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Oh, he has a C5? Oops. edit: what a cursed page snipe. here's a thing on Amazon right now for people who want wide fields 
duodenum fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 22:22
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Yeah I also made the stupid assumption the individual who said they had a C6 actually had a C6. My bad.
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Apr 28, 2023 23:13
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AstroZamboni posted:Yeah I also made the stupid assumption the individual who said they had a C6 actually had a C6. My bad. Yeah that was my bad, sorry  . I do appreciate everyone’s generosity in sharing knowledge in this thread though.
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Apr 29, 2023 00:14
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Another wide-image this week, with a canon 50mm lens rho ophiuchi 
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Apr 30, 2023 01:28
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An image from the weekend NGC 6188 and 6164 ASI294MC camera + Askar FRA300 on a AM5 mount. Been trying to integrate a mini PC into my setup, first light with it but the fresh installs of all programs had a few teething issues. I eventually got it all working after a few hiccups (namely location not correct in one of the programs)  Fighting Dragons of Ara by Marc, on Flickr
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May 17, 2023 00:22
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^^ great stuff, Raikyn https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1678264-OREG/sky_watcher_s11620_classic_250p_10_traditional.html 
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May 17, 2023 00:39
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https://twitter.com/d_a_howell/status/1659709373080322048?s=21 nice https://twitter.com/d_a_howell/status/1659989087099686913 Luneshot fucked around with this message at 03:50 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 20, 2023 01:45
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Here's an image of the supernova taken yesterday: More info here: https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/2023/05/24/supernova-sn-2023ixf-in-the-messier-101-spiral-galaxy-a-image-23-may-2023/ Amazing to think that we're looking at a 21 million year old explosion.. According to Scientific American, even though this is one of the closest supernovae in 10 years (and this is the SECOND supernova to go off in M101 within the same time) neutrino detectors on Earth haven't gone off or anything. Binary Badger fucked around with this message at 16:12 on May 24, 2023 |
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May 24, 2023 16:08
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 big pre:Target: Ced 174 Coordinates: RA: 20h 02m 55.056s Dec: +37° 01' 17.32" Rot: 244.25 Subs: Ha - 39x600s OIII - 41x600s SII - 36x600s Total - 19h20m simble fucked around with this message at 00:14 on May 25, 2023 |
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May 24, 2023 21:47
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So OPT Telescopes is pretty much out of business and their inventory is going up for auction on June 6th. https://www.bidspotter.com/en-us/auction-catalogues/tiger-asset-intelligent/catalogue-id-bscti10071 I know the last few year business has been hard on them like many other due to the pandemic and their service was spotty at times too. Actually I'm sadder to learn that Don Pensack of EyepiecesEtc. is retiring at the end of this year. He's the guru of eyepieces and easy to talk to if you want to know anything about eyepieces. Hopefully, he'll stay on Cloudy Nights Forums.
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May 25, 2023 22:21
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i would have expected telescopes to have been a business that did well in the pandemic, what with there being a ton of nerds with extra money. the pandemic was hard on a lot of businesses, but suppliers of nerdy hobby accessories tended to do pretty well
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May 25, 2023 22:37
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I wonder how much of the problem is with the supply chain disruptions rather than customer demand.
