jjohnson3803

Got a cheap short tripod with a geared center column that I had planned on using with my AZ Pronto mount and 50mm converted finder.  You get what you pay for.  😜 

I was about to box it back up and return it, when I decided to put a ballhead mount on it and try it with some binos like the mini-tripod solution in another thread.

Bazinga!  Much less shaking with my 15x70s after extending one section on each leg and handholding it.  Couldn't test it extensively, but I think I'll keep it.

Weather forecasts were dicey, but it was clear here yesterday for the entire eclipse.  I think we got to about 98% coverage.  Not totality, but beautiful nevertheless.

I had rigged up a projection box with an old finder, but my employer gave out free glasses to anybody who came to campus, so I was able to view it directly.  Luckily, the glasses weren't the ones sold on Amazon that were recalled.  😜

The camera on my phone wasn't up to the task, but several people got some nice shots by holding their eclipse glasses in front of their phone cameras.

Only partial here and I'm working, not traveling.  But it looks to be clear and I have my DIY solar projection box in my car.

On 06/04/2024 at 17:08, John said:

I've now got my 11x70 binoculars on standby in case there is a sudden clearance again 🙄

In addition to 8x42 binos, I keep a 50mm converted finder with an EP in it on a lightweight tripod close to my back door.  Not ideal, but I have gotten some observing in through sucker holes.  Better than nothing.

Nice.  I was admiring the Summer Triangle before (Hawaii) sunrise this morning. 100% cloud cover here.  

"Recreations in Astronomy",  Henry White Warren, DD., 1879.

Does Amazon stock a camera bag that'll fit that?

Have to admit that I like the color.  🙂

Hopefully nobody drives through the fence...  Nice build!

I use an erecting prism for everything.  😄  I just prefer a correct image. 

I came across one of these at my local office supply store.  Not as nice as see-through acetate, but handy for different atlases.  I used a Sharpie marker to mark which holes correspond to which FOVs.

I wound up buying a pair of Vortex Crossfire 8x42s.  I considered Vortex Diamondbacks, but didn't want to spend the extra money in case the 8x42s didn't work out.

The weather has been pretty much rubbish (as expected 🤪), but I've been quite happy with them the few times I've had them out.  I have a trip coming up and hope to see what they can do under darker skies.

17 hours ago, Rusted said:

When I were a lad: I was the victim of a severe dose of Dixon's Prinz 10x50 binoculararis.
No amount of prism adjustment ever resulted in anything but chronic and untreatable strabismus.

Sounds like the Celestron Skymaster 15x70s I had.  Couldn't collimate those things no matter how much time I spent on them.  Being they were relatively inexpensive, I binned them rather than continue the frustration.  In retrospect, I probably should have sawed them in half for monoculars.  😏

I'll defer to more knowledgeable folks, but I'd be leery of doublestacking the extensions.  Seems like the stability would be marginal.  Maybe you could fabricate a sturdier DIY of some kind that would give you the needed height?

The other thought I had was to elevate the tripod on some kind of platform and sit off to the side, but that would likely limit the grab-n-go ability.

Good luck!

I thought the last of the Iridium sats had been deorbited awhile ago.  Maybe that's not correct.  Anyway, I'd guess there are plenty of other sats that flare.

The ones that I wonder about are the seemingly stationary orange ones that slowly fade out. 

On 24/03/2024 at 08:29, DPF said:

Hi all,

I use an erecting prism on my scope - does anyone have recommendations for a map of the moon, with the orientation right way up and right way round, as I’m not too great with orientation 😩

Thanks in advance

If you want a map, I'd echo suggestions for the Sky & Telescope correct image (binocular view) map.

I like the Charles Wood atlas, but some people feel the errata list is too long.  It doesn't bother me, but YMMV.

I'll have to try it with my 72ED just for grins, although I rather doubt that's going to work.  Then I can try my ST102.

Since I usually observe pre-dawn, my springtime targets are evening summer targets - Hercules, Lyra, Cygnus, Saggita, Aquila.  Scorpius isn't quite at culmination yet, but the claws and Antares are well-placed.  Then you can slide "left" to Ophiuchus.

I usually observe Orion in the late summer / early fall which is nice because the weather is still decent.  

The problem is that dawn comes on mighty early as we get closer to summer.

When I bought my C8 in 1982 or so, they were the Big Kahunas / future of amateur astronomy / must-have scope / and all that.  😁

I would not buy one today, not because I dislike them, but because they don't fit my current needs or lifestyle.  (I did buy a 90mm Mak a few years ago, mainly for lunar observing but sold it.)

On 09/11/2021 at 00:21, Ags said:

I am just practicing for the night when there's a power cut and the night will turn from murky orange to sparkling black... one day it will happen. 

And I thought I was the only one praying for power outages.  🙃

I took numerous physics and astronomy classes at uni, but the thing that first got me interested in astronomy was the beauty of the Universe.  As I've gotten older, it's the beauty of it to which I've returned.

When I was in my early 20s, doing spectroscopy with a 1-meter scope was better than beer.  I find lately that I'm appreciating bino or even just naked eye astronomy more and more.

As mentioned, there are so many stars in the FOV that I don't always know what I'm looking at.  Forget starhopping. 

Cancer at home has at best one or two stars visible to the naked eye.  Once, in a B2/3 zone, I could see a crab - body, claws, the whole thing - and it was screamingly obvious.

The most memorable view though was of the Leo Triplet of galaxies.  None of them are visible with any of my scopes at home.  In a B2/3 they were so bright that I jumped back from the EP.  It was like getting slapped in the face.  😄

I should also mention globular cluster M4 in Sco.  Extremely difficult to see at home.  Under a dark sky, it's like, "Oh yeah, of course - you can't miss it."

I'm a heretic.  I accept that inflation theory explains a good many things, but there is something about it that whispers, "Epicycles!" to me.

I have doubts about dark matter as well and I frankly don't think it will be found anytime soon.  Kind of like Supersymmetry in the Standard Model.

But I acknowledge that I'm often wrong, at least according to my wife, so I'll leave debates to others and keep trying to decipher cosmology preprints on arxiv.org.

I should be more disciplined - I have multiple observing lists and I don't use any of them.  I was thinking the other day that I should bin them to reduce clutter.

Maybe I could ease into it by writing down three targets a night or something.  

Wow!  That's outstanding!