John

I've been observing for around 40 years now and somehow the interest has kept alive although the skies are largely the same as they were when I started I have favourite targets as the seasons progress and it's nice to re-acquaint myself with them as the weeks pass. The planetary positions have been pretty awkward (Venus aside) over the past few years which has made observing them challenging but where there is a will there is (usually) a way and their positions will improve over time. The special events that crop up such as interesting conjunctions, lunar and solar eclipses, the occasional brighter comet, supernovae, etc, sprinkle some spice into the mix at intervals. When new equipment comes along that has to be tested on the familiar targets of course and then pushed to see if new challenges are now possible. And also each season there new targets to seek out as skills are developed and I learn how to push myself and my equipment further. Often it's been on this forum that I've learned of something new to have a go for. I've had a few periods when I've not been as active an observer and sometimes such a break is good and I have found that I appreciate things more when I do start observing again. In the past few years I've joined my local society (at long last !) and that has provided me with the opportunity to take part in outreach events. These have added an important and very enjoyable new dimension to the hobby for me. I have found there is nothing like sharing the views I enjoy with others to re-kindle my enthusiasm and I can share in their excitement as they observe for the first time what have become "old friends" to me. As yet I have not been tempted into imaging either !

I've just posted this elsewhere in answer to your other post asking about this:

Stars will always look like points of light now matter how much they are magnified and how powerful your scope is. With a scope though, you can see more stars because it captures more light than your eyes alone can. So the fainter stars become visible and also many deep sky objects such as star clusters, nebulae, galaxies etc. You can also see that some stars have companion stars near them, sometimes very close. But the stars are just far too far away to see them as more than pin points of light. The planets though, can be seen as disks although people are often surprised how small they look even when using a scope. Although large (very large in Jupiters case) they are also a long way away (not anywhere near as far as the stars though) so their disks are small even when magnified 100x or more.

It does look like a 150mm F/8 refractor. It is the same basic scope as the Skywatcher Evostar 150 but back then they were branded as Helios and on an EQ5 mount on the rather wobbly aluminum tripod. This is todays equivalent: https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-evostar-150-eq5-telescope.html Difficult to see what is missing from the angle of the photo. The counterweight bar on the mount and counterweights don't seem to be present. There should be a finder scope mounted on the main scope tube as well. The mount needs to be setup properly once the counterweight bar and weights are found. It can't be used as it is. If you can post more photos we can give more guidance on what needs to be done to the scope to get it up and running.

6mm is a really useful focal length eyepiece in the 200mm F/6 dobsonians. It gives 200x. Unfortunately there isn't a BST Starguider in that focal length - that range jumps straight from 8mm to 5mm - too large a gap in my experience. Jupiter, for example, often needs 180x - 200x to give of it's best. 240x is often too much. The William Optics SPL 6mm would be a good one to fill that niche. Getting the whole of an eyepiece range does not always pay dividends even though it does look neat in the eyepiece case. Cherry picking the focal lengths that are most effective from a number of ranges usually gets the best results. Just sharing practical experience here

Yep. You will need something between the 8mm and 3.2mm earlier though !

My family have shown more interest in looking at the sky since the Starlink satellites have been passing over

We are really torn over this aren't we ? Love to watch the launch and catch the rocket as it passes over but hate the payloads it's carrying

Good idea - 375x will get infrequent use to be honest with you but 150x - 250x will be a "staple" high power observing range on the moon, planets and binary stars so you need good coverage there.

You do have something between the 8mm and the 3.2mm don't you ?

I can't recall the scope you have - what magnification will a 3.2mm eyepiece give ?

Its a 120 refractor so a standard air spaced doublet. I'm guessing that it is either the Evostar 120 F/8.3 or the Startravel 120 F/5.

I find Cartes du Ciel pretty accurate with regards to the positioning of comets. It's quick to do an update of them as well.

