Hi Tsula. I have been observing M13 for the last two days with both my 10" go to dobsonian and my 180 Maksutov. I am looking at buying myself a 6" refractor soon and I think it would be a good video for you to make comparing yours with your 8" SCT.
Something I never realized is the moon. It really is the enemy of deep sky visual observations. This is a older video but I learned when I posted " I got a 8" Dob and nothing looked clear or special" You said where was the moon and what phase? It's behind me and I'm not looking in that direction, You said it drowns the night in unwanted light. Song title? But 2 nights later was New and I saw everything and got mad morning came so soon!
Thanks, Chris. Enjoy your four day weekend! I can't believe the smoke is still plaguing your area. Fortunately, we have been spared here in Montana I guess because it has been an unusually wet spring/summer. It usually clears up at or near full moon.
This is a wonderful video - your awe at what you were seeing reminded me of my college days, when the chemistry building, with its professors and students in lab coats, gave me the eerie feeling of a temple in which priests, so to speak, struggled to plumb the secrets of the universe. (Not that I think humanity will ever fully plumb them - from what I've read, the next step, beyond what we've discovered with the Large Hadron Collider, will require a collider as large as the circumference of the earth. Socrates, perhaps, said it best (I paraphrase here, from Xenophon): "The gods deliberately hid their secrets from us because they - the gods - knew that if we ever discovered those secrets, we'd use them to destroy ourselves, thinking ourselves gods. It's like staring into the sun. Look at [the astronomer] Anaxagoras! He's half-crazy already.") On a lighter note, I particularly like your @8:00 drawing - it's practically photographic in its realism, and stunningly demonstrates what attracts people to astronomy - and Greg's suggestion of special astronomy drawing tools. (Before reading his comment, I planned to suggest refining your technique simply by using ordinary pencils of different hardness, the better to capture pinpoints and nebulosity, and a gum eraser (since half of drawing is about smudging and erasing) - but I must defer to him on this one.) In fact, here's a detailed how-to article about it, from the same BBC source which I cited in one of my previous comments - perhaps, one day, we'll see stunning color as well as B&W drawings from you! www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/how-to-sketch-an-astronomical-deep-sky-object/
Walter: Thank you! This video was much more manageable because I had a limited number of objects to tackle. I read the article you mentioned. Her drawing of M44 was beautiful and almost reduced me to tears. I will need to invest in many more items to get to the point of creating something that majectic. Right now I have blending stumps, pencils, and special erasers and this sort of sand paper but nothing to make colors other than adding a blue pen. I had a hard time controlling the size of the stars in M13. I have a shaky hand and have had bad hand writing my entire life. My hand just wants to stray. But trying to improve my star drawing skills is something that interests me. I will need to research what other tools I will need to expand my skills. Ever since I heard about him I have reallly admired Howard Banich, who often writes for Sky & Telescope and who has made some incredible drawings of the night sky. I would love to achieve something even close to what he has done. Of course his telescope is 24" I think. But thank you for your input and encouragement. It has really peaked my interest and given me the motivation to keep trying to improve my observational skills and attempts to convey what I am seeing in my telescopes.
This really is a gorgeous cluster, Tsula! I had the opportunity to do almost the same as you: binoculars, and then my 10" dob with an 8mm Ethos (but I don't have a humungous scope yet!). I also was able to image it and it looked pretty good! Looks like you had some nice weather for a change. Very happy for you. We'd love to hear more about your observatory! Regarding your sketches, I thought I'd mention I got something neat for Christmas: Dark Matter Notebook Series that has black pages and a pen that writes white. Pretty neat since you don't have to reverse the normal pencil/black ink/blue ink on white paper (but I haven't really used it yet). Loved the video and, as always, your contagious enthusiasm!
Hi Greg: Thank you! Yes, it finally cleared up and warmed up for a couple of days and naturally by then the moon was nearly full. But I was determined to take advantage and stayed up last night until the moon set at about 2:30 am. After that the Milky Way was just gorgeous splashed across the sky. I wanted to stay up longer and enjoy it but had to pack it in at 3:00 am. Glad your M13 photo turned out. By the way, do you like your AM5 mount? Do you find it hard to polar align without a polar scope? How long does it take you to polar align with an electronic polar alignment? I think you said you returned the Quattro scope. How big is the scope you put on the AM5? I heard someone mention using black pages and a white pen for his sketches and wondered if it looked any better than inverting the white page in Photoshop. I actually made an entire video about the observatory but did not publish it because then there were more developments. But it will come out soon.
