Gfamily

Possibly more than you were thinking of spending, but I bought a Celestron Lithium LT power pack that does several nights without needing recharging after each session. Never had a problem with it powering down. https://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/celestron-lithium-lt.html

Fun Fact: the small galaxy next to M81 (UGC 5336 - also Holmberg IX), is a dwarf galaxy that is one of the youngest galaxies in the local neighbourhood. The stellar population indicates that it's less than 200 Million years old - which means that there were mammals on Earth before this galaxy switched on.

And soot on the telescope eye-cup?

In the meantime, get a Planisphere and a couple of good books to whet his astro appetite. Turn Left at Orion is highly recommended, as is the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders (which is a bit like the next step up from TLAO). Both of these can be found in Preview Mode on Google Books under the links The Sky and Telescope Pocket Atlas is also a good resource.

Angular resolution rather than atmospherics is the limiting factor for observing the items remaining at the landing sites.

Ah yes, checking the manual again; the centre (Timelapse) position tracks in the same direction as North does. The difference between the Timelapse and North position seems to be if you are using the camera release cable - as the two positions give different exposure times (50s and 100s respectively on sidereal tracking mode)

Are you sure? I only have the original SA, and on that the N/S slider is to set the direction of motion for Northern/Southern hemisphere astro tracking. I've had a look at the manual for the 2i, and I'm not seeing that action described.

Don't tell Mrs G, but a Svbony 7-21mm zoom lens for her Heritage 130P scope, for Christmas. Not tried it out at night yet, but I'm pretty impressed by the 'daytime' views - granted it's not parfocal, but for <£50 it's pretty impressive. One significant consideration is that it's about half the weight of their 8-24mm zoom lens The only trouble is that: over a week after ordering it, and Royal Mail not showing it as being 'picked up', I got in touch with the vendor - who sent out a second despatch. So I have another on its way. At the price, I'm tempted to keep it as a raffle prize for when the Club restarts. So don't tell the Club members either

If it moves about you're too close to it; move your head back so that you're seeing it with both eyes and you should see that it stays in the same position with respect to the far field. When I'm using a RDF (or a finder scope), I prefer to set up the scope and before moving to the first alignment star I go to the most distant street light, centre it with the telescope and then adjust the RDF so that it is pointing in the same direction. When it's (more or less) aligned I can then be pretty sure that it'll be good enough to get the #1 alignment star in the eyepiece field of view. I then centre the alignment star and put some fine tuning on the RDF.

Yes, you'll get a bit more light through and a bit more scope for higher magnification in use, at the 'cost' of it being a bit bigger to store and carry outside when observing. A lot will depend on the quality of the sky where you live and whether you'll be travelling to use it much. With good dark skies, I'd say you can get away with the smaller scope. Less seriously, it used to be said that your next scope needed to be 4” larger than your current one to get a significant "step up" in use. So you might be looking for your next scope to be a 10" rather than an 8"

Sadly, the extra length is only going to make things worse, so you may not be able to get focus even with a Barlow.

+1 for the Celestron. It has rack and pinion gears on all three axes so you don't need 3 pairs of hands to get the camera centred on the eyepiece view.

For reference, the Plus* version of the Stellarium phone app shows the visibility curve for selected objects. *This is the version that costs about £7-8 (on Android anyway)

I don't think all versions can.

The maximum altitude of any object will be as it crosses the meridian ( i.e. when due South for us in the Northern hemisphere). How high that is ONLY depends on your location. WHEN that is depends on the date. If it reaches its max of 31° for you today at 1am; then in a month time it'll reach its max of 31° at 11pm. A month after that it'll be at 31° at 9pm, but it'll never get higher for you than 31°. If you want to know when it reaches its maximum altitude for you today, then that's a different question, and my first answer (i.e. select the object and see what time it transits) applies

What's more likely, an error in a theory that has been demonstrated to conform to observations for: Earth based experiments Orbit of Mercury precession Shapiro effect Deflection of starlight during eclipses Binary Pulsar orbit decay Gravitational lensing Scale of anisotropy of CMBR or We can't see everything in a galaxy?

The maximum altitude for 'fixed' objects (stars and DSOs) will be the same regardless of the date - so if you select an object, the information provided will include the time of transit. If you then hit F5 and set that time , the information will give you the altitude at Transit.

My first piece of advice would be to get yourself a decent Planisphere, for example the Philips one (though not the gimmicky 'glow in the dark one') as that will give you a 'whole sky' view of what is up at the moment and has the brighter stars named. Second suggestion is that you try the Level and North alignment on the handset (I appreciate you didn't get on with it, but it's worth sticking with IMO) , you don't really need to know the names of the stars, as the stars selected should be amongst the brightest ones, and if your initial estimate of Level and North is close, then it should be pretty obvious which star it's meant to be pointing at.

Just a quick update for anyone who does a search on the A5000 camera. I found out today, that if you choose any of the 'Continuous' shoot modes, then the camera doesn't apply the Noise Reduction. The best mode to use is the Continuous Bracket mode - as this allows the use of Bulb mode for longer exposures than 30". If used on Bulb it doesn't actually do any Bracketing, it just takes the one exposure.

All Saints Church's wartime role is also mentioned here http://www.petershamvillage.org/history1.html

Two updates on the research: #1 I have found a contact in the Friends of Richmond Park - apparently a US Professor asked the same question back in 2011 so I've asked the chair of FRP if anyone was able to help him. #2 Independently though, a 2007 copy of the Richmond Historical Society Journal (issue 28) has the following article, so it seems very likely that this is the site used. You can buy a back copy for £5

In case people didn't read the full thread on why you shouldn't buy the A5000, the main issue raised is that the Noise Reduction (dark frame image) can't be switched off, so any long exposure is followed by the same length of 'processing', so a 1 minute exposure on Bulb will be followed by a 1 minute dark frame exposure before you can take your next image. However, this is not actually the case, as there is a Continuous Bracket mode which doesn't do the Noise Reduction. In fact, none of the continuous modes does NR, but only Continuous Bracket mode works with Bulb.

One of my astro club members mounted a TS 60 scope + dSLR on the Star Adventurer and used a repurposed 6x30 finder as a guidescope (mounted on the counterweight bar). Might be do-able within budget.

Hmmm, I have a Meade LS and I'm pretty sure it would be loud enough to be audible by the neighbours on a warm summer night if they had their windows open ! But Meades have a bit of a reputation for this. Fortunately, it's one I only really use at star parties or out in the middle of nowhere these days.

The NWAF is online this year, currently on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4RECl5Wq8