Cosmic Orbit - May 2026

Added: 2026-05-12

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[00:01:17]Hey, Heat.

[00:01:20]Heat. Heat. N.

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[00:01:55][music] Heat.

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[00:04:06]Heat. Hey, Heat.

[00:04:17]Hello everybody. I like to get my microphone in the proper position here.

[00:04:21]Good evening and welcome to Curiosity Orbit, my monthly news show where I go over the latest news from the world of astronomy and astrophotography. This is the show for May 2026.

[00:04:35]And um as always before we dive into all the news with all the things that's happened, all the new equipment. Um always good to see a good old Elite Dangerous buddy. Yeah, still here, still live streaming from time to time. Um before we dive into all the news, I just want to again give you a quick update on what's going on on the channel. Um I have a number of things sitting right here. I want to show you some uh new things I've acquired. First, I just want to say uh thank you to uh Where's the Styles who became a member this month and I'm not running Patreon on this channel.

[00:05:12]I decided just to go purely on the YouTube membership program. Um and I'm currently working on a there's going to be a new perk for channel members. So, if you don't know already, um if you become a member of the channel, you get uh get of course a perk with some little star next to your name in the comment sections and some other perks as well.

[00:05:33]And for the other tiers, you can also get access to a a repository of wallpapers. But the thing that I'm making now is I'm also making some of my uh data for some of the images that I've taken available. So, if you want to have access to um to some of the data and you want to download and try to process yourself, you can also do that and that's also going to be available. The perk has not been put live yet, but it will be very soon. So, do stay tuned for that as well if you're interested in getting your hands on some uh some data that you can process yourself if you want to. Now, I wanted to show you because I made a few purchases this month. Um first of all, going to start with this one.

[00:06:15]I gota I gota I gota I got to do telescope. Um I don't think I mentioned this yet but if we just quickly go and do this and I make some room here so I can show you what I got.

[00:06:31]This is a L solar solar telescope.

[00:06:42]Very nice little uh I think it's a 60 mil 60 mil aperture.

[00:06:48]Yeah, 60 mil aperture solar oscilloscope with this one comes with the B600 blocking filter back here. So, it's a rather small blocking filter. Um I have been trying to hook up a camera to it and try to play around with it. It's a bit of a learning curve. I'll try to give you guys a better view of it here.

[00:07:08]It is a bit of a learning curve for me.

[00:07:10]Um because I'm mostly been doing um deep sky stuff and trying to get into solar as well um because I want to have something to do in the summer. And uh if you don't know my I wrote my master thesis on um on solar on solar flares. So me not having a solar telescope is kind of a bit of a um a little bit weird. And so so I got this secondhand was a guy selling it. So I got it relatively very cheap compared to if you were buying it for new. As I said, I have tried to mostly been using it just optically with the uh with the eyepiece that it comes with. But I have been trying to hook up some cameras. I don't really have a camera that's like good for this. Like I mean it it is an H alpha telescope. So, oh, um, so ideally I want a mono camera, but the only mono cameras I have are guide cameras, and they're not really ideal for that kind of thing. So, I was just hooking up my I have it right here. I was just hooking up my uh my planetary camera. I have a an older It's not that old actually, but it's it's a decent planetary camera, but it's a color um which of course is not ideal when it comes to doing solar stuff, but it was just also play around with it. And um it's definitely a learning curve. So um you will see this a lot more on the channel here over the summer. Um I'm already been shooting shooting a video that's going to be coming out here uh probably next month when it's gets into the to the cycle. Um but it's something I'll be playing with over the summer trying to to get a little bit better at.

[00:08:48]See if I can figure that out. The other thing I got is for the observatory. You might know that I'm working on building an observatory. And this actually just showed up today.

