Episode 47 - First Light!

Welcome baaaack to The Astrocast! Thanks for tuning in this week for a UNIQUE episode as Roo takes you with him to the good old side yard for some first light shenanigans on the new Askar SQA55. I purchased this scope myself, it's my new refractor, and I thought I'd share some of that experience with you! Since this night, I've managed to get a capture of the HH/Flame Nebula for 4 hours and am VERY happy with the results! You can see it on the Astrocast FB page. 

Links:

Sharpcap 

This week's recommendation: ESMZ 

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Thanks so much for tuning in to The Astrocast, and CLEAR SKIES!

Transcript

0:25

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. You are listening to the Astrocast Oh. Oh! Welcome back to the astrocast. I'm your host roo. Today is Tuesday, February 4th. It's lovely outside. The, new moon week is still kind of hanging on. Its best it can. Things sound a little bit different because I'm outside tonight. It's actually not. Tuesday, February 4th. In reality, is Saturday, February 1st. You got Tuesday, right? Let's see. Saturday. First Sunday the second. Monday the third. Yeah. So Tuesday will be the fourth. But we are time traveling tonight, just like we do through our telescopes. It's a Saturday night, and I'm looking up at my sky. I'm at home. I'm not at the observatory. I'll tell you why later, but, I can't I can't tell if it's bad transparency or bad seeing, but it doesn't look wonderful. And it's kind of a shame because I'm testing some new equipment tonight. I kind of, made an impulse purchase somewhat, last week. I don't know if you could really call it an impulse purchase, because I literally been thinking about it for the last year, and I haven't bought a new, telescope, since, I guess technically, since I bought my Rokinon 135 lens and as you know, that's not really a telescope. So, anyway, I decided to pull the trigger on and ask or ask a 55. So if you somehow have not heard of the ask our ska 55, it's, it's in that compact Aster graph lineup, very similar to the Redcat 51. But from doing extensive research and watching reviews, particularly, with the Lazy Geek and, Luca Moco, they both did excellent videos on the SKA 55 that basically, showed that it gives a much flatter field than the Redcat, so it apparently performs much better. It's an f 4.8 quintuple. It, petzel designed and petzel is a particular, type of mechanism on a telescope focusing mechanism. Sorry, I'm forgetting the word late. That allows for, you to not have to really worry about back spacing as much. So basically, if you can get between 50mm and 60mm, you're golden. So it doesn't have to be that exact 55 that we're generally accustomed to with most astrophotography cameras. So anyway, I, tell you all that and by the way, a pitiful design. I looked it up real quick. Because I know what it means and that it doesn't require you to, you know, do a specific back focus. Essentially, as long as you're within a range that you can focus your camera at. Whereas with, you know, like your typical, double a telescope, you would obviously have, more stretch stars at the corner because you don't have a truly, flat frame unless you get it to that perfect 55 millimeter back focus. And then even then, if you do something like adding a filter, you have to add another, you know, one third sized spacer of whatever that filter is, to avoid getting elongated stars in the corners. So the astro graph, on the other hand, is made specifically for taking photos of the night sky. You can't even connect an eyepiece to it. So you know my S.V. Boni 80 doublet that I've used, you know, since I started in astrophotography. You could absolutely hook up an eyepiece to it if you wanted to. Whereas with an astro graph, it is made specifically, to be used for astrophotography. And because of that, there's really a lot of different benefits. But, you know, traditionally speaking, something like this makes it just generally easier to work with and gives you a very flat field of view without having to worry about accessories like reducers or flatness. So what I'm going right now, just to give you an idea, is I'm actually, setting it up for the first time, and I'm kind of the funny. One of the funny things about this particular scope is it is adjustable aperture. So if you remember, I guess maybe like a month ago on the show, we talked about adjustable aperture telescopes. I think that was actually the title of the episode. In fact. And, I kind of criticized them at the time because I was like, why on earth would you want an adjustable aperture telescope? It didn't really make sense to me. But that being said, now that I've seen this one, I can tell you that there's really no negative impact whatsoever to having that adjustable aperture there. All it is, is an added benefit. If you wanted to use this as a landscape photography lens or a telephoto lens, you could, you know, certainly do that and probably get very good results. Now, obviously you have to manually focus it. Unless you were to hook up some type of, you know, belt pulling focus similar to what you would use for this, with astrophotography, which we'll talk about a little bit later. But there's no real drawbacks is what I'm getting at, because when you have the scope wide open at f 4.8 and you do that by turning an aperture ring on the telescope, it's got three different rings that you can adjust. The top one, and it's probably about the width of your thumb is the, aperture ring. It feels extremely well