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Golden-i posted:The weather is finally clearing, and I can get out this weekend. I'd like to re-shoot the Whirlpool Galaxy, but am caught up on which scope to use. You might get a better answer from a more experienced astrophotographer, but I would say consider whether your seeing and your mount's tracking can support the additional detail the 8" may provide. The extra perfection in the sky and in your mount that would be required to fully realize the difference might be difficult to achieve.
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Apr 18, 2020 00:32
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Golden-i posted:The weather is finally clearing, and I can get out this weekend. I'd like to re-shoot the Whirlpool Galaxy, but am caught up on which scope to use. my 80mm refractor in Stellarium  and an 8" f/5 Newt  and my 8" SCT  Also, don't forget about the New Horizons Parallax Program! Take a picture of Wolf 359 and/or Proxima Centauri next Thursday morning. http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Learn/Get-Involved.php#Parallax-Program For most NA observers the only one that works is Wolf 359 at 0400 UTC. It's a dim star but should be visible in photography in mid-range scopes. I'm gonna give it a shot tomorrow when it's supposed to be clear here.
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Apr 18, 2020 03:18
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Finally packing it in after the first (near) all-nighter in the makeshift observatory. Between the fact that I was getting better dark-adaptation, there were no lights distracting me, and I was observing with two fully-cooled scopes that complemented each other really well, I was pulling in stuff that I've never been able to see from in town before. In decent detail, no less.
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Apr 18, 2020 11:44
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Soo, questions regarding balancing this AD8. It has bearings that can adjust up and down the tube, but realistically don't I want to be able to move them away from the centerline of the long axis to get it really balanced? As it is, I think I'll only really be able to balance it at one specific angle and it's goin g to want to fall in either direction off that balance point. So, I guess the questions are, how can I balance this in the other axis, and where should I adjust the balance point to with the existing setup?
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Apr 19, 2020 17:11
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Soo, questions regarding balancing this AD8. It has bearings that can adjust up and down the tube, but realistically don't I want to be able to move them away from the centerline of the long axis to get it really balanced? As it is, I think I'll only really be able to balance it at one specific angle and it's goin g to want to fall in either direction off that balance point. It's going to be entirely dependent on how much weight you have up front on the tube. That's why they're adjustable. A lot of people attach a Telrad, or replace the focuser, or primarily use really heavy eyepieces like TeleVues. The more weight there is on the front end, the further up the tube the bearings need to be. Positioning of the altitude bearings is going to be entirely dependent on the equipment loadout YOU are using. Some people still need additional weight on the back end of the tube to make things balance. In that case, magnetic weights on the back end are the solution I use on my XT8 that doesn't have adjustable bearings. In such cases, it helps to position the weights at the back end on the underside of the tube, radially opposed to the focuser and finder. I doubt this step will be absolutely necessary if you're just using the stock AD8 accessories. I believe the specific answer for you is to attach the finder, install your usual equipment loadout in the focuser, remove the dustcap and then play with the positioning of the bearings until your scope actually balances when positioned horizontally and the altitude bearings tension is loosened all the way. Further test it by nudging it up and down gently. If it keeps moving after pushing it in one direction (up or down) more aggressively than the other then you still have a slight imbalance. Once it's good, tighten the bearings into position on the tube and adjust to your preferred tension and go to town. If you ever attach a supplementary finder or switch to heavier eyepieces, you may need to repeat the process. I always like to keep a few small extra magnetic weights on hand as well for adjusting small imbalances like from using a Barlow.
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Apr 19, 2020 19:23
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Isn’t this the time of year gear and eyepieces go on sale? I may splurge for a field flattener and t mount for my D700.