[00:09:01]And um let me just take you guys with me down here. Well, this thing showed up and this is the computer that's going to be running all the imaging setup. This is I I mean, as you can see, there's no branding on it. It's basically a no-brainer. I got it on uh on the the German Amazon page. Um small computer, not necessarily super fast or anything, but it's fast enough to run um like Niner and Sequence Generator Pro and that kind of stuff. One of the some of the things it has a lot of features. I'm going to make a full video on this um why I picked this, but there's a number of features that I like. Nice with like plenty of USB ports. We have four here.

[00:09:53]We have two back here.

[00:09:56]Dual land ports, so you can run double LAN as well as um GPIO pins, which I also think is a nice thing that I could actually end up using. And then of course, it's completely fanless, so it's completely passively cooled. You see, the entire thing is just one big heat sink. There's no fans, there's no air flow. It's just passively cooled. Um, of course, making it better when it's going to be sitting outside. dual antennas for Wi-Fi. So, I'm going to be doing a more in-depth view on this in the future. Um, also a video that's in the works right now where I'm going to show you also the inside because it has some quite neat features specifically for remote observatories.

[00:10:40]Um, I'm going to pack this away afterwards. Put that down away down there and we're going to look at that afterwards. Okay. Um, how's the plans for the observatory coming along? They're coming along very nicely. So, equipment is beginning to show up. Um, the um the telescope itself, the optical tube is here. Of course, I got the mount a while back. That's the mount you saw.

[00:11:05]I made a video if you saw that a while back where I upgraded my um EQ6. I got an older EQ6 that I then upgraded with the build mod. And I also got a new uh drop-in replacement motherboard for it that gives it access to stuff like USB instead of using the older comp ports. Basically just bringing that mount up to modern standard. Um so all that stuff is coming up. The actual observatory building has been ordered, not been shipped yet. It's currently being built. So I'm I'm ending up buying it from from Dome Parts. So that's being shipped. So, so planning is pretty much I mean the planning phase is um coming to an end and I'm going into the actual construction phase where we where the next step would be as soon as I have the actual you know physical building I'm going to begin to uh to move some dirt around and begin to the actual uh um actually build the building. But a lot of the equipment has already uh showed up and there still still need more equipment before I'm I'm ready to go go full uh remote with it.

[00:12:14]But if as you also might know um my plan is to take it step by step. The first plan is not necessarily to have it in a full remote state. I'm going to start out in a state where I can um where I'm still going to have to be there physically and then I'm going to try to work out all the potential issues and and kinks and issues that might be with the with it in the beginning. And once all that is working and I can use it while I'm on site, then I'm going to begin to do the upgrades that's needed for it to be working fully remotely. Um, but that's a process that's going to be running here over the summer and probably also into the fall and I'm hoping for the winter season I'm going to be ready for running uh fully remote sessions um over the winter. So, it's coming along and uh I'll try to have at least one update on it every month um both here in this uh live stream section but also in uh in a separate video where I might show off some equipment or something like that.

[00:13:15]There should be continuously updates on it um as uh as it develops. Okay, let's uh let's dive into some news and uh I want to start over here um with the dark energy spect spectro spectropic. Yeah, a dark energy spectropic instruments.

[00:13:42]A build diary would be good. Yeah, I'm think I'm doing something like that. I mean, basically when we begin to actually, you know, building, it's going to be more of a, you know, a a diary kind of thing. And maybe I can try to see if I can post some small short updates like so you get small updates in in short form and then have the long form videos coming out a little later. I'll see how uh how that works out. Um but anyway, dark energy spectropic instrument has completed it original planned five-year mission of mapping more than 47 million galaxies and quazars creating the largest high resolution 3D map of our universe to date. So, you probably seen these animations before um where they they actually have this rather nice animation here where you can see the the data being collected. They're collecting it in hexagons. I assume that because they're um probably the main sensor array was was hexagon shaped.

