Marvin Jenkins

All too easy to do. I have countless pictures with a dogs nose poking in somewhere. Marv

UFO in the top left corner.

Looking right now and not a chance. Would love to be part of it, but under gunned in every way. Marv

A pair of bins my late father in law gave me. Perfectly acceptable terrestrial use. Really useful for wide field field Astro, but the moment you use that chrome thumb lever you wished you hadn’t. Best left at the lowest mag end and they give really good views of open star clusters and right now great for Jupiter moon spotting rested on the top of the washing line.

Great thread. Everyone is doing really well and the ep shots are great. #Stu1smartcookie, elevation is everything as you rightly point out. If you can get get a bit more altitude by moving location the effect can be dramatic. On a personal note about filters, I tend to use yellow for Jupiter and err towards green for Saturn, but a week ago I decided to test all my colour filters in one sitting and found on that night, under my conditions, Blue really picked out the equatorial bands, the GRS and at the time a disturbed area which turned out to be a barge! A first for me, and I doubt I would have seen it with my usual colour choice. Experimenting is the key I guess. Marv

I tried a few different filters and eye pieces and I am not convinced. Perhaps on a night of better seeing I could be persuaded they are eggs.

Great stuff, always one of the main memories in planetary observing, your first GRS. Well done and congratulations. First Mars polar ice cap for me also hopefully. Fingers crossed for zero sandstorms. Ruined my chances last time around. Shout out if you get to see it. Marv

Just one to look out for and entirely my own fault, I found the solution to my previous post sometime back about a dead polar scope illuminator. Turns out that after removing the inspection panel that holds the mother board, I replaced it carefully or so I thought. Turns out I trapped the red pos wire to the LED between the mount internal and the face plate! This had the effect of flattening the insulation to the point that the wire was earthing into the mount body. I have insulated the damaged outer and ensured no more trapped wires. All works fine now and is adjustable in intensity from the handset. Just need a clear night to get out and test it. Marvin

My first thought~ Stolen camera! Should have read the original post before looking at the image. Marv

Thank you for the picture John. I was out last night with the 150 newt and despite the heat and thermal shimmer there were many excellent moments of clarity. During one of these I could clearly see the GRS and made a note that the other belt seemed darker with a complex area that I could not quite resolve at my aperture maxed out with a 10mm Plossl. Looks like I was seeing the barge in the North Equatorial Belt. Without the picture I would probably not have known that this was a first for me 👍 Marvin

Hi si717, I have the same mount as you and I too encountered a few little problems at the beginning of the sort you are describing. Firstly, make sure your mount is polar aligned using the in built polar scope. It is a great help to calibrate the scope reticle (good tutorials on YouTube) and if you do not have one, get the polar scope illuminator thingy, it plugs in the front of your mount and lights up the polar scope. Second, make sure that when you have Polaris dead in the cross hairs that your scope when turned to the sky can see Polaris too. Third, and the easiest bit to mess up is improper imputing of position data into the hand set. Best way to get this right is to get the Synscaninit app previously mentioned by #Gfamily. This app will give you a picture of the off set needed for perfect North Celestial Pole alignment and GPS details conveniently in US format. Fourth, how are you powering your mount? At first I was using a decent brand new car jumper pack which according to the details was more than enough. It was not! Unless fully charged and warm my mount did all sorts of odd manoeuvres. As soon as I ran out the 50m AC extension lead all was solved. I will say though that the first star is quite often a long way out, then the second much better, the third normally bang on. I lost three valuable nights in a long winter of cloud due to the problems you describe. I know it is frustrating but keep with it and change one thing each time to iron out the bugs. Good luck Marvin

All my gear is in the signature at the bottom of my posts, but feel free to PM me through this site if you want to chat astro. Marvin

Hello from another expat in SW France. I too have the 150pds on an EQ5 and love it. I use it quite happily for Lunar, Planetary and DSO including AP. You are in an enviable position being in the mountains and having established knowledgeable friends to guid you. Good luck and happy observing. Marvin

I watched it on the NASA feed. Couldn’t quite believe how emotional I became. I can’t imagine what people felt watching the Apollo launches. I will be following this mission for years I am sure. Marvin

