skyhog

Yes, that's more or less correct. Light pollution is essentially road lighting which has been replaced in its entirety. 

I'm in the definite improvement camp. Fortunately there are no commercial premises around me and the residential lighting makes the area very much darker than the old sodium lights. It's rather amusing to hear neighbours complain about it being darker. Away from the roads some of the pathways are very dark. Actually see head torches when I'm out walking the dog👍

So my neighbours of some 25 years have just sold their house. Its the only house within 500 yard's of mine. I met the new couple who have bought it the other day and they seem very nice. Fast forward a week and he's really rolling the sleeves up to do some DIY, skip on drive full of earth and lots seems to be going on.  And what job did he think required doing first of all you may well ask. Well obviously lights on the front of the garage to downlight the drive. Luckily, this is the front of the house and the lights could be brighter I suppose and they are, thankfully, motion sensed.  But it does illustrate that the desire to do this is very fashionable at the moment. hopefully they are not bringing that fetish to anywhere else around the house....

Definitely worth doing if you haven't experienced a truly dark sky before. Its hard to convey the beauty of a clear night under the darkest skies possible. And that's the issue here. There's a world of difference between a dark site and the darkest site its possible to have. I think I would have to camp or stay somewhere though. The prospect of driving home after a long observing session would spoil the experience for me. 

A single 10 second shot with a canon 600d and the 40mm 'pancake' lens. It was a beautiful cold twilight and orion was sinking over a snow capped high brow. I'm assuming thats high brow from the cottage I was renting. I could be wrong!  

Just found this among my many astro books, got it around the mid 70s. Nice little photographic atlas. Used it a lot back then.... 

Sorry, the scope used was a 12 lx200gps 

I have tried to observe the pup for a number of years, all occasions seem to end the same way, namely that I think I've detected it but never with the absolute confidence I'd like. Sirius is very low from the north of the UK and most sessions have it like a disco ball in the eyepiece. Last month I did have much steadier seeing, and also very good transparency so I decided to stick a planetary cam on the scope, the zwo 385, and see if I could observe it on the laptop in the obsy. I first got rigel on the screen. Played around with the gain and exposure and it was sitting there on the screen just as I view it visually. Then over to sirius, a bit of a tinker with settings and the pup was there blinking away beside its overbearing partner. I sat and watched it a while contemplating just what I was observing, then it was cam out and in with an eyepiece. Though I was telling myself it was there, and on occasion chalking this up as a success, it still refused to let me see it in a way I'd feel satisfied. Next year Rodney... Next year.... 

Some great replies, because I seem to have gone through life without bumping into anyone who shares my passion, I have always managed to be the guru in the many situations where astronomy has become the topic of conversation. I've lost count of the number of occasions where enquiring eyes look up and ask questions about what they are seeing. It always happens when someone is presented with a very dark sky and they normally live under heavy light pollution. Hopefully I've spurred a few folk into looking deeper into the hobby... 

7 minutes ago, Paz said:

I find this to be a rare hobby. Outside the small club I go to on occasion I've only met one person who does astronomy and there's almost no observing scene. Most people know nothing about it and I would guess some of my neighbours have no idea what I'm doing when I'm out the front observing.

If you go to an observing meet you would probably not recognise anyone you met if you passed them in the street the next day!

However I enjoy the peace and quiet of observing and I enjoy being part of what sometimes feels like a secret society.

Yes, my thoughts exactly. Although I'm bringing this up, I actually do like the solitary nature of the hobby. I think my wife has set foot in the obsy perhaps half a dozen times in nearly 20 years. Most of my former workmates think I'm slightly deranged going into an unheated shed during the winter. 

6 minutes ago, 900SL said:

I started an astro whatsapp group in Saudi and we've collected quite a bunch. There's about 30 in the group ranging from RST 135 AP owners to time lapse and astro landscape shooters.

