Zermelo

I just managed to get aligned here, looked up - sky full of clouds. But the forecasts are still optimistic.

In this cold spell we have had evenings limited by some high cloud, but I didn't see any tonight. The seeing started off quite poor, but improved some after a while. Jupiter was very poor, low above the rooftops, couldn't make anything out. Mars was quite decent high up, even though it's getting smaller, the North polar cap is still obvious and I caught some albedo features. Uranus was, well, Uranus. Like @bosun21, I took a Morpheus 17.5mm to M38, and also to M35,36,37. And a few doubles to try out the debutant Morpheus 6.5mm: Alrischa, epsilon Arietis, Almach, Algieba, HD 36203. Finished with M42 at different magnifications. Over 4 hours outside, and everything was covered in frost when I turned on the headtorch.

Even if it's not a dewey evening, you may find some advantage from the dew shield in controlling stray light entering the tube, bouncing around and reducing the image contrast. It depends on how much local light pollution you have, its direction, how well the inside of your tube is blackened , etc. I always fit mine, dew or not.

Yes, section 7 of the Design Notes explains the derivation of the catalogue. There are indeed several stars in Synscan that don't use the standard IAU names (which presumably are what Stellarium uses). I chose to change the names in SAPA to be exactly what Synscan uses, because otherwise someone doing an alignment would find that the star they were expecting from SAPA's output isn't listed by the app or handset. Of course, that means that those names won't match what you see in your planetarium software when you're planning, but at least when you're inside you have a bit more time to look them up. In the spreadsheet catalogue sheet, I have included Bayer or Flamsteed designations for every entry, so that can be used to cross-reference the mis-named stars. I also copied into the "Catalogue refs" column any other information that I found in the source catalogue, such as synonyms. I can see the advantage of that. I reserved the first comment slot above, one reason was to collate suggestions. Thanks, I'll be very interested in how you get on.

Updated to 1.1 in original post. That didn't last long!

Odder still. Now, in my spreadsheet, the button is assigned currently, but if I unassign it and try to re-assign it, it's not in the list! Must be some kind of scope/permissions thing. BUT you can just type in the name yourself. However, as it happens, the parameter for DisplayCandidates is optional, and by good fortune I wrote the code to check it "the other way", i.e. the IF statements look for "auto" from the internal call from AutoSession. So, if you edit the button and set the macro to 'SAPA 1_0.xlsm'!DisplayCandidates without a parameter, it works as it should. I'll replace the copy I posted. Thanks.

Thanks for looking Peter Now that is odd. The macro behind that button should be called DisplayCandidates. The AutoSession macro basically strings a number of those together, so you can sort of emulate it by running AutoSession with one iteration. But they're different. Now, when I select (in base Excel now) "View", "Macros" I see the following: but if I choose any of the macros and click "Edit", then in the edit dialogue I see the missing macro in the list: and I can then select and display it (and of course, run it). I'm mistified, but I'll have a think.

Just so that I understand, would this quality rating relate to: (a) the object as observed in that particular session (b) the object, as it can be seen with that equipment and from that location, but not specific to that session (c) the object's intrinsic quality, irrespective of location/kit/conditions (but still your subjective view) I assume you're talking about (c), and I would certainly use such a feature. The others could also have some merit. Obviously SimulationCurriculum would have to attach the new field to different parts of their database for (a) - (c). I'm guessing that (a) would be easiest for them, just another field on the observation. (c) might be a bit less palatable as it might need a new host entity for a user-specific value related to a database sky object (b) looks to be the most hassle, of the three

Suggestions for Changes (1) Parameters sheet: default the Date and Time cells to the current values, which can be retained or overtyped by the user. If the user changes these and saves the spreadsheet then of course the formulae will be gone, though a macro could probably be created to repopulate them each time it is opened. >>> included (modified) in v1.2 (2) Print sheet: define a print area that excludes the print buttons (which force the printing of a second sheet) >>> included in v1.2

I created the attached spreadsheet for my own purposes, but then I thought it might be of some use to others. So, I had to give it a name (easy enough), to tidy it up (not so easy), and to document it (the longest part – it seems to be a trueism that it’s much quicker to do something than it is to explain how and why you did it). What is it for? From the attached User Guide: - to assist the observer in selecting effective stars for the Synscan alignment of Sky‑watcher telescopes, in advance of an observing session - to support the collation of a history of the alignment details used for each observing session, and a record of the pointing and tracking performance of the mount for those sessions. What does it do? Basically, you tell it where you’ll be observing from, and when. It will analyse all the stars that Synscan uses and rank each combination, using the guidelines in the Synscan user manual, but with more control. You can tinker with the configuration of the alignment rules, and weight them differently. You can ignore specific stars. You can create your own map of local obstructions, and it will ignore any stars that will be obstructed when you align. You can compile a list of alignment stars for different times in the evening. You can copy all the details into a log, along with your rating of how your scope/mount performed. You pick the stars from the output that suit you, and choose them at alignment time from the app or handset. Some Notes and Caveats If all you want to do is use it in it’s simplest form, you don’t need to read much. The User Guide has a very short “quick start” section. If you want to play with the settings, read the rest of the User Guide. If you want to understand how it’s working, have a look at the Design Notes document. The tool works for Alt-az alignments using two stars (incl. “brightest star”, “North level”), because that’s what I use. The spreadsheet was created with Excel 2016, but I have also tried it successfully on Office 365. It includes VBA code, so it’s saved as an .xlsm. That means you will need to enable the content when you open it, and possibly copy it to a trusted location first, depending on how your Excel security is set up. I’m not too bad with Excel, but this was my first time coding in VBA. It’s my first foray into positional astronomy, so it has been a steep learning curve. I’m sure that there are people out there who will be able to put me straight on a few things. I’ve been using it for a while now, but I’ve also been making changes as I went. I gave it all another test before posting it, but I don’t (yet) have anything like a proper test suite to run through. So of course, any feedback on bugs/ suggestions for changes will be very welcome. Spreadsheet: *** UPDATED 05/04/2023 *** SAPA 1_2.xlsm User Guide: *** UPDATED 05/04/2023 *** SAPA User Guide 1_1.docx Design Notes: *** UPDATED 05/04/2023 *** SAPA Design Notes 1_1.docx

Even the weights look beautiful

+1

Congratulations on the Horsehead, I guess EEVA is the best chance that most of us are going to get to see it. And you didn't need a H-beta!