The cloud took the jam out of my donut. I don’t want to play anymore. Marv

It has been going so well up to now. Moon, Jupiter with Io transit, Saturn with two moons, not a chance of Pluto, what was I thinking. Neptune lovely blue colour star but more soft and rounded. Uranus, obvious cream disk and Mars so bright the atmospheric distortion robbing of a detailed look. Just Venus and Mercury to go and a horizon to horizon cloud bank has covered the entire sky despite The weather man saying clear. Tell me if I am wrong, they do have satellites in space right? Marvin

Good work everyone. Total disaster for me though. Uncomfortable first part of the night on the sofa, only to wake at 2:30 to find the small bank of cloud to my south had turned into anvils then blown out all across the sky! Still partly clouded over this morning. Before starting all this I did get a great look at the Moon, Jupiter and Venus with the bins so all was not lost. All the gear is still on the barrow ready to go, so tomorrow morning I will have another go. (Not crossing anything anymore). Marv

Big bank of cloud to my south! First cloud in ages. It Is set to be completely clear by 2am So fingers crossed. I have the mount, scope, bags and boxes all loaded onto a barrow used for moving carp fishing gear round lakes. I need to get to the top of my lane and use the high ground to my advantage and loading a van to go 300 meters is a bit lame. Thanks for the good luck, I will give it my best shot. Marv

My weather is looking very promising and I am planning to crawl quietly out of bed at 2:30 am (can't believe I just wrote that). I will still have Jupiter and Saturn to my west and I have decided to go for the holy grail and try to locate Pluto which by all the apps is right between the two, however, at mag 14 I am probably wishing. Neptune then Mars then Uranus. I want to spend some time on Mars as I failed to see the polar cap at all last time it was well placed (sand storm?) One of my big goals this year is observe Ceres and it is in the mix. Hoping for a big show from Venus in the East then Mercury with the binoculars and skulk back to bed all happy with a silly look on my face. Now I have written all that it is bound to go wrong! Marvin with everything crossed.

Brothers in arms, I use it every time and it works a treat. See. There are three of us including the Cloudynights astronomer. Marv

How are you using your Nikon? Is it on a tripod with camera lense or attached to a telescope in some way? If on a tripod with lense, what is the focal length, ie what number in mm are you using. My kit lense which at its shortest is 18mm and longest 55mm will literally only give me tiny spots of lights for the planets. A much longer lense like 200mm will be better but I doubt if you will see anything more than the disk and perhaps the moons as points of light. To photograph the planets in more detail you will need to attach your camera body to a telescope and use a Barlow for extra magnification. You are also going to need to put your camera settings to manual. I would advise looking on the Imaging Planetary section on this site. Marvin

Great find, very interesting stuff although inevitably way above my pay grade. As seen as you are on a winning streak, BANG also makes a passing reference to a Hyper Nova. Are there any known Hyper Nova remnants visible in our night sky? That must be one really big event, always ending in a black hole I would presume? Marvin

I have been reading the most excellent book BANG! The complete history of the universe. Page 66 dealing with Supernova remnants mentions a star in the region of 160 solar masses. It is referred to as a Pair-instability supernova and no black hole or neutron star is formed but all the material is thrown outwards becoming available for the formation of more stars. Is the Veil nebula the consequence of one of these Pair-instability supernova? Marv

I think the first pic (daytime) is Venus. It does not appear round as it has phases just like looking at the moon so I would think in your picture it is roughly 3/4 illuminated. FYI we see these phases from crescent to half to full and back again because Venus along with Mercury are inferior planets ie inside our orbital path and closer to the sun than we are. Any planet farther away than us is always fully illuminated by the sun from our position. Marvin

Thanks everyone. I am very much at the beginning of the AP journey and the positivity means a lot. I have only recently started processing my own images and bit by bit I am starting to use the tools in GIMP to my advantage instead of scratching my head with a worried look on my face. As for the colours I was quite amazed when I looked at a single sub on the back of the camera. Like most at the beginning I used to think 'wonder what kind of colour tools they use to paint in those colours'. Now I know they are there for real. Marv