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markse68

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Everything posted by markse68

  1. It’s a real shame Celestron haven’t released starsense explorer as a bolt on kit yet!
  2. Hi Procky, that looks just like what I saw last night 😊 Despite misty hazy atmosphere the seeing was very good and probably for the first time the southern hemisphere below (above in ep) the main dark regions was noticeably darker than the N. Hellas was clearly lighter and those 3 fingers were very obvious. I wanted to sketch it but was too cold and damp but it would have looked almost identical to your v nice sketch 😉 Mark
  3. Not really in the market for a focuser right now but it does look quite nice. I’m wondering though if a self centring type clamp is such a good idea on the draw tube as it centres whatever it’s clamping away from the draw tube wall- how stable is that? Is it really rigid? I’d have thought thumb screws can force the clamped item over against a wall to make it a more solid coupling? I like your videos btw Mark
  4. What lovely souvenir of a really great apparition! And it’s not over yet thankfully 😊 Mark
  5. Orion is very impressive looming over the eastern horizon right now and of course is full of amazing sights- a striking and unmistakable constellation for sure. No love for Lyra though? I have a soft spot for Lyra being home to the double double and ring nebula- some of my first targets and not far to M13. Cass, the big dipper and Cygnus are important sign posts too. Scorpio? No idea what it looks like as my southern horizon is v poor most of the time but Antares is always a target- frustrating target but one day... Mark
  6. Hi Robert, it doesn’t but according to Daniel, his father didn’t always mark them and unmarked ones are likely A or B grade. Yes it does deserve a nice OTA and i had big ideas for it even designing an ota in solidworks but then I got my Fullerscope 8.75” and it got moved to the back burner. One day 😉... Mark
  7. This is very sad Soon after I started,~ 1.5 yrs ago, I purchased a nice looking 12” mirror on ebay. Posting on here led to me contacting David Hinds Ltd and a very helpful email exchange with Daniel who even went to the trouble of asking his dad about it and confirmed that it was the 3980th mirror David had ground and by the looks of the original packaging likely unused. I still have that beautiful mirror and intend someday to build a nice big dob with it Mark
  8. Google says it’s HD 184738 and near Albireo so getting a bit low to the west now for me but I checked and it’s in the Starsense app list so i’ll have a look when I can- added to the list Thanks Marvin Mark
  9. Don’t mind me- I’m just copying Dave 😉
  10. I tell you what Dave, I was quite surprised what a nice crisp dark pink disk it made of mars- dark markings visible too. It was only at 100x so not a big challenge and tiny compared to what i’m used to, but pleasantly surprising. The edges go very soft so the moon didn’t look good filling frame at all. I had planned to sell it on or give it away but might look into trying to improve it 😉 Mark
  11. haha- I just ordered m4 of the same for the bird jones thing the starsense is attached to- the image isn’t so terrible in the middle with decent eps but the chrome metal focuser tube screws should really be illegal! Mark
  12. An interesting looking book by our very own @WJC courtesy of @Grumpy Martian- thanks Martin and a beautiful leather pencil case just the right size for a pencil and eraser pencil for sketching- all the way from Latvia
  13. oh that’s good news it’s not in your optics then. I wonder if it could be seeing related because with mars as high as it is now (unless you’re viewing it low when it’s on its way up or down?) dispersion shouldn’t really be an issue. I think i saw a bit of dispersion the other night but the seeing was poor with jetstream overhead. The forecast for next week looks like we’ll be clear of the jetstream so fingers crossed for some clear skies! Mark
  14. When it’s high I don’t really notice the dispersion but I wonder if the turbulence from the jetstream we’ve had past few nights could make it worse? Does it change as mars moves across the fov? Could be eyepiece chromatic aberration if it does- that seems to get worse with brighter objects and Mars is pretty bright. Mark
  15. I think that was a special offer price from 365 doing a stock clearance? They’ve just gone up a bit maybe because of covid but flo has the XWs at £260 now i think Mark
  16. Nice sketch Melsmore- looks like you’re getting loads of detail there. I’m really enjoying the process of sketching and really look forward to it now- hope you keep at it 👍 exactly this- staring at a planet for ages can seem a bit pointless but sketching seems to justify the process and really makes you look for every subtle detail and i think see more! Certainly helps me form a picture in my mind of the features and start to learn the “map’ better It’s nice to put them up here and get encouragement and discussion and feel part of something but like Globular says it’s not the reason for doing it- that happens at the eyepiece 😉 Mark