@@tsulasbigadventures Hi Tsula. Ugh, those gorgeous nights when the Milky Way pops out are just amazing! I've done a few of those "just a little longer" nights myself that turned into a 3 am night. It's hard to tear yourself away, isn't it? I absolutely love the AM5 mount. Believe it or not, it's much easier to align using that mount than when I was using a polar scope my previous mount! But for the accuracy you need to image, you'd have to use a computer assist. I attach a laser pointer to the bracket that it comes with on the side, put the laser beam close to Polaris, and then use the Polar Alignment routine in my ASIAir (although you could use any computerized polar alignment tool). It usually takes all of about 4-5 min to get a polar alignment with about 10-20" of error (depending on how OC I am that night). It's really super easy -- and no neck strain from a polar scope! So, for imaging you'd need some type of computerized assistance and couldn't do a manual PA since there's no polar scope. I imagine you could attach a polar scope to the bracket on the side and try polar aligning, but I don't know how accurate it would be even after you ensured the polar scope was pointing in precisely the same direction as the mount head. Since the AM5 can convert (in about 2 minutes) to an Alt-Az mount, you can also use it for visual observing. (I do sometimes.) Of course, you can't polar align with it in that configuration but all you do is point one side of the mount as close as you can at north, and if you use a guide scope attached to your observing telescope the plate solving (I use the ASIAir) will get you on your target and track it. You might have to tweak the mount with the controller to center the target, but once centered it tracks nicely. I use the TC40 carbon fiber tripod from ZWO with the AM5. It's nice and lightweight and it provides good support, but the hefty tripods you already have would probably be better. (But I don't think the AM5 fits on every type of tripod, so you'd have to check to be sure.) On very windy nights, I usually throw a 7-10 lb weight in the tripod hammock to stabilize the tripod and that works well, especially with the low profile of the refractor. But you wouldn't have to do that with one of the beefier tripods you have. Yes, I returned the Quattro and now have a 107mm refractor, an Askar 107PHQ that I use with the AM5. With all the accessories attached to the 107PHQ, it totals about 25 lbs. and the AM5 handles it beautifully. With average seeing and anything up to about 5-7 mph winds, I routinely get guiding in the 0.4-0.5" total RMS error range. On nights with poor seeing and/or wind, my error is usually about 0.8-1.0" total RMS, but the stars are still round in the images. The AM5, being a strain wave mount, does have some periodic error so every now and then the guiding error is a bit higher, but it recovers and settles fairly quickly. All said, I am 'over the moon' 🤣happy with the AM5 mount. Hope things are okay with the observatory, and I'm looking forward to seeing your video about it.
@@gregerianne3880 Thank you for all that information. I have been looking at strain wave mounts as a possible solution for something that can be taken on a plane that can handle more than a Sky guider or Star Adventurer can. I was hesitant about the AM5 because this is ZWO's first plunge into the world of mount making and was concerned about how good it could be but it seems like it gets good reviews. Thanks for all the information.
@@tsulasbigadventures Strain wave mounts like the AM5 are good choices, I think. The AM5 can handle up to 44 lbs, so it's quite capable, doesn't weigh much, and comes with a great little case. Right now, anyway, I think it's just a bit cheaper than some of the other strain wave mounts without encoders. Hope you have a great 4th of July weekend, Tsula!
Loved this video Tsula and your drawings. I finally got my tripod! Last night I chose the gibbous moon and it looked pretty good. I’ll shoot for M13 soon though.
Looks like my observing stool. Those are great. Bought mine at a second hand store for $5 and replaced the wheels with rubber knobs. The swivel and easy up down works great for Dobsonians and other scopes too.
I like that stool too. I was hoping to put a rug in there to keep my feet warm but not sure that stool will be able to glide over the rug like it does over the concrete. What kind of terrain do you run the rubber knobs over?
@@tsulasbigadventures Well, mine had a bum caster wheel. Tried to repair it but not very effective. I ran it on a concrete pad okay but also took it to remote locations with dirt or gravel ground. The knobs are available at any hardware store and I find the light weight stool is easy to pickup and reposition. The height works well with my 10" Dobsonian. I find viewing is really better when you are comfortable. I usually wear insulated house slippers (the kind with a good rubber sole) when observing or doing photography from my backyard observatory slab.
Excellent video. Your sketches are great.
My hands, I might as well use Crayons
@5:40 I know your pain.
Hi Tsula. I have been observing M13 for the last two days with both my 10" go to dobsonian and my 180 Maksutov. I am looking at buying myself a 6" refractor soon and I think it would be a good video for you to make comparing yours with your 8" SCT.
My 8" SCT is in CA and my 6" refractor and 10" Dob are both in MT. I don't own any telescopes in the 8" range in MT. I'll try to figure something out.
