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Greetings from Bucks!


cwis

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Hello!

After completing a physics degree 30 odd years ago in which I did quite a few astrophysics modules because I found them fascinating, (I really must get a telescope) and looking at  Hale Bopp as I popped out of work for a fag on the night shift, night after night (I really must get a telescope) and being in France (on purpose!) for the total eclipse in 1999 (I Really MUST get a telescope) and watching Mars being huge and red all last year, I FINALLY got a telescope in the middle of lockdown, a few weeks ago.

It's a Sky-watcher 130ps on the AZ GTi mount. I got the mount because my back garden is a sea of light pollution and otherwise I'd have no idea where to point a scope (I started looking at the 130 Heritage initally).

Since then I've developed quite a fascination with double (and more) stars  - and intially started trying to photograph the splits with my mobile phone, an exercise in frustration. After 3d printing about half a million different mounts and adapters I bit the bullet and got a SvBony sv305 camera which I first used in anger a few nights ago on Albireo. It didn't go well.

I'm REALLY REALLY going try and stop the equipment creep there - and try and run a lightweight astrophotograpy rig.  I can't use an SLR - not enough back focus. I can't use a 130pds - too heavy for the mount. So I'm changing nothing. I might get a heavier tripod though...

The OTA is really light - I keep it clamped to the mount so it doesn't float away.  I was worried about collimation initially because when the scope turned up the secondary mirror had rotated in transit - seagull shaped stars with the 10mm eyepiece.  And you can't adjust the primary mirror. I lined the secondary up nicely with a collimation cap and realized that my eyes had more astigmatism than the scope had coma with a 4mm eyepiece fitted, and ceased with the fretting. I can split the double double, so no worries, right?

Anyhoo - hi?

 

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Hi and welcome.   Albireo is where it started for me .....some 45 years ago.....!!!!!... looking through a wobbly refractor, but it was enough to create a spark.

Only really got 'serious' with it about 6 years ago with a Total Lunar eclipse. I took a picture with my little compact which came out ...err.welll.... blobby. I thought to myself, I can do better than that.

And so it began.

"I'm REALLY REALLY going try and stop the equipment creep"

Good luck with that.  Best thing to do is to lock every available cupboard or live in a tent, because inevitably those 'boxes' start to arrive in the post and you begin to have 'options' as to what objects you are going to observe or image.... by which time it's too late...   enjoy the journey.

Here's Abireo..... 39 years after I first saw it.... now photographed with 'some' of the gear I now possess.....

247641472_AlbireoLRGBC8HD1-1-1-1April17th2020.thumb.jpg.3f7019ad1462b591bda27235653dd75c.jpg

 

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Welcome to SGL! If you like doubles I have three suggestions for you. First is the Astronomical League Double Star program. Second is the Cambridge Double Star Atlas that has over 2,000 interesting doubles. And third is a more technical tome that may appeal to the astrophysicist in you. It is Observing and Measuring Visual Double Stars. It includes chapters on how to conduct astrometry and so on. Links are below in the order I mentioned.

 

https://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/dblstar/dblstar1.html

https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Double-Star-Atlas/dp/0521493439

https://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/dblstar/dblstar1.html

Edited by Dr Strange
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