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May 25, 2023 22:44
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Base Emitter posted:I wonder how much of the problem is with the supply chain disruptions rather than customer demand. Bingo! I remember seeing a lot of posts on Cloudy Nights and Facebook astronomy groups where OPT couldn't fulfill orders despite allowing people to make place orders. Agena Astro and Orion were much smarter by disallowing orders on items that we out with no real sight of return. There was a lot of demand during the pandemic. Combine that with the supply disruptions and you'll have the perfect storm. Some vendors like Orion still haven't fully recovered, but there's also fuckery by Celestron / Synta causing Orion issues too. edit: There's also a sweet foosball table in the auction too. Or there's a box of 24 Celestron counterweights. Liquid Chicken fucked around with this message at 00:00 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 25, 2023 23:49
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Achmed Jones posted:i would have expected telescopes to have been a business that did well in the pandemic, what with there being a ton of nerds with extra money. the pandemic was hard on a lot of businesses, but suppliers of nerdy hobby accessories tended to do pretty well I wonder how the market for telescopes and “space stuff” has evolved over the decades. On the one hand you would imagine that the internet and ongoing democratization of computing power and tech would’ve only pushed the hobby forward and to a broader/bigger audience, but AFAIK the hobby of astronomy and sky-gazing has largely shrunk and become more insular in many ways over the past 20 years. An astronomer friend once commented to me that the relative ubiquity of shots from Hubble/Voyager/etc had largely served to depress interest in stargazing as a hobby. He said that previously the best way to see the sky for most people was to do it firsthand, but that the rise of high resolution photography and deep sky imaging along with cheap color printing and now cheap HD/4K+ scale displays, meant that the most striking visuals from space were now in publication. It’s too expensive/difficult/knowledge-dependent for most people to get a similarly impressive view in person, so why bother going through the trouble? It feels like the high-water mark for this stuff was in the Space Race era and its aftermath, the 60s and especially the 70s, like a lot of people got excited about it and brought on board because of the national intrigue and competitive element; or like thru more counterculture/new-age types like Dobson/etc getting hippies to look at the sky and whatnot. And then you’ve got the Hubble and the post-Hubble era. I was born in ‘89 and my elementary school years were filled with all of the hi-res images of the Crab Nebula, Horsehead, etc that we’ve come to take for granted today. It took me until I was much older to understand that those images were about as “new” as I was, and that my parents hadn’t grown up in a world where those were the ubiquitous images of space that everybody knew, that even kids in the 1980s who had the Voyager shots didn’t have those images.
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May 26, 2023 01:27
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Light pollution has to have had an impact. I know growing up we could see the Milky Way in my parents' backyard. I was there a month ago and fat lot of nothing.
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May 26, 2023 01:33
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We might have seen the supernova at last night's star party with a 21-inch reflecting telescope. It was hazy out, the moon ruins everything, and we couldn't make out M101 itself. The telescope operator knows his poo poo, but we were under the impression that the star we could see was the supernova. We'll have to look for it again next month and see if it disappeared or not.
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May 28, 2023 19:32
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Ok Comboomer posted:I wonder how the market for telescopes and “space stuff” has evolved over the decades. On the one hand you would imagine that the internet and ongoing democratization of computing power and tech would’ve only pushed the hobby forward and to a broader/bigger audience, but AFAIK the hobby of astronomy and sky-gazing has largely shrunk and become more insular in many ways over the past 20 years. People just don't look up. I have to strap people to a stretcher and hold their eyes open just to get them to look at the moon. You can make out bright constellations even in light pollution, but people don't know what they're looking for and never try. If they are looking up, it is only when they're out of town driving at night and maybe notice something. The only people that know what the Big Dipper is are freaks like me who wore that information on my sleeve and was told Hale-Bopp was going to crash right into my home and kill me by my peers. You cannot get people to look up. It's just impossible. It's an insular group of people going out and using just their two eyes and nothing else because no one cares. It's the same for getting people to read. No one cares, no one has the time, no one has the curiosity.
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May 28, 2023 19:41
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Star Man posted:
Star Man posted:I have to strap people to a stretcher and hold their eyes open just to get them to look at the moon.
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May 29, 2023 00:35
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PerniciousKnid posted:But I don't think you should do this. I have never actually done something like that, yeesh. My point is it is an awful lot of effort to get anyone to even look at a total lunar eclipse on a clear night. All you have to do is go outside and look up. No equipment, no charts, no travel to the country. I can't even get people to do that unless I am there with them and browbeat them into it.