[00:14:45]But you can see here as they're collecting it. And if you're wondering why they're collecting in two cones, so obviously the Earth is there in the middle and then they're collecting in two cones. The reason they're doing that is because that's the galactic plane. We can't do these deep sky surveys because there's too much gas and other stuff in the way in the galactic plane. And that's why we end up with these cones going out up and down when we're looking either straight up or straight down out of the out of our galaxy. So rather nice, very very big survey of loads and loads of objects. And of course they're using these models to look at some of the large scale structures in the universe. And then they're using that to try and detect um dark matter based on the filament structure of the galaxies and these arms that they form between the voids. Um so actually let me just show you because it's a rather interesting topic when it comes to these large scale structures that I think it was one of the most we're going to paint this um it was one of the most I think very fascinating topics when uh when I was studying. So um let me just get you guys with me here.

[00:15:58]If you if you imagine like we have like I'm not going to be very terrible at this. We have Earth here, right? So this is us sitting here and we're looking out into the galaxy. So we imagine like there are galaxies out here, right? So this is a galaxy galaxy galaxy, right?

[00:16:15]Um but the triggers what we see is of course that these galaxies they form like these filament structures where then there's a galaxy like cluster and then there's a filament structure and then there's filaments and a cluster and they form these things right and and one of the things that that puzzled astronomers in the beginning was when you were looking at these filaments arms and you were looking at the density they were denser than they were supposed to be until they realized if there is such an arm and They're they're measuring the distance based on red shift, right? So the further away, the more red shifted the light is. But you if you imagine a galaxy sitting here because that arm is here, which is of course going to have a high amount of mass. That means that galaxy there is on average. It's still going to be moving away, but it's going to be moving away slightly slower than it should than if this arm wasn't here because the gravity is pulling it in the opposite direction.

[00:17:13]And because it's moving away slightly slower, it's slightly less redshifted.

[00:17:17]So if you only if you don't account for the galaxy's peculiar motion, and you only look at it from the galaxy's um and you only look at it from the galaxy's red shift, even though it's it's looking like it sits here, in the data, it's going to show up as it looks as it sits closer. And similarly in the other end, if you have a galaxy that sits here, it's moving in that direction because of the gravity from the from the filaments here, it's going to be moving slightly faster and that's going to make it look like it is slightly further away than it is. So that means it's when you have these arms because the way red shift works, it's going to look like they are denser than they actually are because of the what's called the peculiar motion of the galaxies. I found that extremely interesting when uh when I had cosmology back uh back in university. Um but anyway, they have there's a very nice article. I think this is uh this is actually from the observatory itself. It seems um picture of the observatory. There it is. And there's also have a picture from inside the dome. And I love this video and I want to show it to you guys. So, first of all, that's a lot of of telescope being moved around. Um, obviously right now the the camera is stationary, but okay, look at that. Oh, stop. Stop. Let's go back. Can I pulse this? Why can't I Why don't I have any There. Look at that square there. You see that? That's their flat panel. This is called dome flats. Um, so when it when it comes to telescopes this size, it's not practical to put a flat field on it. So they do one of two things, either they take what's called sky flats where they just take the morning or evening sky um just before sunrise or just after sunset. Then you will point completely opposite of where the sun is and you will use the sky there because it will have a very even brightness. You use that as a flat panel. But what has become more um more common in large observatories is having these large panels that are then being lit up and they're basically just mounted to the inside of the dome and they're called dome flats and then they take flats using that panel. So that's their flat panel that are that are sitting there in case you're wondering.

[00:19:41]And look also look at that. You can see here that they have some kind of iris or something in here or something like flaps that can open up to protect the main mirror that's sitting down here when it's not in use.

[00:19:58]I think it's this is obviously sped up, but look look at the you can see the doors here and this and the ladders on the side.

[00:20:07]Wonder what that mountain would cost on AliExpress. honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you could buy something like that on AliExpress. They have more videos and uh it's a rather interesting read. Um I would recommend if you're interested in uh in cosmology to go out and uh and check out the latest findings here and uh they completed their survey which is cool. Okay, let's move on. And um I assume all of you guys have seen this, right? Did you guys read about the the supernova that got got discovered? And we actually have video of the supernova as it happened, which is like I love this video.

