Smart Telescope

[dinny_g]

I'm still amazed by the results you get, given how relatively inexpensive the kit is...

[RobYob]

Went to the coast last night to try and see comet 2024 G3 as its been on the news and I've seen some lovely photos posted.

A little disappointed that while I could get a an image with a 10s exposure and so could the Mrs on her phone in night mode I couldn't see anything at all with my eyes (ok mine are old and stuffed but my teenage son with 40/20 vision couldn't see it either).

At least the planets are putting on a great show at the moment.

[Zonda_]

I see there is a cheaper model coming, around £280.

https://store.seestar.com/products/see ... -telescope

[Mito Man]

On Friday night or maybe Saturday, can’t remember exactly, I noticed the moon was roughly intersecting the flight path. So pointed the telescope at it and put it on Timelapse mode and caught one!

Unfortunately the YouTube compression makes it look not very good but on my phone I can see the haze from the engines - looks really cool.

[nuttinnew]

Bah, but still

[RobYob]

Very cool to capture that stuff, even if YouTube botches the sharing thereof.

I used to check this website for ISS transiting the moon but fell out of he habit.

https://transit-finder.com/

I happened to randomly see a transit once walking home from the train, total fluke.

ETA. Glad I looked, might be a chance of a sun transit and moon transit on the same weekend in march.

[Mito Man]

Cool website, I’ve saved one of the lunar transit dates which is at a sensible time.
I think if I just let it record a video I should get something much better quality.

[dinny_g]

That is a cool site...

I don't have your kit Mito but there's one coming up for me in March - I might just get my camera set up and give it a try. The transit is only 4.2 seconds but that should give me 20 + shots. Through a 70-200L IS, I might get something zoomable.

The big issue I see is that I'm pretty sure my camera can't do continual shots without holding the shutter release (It will do single shots or 3 for bracketing) so no matter how well I weight down the tripod, even the pulse in my finger is likely to blur the images...

(Issue of Top Quality Glass but basic camera body)

Might see how much the remote for mine costs.

EDIT - £7.99 on Amazon for no brand name Chinese one - ordered...

[RobYob]

The big issue I see is that I'm pretty sure my camera can't do continual shots without holding the shutter release (It will do single shots or 3 for bracketing) so no matter how well I weight down the tripod, even the pulse in my finger is likely to blur the images...

Have you tried the remote capture function of EOS utilities? I haven't used it in a while but did get some nice close up pictures of tits while sitting in the comfort of my lounge with a laptop and 10m (active) usb cable

[dinny_g]

[RobYob]

Well they're not great tits but I still don't think the result was too bad, perhaps a touch underexposed.

Spoiler

[dinny_g]

My camera's pretty old so not sure Eos Utilities will help. I'm also going to be standing in the middle of Bury Field so hopefully, the Chinese remove will do the trick.

[nuttinnew]

[Mito Man]

The telescope has had a big update with scheduling (so you can tell it on your phone to image target A for X minutes, then go to B for X minutes, then turn off before sunrise - mainly useful for short summer nights) and AI denoising.
The latter interests me as it’s essentially what the clever photoshop type programs do to remove the grainy film and it’s quite time intensive to manually do. Got an old picture I wasn’t happy with on the app and let it do its thing which took 15 seconds.
Before:

After:


What a thing!

[RobYob]

Results of the denoiser look good, not lost any fine detail?

I used to check this website for ISS transiting the moon but fell out of he habit.

https://transit-finder.com/

...might be a chance of a sun transit and moon transit on the same weekend in march.

They do say in the website predictions more than two weeks in advance are not reliable.

The bad news is the upcoming transits I was hoping to see next weekend are now either near misses or very fine grazes.

The good news is some new transits at a far more convenient location have shown up the week after!

[Mito Man]

Landing into the weekend

Finally found a benefit of living directly under Heathrow flight path
As far as I can tell from Flightradar I was tracking these from 7-10 miles out. Any closer and they’re too fast for me to pan. What is even more incredible is that I could also see airplanes once they had taken off from Heathrow at the other end, which must be 15 miles out.

But really this is just to remind everyone that there is a PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE tomorrow at 10:07am
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmjdy10rmmo.amp

[RobYob]

Very impressive.

Thanks for the reminder, I put the 2028 total eclipse in my calendar

[nuttinnew]

and audio

But really this is just to remind everyone that there is a PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE tomorrow at 10:07am
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmjdy10rmmo.amp

Royal Observatory Greenwich Partial Solar Eclipse LIVE | 29 March 2025

Starting at 10:00am


https://www.youtube.com/live/NwOL-q1FuVM

[Mito Man]

Think I’ll stick the telescope on it at 11am. From what I’m reading it can only do 10 minutes before overheating.

[Mito Man]