster NGC 2158 was a challenge. M44 in Cancer was a field full of stars with a nice mix of orange ones scattered throughout the brighter white ones. After an unsuccessful galaxy hunt around Leo, I returned to Gemini before it set to see the bright double Castor. Whilst in Gemini I decided to finish with the Clown Face/Eskimo nebula NGC 2392 which was a surprising bonus. A very clear pale blue circular patch and even the centre star could be resolved. Its not often the 8mm ep gets onto the Dob' and I went in to find my sketch pad. Hopefully another stargazing night will arrive soon. Clear skies all.