machined. What's one thing I'll say when you when you pick up this telescope? You immediately can feel the quality. I put it on the scale, and I think it was a little over 4 pounds, if I remember correctly. I can get the exact weight numbers in a minute, but, I'm running it on my, Star Adventure GTI. Because one of our Patreon members actually said he successfully runs. Cuz that way. Shout out to, our listener Nathan and, subscriber of the Patreon. Thank you very much for that. For the insight, Nathan, you, were able to answer quite a few key questions for me. Tonight as I was setting this up. You know, another thing that I realized, it's been quite a while since I've actually set up a new rig. And while I'm repurposing a lot of parts, obviously, from what I've been using my rokinon 135. Sorry. Lost my hat for a second there, and I got my, microphone clipped to it, so that's kind of important. But anyway, I'm repurposing a lot of parts, from my Rokinon 135 rig. And in doing so, I was basically sitting at my kitchen counter for God near an hour tonight. Two hours, actually, about two hours. Just kind of putting everything together, one piece at a time. And I will point out one negative that I found on this scope thus far. And depending on how you're going to run it, it may or may not really have any impact on you. Well, I guess you could say it's of a positive and a negative, really. Because if you look at, a photo of this scope, you'll notice that there are three different positions with which you can add, accessories. So you got a top shoe, a left shoe and a right shoe. And then underneath on the bottom, you have, you know, the Vixen rail. And all of these are detachable, by the way. Well, the Vixen rail on the top, in the bottom rather. And it's got a quick tubeless adjustment, which is super nice, but, what I noticed is I was going to mount my ASI air mini on. I was hoping for the side of the Astro graph and then have my guide camera on top, and then when I get that autofocus kit, have that on the right hand side. And I figured that'd be the best way to balance it out. However, it's not a standard like, cold shoe or Vixen dovetail. It looks to be some type of proprietary connector, that Asghar has designed here. So, you know, on the one hand, it's a really nice proprietary connector. If it's. Yeah, it looks like it is the same one. So the same thing that you that it comes with one of basically, that you can put the that I have the guide camera on basically the top rail that it sits on. And I'll post a link to images so I can show you guys what I'm talking about in the show notes. But you really kind of need at least, you know, 2 or 1 more of those if you want to mount your ASI air on the side of the Astro graph like me. But what I said was it kind of depends on your setup, because if you were to run, like, let's say one of the new, 2600 air cameras, if you don't know, zwo, makes a cold version of their 2600, you know, Aps-c sized sensor, astronomy camera, and it has the guide sensor built into it. Therefore, you do not have to have a guide scope or an off access guider on your scope. And it also has the ASI air built into it. So literally you just screw the camera on the back. And if you're manually focusing, that's it. So I'm really curious to see how the manual focus holds on this scope. So I'm going to go ahead and, you know, give that a whirl. I will say, you know, looking up at the sky. And now that, you know, I've had a chance to let my eyes adjust for a few minutes, it's definitely, like, terrible seeing tonight. I think we've got, like, really high upper atmosphere clouds going on. Which is a little disappointing, but, you know, hey, at least I can see stars on my, first light night of my first new gear in a couple of years. So I guess I should be thankful for that. All right. Time to focus this bad boy. So I got the aperture opened up to f 4.8. It looks like it came by default at the, maximum aperture, which I believe is f 22. Yep, f 22. So you can adjust it from f 4.8 to f 22. And if you don't know, 4.8 would be the widest setting. So, you know, the most light is let in. And I will point out, for those of you who really understand, camera lens as well, there are no aperture blades visible in the image. When you're at f 4.8, you just have a nice clean circle on the, the 4.8 end of it so you don't have to worry about, like, blades infringing on your image when it's wide open and causing artifacts in the image. Go figure. My headset just died on me my first time using it. And, God, at least a month. I think it's been a month since I've been out under the stars because I've been so busy. But anyway, let me go. Swap this out real quick, and we'll be right back. All right. Welcome back to the Astro cast. I'm your host, drew. Thank you for tuning in this week. This week we are having first light on a new astro graph that I have procured. So, we are currently just trying to get a picture of the stars. I don't, have one yet, and I just adjusted the aperture to wide open, and now I'm kind of looking at the focusing rings. So this does have, two different sets of focusing rings. You have a coarse adjustment and a fine adjustment. It's very similar to a manual camera lens. If you have ever used one in that, you rotate the rings on them. Or, you know, most modern lenses also have some type of rotation rings on them. And I'm just, moving the indicator down to infinity here. And you actually got looking at it, you've got a good bit of travel past infinity. You can go a good. Let's see. Gosh, you can go.