Something I never realized is the moon. It really is the enemy of deep sky visual observations. This is a older video but I learned when I posted " I got a 8" Dob and nothing looked clear or special" You said where was the moon and what phase? It's behind me and I'm not looking in that direction, You said it drowns the night in unwanted light. Song title? But 2 nights later was New and I saw everything and got mad morning came so soon!
I still want a peek thru your best scope
Excellent! I actually have a 4 day weekend…. Unfortunately, We are plagued with round 2 of Canadian wildfire smoke clogging up the skies.
Thanks, Chris. Enjoy your four day weekend! I can't believe the smoke is still plaguing your area. Fortunately, we have been spared here in Montana I guess because it has been an unusually wet spring/summer. It usually clears up at or near full moon.
This is a wonderful video - your awe at what you were seeing reminded me of my college days, when the chemistry building, with its professors and students in lab coats, gave me the eerie feeling of a temple in which priests, so to speak, struggled to plumb the secrets of the universe. (Not that I think humanity will ever fully plumb them - from what I've read, the next step, beyond what we've discovered with the Large Hadron Collider, will require a collider as large as the circumference of the earth. Socrates, perhaps, said it best (I paraphrase here, from Xenophon): "The gods deliberately hid their secrets from us because they - the gods - knew that if we ever discovered those secrets, we'd use them to destroy ourselves, thinking ourselves gods. It's like staring into the sun. Look at [the astronomer] Anaxagoras! He's half-crazy already.")
On a lighter note, I particularly like your @8:00 drawing - it's practically photographic in its realism, and stunningly demonstrates what attracts people to astronomy - and Greg's suggestion of special astronomy drawing tools. (Before reading his comment, I planned to suggest refining your technique simply by using ordinary pencils of different hardness, the better to capture pinpoints and nebulosity, and a gum eraser (since half of drawing is about smudging and erasing) - but I must defer to him on this one.) In fact, here's a detailed how-to article about it, from the same BBC source which I cited in one of my previous comments - perhaps, one day, we'll see stunning color as well as B&W drawings from you!
www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/how-to-sketch-an-astronomical-deep-sky-object/
Walter: Thank you! This video was much more manageable because I had a limited number of objects to tackle. I read the article you mentioned. Her drawing of M44 was beautiful and almost reduced me to tears. I will need to invest in many more items to get to the point of creating something that majectic. Right now I have blending stumps, pencils, and special erasers and this sort of sand paper but nothing to make colors other than adding a blue pen. I had a hard time controlling the size of the stars in M13. I have a shaky hand and have had bad hand writing my entire life. My hand just wants to stray. But trying to improve my star drawing skills is something that interests me. I will need to research what other tools I will need to expand my skills. Ever since I heard about him I have reallly admired Howard Banich, who often writes for Sky & Telescope and who has made some incredible drawings of the night sky. I would love to achieve something even close to what he has done. Of course his telescope is 24" I think. But thank you for your input and encouragement. It has really peaked my interest and given me the motivation to keep trying to improve my observational skills and attempts to convey what I am seeing in my telescopes.
Your sketches are wonderful. 🙂
Thank you.
This really is a gorgeous cluster, Tsula! I had the opportunity to do almost the same as you: binoculars, and then my 10" dob with an 8mm Ethos (but I don't have a humungous scope yet!). I also was able to image it and it looked pretty good! Looks like you had some nice weather for a change. Very happy for you. We'd love to hear more about your observatory! Regarding your sketches, I thought I'd mention I got something neat for Christmas: Dark Matter Notebook Series that has black pages and a pen that writes white. Pretty neat since you don't have to reverse the normal pencil/black ink/blue ink on white paper (but I haven't really used it yet). Loved the video and, as always, your contagious enthusiasm!
Hi Greg: Thank you! Yes, it finally cleared up and warmed up for a couple of days and naturally by then the moon was nearly full. But I was determined to take advantage and stayed up last night until the moon set at about 2:30 am. After that the Milky Way was just gorgeous splashed across the sky. I wanted to stay up longer and enjoy it but had to pack it in at 3:00 am. Glad your M13 photo turned out. By the way, do you like your AM5 mount? Do you find it hard to polar align without a polar scope? How long does it take you to polar align with an electronic polar alignment? I think you said you returned the Quattro scope. How big is the scope you put on the AM5?
I heard someone mention using black pages and a white pen for his sketches and wondered if it looked any better than inverting the white page in Photoshop.
I actually made an entire video about the observatory but did not publish it because then there were more developments. But it will come out soon.
