Jump to content

NLCbanner2024.jpg.2478be509670e60c2d6efd04834b8b47.jpg

  • Welcome to Stargazers Lounge

    Register now to gain access to all of our features. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to contribute to this site by submitting your own content or replying to existing content. You'll be able to customise your profile, receive reputation points as a reward for submitting content, while also communicating with other members via your own private inbox, plus much more! This message will be removed once you have signed in.

Forums

  1. Welcome

    1. 301.2k
      posts
  2. Beginners

    1. 265.9k
      posts
    2. 195.4k
      posts
    3. 53.7k
      posts
    4. 173.3k
      posts
  3. Community

    1. 8.6k
      posts
    2. 999
      posts
    3. 7.1k
      posts
    4. 14.8k
      posts
    5. 36.6k
      posts
    6. 6.2k
      posts
    7. 396.1k
      posts
  4. Retailers

    1. 25k
      posts
    2. 3.2k
      posts
    3. 899
      posts
    4. 2.1k
      posts
  5. Equipment

    1. 316.4k
      posts
    2. 20.5k
      posts
    3. 105.4k
      posts
    4. 115.8k
      posts
    5. 76.1k
      posts
    6. 1.8k
      posts
    7. 56.2k
      posts
    8. 123.2k
      posts
    9. 50.3k
      posts
    10. 42.6k
      posts
  6. Observing

    1. 39.2k
      posts
    2. 55k
      posts
    3. 25.1k
      posts
    4. 10.2k
      posts
    5. 22.7k
      posts
    6. 24k
      posts
    7. 15.2k
      posts
    8. 10.6k
      posts
    9. 7.6k
      posts
    10. 18.2k
      posts
  7. EEVA (Electronically Enhanced Visual Astronomy)

    1. 1.7k
      posts
    2. 20.2k
      posts
  8. Imaging

    1. 97.5k
      posts
    2. 25.1k
      posts
    3. 48.2k
      posts
    4. 3.1k
      posts
    5. 80k
      posts
    6. 120.8k
      posts
    7. 114.5k
      posts
    8. 327.3k
      posts
    9. 55k
      posts
    10. 658
      posts
  9. Science

    1. 1.6k
      posts
    2. 26.4k
      posts
    3. 8.1k
      posts
  • Latest Posts