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Apr 19, 2020 23:02
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Soo, questions regarding balancing this AD8. It has bearings that can adjust up and down the tube, but realistically don't I want to be able to move them away from the centerline of the long axis to get it really balanced? As it is, I think I'll only really be able to balance it at one specific angle and it's goin g to want to fall in either direction off that balance point. This can happen, and there are a few ways to fix it. As you suggested, the bearing axis can be moved off the axis of the tube, so it intersects wherever the centre of mass is after all the accessories are added. Homebuilt telescopes may have provision to do this. I’ve never seen it on a commercial Dobsonian. You can install counterweights to bring the centre of mass back to the tube axis. This is what I do. If, when you point the telescope low, the accessory weight is on the upper part of the tube, as is typical, you’ll want to put the counterweights on what is the bottom part of the tube in that same orientation. I put them towards the mirror end to kill two birds with one stone. It doesn’t matter if the centres of mass is left or right of the tube axis, i.e. biased toward one bearing or the other, just that it’s not above or below it.  The third and funniest way is to hang something like a chain from the back of the mirror end. Then the telescope is pointed low and the leverage of the off‐centre accessories is greatest, more of the chain lifts off the ground, countering the effect.  This is, in my view, not the most elegant solution, but it apparently does work well enough.
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Apr 19, 2020 23:31
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Apr 20, 2020 00:30
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Okay, I thought I might have to go the counterweight route. Any recommendations on what to get exactly (that's not a dumbell haha). I do like the idea of the magnetic one so it can be adjusted as needed. Thanks for the effortposts!
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Apr 20, 2020 01:30
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You could do worse than cast lead SCUBA weights. Get coated ones so you don’t spread brain poison around from handling them. For adjustment, what I do is have a long strip of 3M Dual Lock. I adjust where along that strip I attach the weight. It can hold a lot of weight, and it doesn’t creep and let go like velcro does when the telescope is tilted back and forth. The adhesive sticks well to my telescope’s paint even in freezing temperatures.  My most and least massive eyepieces vary by over a kilogram, so I do have to adjust for that. What I do is balance the bottom end of the telescope for the heaviest eyepiece (and coma corrector) and little bit more. Then, to tune it for lighter eyepieces, I have a dual lock strip running along the side of the tube under the focuser and a three‐pound weight I can attach anywhere along it. When light eyepieces are in use, the weight goes near front end of the tube. When the heavy eyepiece is inserted, the weight goes near the bearing axis. This system works all right for its simplicity. I do plan to upgrade it to some kind of a rail with a clamp, where I can press a button or turn a knob to allow the weight to slide along the rail and lock it in place where I want it. This would allow me to finely adjust the scope’s balance without disturbing its aim. I haven’t made that upgrade yet because it’s really only the one heaviest eyepiece I have to adjust for. The others are within the margin of friction in the bearing. Disturbing the point of aim is rarely a problem for me. 
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Apr 20, 2020 02:54
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I use a whole bunch of these with felt glued to them so they don't scratch up the tube. https://www.harborfreight.com/set-of-2-magnetic-decor-hooks-65528.html They give me a lot of flexibility to adjust positioning to get optimal balance.
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Apr 20, 2020 20:22
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Here’s another option. http://www.scopestuff.com/ss_mwt1.htm
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Apr 20, 2020 20:34
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High Point had dust caps for GSO Dobsonians on clearance so I ordered a replacement for my missing one. Wound up ordering the last two color filters I needed to complete my collection while I was at it. Planetary season is fast approaching and I plan on doing some planet sketching for the first time in forever.
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Apr 21, 2020 06:42
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AstroZamboni posted:High Point had dust caps for GSO Dobsonians on clearance so I ordered a replacement for my missing one. Wound up ordering the last two color filters I needed to complete my collection while I was at it. Planetary season is fast approaching and I plan on doing some planet sketching for the first time in forever. Speaking of planet season, my kids have been eager to get up at 5AM to look at Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. I drag the 100ED outside and it’s been kicking some major rear end. I used to have a C102 achromat, and it took magnification well, but it would put up a noticeable purple halo around Jupiter and anything remotely bright. This FPL53 doublet is color free and sharp as hell even up at 200x. I’m going to break out the 150mm Russian Mak next clear morning and do a little comparison. My middle child, 8yo girl, said Saturn had TWO rings, one inside one and outside. So I told her about the Cassini division and she told her mama all about it. Her older brother said Mars looked like it had a butt crack, there was/is what appears to be a nice dark region visible across the middle of the disk. It’s already planet season if you get up early enough!
