M40

Co-incidentally, a new member joined yesterday, Stephen Waldee, who seems to have a great deal of information available on his website about viewing the HH. Not sure how to do it, but see if you could link / bring this topic to his notice. 

Hello Penelope and welcome to the site 🙂

Hello Jim and welcome to the site. Some great pictures there 👌

Hello and welcome to the site 👌

Managed 17 on the 26th. I was hoping for more but using the "couldn't see any starlink satellites" as a guide, I am going to take that as a win.

Hello Ash, I bought astronomy for dummies a number of years ago and found it very good. I just checked and it is still available, Amazon have it for £12.85. I must admit that I found Turn Left at Orion hard going when I first started, but once you get used to it, it becomes very useful. Another thing you could try, is software like Stellarium. If you select say Jupiter, it does give basic information then by zooming in you can get information on the moons. 

Hello Matt and welcome to the site 👍

Hello Dustin, welcome to the site 👍

Hello Frad76 and welcome to the site 👍 

2 hours ago, Frad76 said:

Good day everyone. A bit weird introduction as I will be straight asking for advice due to a purchase of a scope a bit too big for my needs! Thanks for having me here!

Isn't that an oxymoron? 😜

Hello Rolfe and welcome to the site 👍

Great video, very informative and helpful 👌 and on the flip side, if you need any help with your telescope decision making, please just ask, nothing better than helping people spend their money 😜

Signed up, thanks GSmith for the link 👍. Hopefully the clouds will part and the moon disappear long enough to actually see something. There are a few led street lights near us but not too many so it will be interesting.

Hello ShellofStoke and welcome to the site 👍 I don't think it's a hammer you are looking for, I think it's called a collimation tool 🤔 enjoy

I think it's the same with all hobbies, my wife for example does crochet, do you need all that yarn? I ask stupidly, she replies do you need all those adapters?. As with all hobbies, there is always an entry point and depending on your circumstances depends how far you take the hobby. If you are into the hobby, you make what you have work. And totaling everything I have spent so far, it doesn't even scratch the surface of keeping a classic Mini in good condition.

Hello terjackz and welcome to the site 👍 enjoy

Your user name reminds of a song from more than a few moons ago, got to go and listen to that now 👌

Hello jadeneptune and welcome to the site 👍 I am not sure if you should claim the best two telescopes or start a shopping list of your own 🤣 enjoy

Hello rojay and welcome to the site 👍 nothing wrong with lurking, I think most of us start here that way 😜

11 hours ago, vlaiv said:

If you are not interested in wide field and you want to maximize detail that you capture - you should then aim for optimum sampling. This is what this tool should be for - if you have idea what you want - it should tell you what combination of camera and scope will provide you with that.

As someone who has used the existing tools.... a lot, that was my aim.

Real world example for you, I currently have no interest in long exposure imaging/processing so I looked for a camera for eeva purposes to get the best or optimum sampling together with FOV on a specific telescope. I knew my targets, so I selected the camera on a very simple basis of no barlow, no reducer and no binning aiming for optimal sampling and FOV. I did the spreadsheet thing so I knew roughly what I was looking for and the tools then gave me a very easy method of comparing cameras. 

Purely from my very basic use of the tools, if I were to change them, maybe the FOV and CCD suitability could be combined such that it's all on one page with maybe extra tick boxes for use of camera i.e solar system/eeva/long exposure which could then include the mount calculations. 

Forgive me for not grasping aspects of the topic but, what is the difference between a single large pixel and binning at say 2x2 to achieve the same size? I have noted the points about over sampling introducing noise and slowing the system, but you gain in definition, surely this is a good thing?

If, for example, I am not interested in wide field, which from the posts seems to be the only point to under sampling, is there another benefit to under sampling?

Not sure that the mount should be introduced into the calculation as you are trying to match the telescope to the camera?

Is it possible that EEVA and long exposure imaging look for different aspects from the camera and maybe that could be a tickbox?

1) Correctly determine over / under / correct sampling for set of parameters user enters - definitely

2) Advise users on any ill effects of their choice. - definitely

Great idea using correx, where did you get that edging from?

And as an aside, toolstation do a 40W tubular heater with integral thermostat for about £15 if you are still looking for one.

The lady wife bought me a really nice prezzie...

And the completed item....

14 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Especially with regards to "under sampling and blocky stars" and how good results are from current version of astronomy tools

Thanks for the link vlaiv, far too heavyweight for me, so @JediScp use the calculators as an online guide only. Enjoy 

Not having years of experience nor any qualifications in this fascinating hobby, online resources are more than welcome. So thank you to FLO for providing what I consider to be a valuable and simple to use resource for a complete numpty. If you do change the tool, please keep it as simple as it currently is.

And copied from the CCD calculator page.... "At Astronomy Tools we want to make useful information available to all. If you can see a way we can improve any of our calculators, or would like us to build a new one, please contact us."

Hello JediScp, I took a similar path to you in making a speadsheet of one form or other listing the data of each camera. Great move because you can spot things like pixel size etc but that is not the only part of the jigsaw. The first time I tried eeva I learnt what under sampled was. The pixel size of the camera I used at the time did not suit the telescope at all and the image became very blocky. By sticking in the camera and telescope in the FLO CCD suitability calculator it instantly went to the significantly under-sampling side of things.

From this, I input my wishlist cameras into the calculator with the telescope and then was able to select a suitable camera/CCD that worked well with the telescope. Moving then to the FOV calculator, I then reduced the choice even further by making sure the camera could provide the right sort of image from the objects I want to view. Out of interest I finished with the ASI385C.

So the answer to your question is to use the FLO online calculators to ensure the camera will work with you telescope then make sure it works with the FOV that you want to image. I am definitely not the one to confirm this, but as to colour v mono, I believe that you get three times the number of pixels using a mono than the colour so possibly better definition when using mono. I will let others confirm that one

All the best and hope it helps.

I am going to +1 for the Baader 8-24mm zoom as suggested by azrabella. When you use a higher power eyepiece it's amazing just how fast everything moves, so the zoom helps find your object on low power then just zoom in for that closer look. I also bought the associated Barlow, but I have rarely used it so depending on your budget just leave that off your shopping list and get it later should you need it.