Dadders

28 minutes ago, Ratlet said:

When you do collimate, do not loosen more than one screw at a time!  Loosen one to get some give then tighten the others to adjust the collimation.  If you loosen 2 at a time the secondary can rotate which means you've just given yourself an extra step to do.

I'd get a cheap sketchbook with thick stock paper.  It'll be good for making observation notes and the thick card will help it not get dewed up.  You should also get a cheap compass (for drawing circles) and a cheap sketch kit so you can do some sketching.  That's £20.  Sketching DSO's is super fun and I find I can see more detail.  You might want to get a cheap head torch and put something in to dim it right down too (cheap gel filters, plastic sweet wrappers, etc).  So dim so it illuminates the sketchpad but not bright enough to illuminate the ground.  We'll call that another £10.  Your sketches will probably look awful, mine do, but it's a nice kick the next morning to match it up to Stellarium (or Cart Du Ciel).  I'll add that I've done a grand total of 3 sketches, but I'm enjoying it imensely.

Next get some black 2mm craft foam and some sticky back velcro to make a dew shield for the quickfinder.  Might just be my location, but mine dews up badly some nights.  I don't use my finder anymore because I prefer the quickfinder and 32mm plossl in the scope so the quickfinder dewing up is fairly inconvenient.  You could get a dew heater but honestly as bad as my quickfinder got my telephoto lens I had out was completely untouched with a lens hood.

If you get another sky atlas (or print your own from Carte Du Ciel) you can use some of the leftover craft foam to make a circle the same size as the view through your 30mm plossl to overlay on the star chart to make things easier for navigating.  The first post in the link below has a file "Locating Objects in the Night Sky.pdf"  which shows what I mean:

https://stargazerslounge.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=105353 360.7 kB · 6,499 downloads

In fact if you ignore everything else I post, check out the guide.  It is super useful.

Now, we've blown about £30 and we've got £70 left.  The next thing you should do is wait for your scope to arrive and get out and observe with what you've got.  I bought a barlow and a zoom eyepiece with my scope and I've hardly touched them.  With hindsight I would rather have waited and gotten a shorter focal length EP and some thicker socks.  Excercise patience and pretty soon you'll know exactly what you need.

EDIT:  Forgot to add, one thing I find incredibly handy is a small folding table to setup by the scope!  I use Habitat Single Folding Tray Table from Argos.  It's £16, a good height and is a reasonable size.

Thanks for the extensive feedback! I've got a nice thick stock sketchbook in a box somewhere - I'll dig it out and get sketching  I'll look into a red head torch to go with it too.

Thanks for the tip on the quickfinder too! Kind of surprising they don't come like that as stock really but it's easily remedied.

And yes, you're probably right about testing the scope out first and just being patient! I've never been the best at biding my time and I've been wanting a scope and a garden to use it in for a lifetime but you're right - another few weeks of waiting won't hurt me!

Ahh great suggestion, I'll add those to the list!

Haha, luckily I'm not quite that short. I've got some garden furniture that might do in a pinch but I'll take a look at observing chairs, thanks! 

2 minutes ago, Orange Smartie said:

If you don't already have it and you're starting out, a copy of Turn Left at Orion is worth buying.

I picked up a copy at the weekend and spent most of yesterday plowing through it. I'm very excited to try making out M31 in a few weeks time!

In a few weeks times, I'll finally have my own home and be able to start my lifelong ambition of astronomy as a hobby.

After some mulling I've decided to go to pick up a StellaLyra 10" f/5 Dobsonian as my scope and with ~£100 left in my budget I wondered what would be the best accessories to start me off? I've already got a Rigel Quikfinder on order so that's covered. I was thinking perhaps a nice eyepiece? The scope comes with 9mm and a 30mm eyepieces which are supposedly pretty reasonable. What would be a good peice to round those out? Any other essential items I should consider?