PeterW

29 minutes ago, Carl Au said:

All my eyepieces are Explorer Scientific in 68 or 82 degree numbers, 5 in total and a focal extender. In fairness could probably live without the 20 mm and the  focal extender. Al Naglar once said, and I paraphrase here, that 3 or 4 eyepieces are all anyone needs…. I concur 

Unless you have a binoscope and then it’ll be 6 or 8… 😉

Peter

A dozen or so (maybe still more binoculars than eyepieces), though have a binoscope does mean that the eyepieces multiply rather faster than I’d like!

Peter

PS probably have more filters than eyepieces too… but again I’m not going to count them, just in case!

 Pyle you post a list of the 20, maybe in nominal brightness order, be good to add to sky safari and go after sometime, seeing that Cassiopeia is so well placed at the moment.

Peter 

Satellite flares are always slowly moving.

peter

Likely to be starlink. Many travel on similar orbits. I have watched a slow procession of flaring satellites one after the other, even though nothing was predicted, as the flares come from glinting reflections off of flat shiny bits of the satellites, like the Iridium flares of old. Twilight will likely be full of such stuff

Peter

Interesting upgrading the RACI. I don’t get much use from the 9x50, mainly just poke the laser down its eyepiece to stop me having to bend down to get the scope in the right rough location. Then starhop through the main scope… SkySafari providing suitably invert/rotated views so life is good… no mentally flipping the chart view like we used to have to do! Goto is nice, but you lose the connection and the context of what you’re looking for/at. More satisfaction when the object you’re after suddenly appears where you expect it to be.

peter

I had a CCD blue filter on me for another reason and OK the views was very blue, by the spot and belt detail just jumped out when we popped it in…. The view was bland when we pulled it off. Not sure how it compares to a written 80a though.

peter

Was very steady last night, got my best ever view, made yet better with a blue filter I happened to have with me. 
 

Peter

Wanting to use both eyes gets expensive on the eyepiece budget… why I don’t own a truck load of eyepieces like many other people I know… 😉

Peter

M13, can see the propellor!

Peter

I moved from 13T6 to Morpheus on the 70mm bins as I expect I will need the extra eye relief soon and I didn’t like their distortion in the daytime). @Captain Scarlet quite liked the daytime views earlier this year. I like giving both eyes the chance to enjoy the views… 

Peter

Be careful where your breath goes as it will rise up, maybe deliberately blowing sideways will keep the warm moisture from rising into the eyepiece when viewing. Keeping eyepieces in your pocket  can help too.

Peter

Maybe antifog spray could help. We had a breezy that seemed to keep the dampness at bay.

Peter

I rarely extend the shield on my mark II, not that it is too flimsy…. though I’d certainly wouldn’t attach a phone holder to it.. 
 

Peter

Bluewalker3 a satellite with a huge reflective surface was launched recently, but I’ve not seen any reports of people seeing it and it would be travelling north/south(?)

Peter

No, just “round the corner” from both of us. It seems we live within a short scope-dragging distance each other. So skies around mag19 (probably worse as the LEDs may be skewing things to look darker).

Peter

Happy to help. Very nice views when we got it collimated.

I’ll have to “make a list” for next time and bring a filter or two.

We used pretty much every second we could, complete cloud out at the end, not even the moon escaped.

Peter 

Moon will need some power, maybe one of the angled eyepiece binoscopes that people like explore scientific, apm or overwork offer, though your budget would probably mean you’d get the achromatic models, so possibly some chromatic aberration at higher powers. You can swap eyepieces (the ultra flat field models do a good job) to change the magnification, exceeding fixed power models and the angled eyepiece makes tripod use easier too. You can pop in 24mm eyepieces and have wider fields for DSO if you wish. I have some 70mm and also find them rather useful as a two-eyed spotting scope for daytime use.

Peter

Inuse one of those ultralight camp chairs that you pop together Al piles like a tent, the high back and normal do just fine as I slump down in them to reach higher elevations. Much easier to carry about. Only issue is the small foot ends that like to sink into soft soil…. You can get ball attachments to avoid this.

Peter

… got to keep Occam’s razor nice and sharp…

Peter

Anything from the sharpness catalog. IC1318 around gamma Cygni, sharpness 119, IC 5068, monkey head, Pac-Man, plenty of next level down objects to point the h-beta at. Really potent filter for seriously improving the contrast, just also tends to kill the stars off too.
 

Peter

Not noticed anything wrong with physics, things still seem to fall downwards, kettle turns on when I turn it on…..

I would suggest that we pay more attention to measurement and measurement uncertainty, to help us be able to critically decide on the significance of measurements and to put limits on theories. Theorists need to dream and model and hypothesise, but without something novel that can be predicted and observed it can tend to philosophy. 

Got to say that quantum weirdness seems to be coming up with all sorts of clever science applications at the moment, so physics can’t be too broken. I tend to stay at the “whack with hammer” scale of things personally, let others play with some quantum/bio stuff.

Now you’ve got me started, we also need to do more boring scientific reproducibility… although science doesn’t like people “just repeating” things others have done…. When people try sometimes they find than things can’t be repeated and thus may have been wrong in the first place…. 

Scientists disagreeing is how things work, different experience and ideas, trying different things until they convince each other that they have a plausible answer (until someone finds a new insight and things move forwards). Being wrong and learning something new goes with the job, keeps things interesting.

There is a risk of thinking that science doesn’t know all the answers, true, but it knows plenty about a lot of things demonstrably better than most other approaches and knows plenty about a lot of things. 

Peter

PS I always think that a good bit of optical alignment, especially involving getting light into optical fibres is good for you well-being! It’s a pity that so many lasers are now “permanently aligned”…. No fun L!

I always store mine with the battery and lid out so I know it’ll fire up when I need it. My eyesight isn’t friendly with the old analogue calipers…. 😞

Peter

The papillo fill the “close up” niche and are  my “don’t have the space the carry a proper pair of binoculars” too. 
 

peter

I’ve noticed that starlink satellites can often produce short rapid brightening a a little like the old Iridium ones. If I notice one I keep looking on the general direction and often I then see several more in the same area. Often the duration of the flash is quite short and you can’t see them before or after. I don’t find the starlink predictions especially good, been out to see passes and seen nothing and seen things that were not predicted. Very fast is likely a meteor. 
 

peter