Search Results for 'espin telescope'

[Jimmy Fraser]

I must add though that despite my loss of enthusiasm for the modern Sky & Telescope covers the interior of the magazine is very well designed with excellent illustrations. I began my subscription in January 1986 – always looked forward each month to the articles written by Walter Scott Houston, George Lovi and John Bortle.

[Jimmy Fraser]

I had real problems renewing my Sky & Telescope subscription online last month – I gave up and sent in the renewal card by post, which they got. I love the old Sky & Telescope covers at Archive.org. They live long in the memory. By the early 1990s they started to use screaming headlines and that special look was lost. Nowadays the cover art never registers with me at all. The BAA Journal is still a joy though. https://archive.org/details/Sky_and_Telescope?&and%5B%5D=year%3A%221978%22

[Peter Carson]

Even at its brightest I had great difficulty in seeing 46P from my light polluted back garden with binoculars or a telescope, but it was easy to image. There was one time when I ventured to a reasonably dark site and could easily see it naked eye only to come home and then couldn’t find it with binoculars.

46P was a really strange comet that required unconventional observing techniques.

[Peter Carson]

I take the S&T and can’t say I’d noticed.

Perhaps S&T thought the UK and Ireland are constantly shrouded in cloud so wasn’t worth putting them on the map.

Peter

[Robin Leadbeater]

Hi Garion,

DSLR are very popular for astrophotography and it is possible to produce some stunning deep sky images with a DSLR used at prime focus (eg using a T ring and eyepiece adapter in place of the lens and mounting the camera in place of the eyepiece)

eg this website picked at random from the many out there

http://ried-sternwarte.de/dslr-galerie.html

You ask if it will work with your reflector and there are two potential issues that you will need to check with your particular setup.

If you plan to use it at prime focus, you will need to check that you can reach focus. (This can be a problem with Newtonians and DSLR as you might not be able to wind the focuser in far enough to place the camera sensor at the telescope focal plane)  You can add a Barlow lens to get round this but this increases the focal length, making the stability and tracking capability of the mount more critical. 

You will need to test the stability of your mount and how well it will track. You might struggle with your Meade Polaris 130MD with its EQ3 mount and simple motor drive,  but the best way to find out is to try it.  

Cheers

Robin

[David Swan]

Yes, very curious. I might mention it to Bob King on his web page on the eclipse.

[Alex Pratt]

Hi David,

Some of my family are from the North East, so I particularly enjoyed last year’s BAA meeting in Newcastle.

Zooming in to your print version the map background looks slightly blotchy and uneven off the coast of continental Europe, clearly interrupting the line of longitude. Perhaps some image processing was done to remove the UK and Ireland?

     Alex.

[Alex Pratt]

Hi David,

Being a Yorkshire Lad I only take S&T’s free e-mail newsletter. In its article on the lunar eclipse its visibility map includes the British Isles.

Observing January’s Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse

Clear skies,

     Alex.

[Peter Anderson]

All I know is that the Australian Jan 19 ‘Sky and Telescope’ printed my story about observing the main stars of Ursa Major (Big Dipper) from Noosa Heads , Aust at 26 deg South as a ‘focal point’ item so I am ‘chuffed’ with it. (See details in my account on this website) Of course we don’t see this lunar eclipse in Australia so the local edition did not cover it. The Australian edition, glossy, 8 per year at 84 pages each draws key articles and reviews from its parent but includes a healthy amount of local content.

[David Swan]

Hello,

Are there any readers of the Jan 2019 Sky and Telescope out there? Glancing at the lunar eclipse visibility map on p19, I immediately noticed that the UK was missing. I initially thought this might be a weird point about issue x (removed for obvious reasons), until I realised that of course the whole island of Ireland, including the Republic of Ireland, was absent. 

It would seem the contagion of issue x is worse than I first thought. Please don’t talk about issue x on this thread.

David

[Nick James]

As others have said 46P/Wirtanen is exactly where the orbit says it should be but diffuse comets are much more difficult to see than their magnitudes would suggest. Even though this one got to 4th magnitude at its brightest the light was spread over an area several times that of the Moon. I did see it a few times from my light polluted garden in Chelmsford using 11×80 bins but it wasn’t easy. Other people at dark sites did get a much better view. With these diffuse comets it is usually better to use binoculars than a telescope.

