Astronomy Bug

It's been cloudy almost constantly for the last week or so. I've been reviewing my telescope plans. Short term I really think I want to pick up an SVBony MK127 scope to put on the Explore Scientific mount (I currently have an Orion 90MM on there). My main interest is visual observing, though there is some thought that this scope would be a reasonable platform for imaging smaller objects than the Dwarf 3 can do, should I want to do that in the future. I did manage to collect a few photos by shooting through holes in the clouds. C2025-A6 (Lemmon)       IC 1805 - Heart Nebula The comet I kept short to keep it from blurring as it moves. Six 15-second exposures. The Heart Nebula got 90 exposures, 60 seconds each at 120 gain. The deep sky stuff really would do a lot better with 3 hours or so of exposures but the clouds only stay away for an hour or two at a time. 

I've been working on getting my visual stuff up, but in the mean time plopping the Dwarf 3 in the driveway and imaging random things.   From October 12: Open cluster M39:  From October 15: IC 1848 (HD237023), the "Soul Nebula" Duo-Band filter, 150x 60second subs, 120 gain, uncropped   Open cluster M29, the "Cooling Tower" Globular cluster M56:    

I've been out of astronomy for probably 10 years. Unfortunately I foolishly sold my 15" dob, but I do have a 10" and a 90mm mak and a decent selection of eyepieces. I've been working for a couple of days renewing my knowledge and getting my equipment back in shape. On the equipment side, my dob has some rubber parts that have perished and a snapped-off nylon thumb screw. I've got replacements for those in my Amazon cart. The focuser rings have rubber traction rings that have long since fallen apart. I am having trouble finding a source for those, so I'm probably going to just 3D print replacements, maybe make them a bit fatter while I'm at it. On the software side, I've dragged up the Pro version software I had before - SkyMap 3 Pro and SkyTools 3 Pro. SkyMap is now dead and buried, but there are plenty of available replacements; KStars, Stellarium, Cartes du Ciel, etc. There's no replacement I know of for SkyTools though. After confirming the old ...

(copied from my DragonflyDIY blog) I have been somewhat interested in astrophotography in the past, but have only done camera-lens wide field stuff with no mount (30 second exposure type stuff). I just wasn't interested in spending the time or money to get into what can be a VERY expensive hobby. However, at this year's Astronomy on the Beach (29th annual, in Island Lake State Park near Brighton, Michigan), I went to a talk about smart telescopes. I had been only vaguely aware of this new phenomenon, and went to the talk very skeptical. Long story short, about 3 days later I laid down $550 for a Dwarf 3 smart telescope. The front runners in the $500 class scopes right now are the Dwarf 3 and the Seestar S50. The Dwarf has a newer generation 8 megapixel imaging chip and a wider field of view. The S50 is more telephoto and has a previous generation 2 megapixel chip. I find that a lot of what I'm interested in are larger objects, and I like the newer chip. Those co...

I've been in and out of amateur astronomy for decades. I'm now retired for a few years and am taking it up again. I don't expect to post anything mind boggling here but I do like to document what I'm doing and perhaps someone will find it interesting. The peak of my astronomy adventures was about 8 years ago when I had an excellent 15" Dobsonian that I built myself around a Swayze 15" f/4.5 mirror. It was beautiful. And stupidly, I sold it.  I now have a 10" Orion dob, a little Orion 4.5" mak-cas, and a Dwarf 3 smart scope (just acquired). The mak needs a better mount, right now it's one of those pressed wood tabletop mounts. My first love is optical observing. Astrophotography is kind of neat, but I was never willing to put the time or money into it. The Dwarf 3 is easy and cheap enough, and produces extraordinary results for the money, so I gave it a whirl. But mainly I like star-hopping to find faint stuff at the limit of what my current scope...