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Apr 24, 2020 16:25
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Correction: it's already planet season WHEN you stay up LATE enough! Unfortunately due to the roofs and trees of various neighborinos, I can't see the planets from my backyard observatory when they're up in the morning, so I gotta schlep everything around to the front yard which is a pain in the rear end when you're cold and fading from observing all night. I think the next time I have to be up early for garbage day and it's not expected to rain or snow overnight, I'll set the 6" scope out back to acclimate all night and then drag them around to the front when I have to get up to haul the bins to the curb. Edited to add: Kinda jealous of your 100ed. Wish I had a good apo on a manual eq with a motor (I'm old school. I hate dealing with go-to systems). As it is my planetary scope is an older (late nineties, cardboard tube) Orion 6" f8 Dobsonian. The mirror was figured by Terry Ostahowski and takes magnification LIKE A BOSS, but it's taken a lot of modifications over the last 22 years to get it to perform to its real potential. Got it new when I was fourteen and been voiding the gently caress out of its warranty ever since. On a good night it's a planetary BEAST and I've bumped it up over 400x without the image breaking down. The problem is manual tracking above 400x is a bitch. I really need to build an equatorial platform for it. I also have an old (99-03, pre-intelliscope) XT8 that I got used from a friend a few years ago for $75. It was in rough-rear end shape missing its original mount, having a partly caved-in tube, and needing some replacement hardware but nothing wrong with the optics. I spent some elbow grease and time refurbishing it into a REALLY nice scope. Managed to get an original XT8 base, pound out the dents, flock the tube, install Bob's knobs and a mirror fan, yadda yadda yadda. It definitely has an edge over the 6" on deep sky, but doesn't take magnification like the other one does, so ultimately they complement each other really well. I might have to post photos of the weird poo poo I've done to the 6" scope sometime. It's a serious frankenscope at this point. I've got a PST but it hasn't been seeing too much use lately as a result of solar minimum. AstroZamboni fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Apr 24, 2020 |
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Apr 24, 2020 17:53
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I had a bone stock XT6 and it performed very well, I bet that Terry O glass is incredible! I liked that it was a one-trip-to-the-backyard scope, and quick to acclimatize. No dew issues, easy on eyepieces, comfortable to observe with, and easy to collimate. I have to have something like that for the nights that look good but I don’t want to go through a huge set up for one hour’s worth of observing before bed. The refractor is that for me these days. A fat tracking dob (with wheels and handles) is in my future, if I can stop spending money screwing with EAA. Hyperstar, filters, cameras, and still experimenting. You should post pics of your modded scope!
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Apr 25, 2020 02:59
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Rolabi Wizenard posted:I had a bone stock XT6 and it performed very well, I bet that Terry O glass is incredible! Believe it or not, all Orion Dobsonians prior to mid-1999 (the introduction of the "SkyQuest" brand coincided with a shift of manufacturing to Taiwan) had mirrors figured by Terry O. He was the head optician for Discovery Telescopes, and they were the manufacturer for Orion's dobs in the nineties. A lot of people who didn't hang on to them at the time are kicking themselves now because of it. I will never part with that scope, but I may eventually build a new optical tube to house the optics. Eventually I want to build an optimized Newtonian assembly for the mirror with a curved spider, tiny secondary mirror with ultra-low profile focuser, flocked tube, rear AND upper boundary layer fans, recessed light trap opposite the focuser, and a bunch of other crazy poo poo. Haven't decided whether to do knife-edge baffles in it or not, but I'm probably going to build a mount with an integrated equatorial platform for it. I want to be able to do some planetary imaging with it. I'm probably going to be setting up the makeshift observatory Monday night, so I'll just do pics of the whole current setup then.
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Apr 25, 2020 05:39
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Finally had some decent weather last night to get outside and mess around with my 8" dob. It was a lot of fun! Unfortunately where I live, there's a lot of sky glow, so anything I saw wasn't clear at all. Going to need to drive at least 30 minutes to get an area of somewhat darker skies. Using Turn Left at Orion, I was hunting for a couple galaxies in Virgo, near Vindemiatrix. I can't rememeber the numbers, but I was able to get a very faint shadow of them. I love the whole aspect of searching for landmarks to find your way around. Does anyone have any recommendations for neat DSOs in the northern hemisphere that are visible the next few months?