I mean, that's 9:00, 10: 14:34

00, probably a good what,

what would 9:00 to 10: 14:40

00 be in terms of degrees? Do that math in your head and that's how much farther ahead it can go past infinity. So that's good to know. Because that's a common issue with camera lenses. And this this is kind of designed like a camera lens in a lot of ways. It's got, you know, five pieces of glass. It's got, adjustable aperture, which is obviously a hallmark of any camera lens. And then manual adjustment, which, you know, most modern camera lenses are going to use, autofocus. But lots and lots of them don't still, I own one, two, three, four, five actually either 4 or 5 manual lenses. They're, they're usually, considerably less expensive. You know, don't get me wrong, you can find very expensive manual lenses as well. But they're usually less expensive than autofocus because they have less electronics in them and therefore less engineering and labor time. And they, often have really good quality. So the image quality, even though you have to manually focus the image quality, ends up being great. Take the, to artisans lenses that I have and have recommended a couple times on the show, the ultra wide field ones. I think it's 11mm and maybe it's an 11 millimeter and a nine millimeter. I'll check later. But, they're they're awesome lenses. And you can pick them up for, you know, just a little over 100 bucks apiece. But that is not the case with this scope. This scope runs for, I think I paid a little over 800 to get it to my door. I got it from a Gina Astro. Just for the record, they didn't sponsor the show or give me any kind of discount or anything. I just bought it like a regular consumer would. Which is exactly what I am. And it showed up about a week later. Their stuff shipped from California. So depending on where you live, if you're in America and you shop at a giant astro they ship from California, I don't know if they have any international shipping available. But it is a widely available scope. You can pick it up at High Point. The reason I got it from a Gina was, what was it? I think the shipping was considerably cheaper now. Now, actually, I think High Point didn't have them in stock and a Gina did. So I went ahead and grabbed it and it ended up showing up about a week later. But that was you know, UPS ground from California. So I'm clear on the other side of the, country and the east coast of Charlotte. So, you know, no sweat to me whatsoever. I just took a three second exposure, and I've roughly focused the lens. I don't see anything yet. Oh, you guys, I swear to God, the lens caps on. Oops. So let it. Let it be known. I, wow, I haven't even looked at the glass on this yet. I just realized that I don't know why. I just I didn't, but it's beautiful. Let's see. What do we got on the inside here? You got, like, it's a 101 022. I assume that's the serial number. Maybe. And then we got the 55, which is the diameter of the lens. It's a 55 millimeter lens, a 4.8 to a focal focal length of 264mm. So yeah, got a little bit of info on the lens there, just like most telescopes do. But let's try this again. Three second exposure f 4.8 rough focus. Let's see how it comes in. Oh we got stars. We have stars. Definitely not in focus yet, but I'm closer. Focus in there are, pretty small things considered. So I am again, there is an auto focus kit that they sell, for this telescope, but it was, not readily available. And it's $79, which, I mean, in terms of astrophotography stuff that's not expensive. Obviously, but I wanted to check and see if maybe I could 3D print something or, you know, finagle something first before dropping another 80 bucks. You know, with shipping and almost 100. I haven't found anything yet. I looked on thing of ours. I don't know how to design in CAD, although honestly, I'm thinking I might start trying to learn a little bit of CAD just because, man, there is a lot, lot of good stuff that you can find. That's astrophotography related for 3D printing. Just a quick little sidebar here, if you're unaware, think of our SI.com and there's several websites out there that, you know, our servers for, various 3D print files. But I personally just started on thing of urs, and that's where I'm still at, because I've only had a 3D printer for six months. But they have a ton of different astrophotography parts. So like, you're batting of mask, you can print vixen dovetails, you can print, the rokinon 135 rings, which obviously I bought myself for almost $100 for that kit. You can you can print them yourself. So, yeah, if you're like me, and you like to tinker with things, you can do worse than getting a 3D printer. Especially if you're somebody who, you know, fixes things around the house often. And, you know, works on astrophotography stuff, so. All right, let's see. I've got the focus app running, and it's auto refreshing. I'm going to loosen up this little rotator thing. It's got, these nub locks that you can use to tighten down the focus, which is really good to see because it sucks whenever you fall out of focus. So it's good that you can lock it down, honestly. Like. If this is anything like my camera lenses, this might be a situation where this thing can really hold focus well. And if that ends up being the case, move like, I don't know if I'll buy the autofocus kit because, I mean, why spend $80 on an autofocus kit if you can manually focus it yourself? I mean, I guess if you're working remotely, obviously, or you have maybe a disability or something that prevents you from going outside and checking your telescope. But I'm very hands on. So, and until that time comes, I mean, I might not need it because the stars are looking crispy so far. All right, I'm loosening up the fine adjustment. Not. Some bug fly around my face. All right, let's see how small we can get these babies. I've never used the fine adjustment thingy on one of these. This is new to me. What is that? Yeah. It's here. Okay, I see, so you can kind of pitch it left and right a little bit. So you get an even smaller. Oh, wait, what am I doing? Duh. I got a baton of mask. I'm over here. Like, trying to eyeball the stars and make them smaller. There we go. Disco. Wow. It's. Holy crap, man, it's extremely close already. It's like I got a bright enough star in the right hand corner. I'm just going to make a teensy adjustment here. And see? Looks like it's a little bit. I once, you know, I haven't looked this up yet, but. When you're in the, focusing app for the AC air, how do you. You've got this little box that you can move around, and I don't understand what the point of it is, because it seems like it's there. So you can zoom in, even if it's just like a digital crop zoom. But it doesn't appear to do anything when you move it around, so, I don't know. I'm probably going to have to, look that up. Well, I definitely have my answer on, where I last used the scope because it's telling me to move down five hours or so, 100% at the observatory. Right back. Welcome back to the Astro cast. I'm your host, drew. Thanks for tuning in this week. We just finished polar aligning the new, ska 55 by ACR. And when I say we finished Polar align and we polar align the hell out of it, boys and girls, I got one second on my first light. How about that? I've, I don't think I've ever gotten one second on NASA or I've gotten that on, the guy. What's the app called? It's what I used when I used, astrophotography tool. And you use it to. It's a great app. If you're using a windows PC, for doing polar alignment and drift alignment. Tell you what, give me one second and I'll find the name of it for you guys. All right, got it. It's sharp cap. Sharp cap is the name of the software that I was referring to. It can do a lot of other stuff too, other than just polar aligning. However, it's very, very good at polar aligning. And, I like the way that it works a little bit better than the easier because you can actually see Polaris and it's basically got arrows if I remember correctly, it's been three years since I've used it, but it basically guides you to putting Polaris right in the, you know, area that it has circled. And it's, it's very easy. And it's great. So, if you're not using an ACA and you're using like a windows PC or you're just getting started in astrophotography, check out Sharp Cap. It's an excellent piece of software. And if I can remember, I will link to it in the show notes. So, Yeah, man, we just, nailed polar alignment, so I'm going to do my first slew. I'm not trying to, like, get anything serious tonight. Like, honestly, all the winter stuff is pretty much about the set at this point. So looking east, it's. What time is it? Is it midnight? Yeah, yeah.

