Ouroboros

Nice one! I peeped out the curtains during the night. Jupiter was very bright and beautiful despite the bright moon.

What hassle? It takes a few minutes to sync the mount to the stars. I usually do it before it's properly dark just as the brightest stars like Vega, Arcturus etc are coming out.

I regret not building (or buying) an observatory 7 years ago when we got somewhere suitable for astronomy in Cornwall. I went for the safer/easier/cheaper option of a suitably sited shed for use as a warmroom/storage, plus a bit of hard standing on which to set up the telescope. It's better than setting up in the middle of the lawn each night, but not as good as having a permanent set up. So my advice is go for it!

Never heard of your step 4 before. I use the slew and sync buttons in CdC. After polar alignment I: slew to a bright star using CdC step to the eyepiece and centre the star by adjusting the scope using a gamepad (set up with EQMOD) press sync in CdC repeat as required. Sometimes I just sync to a few stars around the region of the sky I'm imaging.

I have a question about something he said last night. He claimed that our solar system is different in form to most found orbiting stars in our galaxy. Our solar system has a group of smaller rocky planets close in to our star, and larger gas giants further out. Whereas most solar systems found so far have large planets orbiting close in to their star. But I thought our techniques for exoplanet detection were more likely to discover large planets with short orbital periods. Is thus still the case? If so the data so far is not statistically representative and our type of solar system may not be so rare.

I thought last night's episode on Jupiter was a tad slow in parts. I kept saying to the TV "Oh, get on with it". I also dislike his tendency to quiet often state as fact things that are really just best estimates based on the evidence as it is now. To give him his due, however, he does occassionally add words like "we think" or "the evidence suggests" etc.

Yes, you've improved that, Carole. It has a better colour balance.

Gorgeous that!

I guess I'm a bit old school here. I use CdC but I align the mount using the polar align tool in EQASCOM.

Hello, MakkettSo. I'm from Kent too. Don't live there now though. Starting out with bins for a couple of years is a good way to get to know Astronomy IMO.

Ah, well, it's easy for the expert!

It is nice. Saturn on the other side of the Milky Way too I think? Was it tricky processing given the Bortle class 5 sky?

Excellent image. I can tell how much work has already gone into it. I can't add any useful suggestions, but I look forward to see the reprocessed image.

Unless I had a secure place to store my mount near where I set up I would not want to lug my AZ-EQ6 any more that a few steps to where I set up. It's not a silly weight - about 18kg I think - but it's a clumsy lump to get hold of. To some extent this will depend on how young and strong you are of course. I'm slightly older and like to take care of my back. I am happy with it as a mount. I only ever use it as an EQ mount. At the time I bought it I felt it was slightly better engineered than the slightly older Skywatcher EQ6 mount. I use it for the telescopes and various bits shown in my sig below for which it seems entirely adequate.

I don't usually like Brian Cox's presentation style. Too gushing. But he toned that down a bit in the first episode of the Planets that I watched last night. I enjoyed it. Unlike a lot of modern documentaries, that assume the viewer has the attention span of a goldfish, the programme was more like a lecture with superb graphics. It had pace, or at least more pace than a lot of science documentaries, which only too often have tediously slow delivery. You had to pay attention to Brian Cox to follow the narrative. OK, I knew a lot of it, but I learnt some things too. For example I hadn't realised that the evidence sugests Mercury has lost a lot of its rocky mantle in a major collision, or maybe a succession of smaller collisions. Also that the planet had once been further out in the solar system because of the presence of certain elements detected on Mercury's surface. I wondered just how speculative all this was. Personally I thought the programme was worth watching, and I'm not Brian Cox's biggest fan. I will try and catch episode 2 anyway.

Oh no! I just want to give my sympathies for your disaster. We all dread something like this happening. I don't know this scope so I can't add anything helpful. No doubt someone more knowledgable will be along in a while who can make some useful suggestions.

Really lovely that image, John. The colours are really good. Good to have the info on the object along with the image too. I had forgotten how large M13 is. Nice one.

Many don't. They're usually focused 30cm in front of them at their phone as they walk along. The young ones anyway. Hanging around and staring up at the sky is usually enough to prompt the curious to ask what's up. I don't usually buttonhole passers by though and insist they look up. Might not get a friendly response. I got a good response one early morning a few years back when I set my telescope up on the Ridgeway to get a good view of the partial eclipse of the sun as it rose through the mist. Surprising how many dog walkers there are at that unearthly hour. All stopped and looked at the pics appearing on the screen of my DSLR and wanted to know what was happening. I had quite a few nice chats.

They knew the Greek alphabet even before the Greeks did. Amazing. 😉 Shouldn't that be sine theta over sine phi - angle of incidence and angle of refraction? Just saying! 🙂

Fabulous image. Competition level definitely. I'm amazed it's so good given the presence of the Moon. I guess it helped that you were looking North and the Moon was in the south west.

I totally agree with the sentiment of the thread. In fact I quite like it when I know a clear period isn't forcast to last long, or there's intermittent cloud, because I don't feel the excuse to go for an imaging session. I can just tour the skies visually. Actually the the same sentiment might also be applied to imaging. I don't feel the need to strive on every occassion to achieve 'publishable' image quality, let alone anything to rival the masters. There's not much chance of that in my case anyway. I don't have the time, the opportunity, the equipment or the skill. Nevertheless, it's good to take even modest image as a simple record of what I've done. I normally print a small 6x4", stick it in my A4 note book and write a few words about the object like what it is, how far away, angular diameter, description and the conditions on the night.

Thanks. I'll try and learn the keyboard versions: 🙂 ":-)". 😉 ";-)". There's 2.

Thanks to all who worked hard to achieve this transition, and for maintaining this great side so well. It is very much appreciated. Just an observation. I notice the emoticon window is still very slow to drop down. Can anything be done about that?

OK. Thanks. I tend to frame mine at any angle that suits, for astro pics that is. But perhaps you use it for terrestrial photography. For that I can imagine it's quite useful. I'm often finding my horizon line is not level with my old Canon 450D. I bet it comes as standard on modern digitals. It's certainly on my little Lummix camera.

@emyliano2000 what's the ice cube thingy on top of the DSLR?