jjohnson3803

Just for an experiment, I opened your Pleiades shot with the default photo editor on my Windows laptop and set both contrast and saturation to 100. It seemed to reduce the vignetting substantially and the increased saturation brought out star colors (there are a few red stars but maybe a couple are just hot pixels 😉). FWIW.

Molto bello! Unfortunately, I have no wisdom to share - I only dabble with my iPhone camera on my unguided 72ED now and then.

I paid around US$1100-1200 for a C8, wedge, and tripod in 1982 or 83. Bought my first S&T around 1967-68. I wish I had kept that issue. But mainly I wish I had had the money (and a place to house) one of those huge Unitrons. 😁

If you think you have a faint fuzzy in view, but you're not quite sure, you can gently tap the side of your scope. That should make it more apparent if you're on target. Apparently human vision / low-light perception is such that we can detect movement more easily than see static objects.

Aside from the LP maps and my eye, I refer to this comparison chart. Seems quite similar to what I perceive and puts me in a 7+ at home. I can see Pherkad and Kochab (and Polaris) in UMi, but none of the other stars in the dipper, so my naked eye limit is around mag = +3.5 or so.

I recently started double star observing and I've been mainly using a 72mm ED f6 refractor. It's about 2.5kg with finder, rings, etc. and is 12 inches long with the dew shield retracted so it's very transportable. US$480. I'm happy with it (for now anyway).

Went out about 0430 today. Unfortunately, winter constellations are behind trees and houses now at that time in the morning and I'm not a galaxy observer, so I spent some time studying the Beehive and then swung over to Mel 111. I guess I either have to get up earlier or switch to late evening observing.

Well, I might be getting old as well, but I've been thinking about it. I just sold my ST120, so I'm down to a 50mm, 72ED, ST80, and ST102. The 102 is relatively new and was meant as a more transportable replacement for the 120. For me, it's mainly a desire to simplify. I've lost observing time while trying to decide what scope to take out. I know - horrible problem, huh? 🙄 I do confess that I've been looking at 60mm refractors, partly because of what I've read on the 60mm groups.io forum and your doubles program. I do think my 15x70 binos gotta go, no matter what else I do.

I believe H-β, 486.1 nm (cyan), would be better for visual.

I've never seen it with any of my refractors, but I live in nasty light pollution, B7 or maybe B8. One observing article said you need dark skies and no moon to have a decent chance of snagging it and that its angular size is surprisingly large. If I ever make to a dark site at the right time of year, it's definitely on my target list. I have an irrational fear though that if I do see it, I'll be cursed with perpetual cloudy skies or something. 🤪

Split Castor this morning with my 72ED, spent a little time on the Beehive, and then swung over to the Coma Cluster. I noticed Arcturus is well up - about 20° alt - now around 0530. I'm trying to reset my internal clock so I can switch to late evening observing for the winter.

When I started back in the hobby, I kept written notes in a bound notebook. But that was a pain because it added to the things I had to take outside and I often misplaced the notebook, so I stopped. Then I realized I really wanted some kind of observing record so I took notes using the voice recorder on my phone. But transcribing them, especially when I was mumbling or there was background noise, was a hassle. Soooo... I started using SkySafari, but that added another layer of techno jiggery so I went back to written notes. But... I didn't always feel like taking written notes. Now I type notes into the Notepad app on my phone since I always have my phone with me, email them to myself, and then copy and paste the email content into a Word file. I assume Word's search function will be a good thing if I ever want to look something up. The downside is any sketches still have to be done with paper and pencil and then scanned in I guess. Good luck and enjoy!

NIce conjunction of the moon and Venus this morning. Very low behind my neighbor's trees when I first went out and then crazy fast clouds came rolling down from the north. I checked a couple weather sat sites and decided to wait it out. It was totally clear by the time they were out of the trees. ☺️ Took a look at M93 with my 72ED through some holes while waiting. Not a spectacular session, but good enough!

That would be any galaxy aside from Andromeda, M32, M81, or M82 at my home. ☹️

I realize there are environmental factors at play and situations vary, but is there an average working range for the S* WiFi? Curious if I could sit in my dining room with an S* outside on my deck (large glass sliding doors) and still have decent connectivity.

About 30 minutes lunar this morning with my 72ED before thick fog moved in. Took me somewhat by surprise since there was no fog forecasted.

Very nice! Since I tend to wake up around 0400, I was out yesterday morning for some lunar observing. Your Clavius shot is spectacular!

Yes, that's it. In my case, moonlight isn't always a bad thing - my house blocks the western sky and I have large trees to the SSW, so the moon is hidden part of the night. The downside is the house blocks the western sky. 😉

You might want to try a refractor sometime. My 72ED f6 is rather short and light and does a decent job on the moon and doubles IMO. But YMMV.

26° F before dawn today and some of yesterday's snow still on the ground, but I wanted to see how low I could go with my 80mm in Puppis. I was able to easily see the 4 brightest stars in Cr 135 which was about 10° above my horizon through some tree branches. I wasn't able to resolve double star Pi Pup though which was disappointing since the separation is listed as 66.5". But the secondary is listed as about magv = +8 and the moon wasn't terribly far away, so I'll have to try again without moonlight. Nonetheless, I'm happy I was able to see anything that low here.

Don't know how much they can handle or if one would suit your needs, but a number of people have made piers out of concrete blocks. I think they call them Tormorden piers. Maybe a possible alternative to pouring a lot of concrete. Good luck!

Try Googling "nautical twilight" and "astronomical twilight". I have the APT dark sky app on my iPhone, but I don't know if it covers your location. You can also try stellarium-web.org. If you adjust the time in the box on the lower right of the screen, it will indicate things like "twilight", "dark night", "moonlight", etc.

Probably not the worst things I've ever purchased, but I tried two different alt-az mounts without slo-mo. They were beautifully machined and worked very smoothly, but well, I like my slo-mo. Sold them both quite easily though.

Agree completely with that. I gave up on galaxies in my light pollution soup quite awhile ago and had been concentrating almost exclusively on open clusters. I started observing some doubles rather recently and it's opened up a whole new realm of observing. Splitting a double is really quite satisfying for whatever reason(s).

May I ask what you put on it? Virtually all the VP-II owners I know of love the thing.