josefk

Hah. Nice. Great minds think alike and all that 👍 - i have the JM Laws book on nature journaling (lovely) and also a "how to" draw birds book by him. Both incredibly useful. I like the approach (in both) that drawing and recording is a skill (can be learned) not a talent (innate). Gives me hope :-). Super transferable to astro journalling. Cheers

you remember Steve i hate hate HATE dew - it just feels so wrong getting astro optics wet! A birding scope i would use in the rain but unsealed/unpurged lenses - ouch. It was a bonus to be out though - it's "nip and tuck" for clear spells isn't it! .. and M57 'in colour' sounds fantastic!

Great list @Size9Hex - Barnard's Star is in a recent Sky & Telescope and it IS appealing to mark something like that over several years and have a little arc in the sky on an atlas (or series of sketches) representing decades of observing.

With the RH forecast to be so high last night i reverted to light and manageable GnG kit even though i was GnG'ing out of the back of the Landy. Just a lazy waltz around the brighter Messier in and around UMa and including a good long look at M101. What a tantalising galaxy this is - even with minimal aperture it rewards just sitting and waiting (for it to reveal itself). No spiral arms for me (nowhere near) but a definite "unevenness" and a couple of brighter "bits" that didn't ought to be stars but i also can't imagine they were any of the NGC HII star forming regions either. Dripping wet through kit and dewed finder and main EP by 00:30 even while a little 5V dew band had kept my main objective clear. I left a door open on the Landy all evening and it was running with water (like a shower screen) by the end. Swampy!

i think you would enjoy this @SwiMatt https://nigelgbruce.com/book-review-explorers-sketchbooks-the-art-of-discovery-adventure/ I have a few of that ilk "for inspiration" 😉

Outstanding looking set-up @Xsubmariner - there's no wonder you don't want to break it down now for a visual peek! Wowser. ...and never mind the scope what a fabulously capable looking mount. I have an Astrozap dew shield on back order and will probably receive a kendrick dew band and Pegasus dew controller today.

I really like that @SwiMatt - a very nice way to collect and log the details while preserving a nice view of the whole. 👍

That is phenomenally fast progress @Armand Popa - really productive sessions. So many Herschels are in the spring sky. How do you find H400 II vs H400 I - does it feel like more of the same or does it feel meaningfully trickier? I keep track of what i've seen in both lists (though i don't deliberately go looking for H400 II ever and don't really focus on H400 I very often). I have a whopping 10 objects ticked on the H400 II list 🙂 In a few years time when i can tell what i have left to go after in either/both of these 400 lists (and assuming those things are at the harder end) i will get serious and rent or buy an appropriate scope to chase the last few and/or depending if they are seasonally concentrated or not - go to a good dark reliably clear sky for a "mop up" set of sessions. I am years away from that though at my current rate of progress. Are the ones you have left doable within the calender year or do you have to wait for any misses to come round again to favourable viewing elevations?

nice @Xsubmariner - did you ever use your 12" visually before you dialled in your imaging gear? I assume you have it permanently mounted? Any dew management tricks you want to pass on? 🙂 i'm probably going to wrap my OTA this week with a dew band under the insulation towards the front of the OTA. I'm waiting for a dew shield and when that comes i will probably also add a 2nd layer wrap around the OTA and dew shield combined at each session...

Nice sketches and notes @AlcorAlly Izar particulary. I also struggle with "too much" red light sometimes and i do turn it on and off and i do have a two stage dimmer on my red light. Have you tried having it behind/under something so it is shadowed when your eye is at the EP but is illuminating your sketch pad when you look up/away to sketch? If i hang a red light head torch from the focuser of my scope pointing down it sort of achieves this effect...Not perfectly - i could still do with something dimmer for the very best dark adaptation...

I did “do the maths” on it @magnahrl - both the standard C11 and the Edge11. For me there were points that counted against both in my “checklist”. It’s a great pity that astro shows and even astro shops are not open at night so they can do demos. I’m in an Astro club but it’s too far away for me to turn up at their observing nights (and their location is worse than mine) so no chance to grab a peek through someone else’s kit there either. I think a lot of us make the best analysis we can on paper then we have to “suck it and see” for better or worse. It’s why I find exchanging info on here so useful.

This sounds to me like heating effects in the OTA. I haven’t seen it too often but occasionally on a star bright enough to cause diffraction spikes and early in a session there has been been other “wispy” moving artefacts in the diffraction X. I never gave it it too much thought because I don’t recall seeing it later in an evening ever and being a transitory thing I classified it as either cooling or seeing related with my bet on cooling.

Well that sounds excellent Magnus on both fronts. Really a win win. Enjoy!