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May 17, 2020 18:38
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Finally had some decent weather last night to get outside and mess around with my 8" dob. It was a lot of fun! I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'll recommend a few of the brightest favorites that should be visible even with some skyglow. Spring stuff: Cancer: M44 (huge open star cluster, "Beehive"/"Praesepe") Ursa Major/Canes Venatici area: M51, M81/M82, M63, M94, M106 (all galaxies), M3 (globular cluster). M101 has a high integrated brightness, but it's spread over a large area so it's quite difficult to see- low "surface brightness". Virgo/Coma/Leo: M87 (and basically the whole Virgo Cluster), NGC 4565, M66/M65/NGC 3628 ("Leo Triplet"), M104 (all galaxies) Hydra (low in the south): NGC 3242 (planetary nebula "Ghost of Jupiter"), M83 (galaxy) Late spring and early summer stuff: Hercules: M13 (bright globular cluster, if you get to dark skies, look for this one naked-eye) Don't overlook the nearby M92 globular either! Serpens: M5 (globular cluster) Draco: NGC 6543 (planetary nebula "Cat's Eye") Summer stuff: oh god where do I even start? Summer is for looking along the plane of the Milky Way. Lyra: M57 (planetary nebula "Ring Nebula"), Epsilon Lyrae ("Double Double" star) Cygnus: M29 and M39 (star cluster), Veil Nebula (this one can be difficult), Albireo (double star with great color contrast), NGC 6946 (galaxy) Vulpecula: M27 (planetary nebula "Dumbbell"). don't bother trying to pick the actual constellation out, it's basically invisible Sagitta: M71 (globular) Scutum and Serpens Caput:: M11 (open cluster) and M16 ("Eagle" nebula) Sagittarius: M22 (bright globular), M8 ("Lagoon" nebula), M20 ("Trifid" nebula), M17 ("Omega" nebula) Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto (Pluto doesn't look like anything other than a star, but it's cool to see anyway) Scorpius: M7 ("Ptolemy" open cluster), M4 (globular), M6 (open cluster) That should be plenty to get you started, although no means is this even half of the cool objects. Start looking for the fall stuff on the other side of the Milky Way in a couple months, but by then you should hopefully have the hang of finding objects to look at. If you're using Stellarium, I'd recommend messing with the DSO Labels in the "View Options" window, and checking the "Use Designations For Screen Labels" checkbox; objects will thus be identified onscreen by their Messier/Caldwell/NGC numbers instead of their common names. This is personal preference, though, whatever helps you remember them is fine!
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May 17, 2020 21:14
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There's currently a Type II supernova easily visible in M61, high in the sky from around 10-midnight. I'll be setting up my porchservatory tonight to observe it. It's a good one even for moderately light polluted skies.
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May 18, 2020 20:36
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See also 2020hvf, mag 12.8 Ia in NGC 3643 (Leo)
Platystemon fucked around with this message at 00:34 on May 19, 2020 |
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May 19, 2020 00:28
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Thanks for all the suggestions, just gotta wait for some better weather. So, I have a telrad mounted to my scope. I found that using that and a 28mm eyepiece worked better than using the finderscope. Is this common? Are there situations where the finder scope would work better? I was debating removing it entirely.
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May 20, 2020 00:47
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I have a Telrad and I use it for the initial hop and sometimes for shortcuts to objects I’m already familiar with, but when hunting faint fuzzies, I find a magnifying finder invaluable. The main scope can’t show enough of the sky to starhop comfortably. It’s extra frustrating with objects that don’t show up in wide eypieces, like planetary nebulæ. I think I’m in the right spot, swap to higher magnification and nothing is there. Am I slightly misaimed or off entirely? Who knows! With a finder scope, I just move my eye back there and reassess. Without one, I might be restarting the starhop from the beginning. Not having a finder scope is especially a problem in light‐polluted areas. The naked eye stars are sparser. There’s less to reference the Telrad on. Starhops start further from the object of desire, and there are fewer stars to reference in the eyepiece.
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May 20, 2020 01:09
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If you're trying to use a Telrad in an area with limited stars visible due to light pollution, you might want to look at a new thing called the Quinsight. It's just one guy custom building them with a 3D printer, but it's kinda like a Telrad on steroids. https://m.facebook.com/r2d2b2.rob.brown/ It's essentially a vertical Telrad with a larger window and additional 8° and 16° circles for being able to use much sparser star fields in light polluted skies. I've been seriously considering ordering one. It's easy enough to configure a custom reticle overlay in SkySafari that matches it so you can perfectly frame an invisible object using much more angularly distant stars.
