I'm like yourself, having trouble cracking the reverse, left right and making sure I'm look ing at the right star in the view finder! just bought myself a Celestron 1100 CGEM and trying to get the thing to align correctly, I think I've got it but I'm sure plenty more practice will come! Just need to sort out which Lens to use as the one that comes with the scope ( 40mm EP ) picks up Jupiter but that's about it. What lens are you using? Like you I've managed to pick up 6 moons but can't see the other! lol

I think you are right Warren, just time and experience will smooth things out for us. The eyepieces I use are : Antares x2 Barlow...Super 25 wide angle with long eye relief (that's a good all rounder)...super 10mm...and a Plossl SP 12.5mm.....I've only managed 4 of Jupiter's moons, not even caught a hint of the other 59!!...clear skies Mon Ami.

Thanks for the list of lens, I'm trying to get a package together so I can see the stars, get the Canon camera attached and CCD camera and start practising! It was sods law last night that I had just got everything aligned and ready to start taking some pics, when the clouds came over and put a spanner in the works! Any advice you can think of would be apprecited.

Thanks for now.

Warren

Just tried all of lens looking into the field across from where I live anf 5mm and 20mm lens I have are useless, very blurred so i've just bought a Celestron 8-24mm zoom lens to practice with. When I've practised and got things down to a tee I'll look into investing in better lens. The reviews on the 8-24mm lens seem very good so it's a good start. Better start saving my pennies again!

I use a dated 8x50 finder and there is now orientation correction, so going through long star hops can be particularly tedious, especially when their are no bright markers along the way.

Pete

Hello Patrick!

I see you beat me to SGL by a few months and you have a much better scope. Mine is the 8" dob and I have a Telrad. I bought used kit and the fellow tossed in books and other bits and pieces, one which is an atlas of sorts that shows where to put the telrad circle for Messier objects and other bright objects in the sky. The title of the booklet is "Finder Charts of Bright Telescopic objects" by Brent Watson. For M45 it shows a chart with Orion's belt int he lower left and the telrad circles about midway between Aldeberan and Algol in Perseus.

I couldn't find the title at abebooks.com, but you might look around for it. I cannot yet attest to its usefulness because all I've looked at so far is the Moon. When (if) I ever get familiar enough with the gear to try the charts, I'll post (and probably, blog) about it.

Clear skies, podnah!

Howdy, Patrick!

I found a url to the folks who publish the telrad chart booklet. Admittedly the page is not very robust but it does give a phone number. If you are interested I could give them a call (no toll charges for me) and find out about their catalog of products and prices.

http://www.sky-spot.com/home.htm