IB20

I’m looking at the same upgrade for my scopes and I’d narrowed it down to the ES68 24mm and the UFF. That’s a cracking price for the UFF. Does anyone know if the housing/eyecups for the different clones make a difference to the specs or user comfort?

Here’s one for the diary. The next Mercury transit is due 13th November 2032! Almost certainly going to be a cloudy day! 🙃

Huge amount of activity today. Prominences on both limbs, a huge arched prom jettisoning off huge amount of material into space. Counted 7 sun spots, some with brigh plage surrounds and a giant u shaped filament. Amazing, hopefully going to be a great summer’s observing.

The forecast yesterday on BBC was clear skies from 11am til early am the next day. It was cloudy all day and night. 🤷🏼

Yeah I find for my local seeing, I get the best views when surrounding infrastructure and temperature differentials are the closest - so April-May and Sept-Oct are the best times. My dob in winter becomes a bit of an ornament. In summer the later at night (or v early in the AM) the better. But as Mike suggests, get out at every opportunity as they’ll always be a moment or window!

Use the netweather jet stream forecast myself and find it’s pretty good at giving an idea of general seeing but as Steve mentions, they’ll always be a few moments of good seeing thrown in with some patience. Your local conditions will play a part too, I.e observing on concrete over turf or observing over rooftops/chimneys etc

Interestingly I just revisited my notes on the E star spot with a 3”. An 83% waxing gibbous moon and a jet stream to die for. So definitely seeing, seeing, seeing!

I still haven’t seen noctilucent clouds, so there’s another for the list. Maybe this year?

Add Omega Centauri, large and small magellanic clouds too.

Seeing The Veil is definitely one for my list!

I’ve bagged E with the Tak 76Q. Transparency was extremely good from memory though, bortle 5-6 skies.

I have an 8” dob and seen E & F stars - not particularly challenging if transparency is good. Sirius B in theory should be easy but I haven’t managed it yet. Found the scope fails to acclimate and control the roiling mess of light that is Sirius. I’d fancy my 4” or 5” APOs would be better suited for this split.

Looking at Stelladoppie; in 20 years the AB pairing will be a ~0.6” separation. Best get saving for a Mewlon 250CRS…

Took a low res shaky phone video on Friday, you can make out the companion, just.

Currently £20 off on the large South American river website.

Rather than correct the image for lunar, I purchased the Duplex Moon Atlas which has both refractor and reflector displays. Makes identifying features a doddle.

It’s great to be back with the PST. Three lovely large plages visible alongside a bright flaring region. A few large proms, one ejecting an enormous amount of material into space.

The new Manfrotto makes “light” work of the hour gap in the clouds!

Made an attempt for the triplet with the 125mm on Friday but the LP sky glow was just a little too much and they weren’t visible. I have to wait until after midnight for the skies to darken more, street and house lights start getting switched off in the area but it’s not really feasible with two young children; I couldn’t function on 3 hours sleep! The 8” dob has shown me the triplet and would be best suited to other Leo galaxy clusters I feel, especially seeing as it works much better when the temp differential between house and outdoors isn’t too great. I’ll make a note to try for these in a few years time! 😅

There’s a real skill to sketching doubles and you’ve nailed it. Your interpretations of Algieba are like I’m at the eyepiece, superb. 👍🏻👍🏻

Something very pleasing about the aerial and roof shots. Reminds me of my own back yard conditions, sometimes you just gotta get eyes or equipment on an object, whatever it takes!

Don’t think I’ve read a bad review of the 3-8mm SvBony zoom. Kind of tempted to try one for myself but a couple of things are stopping me; 1) the last zoom I had, I changed mag so often I spent less time actually focusing on observing and 2) I’m scared it’ll make all the high end FL EPs redundant and I’ll be wondering why I spent all that money on them!

Yes it was back to front I.e NW, I tried again tonight with the phone and the camera can add in reflection artefact; so it almost certainly wasn’t the pup. I’m sure my perseverance will pay off one day though!

Tick off M44, M50, M48 and M67 too!

Fantastic night with the StellaMira 125mm. Just dropping the mag and cruising with the 55x 17.5mm Morph for a lot of the night. The 25mm BST performed admirably but I now know I need to upgrade it, the edge aberrations are a bit too noticeable. Spent plenty of time on Sirius with the 4mm TOE at 244x, some possible sightings of the pup in the NE glare but nothing I’d put my house on. Heading southwards I finally bagged M41, a lovely open cluster that I’ve never seen before despite trying a fair amount. A little time spent on M42 before going on an open cluster binge of M50, M44, M67 and M48. I’d never really appreciated open clusters before but the 125mm does them real justice even with bright skies, the Bee Hive is the best I’ve ever seen it. Then over to Algieba, two golden orbs of perfection, always a favourite. I then remembered the Tegmine thread so decided to try and locate despite having no finder. After about 30 mins of meandering around Cancer I finally located it by jumping from Al Kirkab, the 3 stars of HR2978 and neighbours and 85 Gem. Initially two yellow white stars turned into a triplet with the 4mm TOE. A fantastic system if you can find it, highly recommend! The 125mm makes stars pop, so finding objects by mag, which I usually do, is a bit more difficult but it’s so captivating. Finished on one of my all timers, Izar. Wow, so far apart, you could drive several 1000 buses through that gap. Overall, a brilliant night and I am a full 5” frac convert. This scope is amazing. March hasn’t been a complete bust afterall, one of the best sessions I’ve had in a very long time.