John

You want to use your lowest power eyepiece for this (ie: 20mm or 25mm) and, in case you have one, don't use the barlow lens.

You don't have to post anywhere else but it's worth seeing what others are looking at

That tiny crater is described as "relatively recent" in the Wikipedia entry for Albategnius so I guess it must be of impact origin, if that is correct.

I use a manual "hurricane" blower to remove loose debris from mirrors or lenses. Over the years I've found the Baader Wonder Fluid applied via a micro fibre cloth the best for eyepieces and objective lenses. A bottle lasts for many cleans: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-optics-cleaning-protection/baader-optical-wonder-fluid.html

If you have a look in the observing sections (link below) you can see what people are or have recently been observing. Also "heads up" posts on interesting short term targets often go into the Astro Lounge or the Celestial Events Heads Up sections (also linked to below) We are not picking on Bresser owners particularly - we have long resisted single brand sections and scope type sections on the forum because we have seen the negative impact it has had on other forums over the years Here are those links: https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/7-observing/ https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/239-celestial-events-heads-up/ https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/12-the-astro-lounge/

It is important to get the finderscope aligned with the view through the eyepiece (a low power one) in the scope. You need a distant target such as a chimney to do this in daylight. The target needs to be several hundred metres away or more. It is very difficult to find targets in the main scope without the finder scope properly aligned - even the Moon ! The moon does not rise until 2:52 am tonight I'm afraid.

The Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas has a special chart dedicated to the Virgo / Coma galaxy cluster. It's quite good for navigating from galaxy to galaxy I find. Still possible to get a bit lost in there though !

I used to visit the Farringdon Road shop when I was on trips to London. It seemed like an "aladdins cave" back then and a chance to see and discuss mouthwatering equipment. I bought quite a few eyepieces from them - mostly dealing with Pete Gallon I seem to recall. Dud Fuller was usually around somewhere at the back of the shop. They would take my older eyepieces in part exchange, which helped cash flow a bit ! I eventually bought a Fullerscope MkII mount and had a number of interesting phone conversations with Dud coming up with more and more varied excuses why the mount was taking longer than estimated to make. It was a bit like the Monty Python "Cheeseshop" sketch at times ! It arrived in the end and formed a very sold mount for the 6 inch F/6 Astro Systems (Luton) newtonian that was my main scope back then. Good memories

My 130mm F/9.2 is not too heavy - 9.2 kg with finder, rings and diagonal. The tube length has posed a challenge for mountings though. The AZ100 handled it well and now I have a T-Rex which is superb. I imagine that the 152 is quite a handful, having owned one or two 6 inch refractors in the past. Superb optics though I'm sure.

When we can travel around again, come along to a star party and have a look through some larger aperture telescopes. The views can be quite startling The difference between, for example, the globular cluster Messier 13 observed with my 100mm scope at 150x and my 300mm aperture scope at 150x is really marked in terms of both brightness and resolution. A completely different experience.

That's all that matters.

I'm not sure that I can really answer that Perhaps start a separate thread in the eyepieces section on the options you are thinking about ?

The seeing does need to be decent to get the more challenging ones.

Great stuff folks - confirms my visual observation last night I modified this Stellarium screen dump to show the position of what I spotted just after I'd observed it. I can't produce nice images of it like you clever people

Another thing I've learned is not to use the locking screws unless you are transporting the scope. With the newtonians that I've owned, once you have got collimation right with the collimation adjustment screws, applying the locking screws could move it out again. Now I leave my locking screws loose unless I'm taking the scope somewhere in the car.

The Skytee II, although it has its imperfections, is quite a stable mount even with a large long refractor on board. With around 10kg of counterweights the mount did a reasonable job even with my 130mm F/9.2 triplet. It holds the ED120 rock steady even without a counterweight.

Quite a lot of scopes have been supplied on mounts that are not fully up to the job over the years I'm afraid. I've owned a few of them ! Meade put their long 5 inch and 6 inch refractors on the LXD55 mount on an aluminium tripod for example Looked impressive but was a nightmare to use at over 100x magnification.

I was using a 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom eyepiece. I can't recall at what setting - probably around 10-12mm. It's just a shot with the mobile phone camera held over the eyepiece with a simple clamp.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Bresser MON2 drives were compatible with the GP ?. I believe they are pretty decent quality - better than the Skywatcher set. https://www.bresseruk.com/bresser-messier-ra-dec-motor-mon2.html

Cheshire eyepiece while there is still some light in the sky, usually followed by a star test on Polaris. Quite often no adjustment is needed - like tonight for example.

Just managed to get SN 2020jfo in M61 as well. Quite tough ar mag 14.4 but I'm pretty confident I've spied it where I've indicated on the Stellaruim generated chart below. Pleased to get these two

I got SN2020hvf a little earlier this evening with my 12 inch dob. Just as you described Neil. A bit brighter than the mag 13 star close to in. No sign of NGC 3643 though. I've also just managed SN2020jfo in M61. Mush harder at mag 14.4 or thereabouts I think. The host galaxy is easy to find though. Here is where I spotted this one (chart from Stellarium, red blob is where I spotted the SN:

I check my collimation each time I set the scope up. It rarely needs more than a tweak but I do it anyway.

It was windy but it's calmed down now. I'm using the dob now and have just found the supernova in NGC 3643, but the host galaxy is invisible. The SN is quite bright though. I keep popping back in for a warm drink but I'm trying to do that without spoiling my dark adaption - which is tricky ! Got a quick snap of Venus through the tak earlier:

Wait for Vega to rise higher in the sky - it will look nicer. The famous "double double" Epsilon Lyrae is close to it - well worth a peek !