A quick recap of nationalities includes:

Belgian, British, Irish, Saudi, Indian, Finn, South African, French. Hungarian, Lebanese, Turkish. It's like the league of nations out there.

This may, of course, have something to do with the weather here. You've never been anywhere quite like the center of the Ad Dhana (Bortle 1) or even better, the edge of the Empty Quarter. Diamond strewn black velvet horizon to horizon, assuming the wind isn;t up and the dust keeps down

My guess is it would be much more popular if the conditions were better (i.e. light pollution and clouds)

 

 

I suppose the difference is reaching out to fellow enthusiasts via social media, local clubs etc and coming across people by chance. I'm talking about the latter scenario.  

34 minutes ago, westmarch said:

You are not talking about AP then?  😁

Yes, a fairly broad church this hobby. I never come across anyone who regularly uses binos, let alone someone down the imaging rabbit hole. 

I was doing some work this morning and a clickbait article caught my eye. "the 30 most popular hobbies in the world". I thought to myself, surely our fantastic hobby makes that cut??

Sadly not, the usual suspects present and correct, fishing standing at the top spot, golf, various sports, video games and on it went. Quite how shopping is considered a hobby is beyond me though I did like to see reading at number 2. I suppose, by definition, a hobby is something done for pleasure so who am I to argue what should be on the list. 

I then thought that Its probably a true reflection of my own experiences. I'm approaching my sixth decade now and I'm pretty sure I haven't bumped into anyone I would consider an enthusiast in the way a site like this would define one. I'm pretty well travelled too, so its probably fair to say this hobby is extremely niche, more so than we appreciate. I always find that a little difficult to understand given the ease with which it can be undertaken. 

I had a lot of those observer books as a child... Great little things... 

On 17/02/2022 at 20:09, fozzybear said:

bedtime reading this little book

Brings back memories that book, I'm assuming it came with this cover though, I think I got this in the early 70s....

A thing of beauty... To be sure. 

Yes, cheers stu.... 👍

Forgive my ignorance but I can't see any indicators on that image that refer to orientation. I know this has been a topic once or twice, defining East West etc with regard to solar observing. Not something I tend to think about whilst observing but I should have it in mind I suppose...

I popped the pst on a tripod yesterday and viewed that. Nice to see an image of it stu. Yes, huge best describes it. There was a much smaller prom on the opposite limb too. I really need to work out the orientation of the image so I know which limb I'm referring to... 

15 hours ago, petevasey said:

I've had a good look in Stellarium which goes down to 18th magnitude stars.  And I reckon the scope was even fainter - perhaps 19 or 20.  So visually you'd need a massive light bucket to stand any chance at all.  Even then the movement is so slight  (less than 2 arc-secs per minute) that you'd be hard pressed to detect it amongst the background stars.

Cheers,

Peter

19 or 20....pretty much forget about that then visually. 😳

Very good Pete, I was wondering about the visual magnitude of the webb. I would imagine it would be a challenge but very pleasing to see it in the eyepiece. That's a great link. Thanks. 

Good stuff. Nice to see sol bursting into life. I was intending to have a peek with PST this morning but things transpired against me, and tomorrow looks cloudy. 🙄

I added a like to that but think it deserves a comment. It's a superb image that, and as mentioned, it really would be beautiful hanging on a wall somewhere. A great talking point. 

My 12 lx200gps, sorry should have mentioned... 

1 hour ago, lukebl said:

Here's a further animation of 50 frames.

10 second exposures from 18:57 to 19:08 on 19th January, during which time it traversed approximately 15 arc minutes (half the visual width of the moon). Atik 383L+, binned 2x, 200PDS Newtonian, Baader coma corrector.

Here's the start and the finish, showing the moon to the same scale.

That's very good and does give me the feeling I was getting at the eyepiece, albeit not quite as quick as that! I must say it was a lot fainter than I was anticipating, transparency wasn't great and obviously we had the moon, but I was expecting it to be brighter.