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May 29, 2023 02:38
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PerniciousKnid posted:Nobody knows the names of the plants in their yard either. It's sad. I must be a freak as I do. This year my gardens have been invaded by Greater Celandine. Lobed leaves and yellow flowers. I made the mistake of puling that poo poo by hand. The sap has a yellowish stain that really glows a strong yellow under UV light. Even after multiple hand washings and showers my one had still glows yellow. Anywhoo to sorta stay on topic. Harbor freight is having a Memorial day sale right now and you can print 25% off one item coupons from their website. Today I drove by two of those stores and snagged two of the 4800 Apache cases. I have more eyepieces that need a home aside from being scattered about the house in their original boxes. Also recently someone on Facebook asked if they can use their binoculars to look at the night sky. Really? You had to ask? You can't just go outside and give it a try to see what happens?
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May 29, 2023 03:54
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Liquid Chicken posted:I must be a freak as I do. This year my gardens have been invaded by Greater Celandine. Lobed leaves and yellow flowers. I made the mistake of puling that poo poo by hand. The sap has a yellowish stain that really glows a strong yellow under UV light. Even after multiple hand washings and showers my one had still glows yellow. Maybe they once looked during the day and got burned.
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May 29, 2023 04:48
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I only get one potential day a week to get some astro stuff done, working a nightshift 6 days a week atm, so have to take whatever I get. Yesterday it was a brief look at the half moon before clouds came in. I also managed to work out a few kinks with a new guide camera, so not a total loss. 
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May 29, 2023 13:03
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Sky-Watcher (U.S. only) is having a sale this month on their classic and flex tube dobbies - not the goto types though. First time I've seen them on sale for quite a while if you've been sitting on the fence about for one. I enjoy my 250p Classic as my casual visual scope.
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Jun 3, 2023 16:53
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https://youtube.com/shorts/S6bUlwtYwGY?feature=share
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Jun 3, 2023 23:51
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I'd much rather have a manual dob than a goto anyway. The last thing I want to gently caress with when I'm under the night sky is fussy alignment and noisy motors. Completely harshes my vibe.
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Jun 4, 2023 18:57
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AstroZamboni posted:I'd much rather have a manual dob than a goto anyway. The last thing I want to gently caress with when I'm under the night sky is fussy alignment and noisy motors. Completely harshes my vibe. I definitely like my manual SW 10" Classic dob. It's my relaxing sit on my rear end dob and just cruise the night sky. It's a great set up for when you have zero goals and just want to enjoy yourself . However, my 16" dob is a goto - the Orion xx16g. It's too tall to sit down. Luckily ,the 2 star alignment is quick and accurate. Yes, it's noisy. I can use it manually and sometimes I do that. However, because of the size it tires the hell out of my arm and shoulder. This is where the goto / hand controller and tracking becomes very useful. Saves me from shoulder pain, but to each their own.
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Jun 4, 2023 22:03
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I'm planning to build my own 16" truss dob later this year, and for a go-to-like system I'm going to mount my Starsense Explorer bracket (with an old iphone 11 I use exclusively as a plate-solving object location computer) on the mirror box, and also build a matching equatorial platform for the scope for tracking. I also plan to build a matching extra-tall observing chair akin to the Catsperch Summit that'll allow for seated observing even with the 16" pointed at zenith. That's going to be much more my style than coffee grinder slewing motors and fussy alignment routines. Maybe I'm just stuck in my ways. I've been star-hopping with manual scopes for nearly thirty years (started when I was a little kid and had to learn the night sky from Star Hustler on PBS and visits to the planetarium) to the point where it's second nature, and most computerized scopes make me feel like a layer of irritating bureaucracy is standing between me and the night sky when I can otherwise just look at the atlas, point the scope, and look through the eyepiece. And I really hate the sound of slewing motors, because I like my observing sessions to be quiet time in nature. The Starsense explorer is the only computerized object location system that hasn't made me want to smash it against the wall in frustration.