So it's 12: 26:31

06 a.m. on Sunday. Looking east, I see Arcturus. Wow. Arcturus has already risen. It's it's not high yet, mind you, but Arcturus is up. Spica is up. And. Oh, man. Oh, look at that. A shooting star just went across the screen on the ACA. That must have been, added in a recent update. I don't think I've ever seen that before. Unless it's telling me that there's a meteor shower tonight. I literally just looked up at the stars for the first time, and 20 minutes. Probably. Oh, guys, it's so friggin bright in my neighborhood now that they fixed these lights and luckily my neighbors have their lights off tonight. A big thanks to them, but it's still so free and bright. So I'm sitting in my backyard. Basically. I've got, you know, we've got our front yard in our backyard and we kind of have this back side yard in between. It's connected to my garage. And, the good thing is, is I've got a fence here so I can block out most of the higher up light, which is you know, obviously a good thing. But still kind of stinks. All right, let's see, where do we want to slew to first I was thinking, since Leo is looking very mighty in the sky, it might be cool at 264mm with a micro 4/3 sensor, which is what I'm running. AC two nine for macpro. I want to head. That's the best camera that I have. So I wanted to obviously use that with the Astro Graph. I also have a, Well, best astrophotography camera. I might take my R5 is my best camera. You know what? Let's do this first. Let's go to Regulus. A very, very bright star. And let's just see what the image looks like. I've got my old pro in there, and if I'm not mistaken, I think they'll probe my blowed stars a little bit. Typically. I'm not really sure, but I'll tell you what. Before I do a slew that far away, let me, do one a little closer to Polaris, just to make sure this thing is acting right. Because I've had a couple of times, The hell it's already. Oh, it never went home after I finish the, the polar alignment. I'm like, why is it already looking off to the right? The let's see. Let me go to home first. Glad to see that worked. Even though I had, if you guys can hear that, I'll turn it up, walk it out. But it's the loud slewing of the star adventure guy. No, it's it's not going home. I don't know what this thing's doing. I don't I don't know what. I don't know what causes it, but it just, I don't it's like I tell it to go home, but it's it's at an angle. Now, I don't know if that's because I forgot to press it whenever I did the, whatever. Anyway, let me, get this fixed real quick, and we'll be right back. You're listening to the Astro Quest. All right, so disaster averted. I basically, I if this happens to me whenever the AC gear gets AC air rather gets kind of screwy with the mount, and it's not appearing to go where I want it to at all. What I'll typically do is I will go to the preview screen and I will use the arrows. You got to tap on speed because it'll be set to 64 X by default. So if you're looking at your AC air screen, and you go to the preview area, you'll see four arrows. And then there's like a place where you can type in an object and then rate and track, click on rate and then move that up. I mean, I move it to the highest speed, and then I'll basically use those arrows while I'm looking from behind the telescope. Just to direct it to a general open area of the sky that's kind of high up. Like right now I've got it pointing at, Dubay and oh, God, I just man, there's actual clouds now. Damn, damn, damn. Anyway, it's pointing at Dubay in the Big Dipper and, once I got that image, I'm able to basically press sync to mount, and then after that, I'll have it move. You know, ten degrees east. And then if it is off at all, I'll just rethink the mount. But it'll automatically go there because it'll move where it thinks it's going to be, and then obviously it'll solve. And if it's not in the right spot, it'll move. Luckily, I did that a couple of times, and it appears to be pretty much right where it needs to be. So let's see if I can get something cool before. All this crap. Clouds come in. That was, So I'm pretty sure over in the Leo region. You know what, though? Before I go there, let's listen. Cancer, cancer's got a really cool star cluster. It's right at the meridian right now to. Which is. Well, it's clear anyway. Then, that area. Yeah. What the hell? Let's give it a try. Freaking clouds, man. I tell you. If you don't know, it's, you know, almost a well-known fact amongst astronomers that anytime you get New Year, you know, new telescopes or what have you, you're almost guaranteed to get clouds and it was forecast to be nice and clear tonight, but that it's definitely not the case. You know, when I look at Mars, what the hell? I know it's going to be tiny at this focal length, but it's right there. I don't know why. I'm always, like, afraid to go west of the Meridian. I guess technically I'm not. It's not because it's because of my yard. Or there's trees in my house and everything is to the western sky, so I try to catch everything. Like most people, I would think, you know, coming up early in the night, but I almost like forget about things that are over west of the Meridian. And I'm like, oh, they're out of reach, but they're really not. So anyway, with it looks like with this camera sensor and this focal length, just to give you an idea of scale you can get if you rotate it. And it does have a built in rotator, which is really nice. Ask me how I know with the Rokinon 135 by the way, that's going to be a topic of discussion, that we're going to bring up on next week's episode. I haven't fully done the research into it, but, one of our Patreon members, sorry about that. Had to check something on my phone. Anyway, one of our Patreon members, Alex Key, actually has found a working good solution, for installing a manual rotator on the Rokinon. 