Show us your set up in action at night.

[mikeDnight]

Not quite dark enough for action, but here's the 5" is getting excited by a clear sky in anticipation of scouting out a few double stars after Sun set. 

[peanutcol]

 

Waiting for the stars to come out with my heritage 130p

[Vroobel]

First light of this setup: Altair 102EDT F/5.6 & 2600MM with filters. Filter offset for a first time and the Lion Nebula if the sky allows. 

Edited April 14 by Vroobel

[DirkSteele]

Had a couple of hours last night with the Takahashi FC100. Spent some time with open clusters and a few globs as well. Plus a Galaxy or two.

[WolfieGlos]

When it’s finally clear for extended runs, of course it’ll be Moon affected! With the way this year has been so far, even with the Moon I’ve decided to make the most of it with two rigs on the go, and a pair of binos for observing.

Main rig of the Starfield 102 with an ASI 585mc on the HEQ5, with a smaller rig of the trusty Canon 800D with SY135 on the star adventurer operated with an AsiAir. One of the few times I’ve had a chance to use the Air that I purchased back in the Black Friday sales! Not 100% sure on it though, I really like Nina and the laptop control so I’m struggling to see if I’ll keep the Air long term.

[Mr Spock]

From tonight.

[Ags]

What EQ platform is that below the 12", @Mr Spock?

[IB20]

Spending some time with the moon.

 

[Mr Spock]

3 hours ago, Ags said:

What EQ platform is that below the 12",

Watchhouse. No longer available unfortunately. It's really well made.

[JeremyS]

Sorry Dizzy, it’s been a while but the night is yet young.

FC 100DZ

 

[bosun21]

On 18/04/2024 at 07:50, IB20 said:

Spending some time with the moon.

 

The SM125 is becoming more appealing to me each passing day.

[John]

My old ED120 eyes the moon tonight at 257x 

 

 

[saac]

Swapped out my RedCat setup for the Esprit120 which I think I'll be using in visual mode for the next few weeks as it is starting to get light well into the evening. I bought the Esprit 120 about a year ago and I still haven't really put it to work on imaging -I've been having too much fun using the RedCat. So this is really the first proper shakedown with the 120.  Tonight I will be mainly looking at the Moon - it looks glorious, nice and sharp and no colour fringes whatsoever. I'm looking forward to playing around with this over the next few weeks, I'm going to keep it in visual mode until the autumn arrives.  

Jim 

 

[Mr Spock]

Quick snap with the D500 taken just now - 00:45 in the morning 

[JAC51]

This was last night  looking at the moon before sunset.

[Sunshine]

Early bedtime meant I couldn’t wait for moon to be visible in my back garden so the driveway it was. Good thing lunar observing amd street lights aren’t an issue.

[John]

4 inch fun and games 🙂

After posting this:

It occurred to me that I have not actually compared these scopes "back to back" for quite a while. So here they are, side by side, trained on Iota Leonis. Vixen ED102SS vs Takahashi FC100-DL:

 

 

[josefk]

The sky wasn't thrilling last night but this is a relaxing way to spend the time nonetheless - sitting comfortably capturing PA and separations for double stars and multi-star systems in M44.

Now i'm sitting comfortably at the scope adjusting a chair to achieve the right height instead of sitting at a fixed height and rotating my diagonal to get comfy (which is what i was doing till recently); West is consistently placed - a brilliant side effect of the BB chair - it makes it much easier to achieve consistent sketches in a series when West is always pointing off in the same direction...

Edited April 22 by josefk

[Naughty Neal]

On 20/04/2024 at 10:09, Sunshine said:

Early bedtime meant I couldn’t wait for moon to be visible in my back garden so the driveway it was. Good thing lunar observing amd street lights aren’t an issue.

What's the UFO playing at,  at 2 oclock ?

[Sunshine]

5 minutes ago, Naughty Neal said:

What's the UFO playing at,  at 2 oclock ?

Lol, I was waiting for someone to mention that, that pesky lens flare always shows up when pointing at a bright object.

[Naughty Neal]

Could be an interesting talking point esp as an April 1st story.

[Sunshine]

8 minutes ago, Naughty Neal said:

Could be an interesting talking point esp as an April 1st story.

When I just zoomed in on it I was surprised at how much it does look like a UFO with some sort of glowing propulsion system.

[Naughty Neal]

A bit like Nessie, fuel  to keep the conspiritulists going for years.

[Les Ewan]

Finally got my old 1990's TAL 2M 150mm f8 Newt out of storage after 20 years packed away in its wooden boxes. I had to clean the eyepieces after the sponge linings in the eyepiece compartment degraded into the lenses. Luckily this was easily done with warm soapy water. The aluminium OTA has also degraded in places causing the paint to peel both inside and outside of the tube.

The mirrors are in better condition than I thought they would be and the drive worked right away. I put it though its paces earlier this evening and the 6" spherical mirror did well considering its was filthy needing collimated and the inside of the tube is full of cobwebs!

Had lovely views of Castor,Algieba and even split  Izar easily, which is not bad considering the state of the scope at the moment.

[John_D]

@Les Ewan Nice, looks exactly like mine 😁 The paint inside the OTA in mine has held up fine, the outside not so much.

The drive on mine has been making funny noises since I bought it second hand last year and was only working intermittently last time out. Hopefully it's just a readjustment and a re-lube rather that a complete strip down.