The Official Astronomy Thread

Crusader said:
Nope, it's not. And I think the word you were looking for would be occultation. That's when one object is hidden by another. Obviously it's more likely that the Moon will occult Jupiter than the other way round, but that's not going to happen.
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Sorry, i'm an admitted noob in this dept :p

yeah, of course, no jupiter between us and the moon likely anytime :D
 
The Moon and Jupiter that close last night looked awesome. It also gave me a great opportunity to test my Baader Hyperion 5mm eyepiece. I am never buying any other eyepiece with a smaller than 68 degree apparent field of view. The eye relief is amazing as well and I could watch Jupiter for 10 minutes strait without getting an eye cramp. :D

I also tested my collimator and the laser dot was about 5mm from the small circle in the middle of the main mirror. So I then pointed my telescope at the brightest star I could find and made the image go out of focus. I could see that the rings that are produced points to one side but not by much. This might explain why the one side of Jupiter never comes into focus or seems to bleed to one side. Tonight I will align my mirrors and see if it improves my viewing experience.
 
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Yup. That sounds like you need tweaking. Just be sure that you kept the star at the center of your FoV. If it's not centered it will always look like you need collimation.
 
I did the alignment last night and things are looking better. Jupiter is now in focus on all sides and the stars have nice round circles around them if I break focus unlike before where it was almost oval.

Stuck the 5mm eyepiece on the barlow last night just to see if it would work. That gave me 300X magnification which is pushing it my telescope but Jupiter looked amazing. I think I need to invest in the 3.5mm eyepiece as soon as there is stock.
 
Be careful getting eyepieces with too high magnification. Conditions might severely limit their use.

In other news my new scope is here! Whoohoo! Just need to finish assembly tonight and if the sky is clear I might have first light tonight.
 
That's something I don't like to be reminded of - R22k. Pretty expensive as scopes go, but hopefully it will be worth it.
 
That is a sweet scope Crusader. I am very jealous. ;)

I am truly annoyed by the light pollution Johannesburg produces. Back on the farm in the Boland I never had issues like these but then again I had a crappy little scope. :(
 
Thanks. It does look pretty impressive. Too bad it's been consistently cloudy every night since I got it. Hopefully by Friday I will be able to use it for the first time.
 
Crusader said:
Thanks. It does look pretty impressive. Too bad it's been consistently cloudy every night since I got it. Hopefully by Friday I will be able to use it for the first time.
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You know perfectly well about the new scope curse.. I bet you everyone in CT are swearing at you for messing up their weekend :D
 
Kalvaer said:
You know perfectly well about the new scope curse.. I bet you everyone in CT are swearing at you for messing up their weekend :D
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That I do, but it has been the severest ever. Guess it escalates according to price as well as aperture. Since I ordered it it has been consistently cloudy every night for the last 10 days.

By the looks of the weather predictions I *might* get a chance to use it on Friday, but I'm not betting on it.

I must admit that there's quite a learning curve to the computerised scopes. Need to learn about backlash, Go-to approach settings and quite a few other stuff.
 
At least you know how to star hop very well though before you went automated. I think its much harder to learn that small but VERY important detail in astronomy if you had the GOTO first.

Looking forward though to hear how things turn out when the weather finally clears for you.

PS: Congrats btw
 
The one link is for motor drives so don't see the second scope. The first scope don't appear to be motorized. Remember that you want the largest mount for astrophotography. Perhaps a EQ6 would be a better option?
 
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