This image is a composite of seven images taken with Seestar S50 and stitched together.

Prints are available. Please use the contact form to enquire

My latest drawing of the Moon centres on my favorite crater Clavious …… I avidly watched Artemis 2 and what a fantastic achievement that was ….. I started this drawing just before Artemis 2 launched viewing the Moon through our Altair 130 EDT APO refractor using a 24 mm explore Scientific eyepiece and x2 barlow. Being a sci fi fan I was mindful of the film 2001 a space odyssey and thatin the film the crater Clavius was the crater used to build a Moon base …… mindful too that the Artemis missions have the ambition to build a Moonbase, though I am sure Clavius will not be where the Moonbase will be. Still it seemed a nice thing to do to contemplate our species return to the Moon.

Clavius

Modifications to the telescope

Some years ago I built my own observatory with the intention of hunting for supernova explosions in distance galaxies. Long story …. but due to some horrendous circumstances that project was never realised. But I am now in a position to start that up again through the Cosmos observatory on Brechiek Ynysek Syllan. We also have a small telescope of our own which I have been modifying to improve it’s capabilities. The last modification was a swap of one of my paintings for a better mount – a celstron CG3 eq mount. This latest modification is to attach the large finderscope that I had attached to my old 12 inch schmidt cassegrain telescope that I no longer have.

I have been waiting patiently for a few years now to use this finderscope again. Almost it qualifies as a telescope in it’s own right …. it is a right angled TS 90 mm refractor and gives fantastic views on it’s own. Having a wide field of view makes it super easy to center fainter objects in the center of the field of view. Properly aligned what you see through the finderscope will be in the centre of the field of view of the main telescope.

Well I had to make a secondary dove plate to attach the finderscope. I decided to use the main telescope tube rings to do this. The dove plate which I made from a spare length of 2×1 inch planned wood drilling two holes to fit the finderscope shoe and two holes to bolt the dove plate to the tube rings. It took about an hour to do …. cost 0

I then spent an enjoyable 20 minutes or so aligning the finderscope with the Newtonian followed by a short observing session having a look at Sol, but only through the main telescope. I do have a 12inch square sheet of seymour solar filter film from which I will make a solar filter for the finderscope and  the Newtonian, Anyway here are some images of the finished modification ….. and that will be the next modification …..

Image shows new set up with my home made astro baader solar safety filter

A close up of the finderscope and attachment to the main telescope tube rings

The telescope without the finderscope mounted only required one counter balance weight to fully balance the telescope, with the finderscope attached the second counterweight was need and has balanced the telescope really well.

And here is that next modification. A home made full apeture solar filter using a 12 inch sheet of Seymour solar film that cuts out 99.999% of light. It was straight foward to make, just measuring the diameter of the refractor’s apeture, I then cut two squares of thick (2mm) card, cut a circular section out of both the same size as the apeture of the telescope. I then cut a section of the Seymour film slightly larger than the diameter of the circular cut out and sandwiched the Seymour film between the two square cards securing it in place with tape – I used some spare gaffer tape to do this. I then made a short tube from the same card that would fit snuggly over then end of the telescope tube and attached that using tape to the square sandwiched filter and covered the whole thing in non reflecting flocking material.

The fit is secure enough that no amount of wind will accidentally blow the filter off. This is essential to avoid any serious accident that could lead to seroius injury to my eyesight …..  I also have enough Seymour solar film left to make a full apeture filter for the Skywatcher  which I will also do. Now we have clouds and showers so I will have to wait for a sunny day to test it out. Here is an image of the filter in place …..

So what is next. Well as you can see from the earlier images of the tripod, it is missing it’s storage plate that would attach to the tripod leg brace ….. so it is in my thoughts to make one, there is some flex in the lower tripod legs at the midpoint when the lower legs are fully extended and the brackets to tighten the tripod legs are made out of plastic which I do not like at all, so my thoughts are to make a tray for the eyepieces and filters I have, and to either modify the brackets or perhaps have a go at making alternative legs ….. I shall have a think about this

Taken with my mobile phone attached to a tripod – this is a series of images overlayed taken at 1:20 am on 11th May 2024 Brechiek Ynysek Syllan

Multiple image panorama taken 11th May 2024 Brechiek Ynysek Syllan Ursa Major high on the left and Cassiopeia lower

What a fab night, started to watch the aurora just after 11 pm 10th May and finally called it a night at around 3 am. The aurora was caused by multipe cme’s impacting on the Earth’s magnetic field from a Carrington level sunspot group. Paintings to follow.

A word on the images. The human eye see’s fundamentally in a different way to a camera. A camera can pick up the colour’s of the aurora whereas our eye’s working differently in comparison to night and day tend to pick up on tone and light, far more useful at night when colours are hard to see anyway. It is possible to see the colour’s of the aurora with the eye during intense auroral displays however the eye see’s using rods and cones ….. cones are responsible for our sense of colour and rods are more useful at night for light and tone. It is just the way it is. So to this end I wanted to give a comparison of what the camera saw, an enhanced image and how my unaided eye saw the aurora. My reason for this is that some people can be disapointed at seeing the aurora for the first time and not seeing the colour’s that camera’s pick up, also people who take the images tend to enhance the image to pick out not only the cours but also the details in the structure of the aurora.

My preference is always to see with my eye and I am never disapointed with how the aurora appear. Here are three images, the first is the camera image as it saw the aurora on the 10th May 2024. The second is the same image enhanced, and the third image is also modified to show the aurora as my eye’s saw the aurora as near as I can manipulate the image ….

As the camera saw and not manipulated

Same image manipulated and enhanced to bring out the colour and details

Same image manipulated as best I can to show how my eye’s saw the aurora