LongJohn54

That's quite an ordeal David.   It's great that you are in better health post-op than before.  Hopefully your strength and fitness will continue to improve.

I'd nursed an aneurysm for 50 years (first noted in Great Ormond Street as a teenager).  It had been stable at 42mm (instead of the normal 30) but then began enlarging in 2016.  By 2018 it was 52mm and in danger of going pop. At the same time the aortic valve was beeing stretched and wouldn't fully close leading to low blood pressure and feeling light headed if I stood up quickly.  All my tests were done at Stobhill or the Golden Jubilee apart from one consultation at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital.  When it comes to big operations like this the NHS is really on the top of its game.  👍

@Skipper Billy  Late last year I was shown a post on Facebook where you said you would be away for a while for medical reasons and added an image of the Heart Nebula (which was a pretty big clue).

I'm guessing you spent some time in the Golden Jubilee?  I was in there in 2019 for a replacement aortic root and re-model of my aortic valve.  They had a good team then and I hope they still do.

Wishing you good health and a successful rebuild of your obsy.

Last March I was looking for a new scope/camera combination and had pretty much decided on the Askar 107PDQ and a ZWO cmos camera.  However, I saw the Askar 130PDQ and spotted a review at the bottom of the page by someone called Lee who I discovered was @Lee_P   I had a read (excellent review) and looked for images here and on Astrobin.  I found some great images and most (at the time) were taken with the ZWO 2600MC camera.   So, a change of plan.  I bought the bigger scope and priced up the camera, OAG and guide camera and set about getting the extra cash needed.   Whilst saving I noticed ZWO had released a new camera, the ZWO 2600MC Duo with a built in guide camera.  Wooo, interesting. 😁  Another change of plan.  The only problem was there were none available.   FLO showed out of stock all summer and into the autumn.   Then FLO/ZWO had a black friday sale.  £250(ish) off.  Can't ignore that so I hit the buy button and sat back and waited. And waited.  On 8th January I emailed FLO asking for an update and within the hour had a reply from Grant. (Excellent response as usual).  There were manufacturing delays on anything with the 2600 imaging chip but the camera should be arriving soon.

No snow 🤣

but hiding underneath was a very smart box.  Inside the box was (after carefully opening and unpacking)

Am I excited?

I can now talk to myself (even more than usual) and then write up my notes later.  It saves going into the warm room to type up notes as things happen and lose some dark adaption.  Then again I lose the chance of a quick warm up.  Hmmmm, have I done the right thing?  😂

It's really nice to see Maggie Aderin-Pocock being made a Dame on top of her 2009 MBE.   Well done Dame Maggie.

See your messages.   I've added a link to my dropbox with the original driver CD and all driver updates and instructions.   QGVIDEO included.

Hope this helps.   Let me know when you've got it. 👍

I've been getting Aurora alerts for the last 3 hours.  With the almost full moon up I doubt it'll be visible here but there's no harm in trying.

@Stu Yes, it was great to see. I followed Ganymede all the way across, never losing sight of it.  I missed the shadow transit.  I was getting pretty cold and there was some light high cloud approaching so I packed up soon after.   There will be other and hopefully better chances to see it again.

After so many cloudy nights I wasn't going to let last night get away.  With an almost full Moon and Jupiter close by the choice of what to look at was pretty obvious.  I would sit at the eyepiece for about 20 minutes at a time then go into the warm room for a heat and to type up some notes.

The transit of Ganymede was a real highlight.  Not seeing the Red Spot was disappointing.   Heres my raw notes of the transit attached.

Great video.  Using a microscope to demonstrate the effect that aperture has on the view was enlightening.  I've always had the simplistic thought that more aperture = more light = clearer/sharper view.  Having a technical explanation as to why this happens was worth watching.

See, I know now why I want an Askar 185 APO. 😁

It will perform as good as it looks and it looks fabulous! Congratulations on your purchase.

@mikeDnight I'd arrived at Dunstable Downs well before 4pm as I wanted to catch the comet as early as possible.  I took a photo every couple of minutes until I saw it.  This is my 'discovery' image. I've attached its Exif as well. Just 6 minutes off from your sketch. 😁   It's pretty faint but the comet is to the left of the wispy cloud in the top right third of the image.

The tail was much more vertical then so I think your sketch would be pretty accurate at the time. 👍

On 31/10/2023 at 09:05, mikeDnight said:

I remember it as if it was yesterday despite it being 2006. There was thick cloud above and a thick cloud against the horizon, with a thin strip of sky low down separating the cloud. It was blowing a Gale and snowing, but Venus was visible in the twilight sky and I was determined to catch a glimpse of this Sun grazing daylight comet. Just as I found it Paulastro phoned me to say he'd just found the comet and it was then that I realised how cold my hands were and I struggled to release my grip. 

I made this sketch to commemorate the adventure, but leaving out the snow which was blowing almost horizontally.