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Jun 5, 2023 06:54
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Over at Bennington College in Vermont, the campus has an observatory with a 16" SCT. I'm sure the scope makes slewing noises, but they are drowned out by the rotation of the dome. Its straight up deafening and sounds like you're trapped inside a dryer machine with a dozen shoes. It make the slewing noises of the 8SE sound quaint and minimal.
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Jun 5, 2023 13:02
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Liquid Chicken posted:Over at Bennington College in Vermont, the campus has an observatory with a 16" SCT. I'm sure the scope makes slewing noises, but they are drowned out by the rotation of the dome. Oh I've been in enough college observatories to be familiar with that horrendous noise. Also not a fan of domes because I like seeing the whole sky. It may partially be my sensory processing disorder, but also I'm a John Muir astronomer at heart. Getting out in nature and keeping technology to a minimum is the way I like it.
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Jun 5, 2023 17:58
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Apropos of this chat, I went to my first dark sky site last weekend and totally botched it, on account of my 5SE's GoTo stuff. I've never had much trouble getting alignment and having the scope find targets from my driveway, but for some reason it just wasn't locating the targets I was looking for. I had a whole agenda for the night and couldn't find any of the objects I was hoping for (except M31, which was disappointingly blurry). It was a useful, if tragic lesson that I need to get better at locating objects manually, and not relying on the software. Like learning math via calculator without doing any of the fundamental stuff. Finding stuff wasn't made any easier by the fact that anytime I looked through the scope there was legitimately like 100+ stars in view, a significant amount more than I see when I take a peek at open clusters like the Pleiades from home. It was really disorienting (if beautiful).
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Jun 5, 2023 21:49
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Jewmanji posted:
I live in a relatively dark area, and didn't point a camera up until a few years ago. I legit thought my camera was hosed up, showing so many stars. Now if I go 30 minutes I can be in a dark B2. Boring landscape but dark. That has spoiled me these last couple of years. Wife wants to move back to the coast and I'm hung up on grey skies.
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Jun 5, 2023 22:02
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Jewmanji posted:Apropos of this chat, I went to my first dark sky site last weekend and totally botched it, on account of my 5SE's GoTo stuff. I've never had much trouble getting alignment and having the scope find targets from my driveway, but for some reason it just wasn't locating the targets I was looking for. I had a whole agenda for the night and couldn't find any of the objects I was hoping for (except M31, which was disappointingly blurry). It was a useful, if tragic lesson that I need to get better at locating objects manually, and not relying on the software. Like learning math via calculator without doing any of the fundamental stuff. This last weekend when the moon was up? The moonlight can act as light pollution. It just washes out most DSO objects. Also what were the smoke conditions? There's been quite a few smoky nights here in the Northeast and elsewhere due to Canadian wildfires. Smoke just ruins transparency. And if it's humid the water moisture and smog just makes smog. Also did you check the date you entered into the hand controller especially the latitude and longitude coordinates for the new site? Some folks will accidently try to enter the digital version which won't do. Make sure it's the hours and minutes format. When the data and alignment is set right, the SE works great. I suspect your viewing conditions sucked and might be a data entry error.
