Astro Meandering

It has been a while since my last astronomy post, having to spend all night studying tends to reduce sky watching activities. There have been several developments however.

The 200mm telescope has proved itself as a semi portable device, it was successfully dismantled and transported to Scotland by car where it was reconstructed with no ill effects. The de/construction process takes about 15 minutes and appears with not really change the required mirror tilts for columnation. The telescope was not actually used up there ( :( ) as Scotland in summer only really gets dark in the morning and the trip to Scotland was actually for an Orienteering carnival - something that generally requires the maximum amount of sleep possible!

One deconstruction/construction cycle later and the scope is now working back down south. I took it out for a quick test last night, the forecast promising clear sky and the moon offering a good target for finder alignment and focus testing. Of course the forecast did not include the predictable appearance of thin high altitude clouds after such a warm day so I only got to looking at the moon and a brief look at Andromeda before everything became obscured.

With a nice full(ish) moon I also had the opportunity to  test out my new phone's camera and the darkening filter I have had in my eyepiece box forever. I have put the nicest photos below, but be warned my skills are still low, I have yet to get the exposure settings right, and I really need to come up with a way of holding the phone that is not my hands so that I can fix the positioning of the camera aperture. There is however a marked improvement over using my old phone (not surprising) or the mighty 76 millimeters of the Drinking Straw, though I think the latter is more to do with mow much more stable the 200mm's mount is!

A full moon in a single image, showing some nice detail on the terminator (to the left).

No Moon-photograph session is complete without a photo of Tycho Crater.