Mandy D

2 hours ago, knobby said:

And now you're hooked 🤣

 

Yes. I am! Is there a cure?

1 hour ago, DaveS said:

This is the Epstein drive from AstronX. Just barely this side of voodoo science.

 

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? 🤣

33 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

Very nice detail.

 

Thank you! It was a very clear night.

16 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

The joys of Nikon for astro , unfortunately neither digiCamControl or Backyardnikon support the D3200 , the only option is the rather expensive Nikon own software , and I wouldn't swear that that works with the D3200.

Umpteen things for Canon , even the supplied free EOS Utility which is why the vast majority of folk use Canon.

 

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

13 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Thank you. Having had a think the easiest solution like like doing something like this.

A cap to slip over the end of the finder and a C mount thread on the top. Now to find a C mount thread already designed to give a head start.

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.

7 minutes ago, DaveS said:

You really don't want to know how much the stuff in my sig cost me. I'm not sure I do either .

*** and "stuff" *** 😁

1 hour ago, Mandy Richardson said:

I think I've just added photo just finding my way around site, mine is a 360pds 😁 I'm in South East we have amazing skies here so hope to figure out how to use it lol

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

1 minute ago, Mandy Richardson said:

Hi I have a skywatcher 360pds any tips or advice would be great I am very new to this 😁

I have gone from a small telescope to this amazing but huge telescope. 

 

Thank you Mandy

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

1 hour ago, Alan White said:

Not the post person, but me taking a drive to collect.

A nice original Vixen GP mount, weights, pillar and a bonus Astro Systems 6” f6 scope as well.

All is good for Lunar going forwards as well as planet season.

 

 

it has an original polar scope as well

 

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

6 minutes ago, Peter-uk said:

Looking for ideas for a telescope cover. 

I went for a popup tent, but you would need somewhere on that concrete floor to fix the tie downs

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

39 minutes ago, Gem85 said:

I have just sent back the Celestron travel scope 70mm as I didn’t find it at all good enough for what I wanted to see. But Can I please ask what’s the difference between a reflector and a refractor? What’s better? 

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

When the clouds eventually parted around 11 p.m. last night I decided to have a peek at Saturn, but with a 135 mm f/2 lens this time, figuring I could get a brighter image for spotting the moons and with no tracking. At an exposure time of 1 second I was getting reasonably round moons, with Titan showing very bright to the upper right of Saturn and a couple of fainter moons nearer the planet. I could get Titan all the way down to ISO-400 with a 1 second exposure. At very high ISO the foreground was clearly lit by a street lamp poking over the roof top and the sky appeared bright pale blue with white clouds surrounding Saturn, but the moons were still visible. Of course the clouds eventually had to obscure everything so I packed up and went to bed.

I had to ask why you'd got a screwdriver jammed into the wooden base. Then I saw the second one and it finally dawned on me. Madness, bordering on genius or something like that. 😅

I've been looking for a turntable like that for an industrial application, so you may have just solved my problem. The friction also helps.

I thought I was looking at the large hadron collider at CERN when I saw that wiring! 🤣

2 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

What filter was it? How did it get so red.

 

It's a standard Syemour Solar glass filter. Just under-exposure, I guess. I can make it as yellow as you have it straight from the camera, but then I lose all the sun spots and detail. As @Steve Ward says, you can recover detail in under-exposure, but over-exposure: it's lost for good.

2 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

Never try and get a disc that looks like that at capture , you always want to 'under expose' , you will have no room to maneouvre in post processing as far as levels and contrast are concerned. 

Once you've saturated a pixel white by 'over exposing' there's no going back , but you can always stretch an 'under exposed' shot , a necessary step when trying to reveal details , especially when trying to show the plage.

 

Yes, I understand this from regular photography, which is why I questioned the "uber-bright" image Laurieast just posted. I watch my exposure very carefully to avoid washing out.

Who'd have thought the Sun has beaches, huh? 😃

Thanks for the explanations.

On 12/05/2022 at 15:14, Laurieast said:

Last night's Moon, very turbulent seeing, but fair transparency. Nothing special, but first time out for a while imaging.
Sky-watcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 Duel axis drives, Asi 224mc+IR Cut. 
AS3, Registax, and PS.

Thanks for looking!

 

 

Nice stuff. Maybe one day I'll get there with your kind help!

3 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

Hope you don't mind, but could not resist giving a go 😁

If that is my image, what did you do to it to get that result?

Am I under-exposing my solar images? I never find that I pick up the sunsposts properly when I get the disc bright yellow like that.

Thank you. 😊

7 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

One more question .... your AZ/EQ  is running in EQ mode I  assume ... ?

Nope! I am not using the AZ-HEQ5 at the mo. I am walking everywhere right now and that is a bit of a monster to carry along with the D800 and a 300mm prime lens and teleconverter. Yes, EQ mode would deal nicely with field-rotation for me, if only I could ...

2 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

I would never stack frames from more than three consecutive sets , especially if there are features right on the limb. 

When there are tiny feature on show mixing frames from each end of a session just kills them as everything is changing so fast relatively , not obvious at first glance doing full discs .

So 1-2-3 or 2-3-4 or 3-4-5 etc , never 1-2-6 .

And certainly never from either end of sessions half an hour apart.

Yes, this is exactly what I have realised. A part of the problem this morning is that I was shooting from work and had forgotten to bring my remote for the camera, so was using the five second timer in the camera to avoid shake, so long time to capture 120 frames.

1 hour ago, Laurieast said:

Good to hear it, It can be done! 

Is that last one above now stacked and how many?

Are you focusing using the camera auto focus? That BackyardNikon would let you see it more easily and has focus tools.

Yes that last one was stacked. Probably 30%, so about 40 frames.

Here is another version where I've removed the offending frames (see my reply to Steve) and taken 30% of the best frames selected by PIPP for final stacking, so about 10.

The camera is currently on auto-focus, due to my eye problem and the laptop being at home along with the fact I still do not have Backyard Nikon. I am currently trying to get to grips with Digicam Control, but it does not look like it can focus the camera.

1 hour ago, Steve Ward said:

There's still one frame at least woefully out of alignment which is unusual from PIPP after "Crop and centre".

Have a look at your AVI output from PIPP , if there's a frame out of alignment from the rest you could put the AVI back in PIPP and get it to recentre , just reduce the Crop sizes a bit first though.

Or you could just remove that offending frame from the initial set and start over.

Yes, you are quite right about frames out of alignment. There were two runs of photography taken this morning with a half hour gap between them and the solar disc had obviously rotated noticeably between the two sessions. On some attempts with PIPP, I was remembering to ignore those frames and others I completely forgot. I have now moved the offending images elsewhere.