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Hi all. Sharing my capture of Jupiter from 19 April 2017. The video comprises frames from 1622UT to 1718UT and shows the GRS traversing the planet. Video can be viewed at either the youtube or attachment link below. https://youtu.be/8M7d3m34c5I 2017-04-19-1622_1-RGB_pipp_x264.mp4 Equipment used: Celestron C8, QHY5L-II-C, GSOx2.5barlow

I had another go at imaging the shrinking Mars, this time without and with a x2 Barlow lens. The results are better with the Barlow, which is what one is led to expect. For whatever reason (probably bad seeing and/or low planets) when I tried a Barlow previously it just made the blur bigger. Equipment: C8 SE, ASI120MC, x2 Skywatcher kit Barlow element screwed directly into 1.25" barrel of the ZWO camera. This does seem to give x2 in practice. I did not use an ADC on the grounds that I shouldn't need one with Mars at an altitude of over 40 degrees. 3000 image video captured with Sharpcap. Processed in Registax6. I found that the Sharpcap exposure histogram did not appear to work on such a small image, so had to estimate the exposure. Yes, optical ADC correction would be better, but the dispersion seemed very small. Blowing up the image x2 in Registax showed a small colour fringe, which I took out with a single point of correction. The images show some surface detail though the contrast is low (if you are using a flatscreen try viewing from below: ?) Mare Sirenum, with Mare Acidalium just discernible foreshortened at upper right.

An image of Jupiter taken late evening, 27 June. Not as good as some other people's efforts, but one of my best Jupiter images this year. The planet was low (around 15 deg) and the seeing was not great. CPC800, ASI224MC, ADC, captured in Sharpcap, processed in Registax6. Best 20% of 5000 frames IIRC. One of the images here is a random raw frame, to show what I had to work with. Io should be visible on left in the processed image.

An image of Jupiter taken early morning, 16 June. Not as good as some other people's efforts, but the planet was low (around 15 deg) and the seeing was not great. CPC800, ASI224MC, ADC, captured in Sharpcap, processed in Registax6. Best 15% of 7000 frames IIRC. One of the images here is a random raw frame, to show what I had to work with. Ganymede should be visible on left in the processed image. GRS coming into view on left.

Hi all, a friend of mine is thinking about selling his 1982 C8 on a motorized wedge mount. He has already found a buyer for it, willing to pay €700 for it... He wonders though, if this particular setup might become a rarity, and so a prized asset...? Or, on the other hand, if it could be worthwile to take the OTA off of the mount, stick a dovetail on it and put it on a nice secondhand HEQ5 or similar... Opins? Thanks!! Gerhard.

I have continued to image Mars as it moves away. It is getting smaller, but on the other hand I don't have to get up in the middle of the night, the dust storm has subsided, and it is gaining significantly in altitude. Here is a series of images taken in September and early October, all taken with a C8 SE, ASI120MC, +ADC, processed in Registax 6. The seeing was often poor, but seemed better on Oct 3.

Found an old (apparently USA model) celestron C8 SCT a while back, its a bit hit n miss with collimation and the optics - (some very strange star test shapes :P) but when it works it works well Here is a couple images from a couple months back. Thanks for looking. This particular night seeing was reasonably good, and collimation wasn't too bad either. Celestron C8 / ASI120MC / 2X barlow - captured in sharpcap2, stacked in autostakkert!2, wavelets in registax6

Here is an image of Jupiter, taken around 6am on 15 Feb with my C8, ASI120MC, +ADC, processed in Registax6 from around 30% of 3000 frames. I am fairly pleased with it considering that the altitude of the planet was only about 12 deg. and the seeing looked bad when I tried to focus on a star. And it shows the Great Red Spot.

Here is an image of Mars I made on 9 Jan this year, with a C8 SE, and ASI120MC camera. The images are rather small (around 7" dia). Mars is now much higher in the sky than at opposition, so it seemed worth taking a few farewell images as it diminishes in size. Captured with Sharpcap. I did not use the ADC - the images are corrected for AD in the processing in Registax. This is from a run of 3000 images. I have included a x3 Photoshop zoom of the same image to indicate the size of Mars at opposition on the same scale. I was quite pleased to record some surface detail, corresponding with the position of Syrtis Major. If I'd had more time, I could have tried some images using a Barlow lens. I have just discovered that I can unscrew the lens section from a Skywatcher x2 Barlow and screw it onto the 1.25" nosepiece of the ASI120MC, which will give a more modest zoom (I think).

