Ags

I am happy to say the PDF is now available for comment online. The project took three times longer than I expected. It covers over 380 deep sky objects, including the obvious Messiers and Caldwells, but adding over 160 further galaxies, clusters, nebulae and variable and carbon stars. I upgraded the charts from the format in the Discovering double Stars, with a (I hope!) slightly more polished look, related object markers, and better label placement. Here is a link to the shareware PDF. It's optimised for online viewing. Discovering Deep Sky Objects The next step involves me getting a print test copy and to incorporate any feedback I receive, then I will put the book on Lulu (spiral bound) and Amazon (softcover and hardback). Unlike Discovering Double Stars, there is just one version covering the entire sky - I find maintaining multiple versions a bit overwhelming at times. I single-source the publishing, but each item needs separate administration in the online retailers, so with this book I am keeping things simple.

In the end I nudged, flipped or suppressed 731 labels. Maybe automating it would have been worth the effort! 🤣

Took the white light scope out today - I lost count of the number of spots on show.

A picture says a thousand words!

I had an out of body experience when I set up and realized the error! I couldn't source a cable while I was there, but I had some eyepieces and it was a magical visual-only trip.

Flying to La Palma and realising you forgot the USB cable for the camera.

The white light rendition is stunning.

Olly, the adverts can't do ALL the work. You have to work with the adverts to get to the magical "Add to Shopping Cart" click. 🤣

If I can't get excited about a 90 mm f5.5 fluorite doublet that weighs 2 kgs and disassembles like an 1970s movie assassin's rifle, exactly under what circumstances should I get excited? 🤣

@JeremyS which end is the eyepiece?

Eyepieces with funny focal lengths. 6.7 mm...

My ZS66 came to me with a large Starfleet sticker over a scratch, so I suppose I should ensure editorial balance by getting the Borg. The 107 FL looks quite manageable too...

A Borg 90 FL. It's got to be the perfect grab and go travel scope out there. Just 2 kgs. Small. The best RFT that can do planets and doubles too? And capable of taking pretty pictures. It's on my long-term wish-list. I only have to sell an internal organ or two, and find a convincing reason why I need a fourth telescope. Has anyone actually looked through one?

Was looking at Gassendi too although I could not make out the rimae with 66 mm aperture. I tried pushing up the magnification to 130x by using an extension ring on the Speers-WALER 4.9 mm, but I think the extension ring is going in junk box - lots of lateral chromatic aberration and no sharpness off axis. On axis the view was good. Looking at a Nagler 3.5mm on FLO and thinking. There's got to be a cheaper option surely?

Getting close to the end now - wrote the acknowledgements section, and created an icon for the "related objects" paragraph. Final edit tomorrow, and then some work on the website and I can share the PDF.

I've been waiting for this pic for a long time! Brilliant work 😀 Now let's turn this imaging array onto Betelgeuse!

Lovely picture. THe scope is telling you: Don't sell me! Don't sell me!

Very impressive pictures - photographing doubles is quite challenging. I have been meaning to try some "deep" double star images, using lucky imaging with my C6, but trying to capture some field stars too.

Observing from Amsterdam, next to Schiphol Airport, I have found that various filters have not helped and instead made the stars unnatural colors. In theory an OIII filter should help on the right targets, but I prefer the unfiltered views of things I can see. On the subject of M57, this is quite a bright nebula that should punch through light pollution. It is hard to spot at low powers because of its size, and with a large exit pupil the sky becomes white (at my site) so the nebula becomes unspottable. Observing with an exit pupil of 1-2 mm makes fuzzy objects much more visible for me - the larger scale helps and the sky background is at least a dark grey, which seems to help with contrast with the DSO. And of course the darker sky background makes the view more beautiful. In a city I never use exit pupils over 3 mm. Obviously magnification makes the DSO fainter too, but the eye seems to apply an S-shaped stretch to the view, and you want the DSO in the middle of your neurological histogram!

Please don't give him ideas! Anyway the Moon is actually pretty dark - apparently it has the albedo of worn asphalt. It has an albedo of 0.12, which compares quite well with something really dark like charcoal (0.04). They probably will paint it black or tow it away eventually - the light of a full Moon will detract too much from the shining orbital advertisements they'll be putting up soon

I am happy with it, but I don't have much experience. Maybe ignorance is bliss?

Great images!

I am pretty pleased with my Scout. I got it just before the price rise, so even more pleased because of that. Surface detail is subtle - I don't know how it might look in another scope, but I think the human eye does struggle a little with distinguishing deep shades of red anyway. But I can see sunspots and plages and swirls and mottling. The scope shines with showing off prominences and filaments however. It took a while to find the right tuning setting - this required methodically photographing at each setting and comparing the images. What also helps is stopping down the aperture as quarks work better at f30 than f15.5. I typically stop down to 43 mm (f22) aperture using some cheap dslr step-down rings. I have posted a few pictures from the Scout on the forum; I am very happy with the photographic performance. Visually, I have found as little magnification as possible is best - usually a 30 mm eyepiece, although sometimes I enjoy a 25 mm or 20 mm more.

Nice report! When I have picked up any color in M57, it's definitely been of the green variety.

I tried an experiment today. I removed the reducer (doubling the scale of the Sun) and increased my aperture from 43 mm to 52 mm, to see if I could get any further detail out of the Scout. I partially inverted the image to compensate for the weak contrast I get as I open up the aperture on the Scout.