Ags

Only if you sold ALL your gear.

Impressive!

Received a XWO IR-cut to replace my AWOL Astronomik L3 today and and a 2"to SCT adaptor, so now I can try my f6.3 reducer on my f5.6 refractor. What could possibly go wrong?

Wackypedia tells me that the Neptunian trojans are probably even more numerous than the Jovian trojans - possibly by an order of magnitude.

I learned today that all planets except Saturn and Mercury have trojans. I suppose Mercury is too close to the Sun, while Saturn's L4 and L5 are unstable, I guess because of Jupiter's influence. Apparently the mass ratio for a nice stable L4/L5 is 1:100:10,000, with the ratios going up with every additional confounding body. So Jupiter is the only body in the solar system that gets close to holding up it's side of a Trojan triad.

@MalcolmP thanks for clarifying. Will watch further developments with interest!

I feel a science fiction novel coming on 😀 Because the habitable zone of a small red dwarf is so close to the star, I imagine we could squeeze a third habitable world in. Let's say it orbits just outside the red dwarf's habitable zone, so it would be a bit like Mars in our solar system if it only had the red dwarf's light and heat. Of course it would be in the sunlike star's habitable zone and it would be tidally locked to the red dwarf. One side of the planet would have a normal but slow day night cycle with the primary rising and setting as usual, while the side that is near to the secondary star would see the primary rise on blisteringly hot days with two suns, and then set on a freezing "red twilight" dominated by the glowering red dwarf.

A dwarf brown dwarf?

Long-exposure photographs finally reveal possible location of Moon.

Nasa will probably explain it away as a weather balloon behind the Moon, but I am not falling for it! Maybe the Chinese are building Dyson sphere around the Moon?

Imagine a binary system consisting of a sunlike star and a red dwarf orbiting in the habitable zone... there could be a habitable planet caught in one (or both!) Of the lagrange points. The red dwarf would be a spectacular permanent morning or evening star!

To qualify as a planet, a body must be round due to hydrostatic equilibrium, and it must have cleared its orbit of other debris. Jupiter satisfies the first criterion, but it has clouds of asteroids, the Trojans, preceding and following it in its orbit. These aren't small clouds of asteroids either, the number of Trojan objects rivals that of the asteroid belt. So, is Jupiter's orbit clear, or must we reclassify the big guy as a "dwarf planet"?

Ice crystals? Nonsense! That's the giant planet Nibiru, on course to collide with Earth in 2012. Totally!!!! 😄

Agreed. I do make sure the mount is as level as possible and then I just use point and track, both for visual and photography.

FLO has a good price on the AVX, it seems to have the least 'goto premium' while still having a decent capacity. Sadly European retailers don't offer similar sharp pricing. If it wasn't for Brexit, I could make them price-match

What did you make of the AVX mount? Just a dressed-up EQ5, or something more than that?

I could see the knots and twists clearly tonight but for me the GRS was elusive. Earlier tonight it was well-placed but I could not detect it. I tried just now and could see the empty space where it should be, near the sunset limb of jupiter, but I could not see any red tones.

Not newly delivered but found after months of looking: a slightly broken AZ-GTI and polar scope doodad.

That was my thinking too - basic EQ mount with tracking. The HEQ5 Syntrek would have been ideal but it's been off the market for a while. I am going back to thinking that a goto 10" dob is the most realistic option for reasonable aperture and portability. Maybe the 12" if i can rejig my garden and sort out a scope trolley.

Had a nice session looking at the Moon and Jupiter with the 90mm frac and Svbony 3-8 zoom. The rille system around Aristarchus stood out well. Jupiter was very clear and stable. The 90mm is a nice scope. I was using very small exit pupils without trouble from floaters - I feel fairly confident in my theory that refractors minimise the effect of floaters, because in obstructed telescopes the floaters bring the central obstruction locally into focus. Took a snap as a memento of a nice evening. Please forgive the green Aristarchus!

The seeing was excellent tonight and I regretted I had the 90mm refractor out instead of the C6. I tried to pull out the surface colors, but had real trouble with the mountains turning green! Aristarchus still looks a bit sickly despite a local touch up.

Yes, larger is not always better. I had an inkling an EQ5 would be ok for a C8, which isn't bad as they come up second-hand at reasonable prices. But if I get an EQ5 it would firstly be for my current scopes- both the 90mm refractor and the C6 would go well on it. I'm not tempted by hyperstar, but if I can get hold of Starizona Night Owl that's close enough at f4. The other scope I do think about in the 8 (ish) inch classical cassegrain. It seems to be a bit better for visual use on the Moon and planets than a C8, but probably a bit worse photographically as it has slightly less resolution. But it is a bit heavier than a C8 - too much for an EQ5?

Never noticed any.

Not that I have a large dob, but my ZS66 can show nice colors in Albireo while the big dob will 'overexpose' them, but surely there are hundreds of faint doubles that are indetectable or colorless in my ZS66 but should show as moderately bright, richly colored doubles in the big dob?

My travel setup includes the ubiquitous AZT6, Artcise tripod, ZS66, ES68 20mm, ES82 6.7mm and Svbony 3-8mm.