[00:20:52]So, take a close look right here in the galaxy here. See that right there? That star that just disappeared.

[00:21:02]This is so cool. And here it is again.

[00:21:07]So nothing nothing and this was taken over a few nights. So you can just see how it just disappears all of a sudden. I mean that is cool.

[00:21:21]This was in NGC 5907.

[00:21:26]H and I believe that what does it say here? That it was it first showed up on the April 21st.

[00:21:33]Um, so that's what a few weeks ago.

[00:21:39]Yeah, about two weeks ago. Um, when it first showed up. That's super cool that we actually have because there's always been this there's this system across telescopes that I think most telescopes that can observe these kind of objects.

[00:21:56]Um I was I was sharing an office space when I was writing my master thesis with with a with one and she was working on the on the system that they they're going to be using so that if a telescope detect so basically all the telescopes when you when you order time you're not actually sitting there know typing it in. You you you book a plan and you plan everything in advance and the plan is executed and then you get your data.

[00:22:25]you're not actually sitting there live controlling the telescope. You submit a plan, but she was working on that system that we that if a supernova was detected, all the telescopes that was part of the system would just have their plans cleared um and then just begin observing that target no matter what because this kind of data we can really only get else it's happening. So you can't plan for it in advance. So when these supernovas you studied physics yes I studied astrophysics. Um I got a master's degree in computational astrophysics. I wrote a I wrote a thesis where I did computer simulations of what's called active regions on the sun. So I did um I took a um a cutout of the of of of the sun like a magnetogram where you can see the magnetic field strength on the surface of the sun. And then I wrote a program that then extrapolates um the magnetic field structure. So basically try to recreate what the magnetic field would look like um in 3D space based on that surface image.

[00:23:36]Um, and then it was run through a large magnetic hydrodnamic simulation that would then try to evolve it in time and then you would look at how the program evolved and compare it to what we saw um um what we saw in in real life as we couldn't do these things live. So you couldn't actually predict them. We could try to simulate and see if we could replicate what happened in real life.

[00:23:59]Um, so yeah, that was what I did. Um, have to drop from a doctor's appointment. Okay, thanks for dropping by.

[00:24:19]Um, yes. Okay, let's uh let's move on to Oh, yeah. You you guys are going to love this one. So, I think in a previous Hold on, I got this in the wrong order. Yes, hit this one first. Um, in a previous live stream, I was talking about the mount that JTW Astronomy is working on.

[00:24:40]It's called the I don't know, it's strutska. Strutska.

[00:24:50]I don't know how that's supposed to be pronounced, but they're building this.

[00:24:54]And you might say, "Okay, it's another hydronulic strain drive mount." No, no, it's not just a um um it's not just another harmonic strain drive mount. So, first of all, um 55 degrees a second slooh speed.

[00:25:11]55 degrees a second. [laughter] Like what? That thing will will do a 180 in just over 3 seconds. Like pointing that way. One, two, three. Done. Now we're pointing the other way. And with a payload capacity of 50 kg, that thing will knock you out. [laughter] I mean, if you're standing next to that and that begins to move 50 kg around at 55° a second. Um, yeah, it would be good for like following ISS, but my god, if you like [laughter] that was going to knock you out.

[00:25:48]That's a very, very strong mount. But not only is it fast and has an extremely high payload capacity, it also has their anti-grab system. And if I just quickly take the next picture here, right, this one, you can see here from the pictures, if you notice, there is no polar alignment um knobs on this. And that's because it has its what they call the anti-graph system. And that means that polar alignment is done robotically. It has robotic polar alignment. And I am absolutely certain that now we are beginning to see this. And this is obviously What are you doing, buddy?