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May 20, 2020 17:56
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Hi astronomy thread. I've started to get into this and wanted to run my plan by you folks. Biggened version That was first decent night. I had originally planned on shooting the core of the Milky Way but there was a huge light pollution bulb from a paper mill about 5 miles away. Current Gear Canon T3 18-55mm Kit Lens DeepSkyStacker/Sequator On order is... Skywatcher Sky Adventurer Pro Dew Band DSLR Noise Pollution Filter (SVBONY Cheapo) Canon 50mm F1.8 Takumar 200mm F4 (With M42 thread adapter to Canon) Anything else I should add to get me in better shape? I'm shooting in a Bortle 4-6 area in the upper Midwest of the US.
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May 23, 2020 14:41
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xpost from another thread: Salt Fish posted:Is there any better thread for discussing telescopes? I was thinking of getting one for the purpose of fitting into a bicycle pannier, 16x12x6" and less than 30 pounds. Vibration and shock resistance are important as is ease of aligning or columating the beam at a camp site, with minimal tools. I read over the OP from this one and a few pages of discussion, and my guess now is that people will point me towards binos, which is fine. I understand that you can get them with some 10-15mm of relief for eye glasses and that something with a large aperture is best, and then realistically 10x or lower magnification if you want to hold them in your hands and still see anything, but it seems that a 7x50 wouldn't be able to catch much detail compared to even the smallest telescope. Budget is something like 500-$1000.
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May 30, 2020 22:21
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Speaking of binoculars, a friend of mine in Denver decided to offload a bunch of equipment that's been collecting dust in his garage on me today, and boy oh boy I feel like I've won the goddamn lottery. I'll get pics up later, but the equipment included: Zhumell 25x100 Astronomical binoculars with a hard case MASSIVE homebuilt parallelogram mount for the binoculars built of solid oak and riding on a Celestron CGEM tripod Homebuilt observing chair patterned on the Catsperch Summit only beefier, with a wide enough height range to use with a 16" dob and even a footrest, also built from solid oak. All of this happened as I was already massively upgrading the framework of my porch observatory. Less than an hour later we had a gullywasher thunderstorm during which it started hailing. Get new gear and the weather gods come-a-smitin'.
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May 31, 2020 00:25
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Hoping to get out and see dragon and then iss immediately after tonight with my kids. We watched the launch and now I want to point them out to them in real life so they can make the connection to reality. I'll bring some binos too, just hoping the weather holds out here (southern Ontario)
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May 31, 2020 00:28
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Salt Fish posted:xpost from another thread: If you’re hoping to get high-ish magnification out of something that’s small enough to fit in a 16x12x6 bag, collimatable after bouncing down trails on a bike, you might consider a 90mm Maksutov. The OTA should be 10-11” long and 4-4.5” diameter, leaving room for eyepieces and... if you can see yourself putting it on a rock or a table, this little mount can disassemble and might squeeze flat into a 16x12 bag. Or, buy the OTA and get a light photo tripod. The OTA collimates with a screwdriver or an allen while pointing at a star. You might find Polaris easiest to use, as you won’t have a tracking mount. It would benefit from a better diagonal and a better eyepiece or two. An 8mm eyepiece gets you around 150x, which might be the best the optics will do. Good enough for Saturn’s Cassini division and the big equatorial belts on Jupiter. Here’s a decent 8mm eyepiece, the exit pupil will be small enough that you might not need your glasses. (Depending in how bad your astigmatism is) https://agenaastro.com/agena-1-25-dual-ed-eyepiece-8mm.html Here’s the 25mm from the same series. They quote 20mm of eye relief, but I remember it feeling a little less than that. Still, good bang for the buck and usable with glasses. Might get more usable eye relief if you remove the big plastic twist up eyecup. https://agenaastro.com/agena-1-25-dual-ed-eyepiece-25mm.html If it’s in your budget, i found this to be a huge upgrade from the starguider 25: https://agenaastro.com/explore-scientific-68-deg-series-argon-purged-eyepiece-24mm.html (But only if sweeping around looking at wide fields sounds interesting, if your trail location is really dark, it would be pretty nice) Oh, and here’s a competent diagonal to replace the junk that’ll come with the scope: https://agenaastro.com/gso-1-25-90-deg-99-dielectric-mirror-diagonal-compression-ring.html