Mars was taken at night between 20:57 and 22:29 UTC. Equipment used: Celestron SCT C8, Barlow 2x, GSO #29 (dark red), ASI120MM Mini, HEQ5 mount. Animation was prepared from 20 images with drizzle 150% (the best 10% of frames from 60-second movies): One of the best images from 21:55UT:

The postman, well DHL delivery guy, bought a few sizeable packages this morning. After waiting a month for an AYO II from Switzerland, only to find out it was going to be another 4-5 weeks lead time, I had to cancel the order as I am currently mountless and booked in for the SWAG Star Party end of March. Instead, I placed an order for an Altair Sabre V2 with dual vixen saddles from Harrison telescopes which were all in stock. I also took advantage of the Celestron spring sale and thanks to the guys @FLO for splitting out a C8 Evolution OTA for me. I could have had a standard C8 but I lke the silver OTA colour and "Evolution" sounds, well...cool. To go with it I added an Astrozap Flexi-heat dew shield and SCT adapter for my 2" Altair diagonal. The Sabre, saddles, C8 and dew shield all arrived safely together this morning I already have a Celestron CG5 2" tripod waiting at home so hope to be building up a nice manual alt/az, dual scope setup this evening. Initial impressions of the Sabre are good. The clear anodised finish is not quite as nice as I'd hoped, it's rather dull, but the machining is very nice. Both axis are smooth although there's a little stiction, but I'm sure that will vanish with the weight of the scopes. It's quite a lump to handle, more so than I'd imagined. I don't think it will qualify as grab and go with a C8 and ST120 mounted and attached to the CG5 tripod. The Altair vixen saddles are very nice indeed, finished in black with the Altair logo machined in. The clamp knobs are chunky and when turned, the clamp glides smoothly in on a Teflon washer and is sprung out, for removal of OTA without having to slide the dovetail through the clamp. I would apologise for the impending cloudiness, but quite frankly someone else must have made one hell of a purchase a few weeks ago to bring on the current permacloud Watch this space for pics.

Hi, wondered if any CEM40 owners could tell me if they image with a C8 or similar and what results they get ? Also will I need 2 counterweights ? Scope / camera etc = 8kg. Cheers

Whilst carrying out a star test I have noticed with a friends C8 that one side of focus appears to be collimated and the other side of focus its off, is this a common problem? Is his best option to collimate as an average so its slightly off either side?

I am currently waiting for a nice shiny 100mm refractor to arrive... to put on my new HEQ5 PRO. Meanwhile, lurking in the garage in a case that hasn't been opened in over 20 years is a 40 years old this year Celestron C8 - the original fork mounted type in orange.... I'm suspecting that in order to get say a long dovetail plate to fit to it will require some modifications? At 2,000mm f/10 it will be good for lunar and Jupiter and Saturn. Has anyone any experience of doing this with the old style C8? It's fair to say I either lack the requisite skills or equipment to do anything more complex than screw/bolt things together, is if it is more than that, suggestions as to who could carry out any necessary modifications would be welcome. I realise DEC balance will be an issue on a GEM with an SCT... (In case you're wondering... back in 1980 when I bought it, there were no such things as dew straps, or much of anything else and I just found it not easy to use, eyepieces were ferociously expensive and I was a lowly bank clerk at the time, then I bought a house....). Ron.

I had my C8 SE out for some visual observing but did not get much done (full moon). There was some action at Jupiter so I put the ASI224MC and the ADC on to take some images. 5000 frame videos, processed best 20% with Registax6. The result was better than I expected with Jupiter at an altitude of 14 degrees. The image shows the Great Red Spot, some nice cloud detail, the shadow of Io and there ought to be a transiting Io there somewhere.

Here is a EEVA-style image of Neptune and apparently its largest moon, Triton. I had been trying to image planetary nebulae before aiming the gear at Neptune, and noticed a faint smudge below the severely over-exposed planet. It was possibly easier to see at the time than on the processed image attached (between planet and arrow). It seems to match the position given by Sky & telescope's Triton Tracker. At around mag 13.5, Triton would normally be beyond the reach of a C8 used visually even in ideal conditions. Image is inverted, taken 12Aug at 22.40 UT. CPC800,ASI224MC, flip mirror. Gibbous moon.

