Show us your set up in action at night.

[JeremyS]

7 hours ago, Andy R said:

My, how I’ve missed nights like this. 

Bit of light pollution on the horizon 🤣

[JeremyS]

Well not quite night yet, but Tessa is ready for some gas giant action, the C11 in obsy for some variable star photometry and the two meteor cams on the rhs for some shooting stars 

[Victor Boesen]

Beautiful @JeremyS!! Have you posted more about the spectrophotometry somewhere on here? I'd love to read more about it

[JeremyS]

4 minutes ago, Victor Boesen said:

Beautiful @JeremyS!! Have you posted more about the spectrophotometry somewhere on here? I'd love to read more about it

I’ve only mentioned my work on variable star photometry in passing on here. It’s very simple: take CCD images and use software to measure its brightness. This is an area that amateurs can contribute real science. I cooperate with a number of professional astronomers and we sometimes publish papers on the results.

I wrote about some of the projects here: http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2018JBAA..128...75S

[Victor Boesen]

Fascinating stuff!! Would love to do similar stuff myself in the future or as a part of my study at some point. Thanks for sharing

[JeremyS]

1 minute ago, Victor Boesen said:

Fascinating stuff!! Would love to do similar stuff myself in the future or as a part of my study at some point. Thanks for sharing

Happy to help if/when you want to have a go. I always say that if one is able to take Astro images, then one can also do photometry 

[Sunshine]

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

Well not quite night yet, but Tessa is ready for some gas giant action, the C11 in obsy for some variable star photometry and the two meteor cams on the rhs for some shooting stars 

Wow, Tessa you say? does she have any sisters? I'm green with envy.

[JeremyS]

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

Wow, Tessa you say? does she have any sisters? I'm green with envy.

Errrmmm…several. He says blushing 

🤣

[mark skelton]

[Deadlake]

More gas action. Jupiter would off been bright but for the Devils **** being up.... 😀

 

 

[F15Rules]

On 21/07/2021 at 00:46, JeremyS said:

Errrmmm…several. He says blushing 

🤣

Several??

He's got a whole harem of them!!!😱😂😂🤣

We should have a competition to name them all..😁..that way we could keep a handle on them all..

Dave

Edited July 26, 2021 by F15Rules

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

On 23/07/2021 at 12:58, mark skelton said:

I started following the cables, felt a bit dizzy and went for a lie down. 😉

[Piero]

Telescope waiting outside together with my observing chair completed only recently. 

 

[niallk]

Great job on both @Piero !!

[Iem1]

A humble WO Z73 with a DSLR awaiting the night shift in the Brecon Beacons (Wales)

[wimvb]

All dressed up and nowhere to go. I had hoped to at least focus and polar align my new scope. But alas, the first cloudy night in ages put a stop to the fun.

[wimvb]

Update to my previous post:

Tonight I managed to tune in my gear:

- Polar alignment despite passing clouds. I got it to 10 arc minutes before a cloud parked itself near polaris.

- Focus adjusted. I don't have a focus motor yet so used the B-mask of my MN190 (!) and manually focused. Worked good. The scope is slow (6.8 vs my usual 5.3), so I didn't even have to use the fine focus knob.

- Dialed in guiding. The mount has no problems with this gear. A very nice looking calibration and guiding rms 0.5 - 0.6 ", despite clouds passing by. At one point guiding went berserk and the mount started spiralling. I purged the calibration, recalibrated and everything worked fine after.

- Ekos consistently sets the camera to bin 1x1, which results in 95 MB image files. After the first image downloaded, the computer just froze. I've now purged the configuration file. Tomorrow I will also remove the guide camera from the imaging cameras USB hub and connect it directly to the computer. The large image file and a constant stream of guide images may have proven too much for the USB port. This will hopefully solve the problem (I don't plan to use the camera in bin 1 mode).

Because clouds started to mess up the guiding (the last few guiding captures barely showed any guide stars), I decided to call it a night and closed down.

It's nice to be able to work the problems before astro season starts in earnest.

[Vroobel]

Hi, 

This is a fork mount based on a heavy 101:1 harmonic gear. It's designed for a 10" Bresser Messier Newtonian telescope, but will be able to drive any smaller OTA with standardised mounting. 

It's not in action yet, just finished enough to test it, but unfortunately there is cloudy sky, like usually when you want to test a new stuff... 

Here is link to a live story of my fork mount: 

I hope to show it in action very soon. 😊

Edited August 4, 2021 by Vroobel

[Sunshine]

5 minutes ago, Vroobel said:

Hi, 

This is a fork mount based on a heavy 101:1 harmonic gear. 

It's not in action yet, just finished enough to test it, but unfortunately there is cloudy sky, like usually when you want to test a new stuff... 

Here is link to a live story of my fork mount: 

I hope to show it in action very soon. 😊

Somewhere there is an astronomer looking into the observatory saying "our scope is missing!"

[wimvb]

19 minutes ago, Vroobel said:

Hi, 

This is a fork mount based on a heavy 101:1 harmonic gear. It's designed for a 10" Bresser Messier Newtonian telescope, but will be able to drive any smaller OTA with standardised mounting. 

It's not in action yet, just finished enough to test it, but unfortunately there is cloudy sky, like usually when you want to test a new stuff... 

Here is link to a live story of my fork mount: 

I hope to show it in action very soon. 😊

Hmm. That reminded me of an odd looking mount I saw a couple of years ago.

http://www.astro-imaging.com/Equipment/Mesu_Mount_Engels.pdf

[Vroobel]

4 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Hmm. That reminded me of an odd looking mount I saw a couple of years ago.

http://www.astro-imaging.com/Equipment/Mesu_Mount_Engels.pdf

Yes, that's strange. My one is simple. 😁

[Barry-W-Fenner]

Waiting for bortle 3 darkness to arrive, two weeks ago

[Deadlake]

Managed to get out on day of scopes arrival, clear skies to around midnight.  On first light, Jupiter was looking good, incredible detail of the belts using a 4 mm TOE, seems to give best views of Jupiter. Colours of the planets looked photographic/film like in nature. However to be fair seeing was not the best. I feel I need to swap the 2" Baader diagonal for the Baader T2 BBHS prism diagonal. The FT focuser made all the difference in making fine adjustments.

Note the amount of counter weight used to balance the scope, its 11.5 11.5 kg without a finder scope or diagonal.

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Deadlake

[nephilim]

I may as well add my newly built set up to the list
Samyang 135 ED f2
Zwo ASI533MC-Pro
SW Evoguide ED50 Guide Scope
Zwo ASI120MM-S Guide Cam
ASIair Pro
Explore Scientific EXOS II PMC 8 Mount

[nitram100]

Not quite night yet, but after a 12 hr Nursing shift I have just setup my scope for the first time in 3 months, work has been too crazy but I'm forcing myself tonight ! Despite how tired I am!

 

Hope to see old buddy M13 and M81,M82!

Also, my local council last year have started turning the street lights off after midnight! Which is amazing considering I'm so close to London.

 

 

Edited August 8, 2021 by nitram100
.