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May 31, 2020 01:39
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:Hoping to get out and see dragon and then iss immediately after tonight with my kids. We watched the launch and now I want to point them out to them in real life so they can make the connection to reality. I'll bring some binos too, just hoping the weather holds out here (southern Ontario) Caught the ISS, kids missed the dragon, but my 3 year old was mesmerized by the ISS so that's a win. They want to come back with my telescope for more stargazing, so I'm happy 
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May 31, 2020 03:20
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Photos of my new gear. The dude who built this stuff is nearly 7' tall and all muscle, so his stuff is accordingly huge. The tripod under the parallelogram mount looks tiny in comparison, but it's a goddamn Celestron CGEM tripod. The finish on the carpentry of the chair and mount are amazing. The 6" and 8" Dobsonians in the second photo give a good idea how gigantic the binocular mount is. https://imgur.com/gallery/hBldwT4
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May 31, 2020 03:58
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I need friends who own land rovers and mercedes with stuff gathering dust.
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May 31, 2020 13:50
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AstroZamboni posted:Photos of my new gear. The dude who built this stuff is nearly 7' tall and all muscle, so his stuff is accordingly huge. The tripod under the parallelogram mount looks tiny in comparison, but it's a goddamn Celestron CGEM tripod. The finish on the carpentry of the chair and mount are amazing. That is an awesome haul!
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May 31, 2020 14:06
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 Pelican nebula, top of North American Nebula. 1600 iso, 4 minute exposures, 5 total. Spent last night with the 200mm Takumar F/4 lens paired to a iOptron Sky Adventurer. I 3d printed a holder for my iphone and used it to get the alignment close. It was much easier to nail down Polaris then. I had zero detectable drift in 2 hours of shooting. The light pollution filter worked really well, very impressed with it. I spent $40, be interesting to see what the $250 ones can do. On the downside the first hour was spent shooting at the Heart Nebula but I discovered I wasn't actually on the Heart Nebula and just got an hours worth of stars. The last half hour found a dewy lens that I didn't notice until post. Welp. I have a dew band too, but neglected to put it on. Next time it'll be dew band and a 3d printed phone holder to mount in my hot shoe attachment so I can run Sky Safari and get my poo poo spot on. Image processing is proving to be a challenge. Maybe I just need more frames.
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May 31, 2020 19:54
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Someone please remind me, when do sales usually happen? Almost pulled the trigger on a field flattener, until I saw the place was charging over $20 for shipping it. In the grand scheme of things it is not a ton of money on its own, but kind of sick of places advertising lower prices but gouging the shipping.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:06
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Yooper posted:
I think this is all a good start! Usually more frames is the answer, especially in light polluted areas since you will blow out your histogram easily so are limited to shorter exposures. Those DSOs are also not super bright ones. You did 20 minutes of exposure there, I'd shoot for a couple of hours at minimum. Then you get to learn about calibration frames... (BTW while you're here, I am slowly working my way through your CMANO Hired Goons stuff and it's really great. I'm way behind though) Hasselblad posted:Someone please remind me, when do sales usually happen? Almost pulled the trigger on a field flattener, until I saw the place was charging over $20 for shipping it. In the grand scheme of things it is not a ton of money on its own, but kind of sick of places advertising lower prices but gouging the shipping. From what I can tell, end of the year holidays, plus around NEAF in April and possibly other events? Even then they're not Black Friday blowouts. If you're looking for real deals on stuff I'd check Astromart or Cloudy Nights' classifieds.
