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Bought myself a StarShoot G3 Mono and finally managed to get a brief gap in the rain to use it (very brief). Below is my result of 11 x 3 second exposures, stacked and tweaked slightly in Photoshop (got lots of experimenting to do with image processing!).



Equipment used and processing:
SkyWatcher ED100 (4" refractor)
EQ5 mount with motors
StarShoot G3 mono with IR filter
Captured using Orion Camera Studio ...

Originally Posted by Euan Mason

A light year is the distance light travels in one year, and it doesn't change with the sensitivity of a light receptor. On the other hand, determining the distance to an object is another matter, and generally involves some assessment of light flux (the amount of light received by a surface perpendicular to the light source), and also some knowledge of the actual amount of light emanating from the object.

I really love the story of Jean-Philippe Lois de Cheseaux, an 18th century

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So I found out what those extra tubes are for in the 80mm ES APO kit. They are so you can extend the focal extenders. And they thread onto the collar with the thumb screws and locking brass tension ring that you attach the diagonal or camera to. It unscrews and then you put one or both of these on.

You will have to do this each time you use the OTA as it will not fit in the case with them on the tube.

If you are just using this for visual then I would suggest pulling ...

From time to time I will post links to things that I have found almost indispensable in this hobby. This will be the first of such posts.

As you collect scopes, mounts and accessories, you will find out rather quickly that there is no standardization between manufacturers when it comes to the screws and bolts that hold our precious kits together. As a matter of fact, there sometimes is no standardization even within the same manufacturer.

Case in point, the screws in ...

I was out last night after taking the C11 back to Celestron (I live close to their HQ) the previous week because of problems with the optics. I found that after cooling it and dealing with some problems with my finderscope I just did not enjoy looking through it. The views were brighter, I could go deeper, and the things I was looking at were "bigger" (note the quotes) BUT... For the most part I wasn't viewing I was cursing. Cursing that it hadn't cooled, cursing the weight of the CGEM, ...