Ags

My travel setup: Long Perng 90, RACI50 finder, AZ-GTI, AZT6, Artcise C60 tripod, Askar FMA 135, SLVs, Svbony 3-8 zoom, very light laptop, talentcell battery. I am considering ways to use the Askar as a finder, but that means getting enough backfocus for an Amici prism.

Doesn't Damian Peach take a C14 to the Caribbean? I'm assuming that's not carry on. Maybe he books a seat for it 😃

For the same true field, does a fast newtonian show more coma than a slow newtonian? For example, assuming I use a 24 mm 68° ep in a 6" f6 scope and a 16mm 68° ep in a 6" f4 scope, thus showing the same true field, would I see the same amount of coma?

Two books about observatories, received gratis from another member.

I am not anti-progress in general but remember these have to beam the energy down to earth. That means the station has to be well above the horizon at night and of course in full sun. Unless we start laying superconducting power lines, the receiver stations have to be relatively local, so if UK is receiving energy, then the power stations have to be in the UK's night sky. It's doubtful that the orbit would be as low as the ISS (to much atmospheric drag and space junk) so if we assume an orbit ten times higher, then I think the power station would be maybe 100 times fainter - still around magnitude -6, so it would cast quite visible shadows and definitely ruin night vision. I don't think a higher orbit is a technical problem actually as the receiver stations would themselves be enormous covering many square kilometers. I used to be a fan of orbital power, and still would be if I could be assured that the night environment would not be (further) ruined. As astronomers we can adapt to these changes of course - Solar, lunar and planetary observing would be unaffected at least, but the birds and insects cannot adapt, at least not in the short term.

The idea of orbiting solar power stations is gaining more and more traction. UK innovators get £4.3m to develop space-based solar power | Solar power | The Guardian In a couple of decades there might be dozens or even hundreds of these in orbit. I imagine each one would be as bright as the Moon. The destruction of the night-time environment, with all of the associated health and environmental damage, would be complete. At least we wouldn't need streetlights any more. The ISS is very roughly 60 m x 90 m, while orbital solar stations could have surface areas around 10 square km. That is about 1000 times bigger, so about 8.5 magnitudes brighter. The ISS is mag -3, these would be edging towards mag -12, roughly equivalent to a full Moon.

THat's an impressive amount of research and observing hours. It looks likely to be a very interesting book

I am happy to say Discovering Double Stars II is now available from FLO. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/discovering-double-stars-ii-by-agnes-clarke.html

Congrats on the successful surgery!

The junk mail person delivered this helpful notification to me. Rethinking my eyepiece collection now...

Yes, the famous Not a Number Nebula 😁

By the way, I want a proper Duo Band Filter with a narrow OIII passband. It only took me a couple of nights with the ZWO to start dreaming of the next upgrade 🤪

Here is the latest state after adding another 400 subs to the stack. Also processed differently, mostly in Gimp with a little help from Siril. Stacked in DSS. I'm up to 137 minutes integration time, which is the longest I have ever spent on a target. Annoyingly I have cleaned up the noise in the noisy parts of the first image, but the extra time has revealed new noise areas! Hopefully I can add 2 more hours at least to this image, I am happy with what I am seeing so far. That will be about 2000 subs, I hope my hard drive doesn't burst! Bottom right is a bad corner, but that is because clouds rolled in last night and field rotation had not covered that area yet.

I got an hour then cloud seeped in.

It's clear tonight - I am going to try triple my integration time! And shoot some bias if I remember!

Shot last night - 8 second subs, 1.4 hours of them, ALT-AZ (no idea where my polar scope is at 😄 ). My new AZ GTis so much better behaved and more reliable than my old one!

I have been trying to get a good picture of the NaN for a few years. Now that I have a good camera - ASI485MC, a good scope - Askar FMA135, a good filter - ZWO Duo Band - a good laptop (one that has hours of battery life), a good mount (an AZGTI that doesn't randomly slew away randomly every half hour), and good software (Siril and Gimp)... I feel that surely there can be no more excuses. It's time to put up or give up. This is 1.4 hours from last night, just a first quick process to see if there is anything viable. I am pretty pleased with this, but I'll need to shoot more subs tonight if it stays clear.

Whilst packing up tonight I saw a very bright whitish green streak shoot past, low down to the south east, going in a north east direction. It seemed composed of more than one point of light, but if it was a plane it would have had to be flying very low and totally silent. It was bright enough to light up the garden, and although it was faster than a plane it could have been a bit slower that the average shooting star. Did anyone else in the Amsterdam area see this presumed fireball at around 03:05 AM Netherlands time?

In the fifties and sixties it was USA vs USSR, there could only be one winner. We got to the Moon. in the following decades we played nice and clubbed together… building space stations. It seems we got a bit more done scientifically and technologically when when we persuaded the general public and politicians that getting the “right” flag on the Moon was somehow very important? When space is presented as an opportunity for cooperation and peace… people aren’t that interested? I’m not trying to start a political debate, but I’m interested the psychology of this. Does public debate focus on the negative, so that when cooperating our discourse is “our partners are spending less than us!!!” while when competing our fear is “our rivals are spending more than us!!!”?

Brings back memories!

I like the second one a bit more, but they are both fabulous. I don’t think you need more saturation, the colors are rich and natural looking.

I also missed the NaN the other night - it's a busy region of the sky and easy for me at least to star-hop down the wrong rabbit hole. Since then I've hopped to it successfully several times. Another problem is that in the Bortle 8 skies I have, the NaN is so faint there is at most only the slightest hint of the target... Siril is definitely worth looking up, I have been trying it for the past couple of weeks and I think it is amazing.

42 minutes in Bortle 8 on theNorth America Nebula. Slight crop. I used my Astronomik L3 filter because my intended filter, a ZWO Duo Band, only got delivered the following morning. This is the most I can get from it as flats failed so I couldn’t correct for the gradient overlapping the nebula.

Binoviewing!

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