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More with the 102ED - Observing 15-16th /08/24


Ratlet

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Despite the torrential rain through the day, CO said we would be having clear skies, and sure enough as darkness descended the skies remained clear.  I set up the 102ED and the GEM 28.  Arcturus was behind the trees from my setup location so I had to contend with somewhat dimmer stars for alignment, but nothing too traumatic.  Let the 17.5mm Morpheus stretch its legs for a good bit of it.

NGC 6802 - unable to observe.  thought I had it but looking at sketches, nope.  Think maybe the sky was a bit bright this close to the horizon.

NGC 6633 -fairly loose collection of stars, all of similar brightness apart from one to the top right which was significantly brighter.

At 23:39 a bright meteor went skiting past south of Vega heading in a North - South direction.  I also kicked the leg of my tripod.  Go-To somewhat less than impressed.

At this point I decided to give Carbon Stars a shot.  A lot of the summer targets are too low down from this far north and anything below about 23° is below my house (I do have a cunning plan however).

V Aquilae - Just couldn't find it.  Nothing lept out in the immediate area.

TT Cygni - Pronounced orange colour.  Pretty much bang in the middle of a triangle of brighter stars.

T Lyrae - Very red in the Morpheus, almost looked like it was orange in the middle with a red ring around it.  Thought that the 8mm BST had less pleasing colour than the Morpheus, but the 12mm compared favourably to it.

Double Double - Decided to see how I faired splitting it with different eyepieces.  Unable to split with the 17.5mm or the 12mm however I could with the 8mm.  Throwing the BST x2 barlow on all of them got splits, although you'd struggle to get a credit card between them with the 17.5mm with the barlow.  

M31 -  Tried both the 24mm/82° and the Morpheus on it whilst doing some timelapse.  It looked really good.  Still can't get any real detail out of it.  The Morpheus did a great job.  I could see one of the sattelite galaxies but didn't determine which one.  I was pretty gassed by this point.

Saturn - By this time it had finally cleared the neighbours house and was in the sweet spot before it got above mine.  Seeing was what I would asses as pretty good.  I went in and grabbed the SVbony zoom and could comfortably get up to 4mm (erroenously wrote 5mm, but it was the penultimate stop) before I felt the image started to degrade.  No detail in the banding evident, however there was a clear shadow from the rings on the face.

I had also decided to do some experimenting with the moveshoot move.  I attached it to a solar finder I had in my bag (short and stubby) and then used my phone to take images in astrophotgraphy mode just point ahead of the scope.  I thought it worked very well.  I'm going to by a dedicated phone holder and 3D print finder shoe for it.  Gives some nice images of from the evening and some very short time lapse.  I wonder how well it would do attached to a finder scope proper?

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Nice report on an interesting variety of objects. I enjoy using my 102ED with the 17.5mm Morpheus for clusters and general low power stuff, it’s a nice combo. 👍

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1 hour ago, RobertI said:

Nice report on an interesting variety of objects. I enjoy using my 102ED with the 17.5mm Morpheus for clusters and general low power stuff, it’s a nice combo. 👍

Looking forward to trying it out later in the year when Auriga is well placed.  The clusters in there are some of my favourites.

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46 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Thos little Timelapse’s are cool, just 30 secs captures? Is the mount tracking? 

Yeah, that sounds about right.  5 minutes per timelapse.

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If you are after a phone holder I’d avoid the plastic ones sold to go on tripods. Also avoid those that rely on a strong spring to hold the phone in place (all too easy to nudge the OTA off track when installing/removing).

The holders that I find best are those that are all metal and sold to attached to motorbikes. And those that hold the phone via an adjustable threaded clamping knob. 

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Sounds like a great evening with a great scope.

 I can relate to your evening, finding and not finding targets, the scudding fine cloud,
feels very much like many f my sessions, fun times.

I like the video idea, not tried this myself, look forward to more from you.

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I've gone for one of these.  Plenty of screw holes for attaching things to it and attaching it to things.  Made from aluminium allegedly.  Bit of a bargain at £7 when ordered.

I also wanted it because it should double as just a phone holder so I can catch the northern lights from my upstairs room which faces north and to test whether it'll work with Starsense without a mirror.

I'm trying to venture out and work through actual lists rather than the usual lastminute dot com observing I usually do lol.

Screenshot_20240818-113801.png

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