[00:26:32]There we go. Bunny's being noisy. Okay.

[00:26:35]Anyway, we're beginning to see these features with robotic pole alignment coming to observatory grade um um mounts because obviously anything that carries 50 kg of payload, it's not something you're going to be be moving around.

[00:26:50]This is meant for a more stationary setup, right? But the fact that we're beginning to see these robotic pole alignments, and I've seen other companies do it as well, means that I think we are a few years away from this kind of technology begin to to trickle down into more smaller consumer mounts. I'm absolutely certain that that's going to be the next big thing um for these types of mounts is that they're going to begin to automatically polar align so that you can just hook it up to your ASI air with the camera. No more sitting turning the the polar alignment knobs. You just basically say polar align. It takes its pictures, does it rotating thing, move the mounts around, and boom, pops your angle and you're polar aligned. Um, I think it's super cool and I think it's a feature that we're definitely going to be seeing more of in uh in more mounts coming in uh in the next few years. Um, but anyway, the robotic polar alignment system is least capable of this I don't know if this one is available yet. I just thought it was a super cool mount because of its insane fast slow speed, payload capacity, and the fact that it could propolar line itself. So, uh, that is very cool, I think. Um, okay. Now, there has been a lot of equipment announcements, and I've had to filter it out, so I'm really only going to be able to go through a number of them. Um, so we're just going to take some of the ones um that I've either been talking about before or something that I found interesting I wanted to share with you guys because there's been a lot of things. First of all, Baroness has launched the Vispera 3 and the Vispera 2 Pro. These are basically upgrades to their existing Vispera 2 and the Vispera Pro. So they had what was it first? They had the Stelina, which is that wide one with with the with the fork and the one that opens up in the middle. That was then upgraded to the Vispera. Then later they added the Vispera Pro. Then the next iteration was the Vispera 2 and the Vis No, they had the Vispera, then they got the Vesper Pro and Vispera 2. And now they have Vispera 3 and Pro 2, which of course are two upgrades to those telescopes. And there's a lot of marketing, but we want to look at some stats. We want to look at some specs. I have actually been uh been playing around with the uh the Sper 2. So, none of these or the older ones um will be limited at factory uh for 10° a second for safety, but unlockable for full speed for those who need it. Yeah, exactly. [laughter] I mean again we it's safety concerns here because again that will knock you out. Um okay so an expert not a problem. Okay so I have been playing around with the respera too. I was uh I had a loner from them when I was doing the interview with the uh with the CEO about their Hyperion telescope. Um here we have the specs. We can see both of them have the exact same optics. So, same aperture, same focal length, obviously, same f-stop ratio. It seems like it's basically the same optics they put in both of them. The difference of course then is the camera where the um the Vispera 3 uses the very popular Sony um 585 color sensor and the VPA pro uses the I think also newer uh 676 sensor.

[00:30:38]You can also see the 676. This is the one I think a lot of people have used that sensor for um um for all sky cameras because of that square aspect ratio. But you can also see it has a smaller uh smaller pixel size.

[00:30:52]Um a bigger one on this. So it's so it's it's not necessarily that one is better than the others. It's depend on really what you want to do with it. Um but yeah, two new telescopes um with upgraded sensors coming from Veres.

[00:31:12]Let me see. We have a lot of things here. Oh yeah. So I want to talk about the Stella Vita because I have been seeing talks I've not been able to see any official information.

[00:31:32]Um but there's been talk about Tubeek making a Stella Vita Pro. This is obviously their normal Stella Vita, but they're saying they're making a um a pro version or an upgraded version of it that from what I've heard should have significantly more USB ports. Um it should be also a bigger device and it should also have vastly improved its um Wi-Fi capabilities because I have a Stella Vita and it is basically useless without the Wi-Fi dongle. If you just use the built-in Wi-Fi, you might as well not because you basically have to have your phone touching it before you can can get that Wi-Fi signal. Um, not quite, but you you need to be within arms reach of it in order to reach it.

