tibbs1972

Thanks, hope for Nebula soon.

11th March Picked up my T-pice and T-ring from work today. Great service from First Light Optics, cheap price and 2 Day delivery. Looking forward to another clear night....... ..... ..... .... Still waiting ..... .......

8th march Reliased I needed a T eye piece and T-ring for the Cannon EOS 1000D camera, looking to order from somewhere. Still, I'm managing to take some shots with just the Camera on its own, linked to my laptop. Having a lot of fun, although proably getting funny looks from the neighbours. I'll have to hold a street star party to give them peace of mind.

7th March 2011 Got my DSLR camera today, looking forward to taking some great images. Cannon EOS 1000D

6th March 2011 Woolsthorpe Manor I Visited the home of Sir Isaac Newton today. Amazing to think I stood next to the same Apple Tree as the man himself did over 300 years ago.

27th February 2011 Luckily a clear night, managed to spot Saturn this morning @04:56 in the south. Using a 20mm lens and my webcam again, I had a shot at getting an image. Although the image was clear using the lens and my eye, the Webcam wasn't so good.

24th January 2011 Chuffed tonight, really clear night, managed to spot Jupiter tonight in the south. Using my trusty webcam I had a go at getting an image. I think I also caught some of Jupiters moons aswell.

21st January 2011 After checking some videos on the sky at night website, I decided to see if I could find the double stars Mizar & Alcor in Ursa Major (The big dipper). To my surprise, I did manage to locate the two stars, which are supposedly caught in each others gravitational pull. I must admit I am amazed to think the two stars I was looking at are actually caught in a tug of war with each other. I also watched a video tonight that explains that each star is also a separate binary system, as well as orbiting each other, so there are actally four stars in total. Unfortunately, I couldn't spot the smaller stars, and it also clouded over, but I hope to get a picture tomorrow.

16th January 2011 I Managed to get out about 9pm tonight as the weather cleared. Finally, I was able to focus the Telescope on The Moon. I was really surprised at the detail I could see. e.g. Craters Impact etc. I managed to tape the 20mm lens to my webcam. After a bit of time adjusting the webcam settings, I managed to filter out the suns relection on the Moons surface. Unfortunately, the Webcam doesn't show the detail you can see through the eyepiece, but a great result for my second night.

15th January 2011 Telescope setup and alignment Using the instruction manual, I setup up the Telescope. I also found videos on "YouTube" to aid me in balancing and aligning the Telescope. I found these videos invaluable, as the instructions with the Telescope can get a bit complicated for the beginner. I had a play around with the Telescope the first night for a few hours, but had issues finding celestrial objects. I realised the problem was with the finder scope. I've aligned this today, with the aid of one of the videos I've linked and hopefully, weather petmitting, I'll have a better night tomorrow.

14th January 2011 I've been thinking about it for a while now and have finally decided to jump in to Astronomy Feet first. I've spent hours reading reviews for the last two weeks to try to decide which telescope to purchase. I finally decided on a Celestron Powerseeker 127EQ. The reviews seemed pretty positive, and Celestron seems to have a good reputation for beginner Telescopes. I suppose this seems to be quite a large scope to purchase for a beginner, but after reading all the reviews, I get the impression that a Telescope with an aperture less than five inches wouldn't give me good results.