Mogster

I have read previously that Celestron had discounted the RASA 6 as regular cameras would cause too large a central obstruction. Maybe the RASA 6 needs a particularly small diameter camera.

£4000 sounds a lot until you price up the individual parts RASA 6, Evolution Mount, Camera, Focuser, Dew system, PC, Battery. It’s not for me but there’s quite a lot there, and it’s integrated into a pick up and go package. I can see it appealing to someone that doesn’t do imaging currently but would find an EAA setup attractive. There seem to be a lot of purely visual observers on the US boards, people with deep pockets. Maybe this is aimed at that market.

I think NASA remarked that they liked the “low slung lander” Alpaca design concept. However they didn’t like the lack of detail in Dynetics bid, and the lack of convincing answers to clarifications raised. Thats possibly more of a management issue though, Elon and Bezos do have lots of money to throw at these projects. Dynetics were relying on SLS (and other paper concept hardware) which increasingly looks like a dead end, Starship has its own transport, as will the Blue Origin offerings potentially. Starship and its booster are real and flying. Alpaca looks more like a multi use Lunar dormobile. A vehicle that you’d use to transport people and stuff across the Lunar surface. A vehicle like that may very likely be of use at some stage in the future but we really aren’t close that point yet.

The more recent Starship HLS images have more LEM style legs and pads on the base. The legs are supposed to be self levelling. I seem to remember that the Raptors aren’t going to be lit for lunar landing, Space X are going to use Dracos at the top of the stack in similar fashion to the Dragon capsule. So on lunar landing Starship will be hanging from the Dracos at the top rather than balancing on the Raptors at the base. https://www.nasa.gov/reference/human-landing-systems/ It’s also worth considering that the Raptor engines are very heavy and at the bottom. Starship probably isn’t as top heavy as it appears at first glance. Maybe…

I did start out many years ago with the EQ3 and a 127 Mak. It’s a nice combo and the 127 delivers super views of the moon and planets. Viewing Saturn for the first time through the thing was like a religious experience… You can get an adapter for the rear cell so you can play around with SCT accessories, 2 inch eyepieces n’ stuff, but that’s another story. However, for that price you’re not getting a GOTO mount. Without GOTO, and outside a decently dark site, finding anything other than the handful of very bright DSOs is going to be a very frustrating experience. Compound that with the narrow FOV with the 127 and things are even worse. It does cross my mind that the 127Mak and one of the widefield robo EAA scopes would make a nice combo… Mak for moon, planets, and small bright DSOs. Mini robo for widefield and larger DSOs.

Another vote for the 4SE. Carry it outside assembled, put it down, solar system or one star align to track object, add alignment points as you go. If you have a laptop replace the ep with a camera for some eaa even.

Thanks for the great weather service and apps Just a couple of comments/suggestions. As someone with red green colourblindness I find the sandy colours and the green hard to differentiate between, the pinky red is OK. Making the sandy colour darker would probably solve the issue. Quite often there seems to be a mismatch in the weather data with rain flagged but 0 clouds. Maybe the rain data is less detailed than the cloud forecast but it looks odd. I notice that an option for clear sky "alerts" is incoming, is there an ETA for this?