That's a lovely sketch.   Here's my image taken 10 Jan 2007 at 17:06 of the Comet and Venus.  I was resting the camera on a cushion on the top of my car in a car park at the top of Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire.  Once the comet disappeared behind the clouds and reappeared it was far too dark for my camera to register anything.  No snow but pretty cold and windy.

Sadly, the clouds failed to part and I saw nothing.  Some nice images above. 👍

On the website if you click HD in the top right corner you can see the map full size in your browser.   Don't forget to disable location (or set it elsewhere) or you'll get a big blob covering the area you really want to see.

Happening now if you are not clouded out.  I'm hopng there will be a better gap in the clouds in 15 minutes time.

13 hours ago, Saganite said:

The eyepiece travels longitudinally, in effect, backwards and forwards along the tube.  It now runs very smoothly after a little fettling , and is really very good.  The first time I have seen anything like this.  This scope I believe, was only supplied to the French Astro market, but I could be wrong.

The 6in version of this was also made by Vixen for Celestron in black. So it's possible these scopes were more widely available.   Photos here -

5 hours ago, bosun21 said:

The Luggie? Is that in the Kirkintiloch area?

Yes, it passes through Kirkintilloch before joining the River Kelvin and on to Glasgow where it joins the River Clyde at Kelvingrove.

We've had light rain overnight and all morning.   Nothing like the deluge of yesterday.  So the Luggie is back to a more normal 'high' and the obsy is drying out nicely.  The black marks in the far corner will scrub up easily and once dry I'll move everything over and lift the tiles off the other side and dry that out.

16 hours ago, Moonshed said:

When we lived in Ayrshire, Scotland, bad weather was the norm, it was to be expected, the Celestron rarely came out of its foot locker in the garage. Then 13 years ago we moved back to sunny England and settled in North Norfolk. We got off to such a good start with more clear skies in one week than I had seen in a whole year in Scotland. It was so good that six years ago I even got into astrophotography and spent bucket loads of cash on new gear. Things went well at first, then it started to get cloudy on a more regular basis until we have the situation today whereby the weather is heading towards how things were in Scotland! You can’t win!

Cheers

Keith

After 30 hours of continuous heavy rain there are currently floods all over Scotland.  Our river (The Luggie) is generally 40cm deep with (rare) highs of 150cm and lows of 14cm.  It was 222cm earlier, not too far below the 249cm record set on 11 December 1994.  If it continues to rain heavily overnight that record could go.

For the first time in 10 years water has been tracking along the roof runners of my obsy and is running down the inside wall and onto the floor.   A flooded obsy! I never thought I'd say that.  Tomorrow I'll lift the rubber floor tiles and dry it all out.

Thaks @Franklin  I'll keep an lookout and see if one becomes available.

I've got a Celestron SP-C6.   It was my first proper scope and I bought it 2nd or 3rd or maybe 4th hand.   Never did get its full history.  The focuser is pretty smooth although quite a short travel.  There's a sliding scale enabling repeat focusing accurate to 0.1 mm.

When I bought it the secondary mirror would not collimate.  This was due to previous owners tightening the screws so much they put dents in the back face of the secondary so no matter what you did these screws always found their way back to the same place.  I put a thin disk inbetween so it could be collimated successfully.

The mount has motors to drive both axis although I do not have the wires or a diagram to create the wiring for them to work.  A divorce and three house moves sealed the fate of that project.  The mount has a built in Vixen plate and the scope rings have corresponding holes to fit.    Scope and mount have been 'resting' in a spare bedroom for 10+ years now.

Large, medium and little.  Revelation 20 x 80, Bresser 8 x 60 and unnamed 1.5 x 28 binoculars

Only one of these has four individually collimatable air spaced lenses, a compass, a mirror and fits in my pocket.  😁

I bought the Bresser 8 x 60 bins from Lidl's famous centre aisle bargain section for (possibly) £30.  Good but at 1kg they are a bit heavy to hold for long.  I think I've had the pocket bins for 40+ years and I can't remember where they came from.  The Revelations were a birthday present 10? years ago.

I sometimes have a wee look through my Vixen 26mm and 7.5mm eyepieces.  They are sharp and clear.

The TV Panoptic 24mm gives a slightly greater magnification (41x verses 38x) and a wider field of view to the Vixen 26mm. I really prefer the Panoptic on a 3x Teleconverter (125x) than struggling with the Vixen 7.5mm (133x).  That 6mm diameter top lens and tight eye relief can be a pain.

Don't worry about your roof runners and supports, they look plenty strong enough.  Mine are 3 x 2 timber (horizontal) each backed up with two strips of 1 inch angle iron which makes for a very lightweight construction.  My roof weighs about 220Kg and I stand on it when opened (another 95kg) to trim back next doors leylandi. Eight years on and they are still straight and level.

Your obsy looks great. 👍