135. So we are going to be talking about that soon. I'm just not quite prepared to talk about it yet because I've got all the parts together. But I kind of want to walk you through how it'll work and order them myself and yada, yada, yada, so we will get to that soon. But thank you, Alex, for figuring that out for us, because that's huge. But for now, we have the. I'm looking right. There's Mars. I might be able to get the jellyfish Nebula. It's pretty bright. Let me head over that way real quick and and see what's up. But it's got the built in rotator on the back, and that is really nice to have, for a multitude of reasons. You basically just loosen up a nut, and then you can, hang on. I'm slewing to the other side of the meridian, so I want to make sure my scope is good. Looks like it's good. I, I had to rig up the, the wire job because of the aforementioned oddities with the, attachment points on the telescope. So I basically use duct tape and wire ties to make it work. But anyway, once I get the the right, you know, parts and, do better cable management, I'll definitely be doing that. Anyway, I lost my train of thought. I forgot what I was saying. It's getting, it's getting late, but we went over to the Jellyfish Nebula. Oh. The rotator. That's what I was talking about. Built in rotator. It's nice because it's got, the degrees very clearly denoted on it, which isn't like, a rare thing for a rotator to have. I think most telescopes that I've seen with built in rotators have them, what was that? Rain. Although it's like actually getting cloudy. Now, let me check the forecast real quick. And make sure there ain't no rain in it. Start doing a live static real quick. Let's see. 60s. That's fine. To start. Pull up this weather so it's fair outside now. Fair and good. 2% chance of showers and, it's about to get actual cloudy. It looks like. Damn. Yep. Cloud cover, 98% by. Well, I want am. It'll be 40%. Honestly, you can't even image right now. I'm going to let it take one shot. I'm on the Jellyfish Nebula and I'm just kind of curious. Might as well see what it can do. But anyway, that rotator is nice to have, because, you can loosen up that bolt. And then if you're using the framing tool, within the ACR, it'll tell you how many degrees clockwise or counterclockwise you need to rotate, the camera to get to the desired, composition. And it just makes it easier because if it tells you 20 degrees to rotate, you know, counterclockwise as you just literally count down 20 degrees on the engravings, and, you know, Bob's your uncle. So, that's that's a really nice little touch that's built into it, which I certainly appreciate. All right, first 62nd sub coming in hot. Let's see what this looks like. I need to get my, AC air back in station mode. I had a weird issue with it, a couple weeks ago where it's a couple months ago now. Where, It kept messing up. I couldn't get it. Properly connect any time I was in station mode, like it would successfully connect to the Wi-Fi. But then when I would get my phone on the Wi-Fi and try to connect to wouldn't work, and it was so bad, I had to do factory reset on the AC air, because, like, I lost connection at that point. But that appears to be resolved now through firmware updates. Anyway, looking at these stars guys, my goodness, I can already tell you this is going to be a hell of a telescope. And it's such a shame that nebula seasons are pretty much ending right now. I, I hate to say it guys, but Galaxy season is upon us. You know, Leo is, pretty high up in the sky already, and it's just after midnight. So the good news is, though, that means Milky Way season is, you know, right around the corner. Just a few months and we'll be looking at, Cygnus coming up in the east. Oh, my goodness, this is awesome. Truly awesome. So the Jellyfish Nebula is, Sharpless 248 248 if you're looking in the catalog, and it's a it's a pretty bright nebula. But again, it has nothing to do with the telescope. It's just we've got high clouds now. You can still see the stars, but. Yeah. How do you expect what's what's first light without some some, freaking clouds, right. You kind of. You got to have it. It's funny. These stars are all so damn round, and I didn't even, I'm just realizing I didn't even turn on the guiding. I mean, wow, two hundreds. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know with, you know, a good polar alignment, 264 should not be difficult. But, I mean, color me impressed because these stars are just pinpoint, and the color on them is very good too. I'm noticing I'm seeing definitely not bloated stars, I can tell you that, from the oh Pro, these stars look great, but I am curious. I'll probably throw in, once I get, you know, clear skies again. I'll throw a uvi or cut filter on. I had the, filter draw on earlier, that I had taken off of my rokinon 135 I have the zwo magnetic filter drawer. Not really a device that I would highly recommend just because I think the designs kind of crap on it. The the magnets are really, really weak. Even in version two, which is like literally, I think the only reason they made a version two was because people complained about how weak the magnets were. They come out with version two and they're like, not much better as far as I can tell, because I've got the newer version. I can't imagine how bad they must have been on version one. It must not been like not even having a magnet at all, because, it'll fall out. No problem. So I end up putting tape on it to hold it in place. You know, which doesn't really add to the, appeal, in my opinion. But, you know, you got to do what you got to do. And, anyway, I, wanted to use my L Pro filter, and the L Pro was actually a little known fact. The first filter I ever purchased. And it's still my favorite filter to this day. Living in bottled seven, officially seven skies. Now, having an L pro makes all the difference, guys. So if you're like me and you're in, you know, suburban skies that are pretty bright having some, you know, obviously dual narrowband is probably the best way to go. And like, you know, Milky Way season because there's so many great dual narrowband targets that are out at that time. But the L Pro, I can use it pretty much a year round and always get good results with it. You know, Nebula season, Galaxy season, whatever season, I get good results, with