[Peter Anderson]

The answer is a resounding YES.  It depends what you want to do with it and I go back to the film days well over half a century ago. You can take ‘happy snaps’ through the eyepiece of bright objects but in this case mobile phone cameras where the lens size is comparable in size to the exit pupil of eyepieces, are likely more efficient. If happy snapping, get as close as possible without bumping the eyepiece, but expect that you won’t get a full frame, just like in the attached Moon image using this method.

Now, if you remove both camera lens and eyepiece, with luck you can achieve prime focus and this is where it really gets interesting because you will be using the main mirror of the telescope as your lens. If your telescope can track your target – even for only around 30 seconds, by cranking up to say 2000ISO you can get passable deep sky images, but beware that the optics need to be properly adjusted.  I have included an image with a 6″ F5 telescope of the Eta Carina area and you can see how the focus falls away on one side due to poor alignment.

Now I could rabbit on at length, but the question is what you specifically want to do with it so I will leave my comments there. (If you wish, you could visit my account site and check out more images. Virtually all are DSLR images.)

[Garion Edward Brooks]

Is it possible to use my dslr camera with my reflector telescope?

Kindest regards, 

Garion 

[Dr Andrew Smith]

Owen as a BAA and SGL contributor, I was interested in how you justify your comment on SGL being “the least credible source of any observational material known” ? Have you done a study or can you provide a credible reference? 

On a different tack, I suspect visual acuity is as important as telescope  aperture, seeing and other sky conditions to observations of the Pup.

Regards Andrew 

[Peter Mulligan]

Thanks for the link David. What a very interesting article, there is no doubt that the tremendous increase in light from

AT2018cow was a very powerful and unusual event, far out shining  its host galaxy CGCG 137-068 as witnessed by the central image of June 20 2018 in the Sky & Telescope article.  It seems there are quite a few theories flying around should be interesting to see what conclusions (if any?) are drawn from further observations.

Here is another link 

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Team_of_telescopes_finds_X-ray_engine_inside_mysterious_supernova

   

[David Swan]

In case anyone is interested, there is an article in Sky and Telescope on the mysterious ‘Cow’ transient that appeared six months ago. Therein are further links to the research literature (Open Access).

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/uncategorized/cow-celestial-event-puzzles-astronomers/

[Peter Carson]

Hi Owen,
 About a year ago I observed Sirius B visually using a friend’s good quality 200mm APO refractor. It wasn’t easy but it was definitely observable. The refractor I was using had good contrast and colour correction which helped. Telescopes of poor contrast will struggle to show it because Sirius is magnificently bright in any aperture telescope.

Peter

[Gary Poyner]

Happy New year Jeremy, and to all BAA members reading this.

A far better year than 2017 – which wasn’t too difficult to achieve.

(2016 in brackets)

North Birmingham.

Clear nights (less than 50% cloud) 44 (25), Partially clear nights (50% or more cloud) 69 (61)

Total observable nights 113 (86) with 55 of these nights being under Moonlight conditions.  I made variable star observations on 108 of these 113 nights.  This is my best year for clear nights since 2003.

Total hours at the telescope: 237.3 (183.6)

Best month May (March) 6 clear and 12 partially clear

Worst month March (February) 2 clear and 2 partially clear

On 53 nights of the year, Birmingham Met Office gave the wrong prediction for cloud cover.  This is a six night improvement on 2017.  My weather owl did much better!  

My total visual VS observations for 2018 is 9,013 – the best year since 2009.  It was a poor year for remote CCD observations though with only 1,767 observations obtained.  This was due to the Open University COAST telescope being out of commission for most of the year, and a prolonged Monsoon in the SW USA which affected the AAVSOnet SRO-50 reflector in Arizona.  All CCD observations were of variable stars – of course.  

2018 was memorable for me as I passed my 300,000th visual VS observation in October.

Gary

[Chrisantha Fernando]

Dear Forum, 

Please could you advise me. I often observe on a remote site reached by car. I have a Celestron CPC 925 telescope, and have problems with Dew. There is a vast range of expensive dew heaters and shields available, sold separately from their power supply. I need my 12V car power supply for the main drive. Whats the simplest way to heat the telescope to prevent dew formation with this setup? Will I need another rechargable power supply? 

Many thanks, 
Chrisantha

[Ron Arbour]

Is it a folded reflector? The focuser does not appear to be at right angles to the tube and there appears to be what looks like a system of baffles, both consistent which such a system. Just a guess.