[00:32:26]Um, but they say that there one of the main things they've been working on is to upgrading the Wi-Fi. And it also looks like that that because the form factor has grown, it's a it looked like it's quite a bit beefier and heavier from what I what I've seen. Um, oh, look at that. Oh, look at the mouse.

[00:32:48]Okay. [laughter] Sorry. Um, and also I don't know what they've done in terms of of of actual like hardware inside it, but it looks like they might have gone away from the standard Raspberry Pi kind of board and moved over to maybe something a little bit more bespoke. I don't know. Again, there's been very very little information about this yet.

[00:33:06]Tube has been s they leaked the information. I saw it in some videos from some of the um um of the astronomy expose. Um, but they have been surprisingly tight lipped about the product launch. Um, so so far they just shown it off at the at some of the expos, but I can't find any information about it online on their homepage or anywhere else. But it looks like that tube is is gearing up to really give the air some um some run for it with the with the new version of the Stella Vita. If you don't know, the distiller of course in the past has been was a bit janky to work with. Then a few months back we got the uh app version 2.0 and that app version is amazing. Like it is so good. Um and it still lacks a little bit in the hardware department compared to the uh to the S, but with that new updated versions, it's probably going to if not be it's not overtake it. is very going to be on par with it. More USB ports at least, which I think is nice. So, I'll be keeping you guys updated on what happens with the Stella Vita and the Stella Pro when we know more about it at some point in the future. Um, oh yeah, I need to hold I need to scrub through this. I have some. So, this is from the Astro Fest in London.

[00:34:34]um where uh First Light Optics they were showing off their new there it is. They're showing off their new what they call a imaging pot. This is a miniature clamshell dome that is designed you can see they actually have a Vaspera in here. That's probably the Vaspera 2 it looks like. Um yeah that's the Vesper 2. You can see it right there on the side of it. Um, but they basically have a clam shell dome that's designed for these smaller smart telescopes. So, if you want to have a smart telescope that is have a more permanent installation for like a I actually talked they were they were talking about it last year when I went to uh to that exact so went to Astroest.

[00:35:22]Um, they were talking about it. They didn't have a prototype at that point, but um they were talking about it like being a balcony sized one. I think it's a maybe a bit big for a permanent installation on a balcony. It's a quite a bit of space to uh to sacrifice, but essentially it's a small clam shell. You put your telescope inside it, it opens, you take your pictures, and then it closes up when you're done. Um, and one of the things they also showed off in the video is that box there, that thing right here, that is a rain sensor. So, if any dew or or not do, but if if it begins to rain, any moisture, anything lands on this thing, it's going to detect it and it's going to close itself up. So, it's basically going to be able to protect your equipment. So even if it should you should get unexpected rain, the dome closes up, protects your equipment before anything gets damaged, which I think is cool.

[00:36:19]They I think they take it out here to show you can see the central there.

[00:36:24]So yeah, if you are into smart telescopes and uh you want to have a permanent installation and you want a dome for it, first leg optics again I was looking at it uh looking for it on their homepage. wasn't able to find any thing. So, it looks like it's uh it's one of those, you know, they kind of announced it. They showed it off, but it's not really necessarily available yet. I don't know. I haven't been able to find it anywhere.

[00:36:51]Um, yes.

[00:36:54]Hold on. I should just change this so it's easier for you guys to see as well.

[00:36:57]There we go. There we go. So, other cool stuff that's been announced, Skywatcher has announced their Helioar, and this is now available. This is a another solar telescope.

[00:37:09]Hydrogen alpha solar telescope 65 mm aperture 630 mm uh focal length priced at around here on Astro in the Euro in EU it is around €3,000.

[00:37:24]So rather expensive equipment but allegedly it should be uh be quite good.

[00:37:28]I haven't seen a lot of it um with it.

