Gammerz Mars is at its closest (and brightest) too. If you use bins or tele, you can see the 4 moons of Jupiter (Io, Calisto, Ganymede and Europa) as stars in a straight line around the disc of Jupiter, that change position from evening to evening.
Jogort Still looking at scopes that will fit my mine Equatorial tracker for a decent budget and hopefully getting some decent bins soon.
Jogort Not the binoculars but the scope I will but that’ll be in the new year before I get it I think.
Jogort Geminids meteor shower peaks tonight, should be quite a few visible if you have a clear sky, thick cloud by me though 😭😭
Gammerz Very good extended Sky At Night episode, reviewing last decade’s discoveries. Plato exoplanet space-based telescope will increase the number of cameras to 26 from Tess’ 4. Also, the ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) will have a mirror of 39m, compared with the current largest of 10m!
Jogort Must still be getting the trail end of the gemenids, seeing a few small ones and 1 absolute cracker, good size and proper greenish trail to it. Never seen one like that IRL before.
Gammerz “Green comes from nickel. The most common metallic meteors are iron-nickel, so green is a common color.”
Jogort Had some very clear nights lately and finally got off my lazy ass to take the EQ mount out with the camera tonight. It’s just a mini so i think it’s error margin for tracking isn’t great for longer exposures but here’s a 2 minute exposure of Orion Nebula taken at max zoom on my 70-300 lens and iso1200. Without the tracker at 2minutes at that focal length the trails would be huge so I’m pretty happy with this for now.
Gammerz Jogort That’s a terrific shot. You’ve got significant amounts of colour in there too - many star-shot photos claim the colours aren’t real and have been processed, but yours are real.
Jogort Gammerz Yeah I’ve seen far too many shots that I think are way too processed but I guess if the person making it likes it that’s all that matters. Yeah I like the amount of colour from just 1 2 minute shot. All these cool astro photos are stacked shots of 10’s even 100’s of photos to get as much detail as possible.
Jogort Oh and my telescope arrives probably Monday so I expect the weather to change completely and be cloudy for days 🤣🤣
Gammerz Jogort Re: picture processing, I was thinking a bit more of professional images, like the ones you see in books (remember those), where I think they use infra red filters etc to see invisible parts of the spectrum and add false colour.
Gammerz Jogort Please also post some pictures of your telescope, or a link with it’s spec. And of course, any pictures you take through it (can you attach a camera)?
Jogort This is what I bought @Gammerz Sky-Watcher Startravel 102 AZ-GTE WiFi GoTo Refractor Telescope. 102mm with 500mm focal length F5, so pretty fast light gathering. It connects to my phone via WiFi and in its app I can choose an object and tell it to go to it automatically as long as it’s been North aligned first. It can also work with my planetarium app stellarium, so I can just look anywhere on that app then hit goto and track. It’s not specifically for photographing but I but the camera adapter also and hope I get a chance to use it as I’m off to work later next week
Gammerz Looks good and look forward to seeing any photos. I only had a noddy telescope, but I found that even with small magnifications, using a focusing ring was a problem, due to telescope wobble - telescopes really need auto-focus or hands-free focusing (like a shutter release cable on a camera).
Jogort Gammerz yeah I think a common upgrade is to a dual control fine & course focuser and for a few more ££ an electronic focuser. Down the line I’ll maybe add to it but time to just enjoy it hopefully.
Jogort Had a quick play with it outside tonight and it focuses really well, I only have 10mm & 25mm lenses for the moment but they both focused easily on Betelgeuse and stayed focused, the focuser has a locking screw if needed also but I didn’t have to. The GoTo function works very very well once you’ve aligned it properly. It was a little murky tonight so didn’t bother trying to photograph anything but hopefully soon.