    • Skywatcher 200p Dob on DIY EQ platform. Southampton urban garden, Bortle 7, ~1am on 29th April 2024.  Seeing OK, transparency not great. BST StarGuider 25mm. iPhone 14 Pro held to the eyepiece using a no-brand smartphone adapter. Captured using the AstroShader app. Cropped and edited. All editing & processing on the phone using the stock camera app, WaveletCam, LightRoom & SnapSeed. This was captured during a late night/early morning observational session on various targets. I’ve been meaning to try and take a smartphone snap of M82 (well, really both M81 & M82) in the same shoot together, with my 200p, for over a year. For some reason last year I forgot or (more likely) was enjoying observing far too much at the time. And unfortunately this year’s ample amount of cloud has made it a rare opportunity. On the night my sky wasn’t the best - transparency not good - and by this time of year M81/M82 are not in the best position from my garden. Eg by the time it’s really dark they are over the top/back of the house. I’m sure that better is possible! Still, it might be the last chance this year so I gave it a go. I’d planned to get both galaxies in the same view, but that failed to give good results (I messed it up!). However, M82 on its own came out better. I find it interesting that the phone camera is picking up some colour. Not the best or most straightforward of smartphone targets. The third and last image is the same capture, just with more “aggressive” processing. 
    • Welcome to the forum. Before you make a purchase I would suggest you locate an astronomical society or club and give them a visit, especially if its at a star party where you would get a chance to look through scopes of different types and price points.  If you search or brows through similar posts to yours you'll see that there is no "one scope fits all"  even with your budget.  Scopes that are more suited for brining out planetary details of Jupiter's belts or Saturn's rings are not ideal for use with deep sky objects such as fain galaxies.  That also brings me on to what you expect to see.  It can be quite a let down when you view a galaxy that looks so bright and colourful in the pictures in books or on forums such as these.  What you see can be just a slightly greenish smudge with a brighter centre...  Part of the reason is that the human eye lacks the ability to see colour in low light, and unlike a camera sensor that can be open for long exposures, can't collect the light in the same way.  This then brings up a second question... do you want to do visual observations, or do you want to use a camera to record the images of targets?  -  Visual setups requirements are different to imaging set ups.  The latter the mount is just as , if not more important than the scope gathering the light.  You are fortunate in that you have a decent budget, and you could get a mount and then use two different scopes, one with long focal lengths for planetary work, and another with shorter focal length and more aperture for deep sky work. The third point is that it's best to plan for the future.  If you think that there is a good chance that you are going to be disappointed doing visual after a while and possibly go towards imaging, then try and get a mount that would be suitable for that.  It would save having to sell equipment to raise funds at a later date.  So many of us have made a purchase, and then find they limited by the hardware when changing directions and wanting to get involved in imaging.  As other members have mentioned, 1200 euros is basically the cost of an HEQ5 mount which has been the "entry" level mount for imaging, but these can be picked up for less on the second hand market.
    • I haven't had much chance to observe recently but I did pop out briefly last night with the Bimos to check on R Vir. It is still brightening. There was some high cloud around but to me it looked very similar to HD109417 which is mag 6.75.  The other thing I noticed was the number of satellites visible.... Cheers Ian
    • The odd thing is that you don't hear any complaints about eye relief from owners of Zeiss ZAO ortho, TMB Supermonocentric or Pentax XO eyepieces, which are very tight in the shorter focal lengths. Presumably the optical performance of these legends is so good that the effort required to use them is worthwhile 🙂
    • 1200 Euros allows for a large number of combinations of GoTo mount and telescope, so unless you want us to randomly pick something and urge you to buy it, you need to narrow the field down a bit.  You can buy all sorts of telescope for 1200 Euros, some of them quite large, provided you put it on a low cost manual mount. If you buy a sturdy Goto mount, capable of supporting a 9Kg telescope and worth keeping for the future, it will not leave you with much change out of 1200 Euros. What you can buy for 1200 Euros is a small-ish telescope mounted on a 'starter' Go To mount capable of supporting telescopes of 5 Kg max. For example the suggestion by M40 above. You still have the choice of what small-ish telescope to buy - a Newtonian reflector, a refractor (traditional lens telescope), a Schmidt-Cassegrain, or a Maksutov.  Some designs are best suited to looking at small objects (planets and double stars and globular clusters) and others more suited to looking at extended objects (star clusters). If you have really no idea, it might be wise NOT to spend the whole 1200 Euros, but to buy a basic low-priced instrument like a 130mm tabletop Dobsonian with a view to replacing it when you have a clearer idea where your interests lie.
  • Recent Topics

  • Recent Status Updates

    • Earl

      broken cloud time to run a timelpase from the back window, might do star trails later as its saying clear so far
      · 0 replies
    • Minhlead  »  inedible_hulk

      Hi there,
      I can see you had a Lunt 50mm for sale. By any chance it's still available?
      · 0 replies
    • Hawksmoor

      Had a brainwave as to how I could make a conversion gizmo to attach to my homemade spectrometer to enable it's use for nebulae. The aluminium bits arrived from EBAY this afternoon. I feel an astro project coming on!
      Finally got the LVST (Lowestoft Very Small Telescope) reprogrammed and catching 'meteor pings' again. Everything went west after the electrical supply to the shed went down in the last major storm deluge. All is up and running again. It really does pay to write down what you have done and programmed when you get old. I'm 74 years old you know!!👴
      · 0 replies
    • Dazzyt66

      Hoping for a clear night tonight! 🤞
      · 1 reply
    • Earl

      Normalirty restored its grey again....
      · 0 replies
  • Upcoming Events

  • Blog Entries

  • Images

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.