John

That is a shame. I've fitted those to a couple of Skywatcher achromat refractors and an ED120 refractor and they went on just fine.

I'm sure FLO will sort it out for you though.

Pallasites are really beautiful. A few have rusting issues but many types are really stable and simply lovely to look at and consider their formation

My postie delivered a Celestron RACI illuminated reticule 9x50 finder today. For use on my 12 inch dob I expect.

Excellent (and accurate in my experience) roundup of the 4-ish inch refractor options from Roger Vine here

http://www.scopeviews.co.uk/FourInchBG2019.htm

7 hours ago, RallyeX said:

Thank you for helping! I ordered the Orion dual axis true track motor drive kit. Thank s to amazon prime it will be here tomorrow. I will post how it works.

It should fit fine. As Peter says, it's not GOTO but it is a useful upgrade to the mount.

Be careful with the DEC motor - the cable connector for that motor is rather exposed and can get knocked and broken easily.

Thanks for the information on this apparition of Mercury

I have managed to get this little world in a scope eyepiece a few times over the years but it is never easy due to its low altitude. My best views have come by taking a portable scope upstairs and viewing though an open bedroom window because that gives me an unclutted SW / W view down the river estuary. The planet shows phases as Venus does but it's disk is much smaller.

Most often I've spotted it with binoculars just after the Sun has set. Its best not to be tempted to scan around for Mercury while the Sun is still above the horizon - the risk of getting the Sun in the view is high because the two are never that far apart.

Cant think of anything better than your FC-100DC on a Porta II mount Helen

I find my 7.2 - 21.5 zoom plus 2.25x Baader barlow plus a 30mm eyepiece for wide field ticks a lot of boxes eyepiece-wise.

16 hours ago, maw lod qan said:

Siberia has seen its share of meteor events, hasn't it?

Yes it does seem that way:

https://phys.org/news/2016-12-siberia-cool-meteors.html

Yes, Stellarium is a free download for the PC. One of the developers, Alex, is a member of SGL. Here is a link to the latest version:

5 hours ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

 

I am still getting my bearings when it comes to altitude, Are they going to be much higher placed in the Sky this December compared to last year?

 

Baz

Not really, they will be rather low again I'm afraid.

This is how Stellarium shows it for 16:30 hrs on the 21 December for my lattitude:

If you use Stellarium you can see exactly where they are and simulate an eyepiece / scope view to see if they will fit into the field of view.

It think that chance has gone apart from binoculars or your finder with the Venus / Neptune conjunction now. Venus moves too fast to stay put for long !

They are a bit over 4 degrees apart now. The widest field with a 200P dob would be around 2.33 degrees with a 2 inch 40mm super wide eyepiece.

22 minutes ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

If I remember correctly there is a star on SkySafari which can be split into 3 bodies. Does anyone know of the top of there head which star this is? If not I can read through all start descriptions again.

 

Thank you

Baz

Iota Cassiopeia is a lovely triple star.

Thanks Chris - I'll mark that one on the calendar

Quite low in the sky in Capricorn so it will be worth observing this from my society observatory where the horizon is much less cluttered than it is at home.

What mount do you have ?

Other interesting "point source" challenges include:

- spotting the central star in planetary nebulae. A few are relatively straightforward, many are rather difficult !

- spotting quasars. A few are possible with moderate aperture scopes and observing such distant objects is kind of fun.

- spotting supernovae when they occur. There is a bright one (relatively speaking) in NGC 4636 (Virgo) as I type.

- finding Barnards Star in Ophiuchus. The closest star (apart from the Sun) that we can see in the N. Hemisphere.

- spotting well known asteroids such as Ceres and 4 Vesta.

And many more ..... probably justifies a separate thread

1 minute ago, Barry-W-Fenner said:

Thanks John. This write up gives me confidence that I can find E & F under the right conditions. I guess I am being optimistic about I&G then. A bit like some of the Uranus and Neptune moons 😂

Baz

Triton at Neptune should be possible at high power Baz but you need to keep trying for it. Its magnitude 12 and quite close to Neptunes disk but its position changes night to night as it orbits.

13 minutes ago, Geoff Barnes said:

Hi @John,

I don't recall having split this one,

Have you managed to split 52 Orionis and if so with what equipment?

I've split 52 with my 12 inch dob and my 130mm triplet refractor. I've had a close split (ie: snowman or peanut shape) with my 120 and 100mm refractors. It's a tough one though. Chris (chiltonstar) observed it recently with his 180mm mak-cass:

I've never managed I or G with my 12 inch dob.

I find getting E & F both seeing dependant and also finding the "goldilocks" magnification. Too high or too low and you don't seem to see them. I often find 150x - 200x just right. I can see E easily enough with my 100mm scopes and F from time to time under excellent seeing, E & F more regularly with my 120mm and above. At 200x with my 12 inch dob they are very clear indeed unless the seeing conditions are awful - in which case I should not be trying to observe uneven double stars anyway !

The fall was captured by the artist P I Medvedev, who witnessed the event:

We have a thread on that, here:

Orion is well placed currently and has plenty of doubles of varying degrees of difficulty. My favourites are:

- Rigel

- E & F Trapezium

- Alnitak

- Sigma Orionis

- Eta Orionis

- 32 Orionis

- 52 Orionis

The last two can be tough, especially 52 Orionis.

On 28/01/2020 at 21:25, andib479 said:

.....Through one of the eye piece when I take it out, I can see the edge of the glass, not sure of this is ok? 

 

 

This does not sound right at all. Do you mean that you can see the edge of one of the glass lenses that is within the eyepiece ?

If you could take a photo looking down the focuser tube of the scope, with no eyepiece in place and the camera more or less in the center of the tube, we could tell quite a lot from that. Otherwise we are just guessing really.

I think the 3.2 is worth using, if seeing conditions seem stable, on:

- The moon

- Saturn

- Mars

- Uranus and Neptune (to spot the moons)

- Close double stars

Jupiter does not seem to benefit from high magnifications usually. Often 150x - 200x give the best views of that planet even with larger apertures.

Mercury and Venus are usually low down so very high powers tend not to be much use in cutting through the atmosphere.

In the dark I think they will all be shades of grey Baz.

Nice set by the way

If your scope is splitting 1 arc second doubles, even if that "comes and goes" it's doing very well. I would re-check the star test a few times under varying conditions before jumping to any conclusions about the mirror quality.