my. So I can definitely, highly recommend that. But I didn't have the, or I have, but I couldn't find the two inch adapter. They'll let you, screw a one, 1.25in adapter into it, and then you put that inside of the, the filter drawer that goes into the zwo filter drawer. Since I couldn't find it, I just took the filter drawer off and went with the standard zwo spacers and use their little in inside the 11 millimeter, 11 millimeter ring that Zwo, sells with, you know, most of their 55 back focus cameras. You can just twist that in, one little trick that I use with those. Just if you have one and you use a 1.25in filter, those little circles that they sell that have the threads on the end of them that you can screw the circle into. It's basically to adapt a 1.25in filter to a two inch barrel, get a thumbtack and put it inside. There's like a tiny little dot circle that you can put a thumbtack in, and then you can spin it very quickly. And it's a heck of a lot easier to install. So like, I'll screw the 11 millimeter, fitting on to the ASI 294. And then once it's solid in place, then I'll put the two inch, adapter in with the filter already pre-installed, and it's pre-installed with the the handle part facing up. So that way the, glass from the filter gets as close as possible to the sensor, which reduces vignetting. Which is a good thing on a, you know, Micro 4/3 sensor with 1.25in because you're already pushing it. It's just barely covering it. Anyway, it works really well if you use a thumbtack with it. So, I think it's cloudy enough that I'm going to go ahead and call it, but we are not quite done talking, so let me, let me put the gear up and I will come back out and I'll finish my drink and we'll finish talking. You're listening to the Astro cast. I'm your host, Ruth. Thanks. Be right back. My goodness, the moisture in the air. Guys, I just picked up the, the lens cap for the new scope and it's more like a camera cap the way you. It's like a pinch style. Kind of like if you ever used a canon F, particularly, f lenses. They have those pinch too close, camera lenses. Anyway, it was quite wet, and my two heater is working nicely, but, do shields and actually. So go leave it all together. It's one of my favorite things about the, star adventure guy. I don't know about you guys who own it, but I literally will just loosen up the right ascension clutch, and I'll just pick the whole thing up. Tripod. And I'll just walk it into my garage and, Yeah, that's all I got to do to, moving in and out. Now, obviously, if I'm, you know, bringing it to the observatory or something, I completely break it down. But even when I do that, like, I oftentimes will leave the counterweight, the actual head. I'll remove the head from the tripod and then remove, the rig from the mount, you know, telescope or, etc.. But the actual counterweight bar and counterweight, I'll leave them. So once you if you as long as you loosen up that right ascension clutch, that's the important part. So you're not making the, belt slip or, you know, doing damage to the belts? Then you're not going to hurt anything, you know, as long as you're supporting the weight, you know, of the counterweight, obviously. And then whenever I set it down, I just set it on its side. That seems to do the trick. No problem. So, All right, I think I'm ready here. All right. I need two seconds here. Will I put this away, and I'll tell you guys, like the universe is plotting against me to not do astrophotography tonight. The, the clouds rolled in, two headsets now. I mean, I told you, the one died. Another one died. I almost spilled my cocktail. Luckily, I was able to save that. But not before my iPad fell on the floor. And, man, this this poor iPad. I have just beat the living hell out of it. It's got a huge crack right down the middle of it. From me setting it on top of the, I want to say, the Rokinon one. No, no, I wouldn't have been dumb enough to do that. The, the A.D.D., I set it on top of it, and you're talking, you know, glass on top of very cold metal. What do you think happens? It slides. Unless you have it perfectly level one. Of course I didn't. So it fell. You know, good. Was at 4.5ft, probably, and bounced off the concrete in my driveway and got a good sized crack. I mean, it's still works fine. Just one long crack up the middle one. Honestly, I don't care anyway. It's literally the only thing I use it for is astrophotography. You know, running my or and such, but that's how it goes. Got those little stupid little clouds. They look kind of cool, though. I will say that I need to learn all the different clouds. Maybe I could talk to the, the captain about that. What do you guys think about Captain Cumulus being on the show last week? I hope. I hope everyone enjoyed a little canon Easter egg. I'm over here picturing Astrakhan ten years from now, and I don't know three of you guys dressing up as Captain Cumulus and. Oh, that would be something special. I'm, kicking around the idea of having the first Astro cast meet up. So I've been thinking about it, and I need to talk to our sponsors. Dark dragons, astronomy, sponsors of the show. Shout out to Jeff and Rick. I need to see if we could potentially host it at the observatory. So hear me out. I live in Charlotte. That's kind of. It's got to the whole. No, it's there's there's reasons why Charlotte, I think, is a pretty good place, to have the first version of the, the star party. And chief among them is Charlotte is a hub airport for many of the major airlines. It's cheap to get here. We connect to tons of different airports. We're kind of smack dab in the middle of the eastern seaboard and in a, you know, somewhat central location, unless you want to, like, go out to the literal middle of the country for a central location. And as much as I would love to do that, to go to like a, you know, I guess you could say a truly dark sky site, I don't know if that's feasible right now. But again, I need to talk to our, team and see what's up. Charlotte is by no means like, a done deal. We we might do it elsewhere. You know, I might consider Cherry