Anyone else out tonight?

[cantab]

I was out for about an hour earlier. Managed to get a nice view of M42 in the little Heritage, seeing the clearly-defined 'notch' in the north of it. I just now found Messier's own sketch, and the bright white region more or less matches what I saw. To the eye it's got a very different shape to the photos. Glimpsed M78 but didn't spend much time on that. Looked for NGC 1788, failed to see the nebula (probably a faint fuzzy too far for my sky conditions and aperture) but quite enjoyed the starfield around its location.

 

Then tried to spot the Io shadow transit, but nothing doing. Is it something a 3 inch scope can show and at what magnification?

[allcart]

5am. Just packed away. fabulous clear night but plenty damp. Started about 9pm and worked solid for 8 flippin hours. had a nice session with jupiter, although with the Equinox 80mm it wasn't very big, but made out the bands and all 4 moons. Then moved to M42 and worked out the cam settings for a broadcast on NSN. Stayed on NSN all night trying to show objects without great success due to having the wrong cams for live broadcasting of dso's. Still, I managed a decent polar align and star align and found all my targets on the ccd chip without any fuss. I just could not get a decent enough image of them for broadcasting on the network.

I'm thinking positive, that I beat the dew, found several objects and learned a few things while I was sitting in my house, in front of 3 screens, totally controlling the scope remotely, drinking coffee and chatting to fellow astronomers from around the globe.

All in all, a pleasant evening.

[Alien 13]

I can't wait for the day when I can observe the Milky Way. One day hopefully.

 

It's been the best viewing conditions for a while. Norwich has had over 6 hours of clears skies! 

 

Unfortunately had a disaster... Me being a noob with Astrophotography, my focus tube wasn't tight/firm enough ( Sorry can't really explain). Was taking 30 minutes worth of exposures (M31), uploaded them into the stacking program... no stars found! Checked in Photoshop - pictures were out of focus  

 

Is there anyway stopping that from happing again? I focused with my Bahtinov mask before and all seemed alright! I assume the angle of the telescope and the weight of the DSLR doesn't help lol..

BahtinovBahtinov

 

Hi dont know what setup you are using but rubber bands to counter some of the weight sometimes helps.

[reader34]

Hi dont know what setup you are using but rubber bands to counter some of the weight sometimes helps.

Thank you. I need to hunt for some rubber bands!

[Doley68]

Had a good night last night, first for a while.

Spent a couple of hours almost exclusively on Jupiter. Watched the GRS and Io transit but my mak had dew trouble. Heater tape kept the corrector plate clear but had fogging on the primary! Not much to be done about that but I still got some great views using my new 2x powermate to push up to x450. Io was a small pale globe floating above Jupiter's clouds. 

Just went out to the obsey and the primary is clear now (10:30am). It was a very damp night though, and cold but I had so many layers on I didn't really feel it, I looked like an Eskimo!

Chris.