[00:37:31]It just came out but I think it is the first like correct me if I'm wrong here.

[00:37:34]I think it's the first solar telescope from um um from SkyWatcher.

[00:37:43]I don't know if they've done anything like this before, but new solar telescopes out from uh from Skyatcher, which is cool.

[00:37:56]Yeah, it looks very nice. I agree. I uh I like it.

[00:38:05]Now I also No, I forgot I got these. Okay, so uh let me actually put myself here where I'm a little less in the way.

[00:38:21]Observable space. These are the guys that was previously known as plane wave.

[00:38:28]So I'm pretty sure you will know plane wave. They are now they changed name.

[00:38:31]They're now branding themselves as observable space. [laughter] They've made these absolutely insane wide field astrograph.

[00:38:41]So this is an 11 in wide field astrograph. It is an 11 in f2.75 focal ratio. Like what the hell? [laughter] It looks silly.

[00:38:59]This thing is fast. Like what is the the rule is? So when you exposure time is goes up with the square from the focal ratio. Right? So that means if you have an f4, if you go from f4 to f8, you double your focal ratio and therefore you quadruple because it's squared. you quadruple your um uh your exposure time in order to get the same signal to noise ratio out of your telescope. So when we go from like the usual the usual Newtonian will probably be around an F5 and a lot of uh of refractors also sitting at around F5 a fast Newtonian might go down to something like an um uh something like an F4. You can get these faster Newtonians.

[00:39:57]I have seen some consumer devices that goes down in this range. Um I think is it carbon star that has some but these 2.75 focal ratios is just I mean compared to an F5 Newtonian we halfed it. So that means we half the focal ratio what we quarter the uh total exposure time to get the same signal to noise. So you just it's just outrageously fast.

[00:40:23]um comes with a price tag. If you have 10,000 US burning a hole in your pocket and you want a very very fast wide field astrograph, you can um yeah, built-in tilt and focal plane adjustment. I hope so. They don't really have they have another one I'm going to show you in a second where we can see the back of it. But the amount of detail, amount of time you have to spend to make sure that your tilt is correct and make sure that your back focus is like spoton and colorating this thing must be a pain. You can also see here um where was it? User friendly coloration software like you need an electronic columator to columnate this thing. This thing is uh is pretty outrageous. Let me just show you the other one that they also made.

[00:41:17]Um because they have some uh they have some videos of it. And this is even more silly. Like [laughter] if if you thought the other one was stupid, [laughter] take a look at this. [snorts] It's It's wider than its log.

[00:41:40]It's cheaper. This is um they call that an FCT. I assume it's a fast. It's for a fast SCT.

[00:41:50]So this is a f2.8 SC like SCTs are usually you know f10 something like that. 8 10 12 that kind of area.

[00:42:03]So I assume this is an 8 in. I assume from the name.

[00:42:09]Yeah, 8 in 5 and um 68 mm f2 with a 60% central obstruction. So they do have a large central obstruction as you can see here on the front which does of course limit it but this is still a light bucket [laughter] actually a light bucket. Um, yeah, I don't know. Like, you can pretty much see that the tube here is of course half the length of its focal length. That's how SCTs work. But still, these things are silly. And these are I mean I want to say more affordable but 6 and a half thousand is still very very expensive.

[00:43:04]Um I think I read somewhere that they said that they they're targeting these things for the um what they calling the the advanced amateur or the enthusiast amateur astrophotographer. So, these are not necessarily meant for like observatories or or anything like that. But I mean, I could see people maybe doing it if they're doing, I don't know, um stuff like um uh I don't know, maybe looking for comets or looking for for for for main build objects or those kind of surveys.

[00:43:40]Maybe this kind of telescope would be good for that. I don't know. But as again, it's a very very weird looking telescope.

[00:43:52]Okay, that uh what is the weight of it? That's a good question.

[00:44:05]Weight um 20 20 pounds. What is that in uh what is that in in in normal units?

