IB20

A bargain £4.99 from Amazon.

First time I’ve seen it for a week or so, definitely brighter and probably around mag 5.5ish. Still spherically diffuse but the core more prominent than last observation.

Great looking moon right now, the clouds have parted and conditions looking ok for the night. Mare Crisium and surrounding areas looking fantastic.

Now the sun is starting to peep over my southern views, I’ve been able to enjoy some very pleasant WL solar observing. It is now a joy and so easy to change prisms with the new set up and I no longer have to wrestle with the Tak collet. I love it!

A quick 2 mins with the new continuum filter, probably not what you want to hear @Stu but I’m pretty certain the faculae are popping more with the reduced band pass, certainly through a camera sensor. 😁

Oooh, missed that. Yeah always something else to spend the moolah on, especially when searching for marginal gains!

A slight upgrade on the 10nm continuum filter. Best filter I own by a country mile.

The 15mm BST is a brilliant EP and works incredibly well with an 8” Dob. The 5mm is also extremely good but would probably be limited to lunar viewing and Mars. I got a 10mm Baader Classic Ortho and that beat the 12mm and 8mm BSTs hands down. It also barlow really well too.

+ Jupiter.

Amazing sight right now.

Venus looking very yellow! I saw it yesterday and thought as much.

Whilst in the area RX Leporis is a really nice coloured orange star, as is HD 33162.

I’ve finally bagged it. Three nights of trying and even tonight failing with the 15x bins. They prepared me well when I swapped over to the 76DCQ as I was I knew exactly where to look after pretty much memorising the star patterns in the area. Wow, it’s very, very red but I’m not surprised I’ve struggled to find it, it’s really dim. Increasing the mag only made it dimmer and reduced colouration. I found 25mm @ ~38x was the optimum to both see the star well with diffraction rings and absolute ruby red colouration. Feels like a real achievement bagging this observation. Now I know it can be done I will check up on it annually. This little Tak never lets me down 😁.

I have the 10nm one which is great a bringing out faculae but FLO now sell the Baader 7.5nm which would improve contrast. Very tempted!

Venus looking magnificent with naked eye on the horizon. It has turned from white at higher altitude to a yellowish white though, which I have never seen before.

I think it’ll take it right now. I had the TOE 2.5mm on the 76DCQ at 388x and it looked great still.

Some more from today, better conditions and a more stable tripod due to it being retracted. AR 3190 is ridiculous in size. The black umbral spindles are really visible. Might be time to save for that Ha scope. I have also been thinking about getting the new continuum filter to see if theres any visual improvement although probably more detectable through a camera sensor.

It’s very diffuse so I’d say it’s hard to tell but the two stars observed alongside the comet are mag +5.7 & +6.7 and I would put it between them, somewhere around the +6.0-6.5 mark.

Unreal result @Stu. My wife has the Pixel 6 base phone and the camera is insanely good so the Pro’s camera will be the real deal. I would have gone for Pixel were not my accounts all tied up with iPhone. Cheers for the ProCamera app tip too, it’s extremely good and the processing tools are excellent too.

Yes just an afocal single frame. The sun skirts the neighbours’ rooftops currently so it was quite difficult to get something half decent. Hoping for better conditions and positioning tomorrow.

Tried the last two consecutive nights to find this. Good news is I can definitely access the area of sky but I’ve not managed to find it due to a bright haziness and thin cloud. Tried with both 15x70 binos and a 3” frac but no success yet!

Have just been out with the 15 x 70 bins; conditions nice and dark with some bands of cloud. Using SkySafari I travelled West from Nekkar and lo and behold next to double star pairing of HR 5830 and HD 139920 was a very diffuse grey blob. Nice and easy, nicely placed in the sky and very visible with bins. Chalk another one off, chuffed 😁.

One of my favourite doubles to look at through a refractor, it’s extremely pleasing to observe as the stars usually give perfect airy discs. Very similar colouration, magnitudes and size with a fairly generation separation.

Tak 76DCQ & 7XW with ProCamera App.

Taken and processed with ProCamera app, iPhone Pro 14 at 162x with Tak 76DCQ and Vixen LV 6mm.