Ags

I think that weights more than my entire eyepiece case with contents 🤣

They didn't "light the candle". Now I need to order something for delivery on Friday to celebrate the next launch attempt. There's always the hope they deliver my polar scope holder on Friday...

Did they remember to realign the warp coils? Their shields probably depolarized.

I don't have the Apollo 11 eyepiece, but I do have the Artemis 1 AZ-GTI & polar scope. Hopefully the widget that connects the two together will come before Artemis 2.

I have added 7mm to the page margins and resolved the resulting page break issues. There were some glitches in the table of contents too. I have been working on the high-contrast black and white version too.

The best time for me is late summer, early autumn I like region around the Summer Triangle, Cassiopeia, Perseus and Andromeda.

William and John Herschel both described this nebula as very faint and its resemblance to a large landmass was only a photographic discovery.

I was exploring the mysterious region around Pegasus with the help of the proof copy of Discovering Double Stars II. Started by estimating tonight's bortle and it was a good (for me) 8. I jumped from Algenib to Caldwell 43 but saw nothing as I expected. I continued the hop to STT 505 in the middle of the Pegasus square, but couldn't make out a companion. STF 24 is an easy hop from Alpheratz, easy but not very bright. 36 Andromedae at 1.2" is possibly the tightest split I have ever managed with my C6. I suspected it was a double at 140x, but pushing up the power to 300x got a clean and indisputable split. STF 3044 south-west of Algenib was worth three stars in my log but I can't remember why! STF 22 impressed me less - it seemed fainter that the advertised 7.1/7.7 magnitude. Jupiter was higher now at 1:30AM, so I had a long look at 157x with an SLV 6. There were glimpses of detail in the two main bands, and the red spot stood out well at times. I have a nagging feeling the views were better in my long-gone 102 mm Maksutov...

That is from over-sharpening I think, sharpening has the downside of sharpening the noise too.

I have the proof copy. There's a few issues - I need to make the inside margin wider for a start.

I guess so, but not 100% certain this will apply to the AZ-GTIX too.

Oh no I just bought the AZ-GTI! I wonder if this can do EQ?

A 0.5" split is phenomenal! Very well done 😀

As some of you may know, my GTi has developed a jiggle in AZ making it useless for photography and planetary viewing. I thought about getting the new SA GTi or the new Ioptron SkyHunter, but I decided to keep faith with the AZ GTi and a new copy shipped today to me, this time with a polar scope too. Really realllllly hoping the new one doesn't do the AZ runaway thing. I'll either sell the old one as spares or try to fix it.

Well, tonight I was trying out the NLV 9 and 12, I thought the 12 would put a bit more color in the Great Red Spot with a brighter image but not sure it did. Also had the SLV 6 in the finderscope - I think I managed to pick out one band on the tiny disk!

1 is too short for me, I will wait for the Artemis 7 commemorative eyepiece.

The NLV 9 won it. The SLV 6 and ES 6.7 were ok too, but the 9mm had the best contrast and the best focus "snap". A shadow transit was in progress and it was clearest in the 9mm. I started with a Speers WALER 10, but that had far too much scatter. I think an SLV 8 would be perfect, if only they made one 😀 I repeated the experiment on Saturn with similar results.

Tonight's mission is to find the perfect Jupiter eyepiece for my C6 at f6.3, and the case has been loaded up with the candidates. Out with the wider eyepieces and in with the SLV 6 and NLV 9 and 12. My money is on the NLV 9, but maybe the ES 6.7 or even the SLV 6 might snatch the title.

Well it's Bortle 9 here, so I think it would work well with my color camera.

These eyepieces look great. Ten out of ten for style.

I have put the new version online, so I would really appreciate anoyone taking the trouble to have a look and give feedback. Discovering Double Stars (discovering-astronomy.eu) I am waiting for the print proof to do a deep edit on the book, it has a had a few screen edits, but paper shows the issues 100% better. The new version is not added to any marketplaces yet.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/light-pollution-reduction-imaging/optolong-3nm-dual-band-l-ultimate-light-pollution-filter.html Looks great. I wonder if you can use it with a mono sensor by simply stacking it with a dichroic red or green filter?

Finally a camera worthy of my ST80!

You could get 2 ASI6200s and image with twice the speed/area for half the price!

That's so true, especially as modern sensors work very well with short subs, so no need to get a heavy mount capable of 5 minutes unguided, for a small scope anyway. I am flipping and flopping between the AZGTi and the SAGTi at the moment - not totally sure the SAGTi adds value...