Hi Gary,

You're right about the sharp increase in expense...particularly if you go for views of Deep Space Objects as opposed to the Moon and large planets...I need to ensure I get 'the most bang for my buck' as far as possible which will limit my involvement for now. Given that much of the equipment only gets used very occasionally its a shame you can't hire it for a week or two as required.

You living 'Down Under'...never thought about you having difficulty with star alignment and calibration. Understand the thing about temperature though...up here dark skies usually mean colder air...not much fun when your fingers have difficulty handling the lenses and adaptors 'cause they're semi frozen and of course due to the nature of things there's a lot of time literally just standing around trying to keep body temperature up.

Ah well, all good fun when you get some results from it.

All the Best,

Karlo

Thanks Derek...should give it a try...there may be some interesting buglife up there!

Cheers Bill, much appreciated. Agree it's good to try new stuff...i'm always on the lookout for new photographic vistas to explore and the good thing with my setup is that so far it hasn't cost me any extra expense as i already had the kit. I think that might change soon though...

Regards

Karlo

Excellent, well done.

Karlo

You're right, it is quite addictive. Hopefully once the darker skies appear a bit earlier again I won't need to stay up so late although i'm often up until midnight+ so it's not a major inconvenience. Took some of Venus the same night but not very visually appealing unfortunately...it's difficult to get good shots with any kind of detail.

I will try Saturn if that presents itself although I could do with inserting an eyepiece and then connecting camera to this i suspect for some of these shots i'm thinking of.

I assume when i upgrade my camera body to one with built in astro tracer it might give me a few more options.

Thanks for your comments in the meantime,

Regards

Karlo

+1

My thoughts exactly.

Thanks for posting.

Regards

Karlo

Cheers Gary.

I can't believe it took me several years to have a go. Very limited by what i can image due to the non sychronised mount...also the 'seeing' was only moderate. I hope to repeat the exercise in the autumn whn the skies should be a bit clearer although I might take some video of the Moon in the meantime.

Good luck with your effort when conditions improve...post some results on here...would be interesting to see how it performs.

Regards

Karlo

Taken late night on 27th May 2018...had to wait for moon to rise above some tall trees obscuring my view at end of garden.

Moon shots at 33% crop one of them partly through vegetation.

Jupiter with its four Gallilean Moons...from L-R Callisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede. Approx 400 million miles away at the moment. (4.45x further than the Sun)

All images with K-50 on Skywatcher Skyliner 150P on a Dobsonian (purely manual) mount.

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Well caught...excellent timing.

Karlo

+1

Regards

Karlo

+1

Really excellent standard Bill...Pentax should be well pleased with the quality of your work.

Regards

Karlo