Mandy D

OK, I know the image is small, but I was working at native focal length and imaging with a D800, so only got 60 pixels across Jupiter. I suspect, from what I've read in here, that I need to barlow my scope to about 4000 mm FL with this camera. I was working with the 200P last night and this is my first stack of 40 still images of Jupiter combined with a single exposure for the Gallilean moons, Ganymede, Io, Callisto and Europa from left to right. Hopefully, with a little (a lot of?) help from you good people in here, I can improve greatly on this result in the future, but I'm happy with it as a first attempt.

Your image is coming out nice. I still have to try stacking mine from last night. I see you also caught Callisto a while after it came out of eclipse. I noticed it first appearing as a tiny bump on the edge of Jupiter and then separating. It looked a little strange coming out at that angle when the rest of the moons were in a nice straight line across the sky.

French wine. A good red. I don't recall, probably because I drank too much of it and addled my brain. Hic!

Do you intend to use the new DSLR for other photography, such as landscape, or are you keeping the Panasonic for that? Do you want the camera to be stand-alone or are you happy to drag a laptop along with an astro-camera? Of course, a dedicated astro-camera is ultimately the better device, but comes with baggage. I started with a DSLR, which I still use, but now also have a ZWO ASI178MM, which is currently very under-utilised. I'd like to do more with it but it is impractical for me to drag a laptop and the ZWO out to an observing site and set up.

I think we'll get along just fine, then!

Yes, Bortle 5 here at home in UK. Uber-bright LED streetlights and I can still comfortably image the planets and their moons. In France, Clear Outside gives me Bortle 3, yet I cannot see our house across the street when staggering home from the neighbours after a glass of wine. I walked a quarter mile past the recycling bin one night thinking I really didn't need to put the outside light on, because I knew where I was going! To be fair, that Bortle 3 is for the village a mile down the road, and not our hamlet which has no street lights.

Just tried that: The one making an L is my right! Oh ... You meant to look at the backs of my hands. Why didn't you say so! Too many ways to interpret this one for it to be a solution! 🤣

Unfortunately, much of the time, the English language tends to devolve, rather than evolve. Today, we seem to be heavily influenced by American TV and movies. English grammar is "you and I". It is the Americans that suggest that "me and you" is correct.

Yes. I am! Is there a cure?

What is it's optical design and focal ratio? Looks like some kind of RC to me. Can I stick my ASI178MM on the back of it, please? 🤣

Thank you! It was a very clear night.

The lack of free Nikon software for their cameras is something that has always annoyed me. I know this won't help withe D3200, but Nikon now offer free webcam software for selected newer cameras, which really surprised me. I wonder if it might work for astro. There is also a list of supported cameras at the link. https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/download/sw/220.html

Yes, good idea. Easy to deal with as you can get a c-mount adapter easily. Just cut it down to suit and make it a tight fit in your cap, probably glue it into place. Here is a link to one: https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/rother-valley-optics-c-mount-125-adaptor.html Or, better yet, it looks like they make the exact part you are looking for: https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-finderscope-to-c-adaptor.html

Measure the thread pitch, then add that to the minor diameter and you will have both pitch and diameter of the thread. So, if ten turns of the thread measure 10 mm with your ruler, the pitch is obviously 1 mm, add this to the 28.47 and you get about 29.5 mm. Allow a bit for slop and it is likely to be an M30 x 1 mm thread. Of course, the thread size will not be specified by the manufacturer as this is not a "user" thread, so it could be anything they like including M29.5 x 1 or 1-5/32" by some crazy pitch.

*** and "stuff" *** 😁

Well, it is on an equatorial mount, so you'll need to learn how to polar align it. But, there are plenty of people in here who can tell you how to do that. Looking at the small cardboard boxes on your table, I assume you have 10 mm and 25 mm eyepieces for it. The 25 mm is good, but the 10 mm is generally said to be poor. Anyway, you'll want to start with the 25 mm as it will give you a wider field of view and make the scope easier to point. Probably the first thing to do is align the finderscope with the main telescope, which is best done in daylight by pointing the scope at something more than about a mile away (a church spire or similar is great) and getting the tip of the spire centred in the field of view in both the main scope and finderscope by adjusting the alignment screws around the finderscope. From your photo, it looks more like a 130P to me. Have a look at the link below and see what I mean. Where did you get the 360PDS designation from? Is it on the tube? https://www.picstop.co.uk/sky-watcher-telescopes/sky-watcher-explorer-130p-telescope.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsJ7N2Kfd-QIVjMx3Ch36iAObEAQYASABEgKKb_D_BwE

IS it a Skywatcher 300 PDS? I can't find anything on what you have listed. The 300 PDS is amazing. I have a 250P and a 200P. Both are good, but yours is even better. You'll want some nice dark skies to get the best out of that. From another Mandy

Looks very nice! Is that a tupperware lid on the scope?

May I ask what is the technology that is being used to make that tent levitate? 🤣

Looking around the world today at all the big telescopes in use and being constructed, you would be forgiven for thinking that the reflector must be the better design, simply based on the fact that no-one constructs large (very large) refractors today. Then you look around camera shops and web sites and see that all the lenses you can readily buy are refractors. You may see the odd wierd reflecting "lens" for cameras, but on the whole it is refractors. So, now you think refractors might be better. Ask any photography enthusiast what they think of miror lenses. They'll likely tell you they are rubbish and that traditional refracting lenses are far superior. For most terrestrial photography, a refracting lens is far better for the task, simply because you usually have oodles of light available. Notice that so far, I have failed to answer your question as to the difference between the two basic types of telescope.. A reflector, as others have noted uses mirrors in it's design, whereas a refractor passes all of the light though glass lenses to magnify objects and collect lots of light. Like lenses, the mirrors in telescopes use curved surfaces to provide magnification and the problem is that you need to have something in between the object in the sky and the mirror in order to see said object's image in the mirror. This is where the "problem" with reflectors comes in and the argument about which is better begins. Anything in front of the mirror that is not to be imaged will inevitably reduce sharpness and contrast in the image. That may not be a problem, expecially if you are using telescopes much bigger than the practical (or financial) limit for refractors. Reflectors also usually have mirror mounts which produce diffraction spikes on bright stars, making them look more star like. Some love this, others hate it. The other thing with passing light through curved glass is chromatic aberration, where you get colour fringing around bright objects, because the glass bends light through different angles for different wavelengths (colours). You can get corrected optics to reduce this problem, but then the price goes up. In essence, as I'm sure others have said and will continue to say, a small refractor will always be that bit sharper than a reflector of similar size. However, a reflector is going to be cheaper than almost any refractor of the same size, or in some cases even one that is substantially smaller. You can grab a lot more light per pound spent with a reflector, which makes them great for faint, deep sky objects. For the Moon, either will serve well. I hope I haven't overwhelmed you with detail, here.

Yay! Well done! I still have Neptune to image to complete my collection of the major planets. I am certainly not at a level where I would consider attempting Pluto. Are you posting your images?

So, I thought I'd post some photos of what I saw last night. Not sure how many moons of Saturn I captured, but Titan is definitely there and clearly visible in the cropped version. This started out as an experiment to see how much was possible with a 135 mm lens. This lens is the unusual Nikon 135 mm defocus lens, which is popular for portraiture, so I thought I'd see how it fared with a family portrait of Saturn and some of it's moons. Apart from a little vignetting, I think it performed well. Saturn is very low in the widefield image as I was shooting over a neighbours roof! Nikon D800, 135mm, f/2, ISO-800, 2s