Springs. Pennsylvania. We could certainly make that happen. I want to do a little bit of research into Cherry Springs, if I'll tell you what, if any of you guys listeners have been to Cherry Springs within the last year or two, could you maybe shoot me an email to Ru Astro cast at gmail.com and let me know what your experience was like? Are they are they pretty cool up there? Is the, are the skies still worth it? Is kind of the main thing I'm getting at here. Is it worth, you know, an eight hour drive for anyone who's driving? Because, you know, most people don't like to fly with their gear. I would drive if I went to Cherry Springs from Charlotte. And that's. It's about a 8 to 10 hour drive for me. It's in Pennsylvania, one of the most popular places on the eastern seaboard for astrophotography. So definitely worth considering having there as well. But again, still kicking around the idea, I'd have to talk to some people up there and see if, you know, they would allow such an event to take place, get insurance, and, well, maybe we wouldn't have to get insurance, I don't know. Again, it's early. But I thought it would be fun to, let you guys know that that is something that is in the works. So, if you are, you know, interested in hearing more about it, obviously, I'll be happy to keep you guys, apprized of the situation, as these months go on. But I think it will be super cool. And I think we have enough listeners now to where I would hope we could get, you know, a few people to show up. So, stay stay tuned for more news on that because that is truly going to be something special. So, as far as the next couple of weeks, I actually am dealing with, a little bit of travel over the next couple of weeks. I have to, go down to Florida, for a few days and handle some business down there. I'm actually going down to celebrate my mom's birthday. She's happy. She's helping her best friend recover from knee surgery down there, and it's her 70th birthday, so I'm going to be going down there and surprising her. She actually lives with us. If you don't know, me and my wife built on a in-law suite for her, after we bought our house two years ago, and she lives with us. But she's she's snowboarding down in Florida, essentially, and helping her friends. So she, she loves it down there. She has a ball down there with her best friend and everything, but I haven't seen her and G's since before Thanksgiving, so it's. It's been quite a while. So I'm going to go down there and see her, and, because of that, I will probably not release an episode next week. Just because I'm going to be literally out of town on that Tuesday and the whole weekend before it. I think I'll be back Wednesday or Thursday. It kind of depends on the timing of everything. And I'm just going to be super busy. So probably we'll skip next week's episode. But I very much appreciate you guys, tuning in nonetheless. So, I think I think that's going to mostly do it. So we talked about the new refractor. Obviously, I'll have a lot more to say on that, and I'm going to do a comprehensive review of the image quality, over the next couple of weeks. As I, you know, get the chance to play with it. Honestly, I probably won't get another chance to play with it too much. Before we talk next. Well, maybe I don't know. We'll see. I did see, the part of Florida that I'm going to within 45 minutes drive. There are all 3 to 4 skies. So maybe I could check it out. I don't know, I'm only down there for a few nights, and obviously I'm going to visit my mom not to do astronomy, but, you know, I don't know. It's something to think about. Got the new refractor. Maybe I'll bring it. I did want to mention to one nice touch with this telescope. It comes in a really nice, pelican case, and I don't know if it's an actual branded pelican case for that style. It's waterproof. It's got the, laser cut foam in it. Very, very well made case. So, you know, considering that it's cheaper than the Redcat 51, pretty significantly cheaper. If you compare the two, I gotta say, man, I think amongst all of the compact graph or factors that are out there, I think Asker has got a winner here for sure. So stay tuned for more information on that. And like I say I will update you guys as more is available. As far as a recommendation this week, gosh almighty. I've been, so busy, you know, I'll you know what I'll do? I'm going to do something a little bit different for my recommendation this week. Let me, let me recommend an album to you. That I've recently, been listening to. It's actually, I don't even know if I can say it's my favorite band anymore. They were my favorite brand while they were active, but they've been broken up for like ten years now, so, you know, I don't know if and when, they will make more music. Their lead singer, has released a solo project or two. Since the band, they technically didn't break out. They said they went on hiatus, whatever you want to call that. But it's such kind of a unique band that the chances of them all getting back together, are basically zero. And one of the key vocalist for the band actually left the band, quite notoriously, about, I think five years before they truly went on hiatus. She wasn't on the the final album that they ended up releasing. And you know what? Instead of recommending an album, I'll recommend the band to you because their discography is certainly worth exploring if you like. Kind of chill yet funky music. Kind of hippie ish, but good rhythm, great drums, excellent technique. Just an excellent band, man. I kind of, like, loved everything about them. I'll never forget. I was. God, what year was it? All right, so the year was 2009, which man? It feels like a lifetime ago. So let me think 2009 was 16 years ago now, which is mind blowing because I don't know why, but I don't think about the mid to late 2000s too often. Well, actually, I do know why, but I won't get into it. Anyway. I was, I was driving around and I think was, I think I was in my first car that I ever owned still. Yeah, I was, I was driving around to my Saturn less. It was a 2000 Saturn less. That was gold. It was