International Space Station (ISS) hunt once again - most likely not the last

It is a really short video (37 sec) of my latest International Space Station  (ISS) hunt which went just fine. Sky was clear of clouds so took my time and recorded two occasions. 

The first one was a tricky one. It was a bit dark to see ISS clear and bright but were no stars yet. So I simply wasn't able to focus my dslr on an object - which ideally a star. So I decided to leave the telescope and only use my Canon. 

The next occasion was a bit easier, could quickly focus my scope on Vega and do all the necessary  setting on the camera. 

MUST be stated that your finder scope / telrad must be spot on, I mean really spot on. Purely because during recording that's how you follow ISS passing by overhead. Through your finder scope / telrad, turning your scope manually and follow its journey causing minimal shake on the scope. 

Altogether 2000 frames have been recorded, but really 4 frames were okey. But probably this was the best one.

Finally the panels can be clearly seen

Processed with Registax - close up

First day of Perseid meteor shower

Luckiest shot of my life through my telescope - perseid meteor right across my field of view

Moon video from the 17th and 19th of July

It is a short video of two different observations, some fine details are revealing and the surface is just astonishing....

The first one was at Regents Park at the Baker Street Irregular Astronomers meeting - I assume the Moon was a bit low during that observation, that might be the reason of its yellowish colour.

The other obsarvation was at Kingsbury School. Through a good friend of mine I have been invited to show the Moon for a class of children. The weather was perfect, Moon was high up and the kids loved it even at the lowest magnificaton eyepiece they were blow away by the view. Who knows which one of them got the lifetime impression to do amazing things in astronomy and study it later on.

Tube case and flightcase

After a long search eventually I found the right case for my Skywatcher 200PDS tube. I ordered it from Germany, the brand called Geoptik and they offer cases for different equipments (cases for various scopes, for counterweights,  for eyepieces etc.). You can find them on eBay, trustworthy and you get the item fairly quick.

Travel kit

Perfect carry bag for midsized Newtonian (eBay)

Also luckily I found on eBay as well a flightcase for the rest of my equipment. A company in Croydon sells second hand items related to film production. Therefore they have flightcases in all shape and form, metal or plastic.... They allowed me to come by and look around in their warehouse, so after a litte search they found me the flightcase just perfect for my needs. For £60 which would be triple at least if brand new.

Flight case and eyepiece case

And just to complete the protection project, also found a little case for my eyepieces for £25 and is a very good bit of item too. The foam inside consist of little cubes you can take out or push it in (that's what I did) to form the right shape for each eyepiece. It's from eBay but it's box told me from Maplin actually.

Eyepieces safe in a hard case

So as the pics show everything from eyepieces to the mount, counterweights, will go to the flightcase and the tube into Geoptik case. Easy to carry with a 4 wheel trolley and easy to handle.
Feels good to acknowlede that all my equipments are safe to carry around, protected during storage mainly from dust and accidental damages. So from now on clear skies :-))

Ring Nebula (M57) and M56

Tonight Ring Nebula showed some more of itself. Still no proper polar alignment so 3sec photo restulted a fairly nice photo.
Also fir the very first time I found M56 cluster, quite bad shot but at least found it. It was so faint it was nearly impossible to see and the London light pollution does not help at all.

Star trail

Star trail

M56

Ring Nebula (M57)

Ring Nebula with its central becoming a dwarf star

Ring Nebula - my first deep sky object

Well it isn't fully correct, my very first deep sky target was the Orion Nebula but it isn't that hard to find and at winter time that is one of the easiest objects to admire.
But now that I managed to locate (with huge effort invested - not easy at all) Ring Nebula I must say this is my first one. Because it isn't that obvious to locate therefore it was the very first real challenge of mine.
Dissapointment in a way cos every novice astronomer have to face the fact - these objects do not look shiny and colorful through your scope, but faint and rather bluish/greyish. Also interesting fact that you need to aim looking to the object's surroundings to see the actual object sharp. It has a lot to do with human eye, we can't collect so wide spectrum of light through the scope that's why they look bluish...
Exceptions are astrophotos. A camera (dslr or ccd) is able to collect sufficient amount of light to reveal colors.
This is my first real deep sky photo with a Canon 600D. Not super at all due lack of proper polar alignment. And also startrails can be seen too.
But the way this photo was taken is my first success.
I do not use laptop at all, only scope and my dslr. It worked perfectly on planetary imaging, you could clearly see the planet on the camera's screen and do the settings accordingly.
The story changes with deep sky photography. Namely you can't see s**t. So you aim the scope roughly according to your finder scope, focusing is extremely frustrating because you can't see what you're doing.
The only way to make sure focus is correct to take several shots and check them on camera's screen immediately afterwards. So it requires HUGE amount of patience. Doesn't work without it.
All in all my final result is here. Not many objects can be seen from my back garden due tree obstruction. SkySafari app showed that theoretically I should be okey with Ring Nebula.
It is only a sinlge 10sec shot at ISO 800. On that night I took a few shots but when I checked them on camera screen couldn't discover anything and already acknowledged my first failure....
So next day uploaded them onto my PC and suddenly I realized that one of those shots actually captured somthing.

I really was over the.... hmmmm Ring Nebula lol

Ring Nebula

Ring Nebula by Hubble Telescope

International Space Station (ISS)

Very first attempt, this picture is actually one frame from an approximate 30 sec. video which had 1100 frames. Only one frame shows the overexposed ISS and funnily looks like a skiing rabbit lol.

International Space Station