As the nights become longer and true astronomical darkness more substantial, August brings back the skies for observing once again.
More accessible this month is Jupiter. Previously rising in the early hours of the morning, the planet will be visible around 11pm on most south eastern horizons, allowing a more realistic chance for newcomers to observe.
The show piece this month however, is without a doubt the Perseid meteor shower. Active until the 24th August, the Perseids (named after t
Clouds all Morning, but by 13:30 starting to clear up and more gaps were appearing. The scope was quickly set up from the now called "Solar Observing Hut", Laptop and CCD Camera set up. Finding the Sun is now getting a lot easier using the shadow method, and I decided to try the reducer lens for the NexImage camera, this has proved to work great on the Moon and gives a wider angle view. Focusing is still one of the main issues, but I think it's getting there, minute adjustments are difficult wi
Solar Imaging. 1st Attempt: Set the Scope up about 11:00 and got everything ready, there was cloud cover but it was moving South and leaving clear blue sky. Took about 9 CCD images, focusing was the main problem, one thing about the Sun is, it's so bright! Think I need to get something that will shade the eyepiece better, as the images from a normal eyepiece we really very good, when my wife arrived back from work, even she commented on the clarity of the image, 10mm, 20mm and the 32mm eyepieces
Im new to all this but i was sitting outside yesterday eve (1st august) with family around 10.30 (ish) and we spotted 2 bright orange lights moving slowly from west north west to west and back again, then disappeared, we presume into the clouds after afew minutes. does anybody know what they were? we were fascinated and would love to know
It's just gone eight in the morning and it feels like it has been raining for weeks. The rather bedraggled pigeon sitting on the roof opposite doesn't look best pleased either. By now, I'd been hoping to write a little something about things I have seen through my telescope. Instead I've had to make do with trying out various different eyepieces in Stellarium to see if it helps me decide what to buy next. It hasn't really, but given that I've not been able to make full use of my current collecti
First evening trying out the WOZ 72. A bit cloudy, but found polaris and aligned okay. Began by imaging simple stars and then tried the veil nebulae. Completed 5 luminance, 5 HA, 5 OIII then the clouds moved in. Bigest problem is tube rotates when filters are changed so they are difficult to stack together.
A friend (Carolyn) and I have teamed up to have a go at some Astrophotography. Carolyn is a professional photographer and i have a couple of scopes and some bits and bobs. so it wasnt difficult to get started. After several months of trial and error we are increasingly become more impressed with our results. So I thought I would post a small blog with a link to Carolyns Website with some of our Photos. One of the images she captured while taking a startrail photo really grabbed our attention. It
I was star hopping last night and i found star of deep amber not like any thing i have ever seen . is it a Red Dwarf? it could only be seen with my telescope.:iamwithstupid:It looked like a pin ***** compared to the stars around it ,absolutely stunning Thanks
ok my dad loved astronomy!!! (R.I.P. dad) in 1986 he bought a super C8 plus celestron 8" telescope to see halleys comet. he loved that thing. he died when I was 6 and i never saw anyone from my dads side of the family till 16 years later my uncle saved my dads scope for me all this time. cool huh well got to run tell you more later
to everyone with the helpful advice. You guys are so helpful on this site and so very nice. Mick UK gave me some good tips i hope to use tonight. So thank you to all the people that are helpful keep it up.:D:D thanks
it seems I'm lost in space every night (that is if it is clear) just looking for new things every night. i like looking at jupiter and saturn most of all. mostly because i cant get my tracking right!!!! If I could i would be shooting pic's of m 1 and m 33 o well got to go eat
Have set up telescope and entered local latitude, pointed telescope at the moon tonight and got brilliant images, so clear! However, I thought the system would keep the image in centre field of vision and track same without adjustment on the hand control, after three - four minutes the image started to drop out requiring further adjustment. Am I doing something wrong? I've spoken to two sales persons, both of whom came up with conflicting advice. Any suggestions re this will be much appreciated
Once more unto the observatory dear friends once more.... Ahhh now an almost critical, possibly fundamental, requirement for your average telescope is the presence of light with which to perform the miracles of magnification. And apparently your average photon does not have the ability to pass through my lens cap...I ask you...photons today are just too damn lazy for your own good. Lets face it why couldn´t they have found a back way in? the cheek of it. So having turned everything on, checked
Coming home from work it seemed like it would be a clear night and i set up the big scope, only to have heavy clouds roll in. As the EQ5 takes a greater effort then the goto to set up I decided to wait it out, cover was broen enough to polar align so that was a bonus and was quickly and easily achieved I plant to place markers on my lawn (little slabs or something). To act as a hardstanding for the tripod and a ref point for orientation. With this in place polar will rarely be needed at all. On
So, having bought my telescope and set it up in the front room in order to learn how to use it, my thoughts turn to what I might buy next. A new eyepiece? Some filters? Maybe start saving for an equatorial mount? Once it starts to get a bit darker, I set up outside and give SkyAlign a go. Point at the Moon, point at bright star 1, point at bright star 2. Nothing. No match found. A couple more attempts using various combinations of stars but nothing matches apparently. Hmm, I must be doing someth
Only recently I ventured into the world of DSO imaging and have slowly built up a my kit which comprises the following.
Orion ED80 with a SW 0.85 corrector
HEQ5 Pro mount with EQDir controlled by EQ-Mod
Canon 1000d (unmodified at present) with a Astronomik CCD CLS Clip filter
SW ST80 Guide scope piggybacked on the ED80
SW Synguider
Dell Studio 15 Laptop
85ah Leisure Battery
Here is my first ever (and only one to date:)) DSO image
M81 & M82 by ashworthacca, on Flickr
Unguided, 2
Well, I thought that i would start to record my sessions in blog form. I recently bought a nice big Dob and am hoping to get some good use out of it this winter. I live in Aberdeenshire and at the moment the sky is far too light to be able to do anything astronomy related, so i'm left with no option but staring at the scope every so often in the garage :( I'll post more when i start to use the scope in anger
Here, I'm hoping to keep some sort of record of my observations over time. My handwriting is not the best so rather than lose my notes in an incomprehensible scrawl, it made sense to attempt to log them on the computer. And where better to do that than here, where there is already an active community of astronomers who I can ask my silly questions? Up until quite recently, I'd been using a pair of 10x50 binoculars and simply sitting in a fold up chair in the garden. This allowed me to learn my w
Due to Telescope Planet ceasing to trade, an auction was carried out to sell majority of their equipment. I certainly have filled my pockets and was hopping to sell the products on SGL, for about 70% of the RRP price. I have a range of telescopes, binoculars and spotting scopes e.g. from helios binoculars to Celestron CPC 800 telescope!! Please don't hesitate to to reply as these are going for a bargain Huw
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