Just crept in after a five hour session with the Mak, a bit mixed. The seeing was iffy early on, and then cloud started to appear at low and mid levels. At one point I had to grab an umbrella to shield the kit from a shower, well most of it. For another hour I was dodging clouds, trying to re-align the scope to correct some aberrant behaviour. As soon as I could see one of the alignment stars, the other would duck behind some cloud. I finally got a clear patch, set it going, checked the finder - no star. Very odd, I've matched the star pattern 100%, but there's a gap where the alignment star should be. What was it again ... Mira Ceti, oh for ******* 🤦‍♂️ (Dear Skywatcher, perhaps this isn't such a great one to include in your list ...) Finally the cloud cleared, and I got some reasonable views of Jupiter and Mars. The seeing wasn't the best, so the tighter doubles weren't splitting, but I did see some new, wider ones in Cassiopeia. I finally got to compare my new Altair 2x Telextender against a Celestron barlow. The Altair just about won the evening, especially combined with the BCO 10mm. I revisited the planets a few times as the conditions improved. I saw some darker regions on Mars, but Jupiter's southern belts were surprisingly vague, as @Stu said above. Getting a bit cold and damp now, but the Eastern horizon was looking too tempting to leave, as Orion and Gemini made an appearance over the fence. M35 was very pleasant in the 24mm UFF. In the end, worth sticking it out.

There has obviously been a lot of rain, but I've also noticed that (here in the South West, at any rate) the forecasts have been very inaccurate over the last 2-3 weeks. In particular, Clear Outside has often been saying "100% cloud" when the sky outside has been perfectly clear. The BBC and Met Office forecasts have been a bit better.

Ah, thanks Stu - I have entered all my kit to get the FOV displayed on the star charts, but I hadn't noticed that the mag and EP were also calculated. btw, the SkySafari V7 Pro and Plus versions are on a 65% off Black Friday deal until 28 Nov.

The 4mm Nirvana has a lot of love: https://stargazerslounge.com/search/?q=4mm Nirvana&quick=1&updated_after=any&sortby=newest I've had some iffy results with it myself in indifferent conditions. Sometimes it seems to suffer more than an equivalent combination of [EP + barlow] (I don't have another native 4mm to compare it with). But as others have said, I expect it's either down to pushing too far beyond the seeing limits (when I use it in my Mak) or to imperfect collimation (in my F/5 Newt).

I saw this case reported on, which was interesting to me as I know a solicitor who writes wills, and we have previously discussed some of the weird cases that crop up, due to dodgy wording and otherwise. I expect most of us might guess that a bequest to "my best mate" might cause some problems, but there is a surprising number of people who don't understand how clauses in wills would be interpreted, and a fair few who forget some very pertinent details until prompted, such as that child they haven't spoken to for 20 years.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/305852-light-pollution-and-aperture https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/384672-light-pollution-and-larger-aperture-telescopes https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/369462-baader-morpheus-125mm-and-175mm/?do=findComment&comment=4014149 and much discussion here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/384301-why-do-we-need-bigger-scopes/

In Sky Safari, use the Planner function to select objects of a particular type (and narrow it down with further criteria to suit your purposes). When it displays the list of objects, hit the button "Make into Observing List". Then, if you edit that list, you can select "Highlight Objects in Skychart", and when you display the main chart it will pick out all the members in that list. For planning purposes, when you display the list you might choose to sort in order of RA, azimuth, rise time, set time or transit time, according to your preferences.

My RACI is in a very similar position on my Mak. As long as you can line it up to point in the same direction as the scope, it will be fine. The only time that it makes a difference is when you're trying to find an object that's just above your local horizon (in my case, the garden fence). In that case, my goto will leave the finder pointing at the top of the fence, but the scope could see the target, provided I can locate it without the finder. You still have the red dot on top to help.

If you're using an app to make notes at the eyepiece (in my case, it's Sky Safari), I find that a decent predictive keyboard can be very helpful. I normally prefer open source apps, but I've not found anything to touch Microsoft Swiftkey in this area. It learns very quickly from previous typing, so now I just need to type a capital "M" in my notes and it defaults to "Morpheus", and offers "9mm" or "14mm" as the next word. If you find that it is defaulting to some word that has a similar "swipe" to one that you use a lot, you can delete the interloper from the dictionary and it won't be suggested again.

Yes, I should have said that it seems to react more than others to indifferent conditions, and I've found it to be a bit unpredictable in that respect. When it's good, it's very pleasant to use.

I used to work with an Ng several years back. The company's IT system insisted that names had to have at least three characters, so he had to make something up. I've seen a few examples of long names being truncated, but that was the only one I've come across that was too short.

Of course. That was why they spent so much effort remastering the Apollo pics ... they knew that 21st century conspiracy theorists would expect much more detail than their 1960s forebears.