Nice report as ever Mark It was a little "milky" here last night so I concentrated on other things rather than galaxies but I did do a slew of globular clusters at the end of my session and an attempt at NGC 50503 was one of them. This is the 2nd time I've tried to view this rather strange globular cluster and last night, again, I found the results rather inconclusive. I may have seen a very faint smattering of stars in the right spot but then again my tired observing eye might have been playing games ! It's certainly a challenging one. I note that the Skyhound (Greg Crinklaw) used an 18 inch for this observation of it and it did not sound that distinctive even with that aperture: https://observing.skyhound.com/archives/may/NGC_5053.html

I had two 15 minute sessions looking for Lyrids between midnight and 1:00 am. Drew a blank on this occasion, unfortunately.

This is a 120mm refractor we are discussing. In this case the objective will need to be removed and the elements split because cleaning fluid from a previous clean has seeped between the lens elements.

I don't have any experience with him personally but I know that he is well regarded by those who have used his services. I don't know what the cost might be. If you want the objective collimated then he will need the whole of the optical tube so shipping and insurance costs will come into play.

The ones I saw went almost straight overhead from west to east. I didn't check the time but I guess it was around 10:30 pm ?

The transparency looked promising earlier but the faint fuzzies that I've looked at so far have proved not quite as clear as I'd hoped so I've used my 12 inch dobsonian on points of light instead, mostly. Initially I observed some nice binary stars including the golden pair of Gamma Leonis, then the closer, uneven pair of Iota Leonis and then onto the other side of the sky for the lovely triple star Iota Cassiopeiae. Then I searched out NGC 6543, the "Cat's Eye" planetary nebula in Draco. This small nebula looked really nice at 265x. It had a clear pale green tint and the brighter eye shaped portion (which looked rather fat tonight) was surrounded by a much fainter mottled halo. The dim central star was gleaming out from the centre of the nebula as well at magnitude 11.4. I tried UHC and O-III filters on the nebula but the unfiltered view was the nicest I think with the main effect of the filters being the loss of the central star from visibility. Back over to Virgo and I had a go at picking up the supernova 2020ftl in the galaxy NGC 4277. This proved to be close to the limit of this evenings conditions with the 12 inch scope as I was only getting glimpses of the supernova mostly with averted vision. It's magnitude seems to still be somewhere between 13.5 and 14 I would say, so holding steady. While in the "bowl" region of Virgo I had another try at picking out the brightest quasar in the sky, 3C 273. Though the brightest, it is still a rather faint magnitude 12.9 point source and I had to do some careful star hopping at high magnifications to be sure that I was seeing the "right" faint point of light. Well it will be faint - it's 2.5 billion light years away !. Fortunately there are some good finder charts for this object on line. I found the one in this Sky and Telescope article particularly good for finding this target (and it lists another 11 that you can find if you really fancy the challenge): https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/12-quasars-for-spring-evenings/ This is one of the best images that the Hubble Space Telescope has captured of quasar 3C 273. Also shown in this image is one of the jets that the quasar emits from time to time - those are estimated to be 200,000 light years in length It is quite mind boggling to be observing the light from such a distant and exotic object I'll probably have a look at a few of the brighter globular clusters to round this session off. A bit of relaxation after these somewhat dimmer earlier targets.

I saw 10 earlier tonight and they were quite bright - about magnitude 2 I guess ? Spaced out by around 20 seconds.

The only one that I know of is Steve Collingwood: https://sctelescopes.com/sc-telescopes-broadhurst-clarkson-and-fuller-fullerscopes/

These are the Starlink satellites. This thread has more information and observations on them:

I agree with Stu about optical quality mattering. The best white light views I've had are with my ED120 and my Tak 100mm F/9. My Vixen ED102SS is F/6.5 and also pretty good but the Tak is even better

I can - I observed M13 with a 20 inch dob at one of the SGL star parties a few years back. Not a view that I will forget in a hurry ! I also got to view M51 with the same scope on the same night - more jaw dropping views.

Lets keep things calm folks. Thanks