Jiggy 67

I’ve just come in after a couple of very enjoyable hours. Started with a bit of high cloud which cleared and caused the temperature To drop dramatically!!... Feet like blocks of ice!! It was first proper light with the ED100....my first ever frac which certainly took a bit of getting used to!! But I was very impressed when combined with my Morpheus eyepieces, pin sharp stars as I chased doubles around Orion as a result of the full (ish) Moon. Love the combo I’ve got now, the frac for double stars, planets and brighter objects and the newt for the faint fuzzies. Warming up with a rum now after a successful evening! Hope you guys are enjoying the evening

Absolutely, multiple star systems are amongst the most beautiful objects in the sky. I would recommend the Cambridge Double Star Atlas, all of them are worth searching out. If I can recommend one, it would be Beta Monocerotis, a triple star system which is well placed at the moment, stunning!!

Thanks @John that’s a great list of doubles, saved to my desktop

Heavy drinking can cause memory loss and cause you to forget you’ve been drinking 😀

Ah yes, the joy of recording your observations, I record all of mine!! I would say just search Amazon, there are loads of observing record books with all the templates required. Most of them are under £20. You can download observing record templates of the net but I think books are better For your daughter I would also recommend a decent set of pencils. The books include templates for sketches which is great for kids

Double stars are the target for moon lit nights. I love the faint smudge of a dso but I don’t even try when the moon is shining , save them for darker nights, you will appreciate them more

One word......WOW!!

It will all become second nature before you know it

Exactly, we should be cleaning up, not adding to it but I suspect Elon Musk couldn’t give a damn as long as he makes a fast buck

Hate to say this but it Doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly to me, there’s enough stuff in orbit as it is, thousands (or even millions) more would not be good imo 😀

If there’s one thing the army taught me, it’s how to iron......you need to put the ironing board through the vest so you’re only ironing one piece of material at a time 😀👍

Great report. You’ve got to love Sigma Orionis, last time I looked at X280 mag, could clearly see a second binary in the same fov, HD294271, lovely sight

I can never get my head around these comparisons to the moon.......are these representations as they would be naked eye??....sorry if I sound a bit thick 😀

Well I’ve just taken delivery of my first ever refractor 😱 an SW Evostar 100ED and when the clouds clear and I can get out, I’m thinking of using Theta Aurigae to compare the view with the 8 inch newt, I think it will provide a good test and comparison. With the newt I found it as you describe, very dim secondary which could be lost in the diffraction spikes of the primary

I had a good look at TA a few nights ago, lovely double but found it to be a really tight split, how did it look through the Tak?

I’ve be become a double star fan and have been considering the exact same purchase

All shiny and new......expect to see a few marks on it from lots of use soon!! 😀

I've seen a lot of planetary nebula display colour but maybe that's because, to us, they appear as small points of light (generally) like a star or planet rather than large regions of nebulosity with low surface brightness like other types of nebula

The pictures you see are the result of multiple long exposure pictures stacked together in software to produce a final result, unfortunately the human eye isn’t capable of that

Yeh you might change your mind about that swap if you knew the truth about our clouds 😫

You’re welcome to do a swap anytime! 😂😂

Great report, you’re so lucky to have the LMC on your doorstep down under 😀

All the above threads are worth a read for the detail but on a personal level, I wouldn’t be without a zoom, they work really well for targets such as double stars when constantly changing ep’s can be a pain. I would recommend buying one even before you start searching fixed ep’s. Just make sure you get a decent one, the Hyperions are excellent

Great result, goes to show that some authorities can be considerate. Our back garden backs onto a wood owned by United Utilities and the trees can be quite high restricting my view to the west. I contacted them explaining the problem and my hobby. A few days later a guy came round to take a look, identifying a few of the higher trees and within a couple of weeks they had been lopped.......You don’t get if you don’t ask

I was using an 8” reflector F5 with a 4.5mm Morpheus ep. Your image is quite a good representation of what I observed, maybe a bit smaller . Lovely little planetary