Stars / Astronomy / Astrophotography / Telescopes / Astro

Do you place the lens warmer appropriately where the first piece of glass is or does it just heat the hood?
That is a seriously lush bit of kit.

Placed just in front of the glass, it barely feels warm when it's on and just creates a little area inside the front of the tube doesn't get dewey

Makes total sense, I have one for my camera but only tried it once as it covered the manual focus ring. This is because I'm stupid and didn't think to use the hood which I'd discarded because it was dark.

in this case, the hood on the scope is actually called a "dew shield", and the dew heater wraps it to create a pool of warmer / drier air to prevent the dew forming.

Had a shot at the moon last night. Don't think I'll be staying up for the partial eclipse tonight however.

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I've been off work and sleeping off some kind of sickness bug for the past two days. I fully expect to be wide awake between 2-4am.

I think it's only a 4% eclipse so not sure how good it will look

Did get the ISS passing last night

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Do know whether this chap has been mentioned on here. This is absolut6inspiring.
https://youtu.be/cQdq-mZx7w4?si=e06RQOQEkDEuVJ9L

It's been 17 days since I got my telescope. Had one clear night so far.

You’ve jinxed it for all of us.
Please sell it on Facebook so that the clear skies come back…

Can I sacrifice someone's cat or something?

No you need to wait out the new gear curse. There's nothing else to do.

Managed to get out for a decent few hours on Friday, got 45 mins on the Heart and Soul Nebulae and a quick and dirty 8 mins on Pleiades.

Heart and Soul was a total of 1346 2 Seconds exposures @ 800 ISO, with a Sony a7 and a Canon FD 100mm f2.8. Untracked and then stacked using SIRIL, star removal using Starnet to bring out the dust, finished using Photoshop. Probs a total of around 10 hours of processing time.

Pleiades was about 500 1 Second exposures @ 3200 ISO, again using the same equipment and software as above, just obvs a fair bit less processing time.

Hoping to get out this weds as the sky is looking decent up in Leeds, planning on getting a load more time on Pleiades with a longer lens.

Keeping my eyes open for a reasonably priced tracker at the mo, quickly realising the limitations of shooting untracked. Fairly pleased with both, especially the Heart and Soul considering how dim it is and how hard it is to get red nebula data without filters.

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London-centric post alert!

The Royal Observatory Greenwhich are hosting a series of evening events featuring a live planetarium show, observing outside with modern telescopes and then a tour round the Great Equatorial Telescope. I'm booked on one in January, looking forward to it.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/royal-observatory/evening-stars

Pulled the trigger on a TTartisan 500mm 6.3 manual focus lens for dirt cheap.
Better learn how to use the star tracker properly…

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather

Chance of Northern Lights tonight

My phone just issued a red alert for them, but it's way too light still

Hackney marshes, from my phone just now

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Almost as good at May's show!

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Northern lights tooting style

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Et encore

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Nanu nanu

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Unreal tonight facing north east in North East Fife.

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^love those shots!

absolutely spectacular!^^

Tonight was the first time I've seen them in all the years of trying, so I'm very pleased. I got to Hackney Marshes about 8pm, but a cloud blocked it straight away. It was from around 9.30pm I could see it.
A couple more from my camera this time:

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