[00:44:16]What is that? 20 lbs to kilogram. It's 9 kg. That's actually not bad.

[00:44:27]That's surprisingly I mean I know that's only the optical. Yeah, 9 kg. That's not bad. That's that's manageable with I mean when you're looking at something like this, it's not just the weight because because this thing is so wide, it's going to mean the weight is kind of far away from the rotation axis. So, your right ascension, you should probably not expect to be able to run as much weight with this as you otherwise would, especially if we begin to put anything on that top rail. Um, the other one, we just go and check out what that was.

[00:45:09]Here they actually listed in kilograms.

[00:45:11]This one is heavier at 14 12 kg.

[00:45:15]That requires a little bit more. And this one has a 63% central obstruction.

[00:45:18]We can see that there.

[00:45:22]It's also an 11 in. This is a big telescope, short and fat, very fast.

[00:45:30]Okay, that was what I had for for you guys uh this week. Um, as always, if you spot anything cool, anything fun that uh you think I should cover in these videos, we have over on Discord, we have a channel dedicated for curiosity over where you can uh post whatever information or whether fun articles or if you spot anything, post it over there. Um, and then I might bring it up in uh in next week's or next month's um curio where we talk about what happens in in the next month.

[00:46:07]And of course, there will be links for Discord in the description below. And again, if you want more astrophotography videos, if you want to see both my uh my more in-depth look at my new observatory computer, or if you want to see me uh take out the solar telescope for the first time, um go subscribe to the channel. Those videos are currently being made and will be out probably sometime next month. But um in the meantime, there are plenty of other fun and interesting videos for you that are already uh ready. And I have new videos coming out every Sunday, so you have something to finish off your weekend.

[00:46:45]Um very interested in the solar scope.

[00:46:48]Yeah, I mean I think it's it's it's the solar scope is is a bit it's very different from what I've been used to.

[00:46:57]Um because obviously I've been doing a lot of deep sky stuff and it's just there's a bit of a learning curve. I think that's the best way to put it. And uh and that is fun and that's why I I like to do it because I feel like I'm beginning to get a decent grasp of uh of of most of the deep sky stuff. Like I can have evenings now where everything just works. You put everything up, you start imaging and then everything just runs as planned. Um, and I kind of enjoy these troubleshooting when things doesn't work and you have to figure it out and then next time you go out, things are better. And also again having something you can do in the daytime that doesn't have to be night. And again, I live quite far north here in Denmark and that also means we're getting into the part of the year now where we have no astronomical darkness anymore. So, it's going to be difficult for me to do any kind of DSOs. And I've been enjoying the galaxy season so far. I've got some uh some rather rather nice pictures. I think nice pictures of boats galaxy as well as the Leo triplet. I actually show you the pictures if you're interested because I have them here. Here. Uh this one here.

[00:48:06]Let me just pull this up so you guys can see it and then get you guys over here.

[00:48:11]There we go. That's the picture I took by um this season from of course Boats Galaxy M81. And we have M82 over here.

[00:48:20]Um, I also got a picture of uh of the Leo triplet, which is right here. We go. Leo triplet.

[00:48:37]So, that should be fun. So, I've been enjoying Galaxy season so far. Um, only got two shots uh of the season, but we're beginning into the to the time of the year where we're not really having enough darkness.

[00:48:49]um that deep sky or DSO objects are um are possible. You can but you it's always difficult when the when you know the data could be better. So that means planets um is an option. I have some plans to try to do some more high resolution moon shots could be fun. And then of course solar astrophotography now that we have these long days with a lot of sunlight. That of course means solar astrophotography should also be something that I'm going to be trying to dive into over the summer. Um, so yeah, loads and loads of things happening in uh in the near future. So do stay tuned to the channel for that. Until then, thanks a lot for watching and uh take care out there, clear skies, and uh I'll see you guys in the next video on Sunday.