Kon

There was a 30min clear sky before the moon came up and I captured the Milky Way in the Cygnus area. I used my Nikon D3200 at f3.5, iso 3200, 20 s exposures. I stacked and processed 18 frames in Siril. Nice amount of details with my limited processing skills. Happy for others to have a go at it; i have attached the tiff. cygnus.tiff

Yes it does filter at the 1.25" barrel and unfortunately you have to remove the eyepiece (not the filter) every time you want alter amount of light and you just rotate it. When i setup for my wife, as a trial and error, i look at the moon holding the filter either with or without the EP and roughly adjust it and then put it in the EP/focuser. For ~£20 it is worth trying and see how you get along with it.

You could also get a cheap Variable Polarising Moon Filter; I do not use it since I am happy to look even at full moon directly with my 8" Dob. On the other hand, my wife prefers looking at the full moon with the filter on and the fact you can filter how much light comes through is a nice option. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/moon-neutral-density-filters/astro-essentials-variable-polarising-moon-filter.html

I got them from Aliexpress, 10 days.

Amazing sketches, so many details! Do you sketch in black paper or do you invert them later from white?

I had to miss out tonight due to work commitments. Nice reading the reports.

The nice postman brought me 2 Explore Scientific 82 degree EPs to complement my 6.7mm one. I love the wider FOV with my Dob since objects stay at the EP for longer. Nice addition to my ES 68 degree 24mm. Looking forward to try them soon (looking good for tonight). I think I am done with EPs for.......well now......🤣

Same here, clear skies but seeing is not great. I can hardly make details on Saturn. Jupiter okish

There is an ES 8.8 82 degrees up for sale in classifieds if you are quick.

Fantastic amount of details considering how bad the seeing is recently.

Seeing here is much better as well. Europa nicely visible just about to disappear.

I was planning an early night but a double one is hard to beat. Dob on its way out....

@Johnit sounds great the last bit of the transit and as @IB20said we will do it again, hopefully with better seeing.

Enjoyed myself tracking this whole event tonight, although seeing was meehhh. It is a goodnight from me; I have to be up early so I cannot wait until 1am for Io's reappearance; looking forward to reading updates tomorrow morning.

Shadow on the limp, wow!

It's getting better here as well. GRS nicely visible now.

It is a semi virtual / live observing session tonight, getting the updates on what's going on from different seeing conditions from other parts of the country. I quite enjoy it but I would rather had nice seeing!✨

I just saw Io 'disappearing' at the face of Jupiter, pretty amazing, my first time. Seeing is horrible; I cannot see the Io disk and no sign of GRS yet; i can just make thick orange brown lines dancing all over. Haze is getting worst but it should be ok to see the shadow at 2330 or so.

Seeing is ok here, quite wobbly but some good seeing comes and goes.

For those with clear skies, Io will start transiting Jupiter around 2245 with a shadow ~2330. GRS should also be visible. Fingers crossed the sky will stay clear; Dob will be out soon to cool down.

I have the Skywatcher 200P and it will be great for DSOs, planets etc. I also have 4 and 6 year olds. My son loved seeing M42, M31 and M1 last year and the planets over the summer. His favourite has been M42 due to its brightness. I found that their interest last 5 or so min before they start wondering in the garden playing hide and seek in the dark 🤣. But the 5 min it really good quality time. I found with my son he was interested to look at the Turn Left at Orion and try spot some of the Moon features with the telescope (you said you already have this book which is an excellent one). I am not sure how much experience you have with DSO seeing but this thread here is pretty spot on . The second link are drawings of DSOs and they look exactly like that in my 8" Dob. Light pollution will also affect what you can/cannot see. Enjoy. https://www.deepskywatch.com/astronomy-sketches.html

Typical, isn't it? Enjoy your session tonight.

Managed to see the first 30min but seeing was through mist/thin cloud so I could not make the GRS very well. The black shadow looked great and my wife was also amazed with the seeing. Completely clouded over now.

It has been excellent here but seeingcomes and goes. Cassini division was nice and clear at Saturn but not very stable.

On this topic, would cotton wool be a good choice as well?