@@tsulasbigadventures Hi Tsula. Ugh, those gorgeous nights when the Milky Way pops out are just amazing! I've done a few of those "just a little longer" nights myself that turned into a 3 am night. It's hard to tear yourself away, isn't it? I absolutely love the AM5 mount. Believe it or not, it's much easier to align using that mount than when I was using a polar scope my previous mount! But for the accuracy you need to image, you'd have to use a computer assist. I attach a laser pointer to the bracket that it comes with on the side, put the laser beam close to Polaris, and then use the Polar Alignment routine in my ASIAir (although you could use any computerized polar alignment tool). It usually takes all of about 4-5 min to get a polar alignment with about 10-20" of error (depending on how OC I am that night). It's really super easy -- and no neck strain from a polar scope! So, for imaging you'd need some type of computerized assistance and couldn't do a manual PA since there's no polar scope. I imagine you could attach a polar scope to the bracket on the side and try polar aligning, but I don't know how accurate it would be even after you ensured the polar scope was pointing in precisely the same direction as the mount head.
Since the AM5 can convert (in about 2 minutes) to an Alt-Az mount, you can also use it for visual observing. (I do sometimes.) Of course, you can't polar align with it in that configuration but all you do is point one side of the mount as close as you can at north, and if you use a guide scope attached to your observing telescope the plate solving (I use the ASIAir) will get you on your target and track it. You might have to tweak the mount with the controller to center the target, but once centered it tracks nicely.
I use the TC40 carbon fiber tripod from ZWO with the AM5. It's nice and lightweight and it provides good support, but the hefty tripods you already have would probably be better. (But I don't think the AM5 fits on every type of tripod, so you'd have to check to be sure.) On very windy nights, I usually throw a 7-10 lb weight in the tripod hammock to stabilize the tripod and that works well, especially with the low profile of the refractor. But you wouldn't have to do that with one of the beefier tripods you have.
Yes, I returned the Quattro and now have a 107mm refractor, an Askar 107PHQ that I use with the AM5. With all the accessories attached to the 107PHQ, it totals about 25 lbs. and the AM5 handles it beautifully. With average seeing and anything up to about 5-7 mph winds, I routinely get guiding in the 0.4-0.5" total RMS error range. On nights with poor seeing and/or wind, my error is usually about 0.8-1.0" total RMS, but the stars are still round in the images. The AM5, being a strain wave mount, does have some periodic error so every now and then the guiding error is a bit higher, but it recovers and settles fairly quickly. All said, I am 'over the moon' 🤣happy with the AM5 mount.
Hope things are okay with the observatory, and I'm looking forward to seeing your video about it.
@@gregerianne3880 Thank you for all that information. I have been looking at strain wave mounts as a possible solution for something that can be taken on a plane that can handle more than a Sky guider or Star Adventurer can. I was hesitant about the AM5 because this is ZWO's first plunge into the world of mount making and was concerned about how good it could be but it seems like it gets good reviews. Thanks for all the information.
@@tsulasbigadventures Strain wave mounts like the AM5 are good choices, I think. The AM5 can handle up to 44 lbs, so it's quite capable, doesn't weigh much, and comes with a great little case. Right now, anyway, I think it's just a bit cheaper than some of the other strain wave mounts without encoders. Hope you have a great 4th of July weekend, Tsula!
@@gregerianne3880 Thanks, Greg. You too. Thanks for the info.
Loved this video Tsula and your drawings. I finally got my tripod! Last night I chose the gibbous moon and it looked pretty good. I’ll shoot for M13 soon though.
Thanks, Martin. Congratulations on your new mount. I hope you enjoy it now that you have the tripod for it.
@@tsulasbigadventures Thank you Tsula!! So far so good.
Great video! Love your work. Looking forward to more like this.
Thank you so much.
Thank you!
Looks like my observing stool. Those are great. Bought mine at a second hand store for $5 and replaced the wheels with rubber knobs. The swivel and easy up down works great for Dobsonians and other scopes too.
I like that stool too. I was hoping to put a rug in there to keep my feet warm but not sure that stool will be able to glide over the rug like it does over the concrete. What kind of terrain do you run the rubber knobs over?
@@tsulasbigadventures Well, mine had a bum caster wheel. Tried to repair it but not very effective. I ran it on a concrete pad okay but also took it to remote locations with dirt or gravel ground. The knobs are available at any hardware store and I find the light weight stool is easy to pickup and reposition. The height works well with my 10" Dobsonian. I find viewing is really better when you are comfortable. I usually wear insulated house slippers (the kind with a good rubber sole) when observing or doing photography from my backyard observatory slab.
@@MrGp3po Thanks. I'm going to look for those knobs. I really like the stool too.