You might hear an "EEK!" out loud in Sth Lincs if i've misjudged this - possibly followed by something slightly stronger..."EEK!!!*%$£@!" 🙂

If this gets out several sessions a year and nets me ~50 galaxies per season (more would be better but i know where i live) then it will earn its keep Olly.

I hope "interesting" doesn't turn out be a prophetic euphemism Steve 😂

A few key stats - it annoys the hell out of me this stuff isn't readily available generally on manufacturers websites so - in case it's of use: Weight of the OTA - dust cap still on a Baader click lock already added: 15.5kg Length (to the back edges of the click lock/focuser: 58cm Diameter: 30.7cm Height e.g. largest dimension including Losmandy and guide scope "shoe" (e.g as would be needed for a bag or case choice): 37.5cm Circumference (e.g for a dew shield): 94cm Circumference (largest dimension around the Losmandy and guide scope "shoe"): 105cm I'll add CO when i've measured it.

Not that i'm impulsive or anything but a recent fabulous session chasing galaxies in the spring sky brought home to me a) I really like finding and observing galaxies, b) opportunities for galactic observing [in the UK] are few and there's a big list of galaxies to get through in a finite number of new moon / spring evenings. Though i have a nearly 8" Cassegrain and generally appreciate that to step up in capability in a "wow" kind of way from that scope i would need to upgrade to 12 inches of aperture for a full magnitude of light grasp improvement, i am a bit limited in choice for a 12" OTA. I live in an apartment and if not on foot for GnG in a nearby park then i have to drive my kit to a local observing spot (in a short wheelbase Land Rover). Those circumstances preclude Dobsonians of both tube and truss style - i'm not wresting a 12" or larger tube (and base) up and down 2 flights of stairs and nor do i fancy sharing my office space at home with one day to day, i also don't fancy collimation (of a truss type) ahead of every session. Similar arguments rule out a large aperture newt unless it was very light and very fast and from what i read that sounds like a recipe for a floppy frustrating collimation nightmare :-(. So in my circumstances that leaves compound scopes. Maksutov's i find quite interesting/appealing but large aperture ones are unobtanium, ££££, heavy and (from what i read) slow to cool. Large classical Cassegrain's are available (a design i like) but they're all heavy, some are v. expensive and the affordable ones have some funny design issues - i really would have liked one of the GSO 10" or 12" Classical Cass but they're both heavy, much bulkier than their mirror size suggests and for the 10" specifically, extremely tight regarding back focus if you would want to use 2" eyepieces (I calculated 2.7mm back focus 'margin of error' for TV EPs with a focal plane above the shoulder of the eyepiece and that is using the shortest focuser i could find and the shortest 2" diagonal i know of). They are also very long in focal length but still with quite large CO despite that focal length. So finally SCT. My least favourite type of scope conceptually - very difficult to work up excitement for spending money on simple mirrors and float glass - no offence SCT owners 😆 i am one now (sort of - the Meade ACF isn't a vanilla SCT). So, long story short, this weekend i have added this 10" Meade ACF to my observing toolbox with the principle target of big galaxy grabs per season: Why Meade and not a Celestron (e.g. C11)? - i like the blue tube , HD radius blocks and HD losmandy 🙂, more controversially i like where Meade are made. Why 10" and not 12" for the full magnitude upgrade? - I did have a 12" ACF in my hands for a few days and it was physically very manageable (better than i was expecting) BUT the one i had in my hands had a bit of an issue and had to be returned to the vendor, it was a one off reduced price type deal and i couldn't/can't bring myself to really splash out on a 12" at full retail price (mirror snobbery). Why f8 and not the more sensible f10 seeing as i will use it purely visually? Well, i hope i haven't made a mistake i live to regret here. The CO of the f8 is massive (i haven't measured it for a percentage yet) but my thinking is... i don't need this scope to be a jack of all trades scope - apart from looking for fainter moons than i've found with 7" and looking for a bit of colour on Jupiter and Saturn i will hardly ever point this scope at a planet so any loss of planetary low level contrast is not a deal breaker, the f8 gives me maybe 1.2 degrees at the wide end and nearly 4mm of exit pupil for use with UHC and O-III for any nebula objects that fit in the 1.2 degrees (its difficult to get more than a degree and 3mm exit pupil out of the f10), i get a really great spread of exit pupils between 1.25mm and 2mm with existing eyepieces. My skies are typically SQM 20.5 and i know that around 1.3...1.5mm is a nice dark sky and a productive "faint fuzzies" (sp. galaxies) exit pupil range in my skies, counter intuitively (for me) the f8 has a flatter field than the f10 because there is less difference in the curve of the two mirrors and SCT field curvature comes from the difference in curvature between primary and secondary mirror not their compound focal length per se, the f8 has a really nice dual speed focuser - even messing about pointing through the kitchen window at a few distant pylons and with everything stood on a bouncy floating floor i can tell that this focuser only needs a light touch. Nice 2-speed focuser (smooth): So, why bother (with 10") at all when i have the 7.x" CC? - though i love the CC it bugs me that it is undersized vs the understanding i had when i bought it. i like to follow lists (e.g. for 8" scopes) and it jars my OCD that mine is an odd size. More seriously because it's a bit undersized I will still be getting a circa 35% level of "betterness" with the 10" Meade. i can take this as ~35% more exit pupil at a given scale or 35% more scale at a given exit pupil. I know I see this improvement quite meaningfully because iv'e been testing this delta with existing kit. Finally, mounting - here the AZ100 is just magnificent. I bought it with kit evolution in mind and here it is nonchalantly shrugging off about 28kg of dual mounted loveliness - it is'nt even balanced up properly here but i can tell already it doesn't care: no SGL favoured lilckable objectives here i'm afraid but the float glass is nice: 😜