  17. Hi Ade, I didn’t mention the interface did I- it is limited compared to full blown SS I agree and would be nice if they eventually did a plug in for SS- that would be really great, but I do really like the interface. It is a quality product and doesn’t have the feel of a toy like it could have been. Sure it has sky tours etc but it has a serious look- a proper tool. I really like the way they’ve done the trail of chevrons directing you to target and how it starts wide angle then zooms in as you approach closer. It does have the usual SS bug bears like refusing to find things if you type them in a way it doesn’t like eg it wouldn’t find bodes or bode insisting on bode’s. Otherwise it’s really great i think Really looking forward to getting it on my Dob Mark
  18. It is! I could see it’s potential and had high hopes but i was grinning from ear to ear last night actually using it 😊 Last time i was so excited about something astro was when i figured out how to use the setting circles on the telementor but this is another level! I enjoy the thrill of the chase of finding things the old fashioned way but sometimes it can be very frustrating under light polluted skies and i think being able to find things quickly like this and being able to browse the heavens like this will be really fun Thinking about it some more, it should be possible to fine tune the offset by manually offsetting the target while doing the initial alignment process- will give it a go. Mark
  19. This thread is meant to be about using the Starsense explorer software standalone and I can’t wait to get my bracket from the printers and mount it on my dob but I just wanted to share my first proper experience with the software and the LT114 bird jones thing I bought as a donor. OMG! this is amazingly brilliant! I just had a couple of hours and so much fun it’s hard to believe. This thing is much more than just a replacement dsc or setting circles. I would just browse around familiar constellations then a messier would pop up on the screen- click and centre it and there it was- I found things I’ve never seen with my bigger scope or even thought to look for. It’d make an incredible educational tool and it will definitely be educating me! I can’t quite get over how well it worked and how amazing it is 😃 The fact it was strapped to a crappy bj didn’t matter one jot- it found me Uranus in an area of sky I could see no stars in at all the sky was so poor tonight! Only a couple of times did it fail to lock but then it’d take a second attempt at it and get the plate solve. It only seemed to take a couple of seconds to get the lock each time and when slewing actually the phone imu did a pretty good job most of the time. There was a little bit of offset in the targeting despite multiple re-centring but it wasn’t too bad. I think that may be from the tilt of the phone holder putting the optical axis quite low in the camera frame- probably lens distortion throwing it out a bit. Maybe they could add some manual tweakability to get it perfect. This is really very cool Mark PS why on earth would they design a scope and mount that couldn’t reach zenith?!? 🤦‍♂️
  20. Just trying it out here at work- probably the worst skies you can imagine- can make out maybe 3 stars just naked eye, and it’s struggling a bit not surprisingly- have to keep moving it around to find some sky it can lock on then it almost finds mars but can’t plate solve again. The fact it doesn’t quite make it though are a bad omen for my iphone imu 😞 Unfair test really as my usual site isn’t as bad. Blimey the mount/tripod on this thing are super twitchy! That’s probably not helping. Oh and you’re right about BJs too Dave- it’s soft round the edge of field on all eps, though sharp enough in the centre Mark
  21. yes and i guess if you do register with them then if worst came to worst i’m sure they’d give you a new code if you contacted them Mark
  22. Had a look at this LT114 and it’s perplexing- celestron seem to have invested more in the locking knobs (cast metal items) than the important bits like eyepieces (christmas cracker grade plastic monstrosities!) and the phone holder seems the best engineered part of it! It is a BJ and it looks out of collimation but if it’s clear tonight i’ll have a look through it... But back to the subject: i just tried entering the passcode i was given and it worked which is good, but it didn’t require me to enter my email. So my question would be, how can they limit it to 5 devices if there’s no feedback to them of where the code has been used?!? (and could i have saved some money by just using the code from that ebay listing 😉😂)!! Mark
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