John

That's a pretty good set. The trouble is that having a really, really nice one can have a sort of domino effect on the desire for more of that quality But your head knows that you have what you need to do the jobs that need doing even if the heart might say something else I'm very poor at resisting I'm afraid

Nice report ! With Sirius, it doesn't look like other double stars. The separation between the primary and the "Pup" star is currently a relatively wide 11 arc seconds (Rigel and it's companion star are 9 arc seconds apart) but the glare from Sirius A can easily extend out further than that so what we are looking for is a faint star gleaming through the halo of scattered light from Sirius A. That point of light is to the east of Sirius A so it trails behind the main star in an un-driven field of view.

I did an outreach event at a nearby school with Bristol AS last night, which went quite well despite a brief (and un-forecast) rain shower just as we were setting up !. Stuck to a variety of easy to find / easy to view targets as you do at such events. Visitors seemed to appreciate it though. When I got back home I stuck the 8 inch scope out again to catch a hour or so of clear sky before it clouded over. Seeing was not the best but I did get some nice views of Comet C/2019 L3 Atlas in Lynx and the very, very distant globular cluster NGC 2419 / Caldwell 25 still within a couple of degrees of the comet. M42 was starting to look quite spectacular as the clouds rolled in (naturally ) Also got M1, M27, M15, M31, M32, M110 plus a few others during the outreach session earlier.

I'm doing an outreach session with Bristol AS tonight at a nearby school. It's taken quite a while for a decent clear evening to come along but tonight looks good. I think we will have 4/5 scopes as well. Hope you have a good one !

And before those Axioms, there were these Axioms

I just caught that line up from our bedroom window - very nice indeed

My dob mount was made for me by a skilled member here. It is simple but has worked flawlessly since the day it arrived and I fitted the optical tube into it. He certainly knew what he was about

I track by hand. I used to have an equatorial platform which worked well but the additional eyepiece height was inconvenient with my F/5.3 12 inch dob. My dob mount is very smooth in both axis so tracking targets at high power is not too challenging. I use the "nudge - let drift - nudge - let drift" approach

I use my 100mm and 120mm refractors the most (probably equally as much) and then my 130mm and 102mm about half as much. The 100mm has practically no cool down time before giving great images so that one is the "grab and go" default.

I've owned Nirvanas (28, 16 and 4mm, not the 7mm though) and the 4.7mm ES 82. All pretty good. Perhaps the 16mm Nirvana was slightly weaker in my F/5 newtonian than the rest. Eye relief can be quite tight in 82 degree eyepieces so not that great for the glasses wearer. I ended up with a Tele Vue Nagler set about a decade back before I got the (expensive !) taste for even wider 100 degree eyepieces

From here, unlikely I would say. On the very, very best nights here I have only just been able to glimpse the HH nebula with my 12 inch dobsonain, using an H-Beta filter. Under a truly dark sky though, maybe. It has been seen with a 4 inch scope I've read. This does not mean to say that I won't try now and again though !

It looks a very interesting and unusual mount. Universal Astronomics mounts are quite scarce here in the UK which is unfortunate because, from what I've read about them, they are very capable. There was one dealer over here who distributed them but they closed down a few years ago. I had their smallest alt-az mount for a while - known as the Dwarfstar. That had quite a lot of capacity for it's tiny size and weighed practically nothing. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the UA Doublestar Tandem

Both work fine. I think the enhanced one had a couple of advantages but, for me, it largely did the same job.

I've installed and used the Skywatcher dual axis motor sets on a couple of mounts. They are fairly straightforward to fit and work fine for visual observing. Like this: https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-eq5-enhanced-dual-axis-motor-drives.html or the older version: https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-dual-axis-motor-drive-eq5.html

I think I'm likely to miss Comet Leonard altogether. I'm no good at early rising these days plus that side of the sky is not the best

Very nice Mike ! If I put a Baader 2.25x barlow on the back of my FC100-DL does it count as an F/20.25 100mm ?

Either the dob or the Mewlon would be good. When I first spotted Triton it was with my 12 inch dob. With practice I've found that I can now see it with some of my smaller aperture scopes. Not yet the 100 Tak or 102 Vixen though. Similarly with the brighter moons of Uranus. The thrill of seeing Triton for me, however faint and elusive it is at the eyepiece, is that it is the most distant lump of rock and ice that I've been able to see. The idea of a world that is about the same size as the USA being visible across 4.3 billion km of space is rather awesome

I'm using the star hop route (below) through stars in Aquarius to find it currently. The dim "zig zag" of stars in the green oval are visible in a 30mm finder as is Neptune itself, although it is faint in the finder.

Venus (naked eye - it's badly placed to get in a scope at present here). With my ED120 refractor: Saturn Jupiter Neptune and, after some time to get dark adapted, TRITON !. First time with the 120mm refractor I think . Pentax XW 3.5mm (257x) plus averted vision / 1000 yard stare needed but as time went by and I got my eye in, it popped into view, albeit faintly, more often. Listed as magnitude 13.55 so probably at the limit of this aperture. So far, so good but the forecast for the rest of the night isn't great

We toured the eastern side from Melbourne up as far as Cairns then across to the centre, down to Adelaide (on the Ghan !) and spent the final week in and around Syndey with my wife's relatives. I have a cousin who lives in Perth but we felt it would be too much to try and visit the west as well so that is for a future trip. Had a great time - it's a wonderful country

Excellent report ! Messier 42: "Words don't do it justice. One of the most splendid objects in the sky." Very much agree and it's one we can share too ! LMC: I found this fascinating when in Australia back in 2018 and I only had 8x56 binoculars with me then. I'd love to explore it with a scope ! I did manage to see 47 Toucanae as well - clear days but annoyingly cloudy night skies during the 20+ days we were down under - just a couple of clear nights Must come again, when it's possible to do so

Thanks Mark I've added a Rigel Quikfinder beside the 50mm RACI optical since that photo was taken so I replicate the finder arrangement that I have on my 12 inch dob. It works very well for me. Even though the 8 inch is a decade old, I think it was hardly used at all since new by the previous owner so the mirror coatings are immaculate and seem very bright. It's one of OO's decent mirrors as well

On targets, the ones you have mentioned plus: - the Perseus double cluster - Mizar and alcor - Albireo - Gamma andromeda - Messier 15 Pegasus (globular cluster) - the open clusters in Auriga

I've done a few outreach sessions with scouts, cubs, guides etc though Bristol AS. My tips would be: - plenty of parent helpers to supervise small groups (3-4 children per helper) - each scope has a dedicated operator who knows the instrument - assign each scope operator 2-3 easy targets that will be seen well with that instrument and that the operator is comfortable with finding quickly and easily. - have a reserve list of targets in case of patchy cloud cover getting in the way of original targets ! - an event leader to give an initial briefing and intro to the main constellations - be quite clear about the rules: no running about in the dark, no touching scopes etc etc. Dark and being somewhere different can lead to over-excited children ! - divide the children up and then let each small group go to a scope for about 10-15 minutes - move the groups around the scopes, on a signal from the leader - a whistle maybe ? - attention span on a cold night is quite short so let them all see something, then a quick chat, then move on to the next scope. - do you have a loo nearby ?. Adding a portaloo to our site makes a lot of difference to the comfort of guests and supervisors ! - don't be too ambitious with the targets, length of briefings etc, etc. Keep it simple ! Have fun

Thanks Mike The scope in the avatar is the Bristol AS JMI NGT 18 inch - it's actually on a horseshoe eq mount. When new, it looked like this. The one we have is in decent working order but is getting on a bit now !