like champagne gold and it was a four door sedan. I love that car. It was so cool. But I never changed the oil. I had blown up the damn engine in it. Anyway, I was listening to NPR and, they were doing their, I think they call them tiny tiny garage or tiny desk sessions. Anyway, they still don't to this day, but they basically bring the band down inside of a small studio and they do a live session. So it was Edward Sharpe in The Magnetic Zeros, in case you're still wondering the name of the band, and they're unique in that they had while they were together, quite a large band like when they were on stage. I believe there's let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 9 to 12 at any given time. Depending on, the performance. And they just had like a completely unique sound. When it came out. Now, a lot of bands took inspiration from them and did a lot of stuff that they were doing. Like you, you started hearing bands like Mumford and Sons come out. They actually toured with Mumford and Sons. And don't correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't know if Mumford and Sons is actually older than Edward Sharpe or not. But anyway, that's not a good comparison because those bands actually toured together and are good friends, but a lot of bands that came after them kind of imitated their sound a little bit with the haze and the clapping and all that kind of, you know, funky sound that they would throw into their songs. And man, I just fell in love with it. And then, they had their one huge hit that if you hear it, you'll know it instantly. It's called home. Go, you know, bring it up on YouTube if you like. But it was in a lot of, movies and such, and I think that ended up setting up, the band and the frontman for the band, Alex Ebert. Pretty well. And, Alex Ebert nonetheless. He, he created this character named Edward Sharpe and, anyway, look into the canon of the band, check out their albums. I believe they did three studio albums for four studio albums. Right. Let me think that you did up From below was their first one, and then the second one. Yeah, second one was the self-titled album. The third one was called here, and then the fourth one was persona. And persona was their most recent album, that came out before they went on hiatus and that was released in 2016. So I ended up seeing them live three times. I want to say, yeah, I saw them once when they were very first touring for Up From Below, and then I saw them on the here tour, and then me and my wife saw them. Well, actually we saw them for the Here tour and for the persona tour. So, but Alex, super cool dude. Very intelligent dude. Left LA, because he couldn't stand it anymore and actually moved to New Orleans. He lives down in the French Quarter. Sadly, his home studio burnt down not long ago. I think he was able to save most of his masters and all of the important stuff, but he had, like, a dope entire home studio, and it went up in flames. So I haven't heard him talk about that lately. And kind of curious, I'm gonna have to message him and ask him. I chat with him every now and then. Actually met him at one of the shows beforehand. We were in Raleigh seeing the show, and he actually came out, and was having a glass of wine watching the open band, and a whole bunch of people saw him, and my wife was like, you better go say hi. And, I of course she was right. So I got up and went over and shook his hand, and he took a photo with me, and, I actually ended up sending him a couple of my songs. I haven't even gotten into that with you guys yet, but I've done some music over my years as well. But anyway, he dug, and I encouraged him to pursue, a little bit more hip hop because there were, like, sprinkles of hip hop and all of his music. He had some hip hop in his, first, solo, debut, which was just called Alexander is the name of the album. I highly recommend that one as well. And he actually ended up when he came out with his, second, or most recent project. He had, you know, more hip hop music on it, essentially. And I thought that was super duper. Also, shout out to Alex Ebert and Edward Sharp in The Magnetic Zeros 2009. Was up from below. That's when that was released. And, yeah, check it out. Check. The self-titled album out here and persona and then, you know, obviously Alexander, his, solo album, highly recommend that he's also got a newer solo album as well. Hasn't released anything lately, though. Really curious to see if he's going to put some more music out because man oh man, that's something special. It's funny. The just one quick note. The person who played the accordion is actually an actress that played on The Office, and I think one of the reasons she left the band is because she was getting, like, acting gigs left and right. So huge band. We saw them when I saw them the first time live. It was at this really small club in Charlotte, and I just remember like being completely blown away, watching the energy of this dude up on stage, just like belting it out. And he had Jade still up there. Who was the female singer on the band who ended up leaving for dramatic purposes and they were just like crowded up there and so, so good. Like, man, they're good. So if you ever get to see them live, if they ever go back on tour again, I'm kind of like praying that they'll do a 25th, anniversary reunion tour for Up From Below, which would happen like four years from now. I'm going to ask Alex about that. If I ever get to talk to him or interview him. Anyway, check him out. I think that's it, guys. I've been rambling on and on and on about music for 20 minutes now, so I think, I think we can call it. And. Yeah, you can't even see the sky anymore. There are no stars. So I'm glad I moved the gear. And because it looks like it might rain anyway, I hope you have clear skies. Thank you so much for tuning into the Azure Gas. If you'd like to support the show, feel free to reach us at Patreon.com forward slash the astral guest. I'm your host, drew. Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you in a couple of weeks. But until then, as always, there's guys.