It is not often in the UK that we have a bank holiday weekend, a new moon and a clear sky at the same time. Last night was one of those rare occasions! The forecast (Clear Outside) was not very definitive about the cloud cover, but from looking at the satellite images and from experience, I thought this could be a magnificent sky as we were on the backside of the last weather front. So, I thought – let’s give it a go, we could be rewarded. By 9pm the car was packed with the C8 and my trusty Vixen SP-DX. A quick check on my friend Steve, and yes, he was up for it, too. Steve is a beginner, so I offered to show him some of the objects I am familiar with and should give a decent view under good conditions. I also wanted to see some of the fainter galaxies which populate the spring skies. The spot we were planning on using is in Southern Cambridgeshire – and compared to light polluted London and St Albans, this looks like “Deep-Sky-Country”, although it actually isn’t perfect. It’s the improvement from the home conditions that count! On the way, I cranked up the aircon to maximum (lowest temp) to pre-cool the scope. This was going to be a chilly night… Arrived at the spot just after 10pm, Steve parked up five minutes later. Thankfully the wind that had battered the South East the whole day had eased off and the remnants of daytime clouds soon hurried to disappear. I spent some time building up the scope and polar aligning while the last bits of twilight disappeared. The sky was now fully dark and really quite impressive considering how close to London this place still is. To the South the capital’s light dome stretched to about 20° above the horizon. Cambridge cast its lights in the North-East although to a much lesser degree. The spring constellations were up to the South with Leo having passed the meridian and the plough right above us in the zenith. We started the evening with a simple target to warm up – M3. A delightful sparkle of stars filled the eyepiece. With the 15mm LV (133x) the core was starting to be resolved - the telescope was not completely cooled down yet, but this was indeed a good starter to the night indeed. Next, we changed direction and pointed at M51, which clearly showed the two galaxy nuclei and the surrounding disc of haziness with direct vision. No spiral structure visible (but that wasn’t really expected with 8” anyway). The pair was nicely framed in the 30mm NLVW (68x) with a foreground star in NGC5194 clearly discernible. As spring is galaxy season we pushed the scope over to Denebola in Leo to go hunting for members of the Virgo cluster. We started with M98, which was a fuzzy faint blob and a bit disappointing. Next object was M99, which was much more pronounced although without any detail in the 30mm. Over to M84 and the starting point of Markarian’s chain. Using the 40mm Celestron Axiom eyepiece (70° afov) four galaxies were immediately visible. There was a bright one in the bottom of the view (M84), with a slightly bigger one in the centre (M86) and a pair of two distinct but faint galaxies to the top (NGC4435/38). Slewing along a bit further, NGC4458 became visible. An incredible sight, especially if you imagine how many millions of light years these are away from us and how big these objects are! We did not follow the rest of the chain (have to revisit this again!), but instead decided to look at something brighter. M81/82 were right over head and simply amazing. Directly viewed, both fit into the eyepiece at 50x magnification (40mm Axiom). M81 clearly an elongated, lens shaped disc. M82 showed as a thick streak of light. Ramping up the magnification to 133x (15mm LV), it revealed its knotted structure with direct vision! It has been a long time since I had seen M82 this clearly. The sky was indeed rather good! To get a bit of variety, I moved the scope to the owl (M97). In went the Lumicon OIII Filter. In the 15mm LV, the sky background turned into an inky black with the stars taking on a slightly reddish colour. The nebula stood out like it was cut out of cardboard! While gazing at it for a little while longer, we were able to see some texture inside the “disc” of the nebula – hints of the owl eyes. As the filter was in, we decided look at another planetary – M57 the ring in Lyra. About 50° above the horizon, a clear ring shape with a dark interior was visible against a black sky (thanks to the filter) - beautifully defined and clear! Next up was M13, the great Hercules globular cluster and it was sparkling with the lights of millions of suns. An extremely contrasty view, resolved into the core… Suddenly we realised some clouds had started to appear, coming in from the North and beginning to cover parts of the North-Eastern sky. So we changed direction (yet again), to look at more galaxies. The whale (NGC4631) was faint, but clearly defined in shape, really resembling a maritime. Unfortunately, we did not look out for NGC 4627, the whale’s companion. NGC4656 – the hockey stick, was faintly visible with averted vision, but no clear shape discernible. NGC4565 – the Needle was starting to get blocked out by a thin layer of high clouds at around 11.45pm. A slightly disappointing sight. By this time, the finder had already dewed up and the first patched of haze were forming on the corrector plate of the C8. The sky was now also covered over more and more, so we decided to end the evening at this point. We packed everything back into the car in about 20mins and drove off at around 12.15. While driving I noticed my feet were actually deep frozen already! The car showed a temperature of just 4°C, no wonder it felt chilly. Thankfully the wind had not picked up all night. Overall a wonderful session with many old favourites and some new additions as well as some targets left over for the next galaxy season. Have to revisit Markarian again and scan the full extent, also missed the black eye and sombrero galaxies this time. Let’s hope for more clear skies soon!

First night in back garden for what seems like forever, had an interesting session. Set the C8 on Jupiter while I dabbled with the star adventurer mini / Nikon D5300 / 105 2.8 macro. Tried too many things as failed miserably on focus with the D5300, Jupiter was just clearing neighbours roofs ... Got quite disheartened by 3am so took cameras off and had a peak at M13 before packing up. Absolutely beautiful ! C8 with ES 14 mm. Thought I'd try imaging it but only had the Nikon with William optics flattener attached ... Managed 20 x 15 seconds as hadn't polar aligned for Jupiter. Good luck all with opposition on the 8 th