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Jun 1, 2020 18:23
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Yooper posted:
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Jun 2, 2020 00:34
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The weather gods are royally smiting my rear end right now for the new acquisitions, so I'm spending my time getting the new binocular mount tweaked to my liking before things clear up. One big weak spot, convenience-wise, was that the ONLY part of the setup process that required tools was also the most demanding and fiddly part of setup; attaching the parallelogram to the tripod. As such I scrounged some hand knobs with bolts of the appropriate size (1/4"-20, which makes things EASY), and now no tools required. Also did some shimming, tightening, and adjustment of the central pivot bearing surface and tripod attachment points to reduce some flexure that I was experiencing. Next, I marked the appropriate counterweight positions on the shaft with a sharpie to make setup quicker. Finally, the original builder used a smartphone bracket running SkySafari in compass mode as a finder, but the bracket was broken. I replaced it with two options; a rail for a Celestron RDF (that should be here sometime before the clouds clear), and a new smartphone bracket that can be swapped out with a single knob depending on which one I want to use. I MIGHT eventually shorten the boom sometime down the road just to reduce the moment arm and improve stability. Its current length is seriously overkill for my purposes, but considering the previous owner is a 7' GIANT, I can understand why it was built that way. Photos at the link: https://imgur.com/gallery/WBYw5r5 Also, spending this rainy season seriously upgrading the PVC frame I deploy around my back patio to set up my tarp-based "observatory." I swear I'll get some photos of the finished setup uploaded sometime, because it's rad as hell, and now that I've got a magnificent observing chair to go with the scopes, and the binoculars to go with the meteor-watching couch, I'm ready to pull some insanely comfortable all-night observing sessions. AstroZamboni fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 02:07
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hannibal posted:I think this is all a good start! Usually more frames is the answer, especially in light polluted areas since you will blow out your histogram easily so are limited to shorter exposures. Those DSOs are also not super bright ones. You did 20 minutes of exposure there, I'd shoot for a couple of hours at minimum. Then you get to learn about calibration frames... Thanks! I'm going to try for Bode's on Wednesday night. Glad you're enjoying the HG stuff, not quite the pace it was for the first year, but still good fun. Infinite Karma posted:I have to ask, how do you manage to get your alignment done with your phone? Looks like you're in a pretty light polluted area. I'm in Southern California on the coast and the light pollution is so bad that I really can't see Polaris most of the time. I've struggled to do some basic shooting with a Star Adventurer and always failed to get it aligned properly, at least from my backyard. I 3d printed a phone cradle that I mount on the StarAdventurer in place of the camera. Then I use the Polar Align Pro app with the daylight align mode and it gets me really close to Polaris. Then I pull off the plate and use the internal scope for the final alignment. Then I have another 3d printed clamp assembly that mounts to the hot shoe that I mount the phone on and use Sky Safari for the final positioning. I haven't tested the hot shoe mount yet and I'm rather skeptical of its flimsiness but it'll work till I get a fixed L bracket mount with a proper dovetail.  
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Jun 2, 2020 02:20
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Rolabi Wizenard posted:If you’re hoping to get high-ish magnification out of something that’s small enough to fit in a 16x12x6 bag, collimatable after bouncing down trails on a bike, you might consider a 90mm Maksutov. The OTA should be 10-11” long and 4-4.5” diameter, leaving room for eyepieces and... if you can see yourself putting it on a rock or a table, this little mount can disassemble and might squeeze flat into a 16x12 bag. Or, buy the OTA and get a light photo tripod. The OTA collimates with a screwdriver or an allen while pointing at a star. You might find Polaris easiest to use, as you won’t have a tracking mount. It would benefit from a better diagonal and a better eyepiece or two. An 8mm eyepiece gets you around 150x, which might be the best the optics will do. Good enough for Saturn’s Cassini division and the big equatorial belts on Jupiter. Thanks for the write up! Very very helpful. I picked up the 90mm and a tripod that collapses down to an appropriate size. I have a lot to learn, but I think this will be a fun way to mix together the science history kick I've been on lately with some real world observations. If anyone has and additional recommendations for books on the history of astronomy that aim to help a student reproduce historic experiments I'd be super into that. I have been reading Isaac Asiimov's two part "Understanding Physics" and doing some of the math he talks about and it's been fun. I've been out of school for 15 years, but its really nice to take some of those formulas over to, for example, kerbal, and work out simple orbital mechanics. I think doing the same for astronomy would be really cool. I'll check out the eyepiece and diagonal later. I'm a bit ignorant right now to pick out an eyepiece among all the options, but I think I'll figure it out before too long once I get started.
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Jun 2, 2020 22:06
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