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Jun 5, 2023 22:30
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This was in central Maine, outside Baxter, and fortunately the fires from Halifax had significantly dodged that area. Cleardarksky indicated the seeing conditions were not optimal but certainly good. There was a waxing moon which I literally waited for 2am to set, which gave me about 2 hours before dawn to find stuff. I was very careful about all of that hand controller input, and had to do it many times over while I tried to error-correct. When doing the 2-star align, the scope was able to precisely locate the second star every time (i.e. you show it Dubhe and it slews precisely to Aldebaran or whatever). I don't know what that indicates, if you can achieve alignment but then none of the targets are visible, but yeah (can 2-star align possibly work with the wrong coordinates or date/time? I guess since the stars are fixed in relation to one another, maybe? But then so would the rest of the objects be). I'll grant that I was doing this at 3-4 am after a long day of hiking, so maybe my brain wasn't working properly, but this wasn't an issue I've encountered before at home to any significant degree. It makes sense to me that the open clusters would get lost among all the "noise" of the other stars, but the globular clusters I looked for (M53, M3, M13, M92, M5), weren't visible, and most distressing of all, none of the nebulae or galaxies I was hoping for were visible (ring, dumbbell, swan, lagoon, M51, M101). Some of these were admittedly somewhat close to the eastern horizon, but I specifically chose the whirlpool and the pinwheel since they'd be roughly overhead all night. I'm not sure I'll be able to troubleshoot what happened, but it was an object lesson in making sure I can find things the old-fashioned way if need be. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jun 5, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 23:02
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I would just say recheck things to see if there was anything skipped. What eyepieces are you using to find these targets? A few of them like M101 will be hard to find with a 5SE even on a good night. There are limitations due to your aperture size. Even with a 16" dob it's just gray fuzzies. Globular clusters should have been visible even under moonlight. Nebulas can be difficult - you're looking for gray wispy ghost farts. A good narrowband or O-III filter can help improve contrast somewhat. It is better to wait till such objects are higher in the sky. Meanwhile, tonight across much of the U.S. we're hosed.  Someone needs to visit Alberta and tinkle on that fire.
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Jun 6, 2023 02:02
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Liquid Chicken posted:I would just say recheck things to see if there was anything skipped. I was using a 32mm Televue (39x magnification) with a focal reducer and this filter. My targets were all chosen out of Turn Left at Orion, which so far has seemed fairly reliable.
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Jun 6, 2023 02:48
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Jewmanji posted:I was using a 32mm Televue (39x magnification) with a focal reducer and this filter. My targets were all chosen out of Turn Left at Orion, which so far has seemed fairly reliable. With that focal reducer you're only at 25x. Reducers act in the opposite of barlows and decrease magnification. Exit pupil is just about 5mm, but some of those targets like M57 are really tiny at that magnification. You might not even notice them. Very low magnification and any light pollution isn't a good mix. Increase the magnification to darken the background. I usually view most galaxies around 100x or so depending on conditions. Depending on the particular nebula I'll be at 50x or more. You do have a good narrowband filter so no issues there. Some of the cheaper UHC filters are really just broadbands. Nothing wrong with your source material - Messier objects are the most popular and on a good seeing night visible to some degree depending on aperture. Have you seen this website yet? https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ Pop in your telescope and eyepiece stats, select a target from the list and you'll get a general idea of how an object is framed along with magnification, exit pupil, etc. It doesn't take in account your viewing conditions so take quality of the image with a large grain of salt.
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Jun 6, 2023 03:39
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So.... I think my ZEQ25 might be toast. It's been having recurring issues with RA overcurrent for a while now. I first remember it happening after it slewed hard over and continued trying to slew until I killed the power. I followed Paul Chasse's excellent guide on tuning the mount to tear it down, and found evidence of notching and flattening on the main worm gearset. The worm gear itself looks OK, but the main gear does not. I didn't get a photo unfortunately, but there was clear notching and wearing on the teeth - some had flattening, some looking very worn, and as mentioned several had notches. Do I impress my friends with a cool table ornament, or do I hope against hope that I might be able to replace the gear - maybe iOptron sell spares - and fit it myself? I'll take it apart again and see if I can get some photos to show the damage.
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Jun 6, 2023 06:05
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My friend is on vacation in the Atacama and took this with her loving phone.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:47
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Phanatic posted:My friend is on vacation in the Atacama and took this with her loving phone. No ring, but otherwise wow! Here's hoping for a blackout on a clear night.
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Jun 9, 2023 20:15
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 Elephant's Trunk 2 hours each Ha, Oiii, Sii.
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Jun 16, 2023 05:14
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