Mandy D

I'll second the Herschel wedge. I've yet to get mine, but it is planned. @AstroKriss Why not invest in another scope that you can leave permanently configured for solar?

It is exactly what I do. Whether it is the right thing for you is another matter and will depend on what you want to image and what level of convenience you desire. I use a DSLR as it is so convenient. I can be outside, set up and imaging inside two minutes. I also have a ZWO ASI 178MM and it barely gets used at present as I do not have a laptop or suitable computer I can put outside. For planetary, lunar, solar and general widefield star imaging the DSLR works brilliantly. For galaxies, faint fuzzies and the like you are better with a proper astro camera on a tracking mount. If you already have the DSLR it is a no-brainer as the extra bits needed cost under £50. You might want a remote, too, unless you are going to use the camera self-timer to avoid vibration.

Yes you need a T2 nosepiece (1.25" or 2" to suit your focuser) and and the right bayonet adapter for your camera. They simly screw together, one end goes in the focuser, the other attaches to your camera.

The Moon, again, but 45 minutes later than yesterday, so very bright and hazy sky. This is a single image, converted to B&W in GIMP with a little sharpening applied and a lot of increase in contrast.

@teoria_del_big_bang Thank you! The weather here in Derbyshire has been mostly terrible during the day, but has cleared in the evening and overnight some of the time. I was awake at dawn and thought I would take a look outside and found it clear. The Moon is still visible in my sky, now, at 8:30.

I was photographing the Moon early this morning and noticed Jupiter to the right and wondered if I could capture any of it's moons against the bright sky. I got Ganymede to the left and Io to the right. Callisto, of course, is far too faint and Europa was playing hide and seek behind the planet! It's not a great image by a long way, but shows what is possible.

The Moon photographed at 04:15 UTC today in daylight. Single frame with Nikon D800 and 600 mm lens. f/8, 1/60s, ISO-100

Wow! That is simply amazing. Great work. I don't think I have ever seen so much detail in that nebulous region. ❤️

I would say fully retracted means all the way in and fully extended would be all the way out.

Stunning images. I love the close-ups. They are really impressive. On top of all that, you achieve this in a month when others are complaining they have seen nothing. I've managed a few sessions on both the Sun and the Moon, but my results pale in comparison to yours.

Being able to move without having to set up again is really quite handy as I have to do a lot of tree dodging in my garden.

I bought my Skytee 2 in April this year and the first thing I did was replace the saddles with better ones. I didn't feel I could trust them with a 200P or my RC6. I moved one of them to the top position for a guidescope and put the other one on a tripod to carry smaller OTAs. I used these from RVO as they have two brass wedge clamps and are only £39.99 each. https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/rvo-mini-vixen-style-clamp.html

Thanks for that. I should have noted that I am imaging, but it looks like, worst case, I will have about 0.5° lateral FOV, so it should be OK most of the time. Good to know that the CA on that little scope is acceptable. Filters are always an option if I were ever to use it for imaging, which would probably only be when travelling. Thanks for the link. I don't have access to a 3D printer, but looking at the images, it all makes sense and I think I can buy a finderscope foot and machine a piece of aluminium for the base that the Starsense sits on and mate them together. This has been a huge help! It looks like yet another telescope will be added to the collection!

@Second Time Around I like the ideas you have presented, here. I have just bought a 300PDS OTA and am shortly going to be building a Dobsonian base for it and was looking for easy ways to orient it on the sky - inclinometer, digital compass, etc, but this idea would make it much simpler and potentially cheaper. How does the Skysense cope at longer focal lengths? Native would be 1500 mm, but barlowed I would go to 3 or 4.5 m. Does it locate the outer two gas giants well? A while ago I was looking for an inexpensive 70 mm refractor and have now bought a 100 mm, f/10, so 700 mm focal length would fit in nicely with my existing kit, whereas the 80 mm would be that bit too long to offer any benefit beyond portability. What is the chromatic aberration like in the 70? Sorry for asking so many questions, but this is my final one (for now!). What is involved in the modification to mount this device in a finder shoe?

@Carbon Brush The Fuji X-T2 is a real camera with a proper size APS-C sensor at 23.4 x 15.6 mm and offers a full range of ISO to 12,800 and pushes this to 51,200. It has no anti-alias filter in front of the sensor, so you get the full sharp resolution of the 24 MP sensor. It is properly made, using metal for the body, in Japan. It should be excellent. https://www.kenrockwell.com/fuji/x-t2.htm

Concerns over safety, security and spying is the official line from the government, but you can buy them freely once in the country!

@Carbon Brush I totally agree that imaging can be done on a shoestring. I started my journey with a Nikon D3200 and Tamron 70-300 mm lens on a budget tripod that today could all be had for less than £200. I photographed a total eclipse of the Moon with this in France and was hooked. So, I bought a Skywatcher 250PX and got my first deep sky image, M42, without tracking. Today, small tracking mounts for DSLRs are so cheap and easy to use. There is some great software available at zero cost for processing the images, PIPP, Autostakkert and GIMP are often all you need. Yes, it can be bottomless pit to throw money into, but it doesn't have to be. I've spent a fair bit of money on my kit, now, but don't regret it. I know that I can sell it when the point arrives that I have to give up, so it doesn't worry me. I've often wondered why more use is not made of some of the great longer focal length lenses in this hobby when I look at the price of small refractors. My Nikon f/4 300 mm prime lens was not cheap, but it is extremely sharp and works very well for astro-imaging, coupled with a x2 teleconverter I can get decent sized images of the Moon, especially with a crop-sensor camera like the D3200 and I can still use it easily in daytime for nature photography. Another plus with camera lenses is the almost complete absence of chromatic aberration. That 300 mm f/4 is as free from it as any lens or refracting telescope I have ever seen.

Perhaps I phrased it badly. You should probably read my earlier comment where I was comparing the 300PDS with a longer focal length 12 inch newt that was mentioned by someone else. I was surprised that it was 17 kg compared with the 26 kg of my 300PDS. Then, later, I noted that I can comforatbly lift and carry the 250PX, which was intended as a separate comment.

Oh, I see the confusion, now. No, I was comparing it with my 300PDS.

300 mm longer and 50 mm wider than what? What are we comparing? I'm lost.

I was, honestly, very surprised at the weight of the 300PDS. I'm used to being able to pick up any of my existing OTAs with one hand, even the 250PX, but this one is a whole new ball game. The 300PDS is f/4.9, so ought to be lighter!

For information purposes, my new Skywatcher 300PDS OTA, complete with rings and a Losmandy dovetail was weighed at RVO and tipped the scales at 26 kg.

@Dimitrisanagn If you think about it, I'm sure you'll see that binoculars gather more light than your unaided eyes. Assume 50 mm objectives and a 7 mm diameter fully dilated pupil. Square both, so we are comparing areas, 2500 and 49. Now do a simple division and you get about 50 times more light gathering from the binoculars than the unaided eye. Does that make sense?

The Sun, imaged through thin clouds today. There are a few nice sunspots around at the moment. Imaged with Nikon D800 and Skywatcher 200P, Thousand Oaks solar filter.

Thierry Legault answers this question in his book, Astrophotography, on page 74. He calculates that the difference in focal plane position in a telescope of 1000 mm focal length, for the Moon and a star hundreds of light years away is about 1 billionth of a millimetre (10-12 m). Even the artifical satellites orbiting the Earth can be considered to be at infinity.