wakefield area

[hazegood]

one last thing to consider - is the webcam and the adaptor absolutely square on?

If it is even ever so slightly off centre, it will be hitting the side of the focusser tube or off to the side of the secondary mirror and not pick anything up. I think you only need about 5 degrees off centre and its doooooomed!

try removing the webcam from the adaptor and manually hold the cam against the focus tube and move it about whilst pointing the scope at a bright light indoors. you should see the dark / light / dark thing you experienced when testing the cam independantly.

I think they are, tried your suggestion, and YES if iMove the web cam about it does change, think this is down to my collimation issues, wil have to try to get to ameet

[crashtestdummy]

Sold my 16" today so I'm officially scopeless until the 22" is finished.

[Astronomer69]

As if crash hope alls well.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Soupy]

Great images lads, can't believe you have sold up Crash, better get that grinding arm on then...

Nick would a focal reducer work. Not sure but it is a suggestion. :-)

[hazegood]

made progress with the web cam tonight, manged to get it to show Moon in  the lappy, cant get focus on it, but can in an eyepiece, maybe washed out because of the brightness? was going to try with a filter but hands got to cold

[crashtestdummy]

Well actually the 80mm finderscope will be quite handy but that's it observing wise for me until autumn

[mapstar]

Think I may need to upgrade the truss mounts for your scope crash, hanging all that weight on the wrong end may need to go up from 1/2" to 1" ha ha

[crashtestdummy]

Haha they aren't actually that heavy but I will get you a total weight so you can calculate what's needed.

[crashtestdummy]

Was a pretty clear night until midnight last night,I almost even considered getting the 80mm finderscope out and having a look to see what I can see but couldn't be bothered.is it bad that I'm not fussed about not having a scope for a couple of months?in galaxy season too!!

Man flu is done with but I'm on holiday next week so after that I'm going to have to bang 10 hours a week on the mirror to get to tile tool stage

[mapstar]

Glad the man flu has been beaten crash.Me and Kieran Off to winscarr tonight for 7ish more on scope's today

[crashtestdummy]

I don't know how you get excited over winscarr when you can go to Sutton for much better skies.

I need to hammer the mirror as my deadline for moving down south is the end of May.

[Soupy]

Winscarr is only 20-30 mins away Rich, Sutton is over an hour... :-) extra time that can be spend at the eyepiece, or for some of us at the computer screen looking at what the camera can see ;-)

And although I haven't been up to Sutton yet winscarr is pretty good for where it is, accessible and dark.

Anyway hope you manage to get some work done on the monster mirror of yours and get it finished by the time you go "dann sarf", the mirror cell that Damian is working on looks amazing!

[Sammyb]

I agree Sutton Bank is very much darker than Winscarr. Sutton Bank is about an hour away and Winscarr is 40 minutes. So not much in it. However the main thing for me is to have some company while out observing so I'll go where people are most happy to meet up.

[crashtestdummy]

Both the same distance from me hence why I never bothered with winscarr over Sutton when people were planning society meets.tbh most of the time I don't like observing in big groups.I get the extra 20 minutes but you can see much more at a darker site so to me it's worthwhile

[mapstar]

Winscarr for me is a 50min round trip sutton bank is 2hours plus

I know its not as dark as sutton but for a site that's a lot darker than my garden and not far away its ideal.

When the big dob is finished I will probably need to travel further for better contrast through the eye piece

[crashtestdummy]

I realise for most of the group it's on your doorstrep and I've been a few times but tbh it's not somewhere I would make an effort for as there's much better sites a similar distance.it's one of the reasons I didn't bother with club meets as there or Parker road were pointless for me and people were happy to organise winscarr because it was closer for them but weren't prepared to go elsewhere.anyway it's something that doesn't matter to me so that's enough of that

[TomPN]

Has anybody considered using Sandal Castle as a stargazing site? It's not overly dark, but it's still darker than in the middle of the city. Plus, it's accessible by both car and by bus. I went up there to watch the Perseids meteor shower and you could see a ton of stars.