Day & Night

@stickmandiaries Below and to the left is Jupiter, and more-or-less directly below (and much fainter, especially through the clouds) is Antares in Scorpius.

@smokey cool looking flower. Love the pic of the moon.

@smokey thx smokey, I’ve been having vague thoughts of getting a telescope, but then common sense prevails..

@smokey beautiful flower. The twisted bud(?) looks fascinating.

@JezB Thanks!

@stickmandiaries Hehe! I had a little telescoping one when I was younger, and I tried to use it not too long ago, only to find out it’s not worth the plastic, metal, and glass it’s made of 😕

@johnjohnston Thanks, John. That is actually the spent flower twisted up 😜

@smokey that’s why it’s a bit of a passing thought as I know I would need to spend serious money getting something half decent 🙂

@stickmandiaries @smokey I’ve had a few telescopes and they just didn't work out for me. They were too fiddly and using one eye was tricky / tiring. I've had much better luck with giant binoculars and a tall tripod. My current tripod is tall but not nearly sturdy or steady enough so I haven’t used them for quite a while. Also my eyes are giving me problems these days. Something to think about though.

@Miraz @smokey Oh I hadn’t thought about that! That seems a very neat solution as I could use tripod for camera too. I’ve never owned a tripod as never had a camera good enough to put on one, but this would suit a number of uses, I like that! 🙂

@stickmandiaries @smokey Giant binoculars are very heavy so they need a tripod capable of holding their weight. They do have the advantage that you can also use them for land and sea viewing.

@Miraz @stickmandiaries That’s an interesting idea. I think my dad‘s Canon has better zoom than the binoculars, so perhaps I should just stick to borrowing his camera 😜

@smokey Oh, what kind of camera is it, I’ve been thinking about buying a “grown ups” camera and it would cover a number of interests I have..

@stickmandiaries His is the Canon PowerShot SX60HS, which I’ve used for some of the bird and moon photos I’ve posted over the last couple years.

(I just realized @Miraz said “giant binoculars”—I’ve seen those occasionally but don’t have a set and don’t know what their zoom/mangnification might be….)

@smokey @stickmandiaries For looking at stars etc zoom is pretty much irrelevant. What you need is lens diameter to gather more light.

@smokey @stickmandiaries Giant binoculars have lenses of 80mm or 100mm. Zoom is probably around 20x. They’re way too heavy to hold though so you need a tripod that can carry the weight.