No postie involved. I fetched it so I could give it a cosmetic look over first with the friendly guys at RVO. Clear skies tomorrow night in theory but I’m not sure I’ll be set up to manage the predicted high RH/high dew point by then 💦 let’s see.

It is a bit irritating @magnahrl but I think it’s more irritating in theory than in practise if you know what I mean. I have the CO calculated at 38% after measurements in the flashlight test but in any event I get nice dark skies and good contrast for eg something like M97 or M57 or M27. I mean really nice so I don’t think it’s impacting the view really. Around the new moon mine “competes” with a nice 5” refractor and I never feel disappointed in the aesthetic comparison between them (apart from diffraction on planets - sorry to mention that again). Ergonomically it is lovely. You’ve used it so you know. Though I occasionally add a DIY dew shield (belt and braces) I don’t think I’ve ever had a real dew “event” with the CC8 with or without it (and frequently the outside of the OTA would be dripping wet on nights with high RH). Even though I will buy more aperture I would keep the CC8 for this quality alone. I’ve never looked through a Mewlon. I guess (purely from reading the experiences of others) the Mewlon will be better than the CC8 on axis but the DK prescription of the Mewlon would be worse than the classical cassegrain prescription of the CC8 off axis. Off axis is important to me. I use the field stop quite a bit so I like things tidy fully across the FOV. all the best Magnus. Cheers Joe.

Very nice @JeremyS - sometimes i love my one and only Ethos (an 8mm) and other times i'm not sure (about the 100-degree FOV) and find my Delos more comfortable and somehow "lazier" to use - the to and fro is preventing me buying any more of either to fill in the gaps at lower focal lengths (i could do with a 6mm of one or the other definitely and possibly one other medium focal length) so its a good cost saving bit of paralysis to prolong on my part 😉 Do you like them unreservedly? Even in the longer focal lengths that may engender larger exist pupils?

i have this scope @magnahrl and i really rate it. It has brought and does bring me a lot of pleasure. That said in your family of scopes i'm not sure it brings any new capability versus the 6" Mak, 8" SCT and 8" newt you have??? In my family of scopes i would swap you my CC8 for your 6" Intes 🙂 The CC8 is a bit undersized (using the flashlight test) at 185mm ish and that makes the secondary a bit chunky in percentage terms and also using the flashlight test the secondary is anyway a bit bigger than specified. Still, I really enjoy it's contrast and general capability (in a compact package) at medium magnifications on DSO (including planetary nebula) and collimation holds really well (i drive down a rough track to my viewing spot and it doesn't care). For planets the diffraction spikes are a big distraction (for me) and i think the quite thick secondary support (that makes collimation so robust) contribute to those spikes being fairly prominent on the brighter planets even while the details on the face of Jupiter in particular have at times been excellent.

Good tip on airing everything out @bosun21 - i'm exceptionally fussy about that myself. Keeping EPs under cover while using them in a session but they're not the one in the scope at that moment is also important (IMHO) to prevent them getting too damp in the first place. Sounds like a good run out @LondonNeil - like you one of my regualr observing spots is a few hundred meters from my home and i walk up to it - my tip - keep it simple. Simple gear (not everything out all at once and not everything at every session) and everything organised (sounds like you have already cracked that with the tool box and ruck sack). If your gear is a bit unwieldy/heavy you could resort to a small sack truck available in DIY super stores. I personally wouldn't jolt my scope around on one but you could bungee your tripod, a stool, and maybe a boxed or bagged mount to one and take the weight out of your hands. 🙂

Nice. I recognise those stars 🙂. The beauty of this game is it does feel like these wonderful things are committed to memory better.

Thanks for the kind words @AlcorAlly i aim to attempt it for certain closely grouped galaxy groups even where all my original sketches for a certain group may not be from the same night (or even the same season). The approach may not scale for M37 though and it was M37 that originally started the thought process in chain 🤣