markse68

3 hours ago, F15Rules said:

I compared my then 14mm XW to my first Morpheus 14mm, and my 20mm XW to my Vixen LVW 22mm. I found to my eyes that the Morpheus and Vixen gave me much more pleasing views, with less field curvature in the Morpheus, with a wider field of view, and almost no FC in the Vixen and a lot in the XW 20mm.

But the 5, 7 and 10mm XWs I owned were simply superb, and I'm quite sure the 3.5mm XW is every bit as good as its shorter focal length siblings..Enjoy! 👍🙂.

Dave

Must be scope dependent I guess - I'm not seeing any detectable FC on the moon at all with either the 14 or 20 in my f8 dob. Assuming FC would manifest as loss of focus at the edges?

Mark

This is SkySafari Pro too Kyle? The object info is a bit sparse though 😂- in case I didn’t know what a crater was lol. If only they gave a bit more detail like age and impact/volcanic etc that would be really amazing

speaking of Gassendi- what a beautiful crater it is- like a fortified settlement complete with roadways across its base. Vitelli looks ace tonight too with it’s prominent inner ring scarp face 

Looking good- good luck with the build John. I'm working on a much needed base upgrade for my scope too

Hi Richard, that's a really beautiful image- what's the target called? Do we know if the dark areas are something blocking the stars behind or holes in a thin densely blanket of stars?

Mark

Thanks again Fozzie.

I just found yet another feature in SkySafari pro that I didn’t know existed- you can search for craters and features and even the smaller ones are there on a very nicely detailed zoomable photo map of the moon! It has more detail than any of the dedicated moon apps I have! And even better it only highlights the one you’re looking for so you don’t get lost in a sea of names. And better yet you can just tap a crater or feature and it’ll display its name. It really is an excellent app! Search over

Thanks for this @Fozzie- what a lovely way to spend an evening searching for and learning new features of the moon. I was able to see Hesiodus A very clearly- didn't try last night though.

Marth I found- it's much smaller and I can just make out something that might be an inner wall but it's not revealing much of itself yet.

La Condamine F I think I found but it's not showing it's inner crater yet.

Seeing's not great so far- it's sharp then pops out of focus randomly but when it is sharp it's very sharp

As a relative newbie to astronomy there's so much to learn and the Moon with so many features can be a bit intimidating but little challenges like this definitely help cement crater names in the mind and to link things up into some sort of cohesive map hopefully. Great!

BTW is that an app you are using to generate the maps? My iphone moon maps don't show these smaller crater names. The 3D rotating moon globe is better for names but is too easy to get lost in and doesn't allow inverting to match scope view except in a fixed map that's not so useful. Would love a better moon map!

Not the postman- had to drive to N London (😳) to pick it up- another stamp in the passport!

Hoping to use it with the Tal 100RS But it's a lot smaller than I had imagined- don’t know if it’ll be up to it. Nice and light though!

Wow! Truly impressive John! I don’t think I’ll ever get close to that with my 8”. I guess lighting is key and last night should have been good but for some reason they weren’t as clear as I’ve seen before but it may well have been my local seeing which seemed great at times with passing patches of the wobbles. 

It was lovely wasn’t it! How many craterlets did you count in Plato with that beast John? I wasn’t getting enough contrast last night to count- I could just about make out some were there but maybe my eyes were tired but I couldn’t separate them

11 hours ago, Nyctimene said:

Spotted the same phenomenon yesterday evening with the 18", mag 128x (seeing rather poor) for the first time, IIRC, and was reminded of it's description in an ancient, but still very recommendable book by G.P Serviss, "Astronomy with an Opera-glass"; a vivid observing report by Neison is quoted:

https://archive.org/details/astronomywithope00servuoft/page/132/mode/2

Stephan

Pretty spectacleular wasn’t it! 

