Ludd

Took this shot last night.

Here it is near the triangle, with M81 and M82 at the bottom of the frame, at about 10.30 last night

I’ve captured a balloon once, and some planes in daylight. The balloon came as a complete surprise.

Lovely selection of photos in your gallery Didier! I have used a GPDX with synscan, with Skysensor and now with basic DK3 motors. All with success that is only limited by my lack or time and skill and dedication!

I took a few photos of the moon this evening, using my C8 and a canon 600d. I played around with this shot to bring out the light that came all the way from the side, reflected off half the Earth up to the moon and bounced back here.

Thanks to dweller25, a set of DK3-A drives for my venerable GPDX mount, complete with clutches and a fancy Lynxastro power cable.

Update: after lots of testing, I am satisfied that the direction buttons on the controller are correct and consistent now. I just need clear skies so that I can test the alignment procedure again. I have opened up the gears and they are all sitting nicely. One of the cogs on the R.A. drive was slightly high on its spindle (so only engaged across 80% of the thickness or its neighbour) so I sorted that out. Grease and internal battery are fine. Still no backlight on the display so I have fitted a tiny LED anglepoise light on the mount.

Ah, thanks for that. Yes, that awful cable! I shall have a look but in the absence of any testing equipment (or relevant knowledge) I may have difficulty with a diagnosis.

Thanks to Dweller25 I shall be trying life with good old fashioned motors!

Hi Pete Good point - I did change it about 5 or 6 years ago, but I would have thought it should still be OK after that time. If I can find a meter I will check the battery.

Oh, nice one! I had these drives on a previous GP and they were great. Will send a message later.

I have owned a lovely old Vixen GPDX mount for a good number of years and it has served me very well. The Skysensor drive controller has been a delight - not an intuitive UI but amazing performance. Until recently, that is. I am now suffering from an inability to do a two star alignment, the tracking is unreliable and the motions are very inconsistent when using the direction buttons, with the scope moving in apparently random directions with terrible jittering. I don’t have the knowledge or skills to diagnose the problem, and I am seriously considering abandoning the Skysensor. I might switch to plain motor drives if I can find a cheap set, but in the meantime I will be using my AZ4 and my astrotrac. Does anyone know of anyone not too far away (from Aylesbury area) who might be able to do a diagnosis?

Messed around with two shots of the moon late this afternoon, with a fairly bright star just off the north end of the terminator. Taken through my C8 on a Canon 600d.

Oh, welcome to Forest Hill - but alas I have left the area now. It was in Se23 (Como Road) that I was bitten by the Astro bug for the second time in my life, and I had a lot of fun watching the planets and the ISS from our garden. One night I did manage to glimpse the Cygnus section of the Milky Way but generally galaxies and nebulae were a bit hard to find. Good luck with observing, and enjoy all the things Forest Hill has to offer.

I went out at 6am this last Saturday (19th October) to see what wildlife I might find, but it was still quite dark so I paused in the graveyard of the church of St Nicholas here in sleepy Cuddington and took a few photos with a 10mm Samyang lens on a Canon 600D. Single exposure of 20 seconds at ISO800 on a static tripod.

A brilliant gift - I took an ED70 with me when I went to see my sister in NZ and it was ideal, lovely clear views in a tiny package. Oh, and my sister is now a regular at her local observatory.

Sounds good - can APT run in the camera or does it need a separate PC?

Indeed: however the single long exposure meant I could come back indoors for more food and and drink!

A single 1648 second shot taken through a Samyang 10mm lens on a modded 1000D from a back garden in Hartington.

Sorry not to be more specific than 10.45pm on 22 July 2019 CE and following the sort of W to E trajectory I would associate with the ISS. I rarely synchronise chronometers when enjoying a summer evening in the garden.

Aha, my wife and I saw this very same thing from our garden in Bucks on Monday night. I speculated that it might be a very recently launched vehicle on its way up to orbit, as there was no way something at the ISS level would be moving so quickly across the sky. Did you think it looked slightly bluer white than, say, the ISS? As it was travelling west to east I did wonder about a supply vessel for the ISS. Or could it have been Chandrayaan?

Just emerging from a performance of Brian Eno’s Apollo soundtracks in the Barbican, I spied the ISS passing overhead. The technology has moved on so much, but the achievement of the Apollo missions is still astounding. Sadly won’t be observing tonight.

I did glance at the road from time to time...

Sadly I was driving most of the evening but as I can down the M1 into Leicestershire I saw the pink crescent rising, and was able to watch it for then next 90 minutes or so as I came through Northants and Bucks, including a brief appearance of the ISS nearby at abou 22.05 and a nice bright Jupiter. Alas, by the time I got home I was too pooped to take any pictures.

Greetings from another Bucks-based stargazer. Some good dark bits out here west of Aylesbury.