I’m off to sunny Spain for a few days and I won’t be taking a laptop. So any blog entries are likely to be sporadic and might just consist of a link to the TFTD website (if that).
In the meantime here are a few pictures taken through my new telescope.
The telescope has an extendable tube, making it easy to store. But this also means you can’t really mount a DSLR camera on it. It would be too heavy. So I got a second hand, lightweight, mirrorless camera that I picked up for fifty quid on ebay.
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicdmcgf3
It can be difficult to use cameras directly through a Newtonian reflector like this. The camera tends to be outside the range of the focuser. But here the extending tube comes to the rescue. You can simply just extend it a few inches shorter than normal and the camera can sit as close to the mirror focus as you like.
The first one is the double cluster in Perseus. The second is the Orion nebula. And I forget what the third one is. Not the greatest photos ever taken, but it keeps me amused.
Platitude of the Day 