IB20

@Nik271 is correct according to my Atlas; seems the secondary peak isn’t directly named but assume that beta nomenclature is right. Correction - Nik is bang on.

Fantastic work. 👍🏻

Aesthetically, I prefer the views through a refractor but Olly sums it up perfectly well. That particular reflector is f4.6 which might be a bit of a nightmare to keep in collimation, hence of the two I’d probably begin with the refractor.

Still loving this Atlas. Makes cruising over the moon and identifying features and craters a doddle. One of my best buys as it’s really got me into moon viewing.

Will get around to purchasing one of these at some point. It could well play nicely with the PSAlignPro app which has a push to feature on it; played a little with last night and seems to get targets in the right area.

Have to say, having the Duplex moon atlas has made lunar observing so much more accessible, as it makes putting names to features so much easier. I was always a bit “meh” when it came to the moon, now I’m an avid observer.

I thought those might be through your f8 dob, cracking images. The FS must be some scope!

Fantastic, thanks for the heads up. Been having a good gander at Rima Hyginus, Rima Ariadaeus and Rimae Triesnecker. Ukert, Murchison and Pallas also captivating. Really rewarding lunar session. Some more iPhone snaps for the pile!

Fantastic sight! Grabbed a quick phone snap.

Gonna be a great day. 😃

Especially those TOEs!

Great pic! The 15mm BST is a fantastic EP. Probably the best of the range.

Playing around with exposure levels of ProCamera app with iPhone14 pro. The exposure and PST sweet spot is quite small but some decent surface detail can be captured. Combining both prom exposure and surface exposure gives a decent final concatenated image. Not bad for a phone and a 40mm scope! Ps, looks better on a phone!

A lovely young slender moon sitting alongside a blazing Venus.

Blimey, this is hard to spot in daylight with thin cloud around! I don’t recall having seen a younger moon or attempting to observe it purposefully anyway. Didn’t take kindly to being imaged either!

Had the 4” Starwave ED-R out last night on the AZ4 which hasn’t seen much action so far. Had to use it as a giant finder with the 25mm BST which actually worked really well, all that straight through finder practice with the Tak must have helped! Despite a lingering sky brightness it gave most pleasing views of globular clusters M56, M13 and M92, surprisingly bright too. In the latter two, single stars were resolvable at the edges; showing noticeably more than a 3” - probably the targets I’ve seen the biggest jump in resolution on so far! Tried for more messier globs M10, M12, and M107 but they were all lower down and swamped by the background brightness. As it was too bright for Galaxy spotting and not having a finder on the scope, I turned the scope to Zeta Herc which at 102x gave no indication of a secondary companion. Dialling up the mag with the 4mm TOE to 178x, occasionally showed an imperfect disc popping into view. Stretching the mag even more to 286x with the 2.5 TOE now showed a blob on the first diffraction ring around 4 o’clock - wonderful, pretty sure I haven’t managed this double with either dob or Tak before. Turning to Lyra, the first constellation I explored with a proper telescope, pretty much around 3 years ago to the day. The double double giving up its splits at 102x as perfect white discs; this scope is real quality, it doesn’t quite beat the Tak 76Q in its diffraction ring control but it does a very close job of matching it. Back to it and M57 was showing as a faint smokey ring and a real favourite of mine, open cluster Stephenson 1 looking marvellous as usual; to my eye delta lyrae has a greenish colouration to it that I’ve seen in no other star. No sign of M56 in the glare of the night so dropped down to Albireo for the famous orange and blue show, terrific! Finished the night cruising the star fields of Cygnus chorused by the hoot of a nearby owl but it was reaching time to pack up and head to bed before being rudely awakened by a toddler at a criminal hour of the day. Great session despite the lack of darkness and really looking forward to the reappearance of the gas giants for the 4” to have a go at and to compare to the little Tak.

Superb set-up. 👍🏻

The sun is properly kicking off today. Just an awesome morning viewing some huge proms and a flare around AR3312. The flare was extremely bright and probably lasted around 15-20 minutes. I seem to be exclusively Ha viewing at the minute, night-time Astro and white light has fully taken a back seat.

I’ve been very impressed with it. There are obviously bigger and better Ha scopes out there but I’m having a great deal of fun with mine and it is so useable. You’re right, seeing the prominences and filaments is thrilling!

A lovely big filament on display and some huge prominences yet again; a huge spire was visible around 2 o’clock ish which seems to have receded since. I love this scope! Afocal handheld shot on iPhone 14 Pro with Pro Camera and processed in LR.

Welcome to the forum! 🔭🪐

A new addition to the stable. 😁

It’s a fantastic bit of kit, really simple and a joy to use. Shows plenty for its very modest aperture. l picked a great time to dip my toe in Ha!

A prominence buffet currently on display. More surface detail visible too, as there is less high hazy cloud about, although not completely clear. Some lovely dark filaments are observable, snaking from AR3297. A quick iPhone snap attached.