@Barry-W-Fenner google is your friend 😉 your image is really good I think- so much detail and sharpness but yea- it’s not the same as seeing it yourself

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_(crater)

think this is it

Beautiful work Achim! Walther was what grabbed my attention on Friday night too- intriguing complexity of form and lighting

1 minute ago, John said:

If you have not seen them before I can understand why it is worth making the effort though

I don’t know if I’ll keep doing it as the lack of decent sleep is having an impact but for me Jupiter is much better already than last year. My scope is performing much better as well (or maybe that’s all it is) but in all the times I viewed Jupiter last year (every opportunity there was!) I never saw a clear shadow transit but I’ve seen 1.5 already! The skies are definitely very different from last year- maybe the covid effect 🤷‍♂️

I did wonder if it might be an idea for one of the zoom talks Stu- an expert showing the rest of us all the neat features of Sky Safari- but then  it might just be me who doesn’t know then akready 😂

Saturn’s been a bit disappointing for me so far this year- I’m sure it’ll improve with greater altitude. GRS was pretty clear and orangey. Unfortunate that Io’s shadow fell in the northern belt so wasn’t so distinct but was just about visible

I didn’t realise this but if you zoom into Jupiter in Sky Safari it actually shows GRS and moon and shadow transits in real time- how cool is that!

Another beautifully clear evening and the moon certainly delivered a lot of fascinating and intriguing detail last night indeed! That pair of goggles peaking out of Clavius was the highlight though  

The moon makes a great backdrop for space junk- I love it when it happens as it did last night a couple of times strange objects floating across its expanse sharply silhouetted. Last night I saw a glider with a 50km wingspan skim across its surface casting a low altitude shadow as it went! Absurd but quite vivid 😉

This was strange to me though. On Friday night I’d also been enjoying the moon but with wider eps it was so bright I should really have used a filter as when I looked away I was night blinded and everything looked purple- it was almost painful. But last night with the same eps I was absolutely fine 🤷‍♂️ Could the moon change that much in brightness from one night to the next? Pretty sure it can’t so it must be my eyes!

Looking forward to tonight's instalment

Can’t you get alignment off the moon with an alt az mount and SS Stu?  Ive been doing this each evening with the telementor setting circles and finding Venus first time every time- it’s so low now though that I don’t get much time before it disappears behind Canary Wharf

Hi Stu, from what I’ve read on other forums where they can get quite obsessive about these things (😉) the mirror should be absolutely free of any even minute strain- eg even ptfe pads supporting the underside are frowned upon as being soft they might deform into surface irregularities in the glass and cause strain on the mirror when changing altitude! So your lateral screws shouldn’t be tight enough to grip the mirror and therefore won’t prevent rotation. Whether or not this would create observable real world issues is 🤷‍♂️ Probably more an issue with the gargantuan thin mirrors they tend to use! I’ve got my mirror rattling loose in there with just the gaffa tape loosely applied to stop rotation- my mirror is far from parallel/perpendicular with the back side so it really makes a difference. I rarely have to tweak collimation which I check every time I use the scope and my issues with astigmatism I had last year have vanished, though that was more likely the secondary

Great report and such success! And a great list of targets thank you Wookie- I shall have a go at a few of these tonight while waiting for Jupiter

3 minutes ago, John said:

Yes it does, but not much.

An O-III filter is the key to seeing the Veil. It can make the difference between seeing practially nothing at all and a rather nice view. A UHC also helps but the O-III filter is the best on this target.

 

I’ve been trying both John but still nothing 🤷‍♂️ Will keep on persevering though- I’ll find it eventually even if I have to travel somewhere less light polluted 

Sounds like a fab session! Bit chilly for my liking last night here so gave up after first view of Jupiter before it had time to gain height enough for detail. I keep trying for the veil but to no avail! Does it get easier as Cygnus gets further overhead? Or am I just unlikely to ever see it with my 8” and London skies?

Shadow transit and GRS tonight if you can make it out again 👍

The tape is to stop the mirror rotating- losing collimation Stu- good idea- I put gaffa on the back of mine but my cell is open at the back. Gaffa is stickier than insulating tape which tends to suffer the dissolving adhesive syndrome from plasticisers in the PVC- May be worth an upgrade

yea back those screws off a little so the mirror is free to breath- sounds like you didn’t have an issue but pinched optics aren’t a good thing! Although it looks like there are felt pads in between the retaining tabs and the glass so it’s probably not applying much pressure at all

Don’t think so- it looked like  a big metallic structure- rigid looking. An unidentified floating object I guess

I was just taking an early eve look at the moon when a strange object floated past- a glinting metallic long pole like structure with a red bit at the end. Perhaps a weather balloon? 

Anyone else mad enough to stay up for GRS transit and a bit later Io shadow then Io transit this Sunday morning? Forecast looks good