John

1 hour ago, John said:

Me too but a big chunk of cloud has just spoiled things. Hope it will move on soon.

Saturn was lovely earlier as well.

Seeing the moon itself in transit, rather than the shadow, is usually somewhat easier when it is close to the planets limb rather than when it's more central. The limb darkening effect helps to show the moon.

I caught some more of the Io shadow transit in gaps in the cloud until it was about 75% of the way across the disk, then the gaps closed.

When things were clear 200x (Ethos 6mm) was working excellently on both Saturn and Jupiter - very sharp indeed.

I found 200x worked pretty well on both Jupiter and Saturn tonight. Usually Saturn benefits from a little more magnification than Jupiter but not tonight.

Io and it's shadow are crossing the jovian disk now. Lovely views here until a large bank of cloud mucked it up !

12 minutes ago, bish said:

Just watching shadow transit now. Seeing very good.

Me too but a big chunk of cloud has just spoiled things. Hope it will move on soon.

Saturn was lovely earlier as well.

Seeing the moon itself in transit, rather than the shadow, is usually somewhat easier when it is close to the planets limb rather than when it's more central. The limb darkening effect helps to show the moon.

Similar milkyness here but it's better towards the zenith. I'm concentrating on double stars currently, which are showing quite well.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Here is a link to a straightforward guide to setting up the Celestron Astromaster 130EQ:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/celestron-site-support-files/support_files/1213475482_am76114130eqset.pdf

One step that the above misses out comes between 9 and 10 in the instructions and this is to set the latitude angle of the mount to match your latitude using the latitude adjustment screw and then lock it in that position. You only need to do this once.

There is also a further important step after the last one shown which is to align the finder red dot with the view in the eyepiece of the scope. You can do this in daylight using a distant (several hundred metres away) object such as a chimney or telegraph pole top. Again, once done, this should hold for some time but it is very important to ensure that what the finder is pointed at, is actually in the view of the scope !

To find things to observe, this book is an excellent starting point:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/turn-left-at-orion-book.html

There is freeware planetarium software package called Stellarium which is very useful and popular. This can be downloaded from here:

https://stellarium.org/

There is also an Android version for mobile phones for which there is a small charge I think:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noctuasoftware.stellarium_free&hl=en_GB&gl=US

Hope that helps !

I've got the 130 triplet refractor out cooling. I rarely use more than one scope during a session though, despite having a few knocking around

The night of the opposition of Mars last year was an exception though:

3 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Steady on now, you're wishing my life away. I'll be 70 years old in 2032. 

I'll be 72

I wonder which of my current scopes I'll still have then ?

No prizes for guessing what you will be using Mike !

It's not really night yet but I'm hoping to have some fun with the 130mm triplet later after being clouded out last night

I'll pop the mount out later, if it stays clear.

You might as well go for it !

1 hour ago, globular said:

I feel left out.  I have EPs with undercuts and I've never had a problem.   What am I doing wrong?

Obviously you and I are doing things in a similar way !

The 24mm / 68 will show you a larger true field than the 25mm / 50 degree TV plossl of course. The 16mm Nirvana shows you a larger TF than the 25mm plossl as well actually.

1 minute ago, Geoff Barnes said:

I always feel a bit spoiled down here with Jupiter and Saturn being so high in the sky compared to you poor souls up north scanning the murk and haze near your horizon.

However, I have just noticed on SkySafari that both planets are starting to move down from their lofty heights. Saturn has descended from 75 degrees to 70, and Jupiter from 70 degrees to 65 in the past year or so. 

Still embarrassingly high for me but at least this means they are rising higher for you and improving your views at last. Enjoy!  😁

I remember observing them when they were that high or higher here Geoff - the views were fabulous

The ones that we can see regularly with small to medium aperture scopes are Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys and Iapetus (in order of brightness). Enceladus is the next on the list but it needs to be reasonably elongated from the planet and the rings to get a glimpse of it because it gets drowned out by the glare easily. I have yet to see any other Saturnian moon even with my 12 inch which goes down to magnitude 14.7-15.1 on good nights here but that is for targets towards the zenith. Saturn's low position in the sky (from the UK) scrubs off some of the brightness of the moons through atmospheric extinction.

And of course there are sometimes background stars showing amongst the moons, just to confuse the observer !

7 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

I found it in the end, but the circlet wasn’t that obvious with the moon starting to make it’s presence known. I had the 15x70s setup on the tripod so had a hunt around with those first to familiarise myself with the area. There was light cloud around too, which didn’t help so took me longer than it should. Still, just great to be back out with the dob again, even if it was on the front drive. 

Well done

M33 can be tough to spot. It's surface brightness is much, much lower than the integrated magnitude of 5.7 that is quoted for it and it is quite an extended object. You are looking in the right place though - it is framed by 4 stars that form a sort of slightly squashed rhomboid shape. It usually looks like an amorphous slightly brighter patch of sky within the area framed by those stars.

If you get a really dark sky it has some suggestions of form to it  - a kind of vague "S" shape. Under good conditions you might also be able to pick out a much smaller faint patch of light next to the galaxy, near a foreground star, which is NGC 604 - a massive star forming nebula which is actually within Messier 33.

Sounds like you are doing all the right things though - keep at it

1 hour ago, Stardaze said:

Plenty of detail on both gas giants but the cloud is back again. Going to give it half hour and see what happens. Still to find Neptune.. it’s there in front of me somewhere.

Still heavy cloud here so I'm not playing.

I use the star Kappa Piscium, the lowest of the stars that form the circlet of Pisces as a starting point for the star hop to Neptune at the moment. Heading down there are 2 distinctive star asterisms (circled) with Neptune sitting between 2 stars in the lower one and just about visible in a 50mm finder:

I owned the 4.7mm ES 82 for a while recently and that was pretty sharp across the field of view with my F/5.3 12 inch dobsonian.

Solid cloud now. Thick too

Scopes back in. Nothing doing tonight.

I think my other half would be OK with an elegant telescope tucked away in the corner of the dining room. I, on the other hand, could live happily with a small dining table tucked away in the corner of an astro equipment room 

11 minutes ago, Stardaze said:

I’m poised ready, but it’s thick over at the moment…

Clouds have moved in here as well. No rain forecast so I'll leave the scope out in case it clears.

10 hours ago, John said:

The figure that I get for the 130mm refractor is mag 13.4 under dark transparent skies observing close to the zenith. It was a few years back when I got Triton with the 130mm. I'll give it another try at the next opportunity. I agree that it's on the very limit for the aperture and for me. The scope has a LZOS triplet objective so most of the light goes where it's supposed to go

Neptune is lower in the sky now which scubs a little of the brightness off.

 

I've got the 130mm refractor out this evening despite the threat of some clouds. If it stays clear I'll have a go at Neptune / Triton with it and see if it "goes" with that scope this time

Excellent shot !

I was observing Saturn last night with my 12 inch dob and the seeing was a bit "variable" here in North Somerset.

The colour tints you have captured are really nice

3 hours ago, Louis D said:

I don't recall it being brought up earlier in this thread, but the rings have been "closing" for several years now, making it harder and harder to make out ring details:

I remember the last time they were fully "closed". There was a short period when you could barely make out that the planet had any rings !

I think that was during the winter of 2009.

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I think the recent Opticron Oregon's are similar to the Celestron Skymasters so this might help:

http://binocularreviews.northernoptics.co.uk/optic-hints-and-tips/how-to-collimate-celestron-skymaster-15x70-binoculars/

And also this for another version of these binoculars:

https://oberwerk.com/collimation-instructionsfor-lw-series-and-mariner-series/