Ags

Lots of detail on the Moon tonight. Viewing at an exit pupil of 0.8 mm was ok, no troubling floaters at night. I did try the same eyepiece in daylight with a Wratten #8 filter to boost contrast but the floaters were abominable. Not quite sure how that works optically... Seriously impressed with the detail shown by the ZS66 at only 79x magnification. The scope could go higher but my eyes won't 😏 Sometimes I wish there was less detail on the Moon, I would be able to make sense of it then! Had a long look at the Sun earlier in the day too.

I like getting several DSOs in the view at once. Double Cluster, M46 & M47, M31 & M32 & M110, Leo Triplet, Double Double, Double Double's Double, M81 & M82...

Dogs have owners, cats have staff.

Label positioning was highlighted as an area for improvement in the edit. I have been working the past couple of days to refine label positions. Rather than some fancy coding to automatically move labels to free areas, I am simply going through all the labels and shifting them to one of 12 standard positions manually - I think I will get better results this way, without the headaches of fighting a label-placing algorithm. Before: After:

And that's why I use argon-purged, waterproof ES eyepieces 🤣

It's actually the first light photo from my ASI485MC when I got it a few months ago. Omar Dog is 13 now and doesn't get too excited about cats any more. He even learned to be friends with a lost racing pigeon we adopted. Gorgeous cat! We used to have a gentle cat named Merlin that kept getting beaten up by a blackbird pair living in our hedge!

With or without a telescope? Without: M31. With: not sure, can't remember them all!

Did someone mention cats? My cat detection officer might have something to say on the subject!

My beautifully crafted, home-made wooden eyepiece case has slots for 12 eyepieces. However I rethink my eyepiece collection, I always end up "needing" 13 eyepieces!

I was pressed for time today but I managed to shoot a few 500 5 ms frame sequences at 43 mm aperture. SS60-DS -> 0.5x Reducer -> ASI485MC -> AS3! -> IMPPG -> GIMP

Just got the book back from the editor - lots of work to do!

The diagrams are to different scales, but in any case I don't have access to the level of bespoke publishing needed for cutouts and overlays.

Looking at ways to indicate other objects in the finder charts without crowding them too much. My latest attempt is to use index numbers with a key at the bottom of the page.

By the way, I uploaded version 2 as a JPG and it looked horrible (sky was very red), then I re-uploaded as a PNG and picture on SGL resembled the way I processed it. Is the JPG auto-stretch some kind of site feature?

The cheap one 😀 - GSO 1.25" 0.5x 2012 vintage. I had to take it apart and reseat the lens to get it to work properly, but it it was money well spent. Admittedly, I found no use for it for 10 years...

M97 is faint. It took 14 years of trying to see it before I finally found it. It took a trip to La Palma to get skies dark enough, but just 66 mm was enough aperture.

I did a reprocess, and managed to tame the red, but I couldn't resist maxing out the Sharpen settings...

I made some progress on focusing. I focus with full aperture to exaggerate misfocus, and then use the step down rings to switch to SOA (standard operating aperture - 43 mm). Obviously my best effort at focus at f15.5 is further sharpened up by changing to f21.

Best 8% of 1000 5 ms frames, SS60-DS, ASI485MC, 0.5x reducer. Thin cloud, so lots of scattered light.

I like it when something absurdly low tech (or in this case, no tech) works like a charm.

Thanks, I just wish I could find focus every time!

I have given up on the solar bullet finder. It is simply vague and annoying! Fortunately the scope is black, and I now get perfect alignment every time by just watching the sunlight graze the dust on the focus ring!

Tried with my humble Super 25 eyepiece today. I much prefer the views over the 30 mm, despite the many shortcomings of the Super 25. I could make out nice detail in the filaments and proms. There's an SLV 25 with my name on it somewhere. I've posted the picture elsewhere, but just putting it here in case this thread gets googled.