allworlds

I gave up on one possible observing site due to feeling unsafe. It was supposed to be closed to cars at night, but it wasn't, and quite a few people were parking up. And perhaps it was just my paranoia but I thought I was being followed while driving away. Not returned since. I find going on my bicycle can be better. The scope and tripod are heavy and awkward to carry on foot away from a car parking space which led to me setting up too close. But I can wheel the bike right to where I'm observing from. In general I feel safest if somewhere is either dead remote and quiet so nobody is likely to go there looking to cause trouble, or reasonably busy so that nobody can cause trouble without risking getting seen. (But busy conflicts with dark adaptation). It's the "in-between" situations where it's me and maybe one or two other parked cars or groups, that's what makes me feel unsafe.

Looked for and found comet 2022 E3 with the binoculars. Faint round averted vision fuzzy that I would never have noticed if I didn't have Stellarium showing me exactly where to look. Still, more than I've seen in a little while.

From what I have read, the courts accepted the argument that camping is not "open-air recreation". Although just one landowner was involved in the court case I think all of Dartmoor's owners could now use this as precedent. No reasonable person could consider stargazing to not be open-air recreation, but nonetheless I would not be surprised if some landowners feel emboldened to harass or order stargazers away.

The ecliptic is inclined relative to the equator. During northern hemisphere winter, the sun appears well south of the celestial equator and so doesn't rise very high. The full moon is directly opposite the sun so during winter it appears well north of the celestial equator and so rises high in the sky.

A great choice I think and definitely a real bargain found. I would stick to 25 mm as your lowest magnification eyepiece. You might find the secondary shadow becomes noticeable with lower mag. If you use the solar filter, tape it securely to the scope. A few weeks ago I read somebody had the filter on a Bresser scope blow off in a gust of wind.

A great choice I think and definitely a real bargain found. I would stick to 25 mm as your lowest magnification eyepiece. You might find the secondary shadow becomes noticeable with lower mag.

For visual use focal length isn't very important because you can just use different eyepieces to get your range of magnifications. It matters more for refractors because a shorter focal length creates more chromatic aberration. The Maksy 60 is very cute. But yeah, unless you're handy with DIY/woodworking, a good mount even for a small and light scope isn't the cheapest thing. I wonder if you could make it fit on the Heritage 76's mount? It would take a bit of DIY but if it works and you can swap back and forth then they'd pair together nicely - the Heritage does widefield and the Maksy does lunar and planetary. With a hybrid diagonal for the Maksy they can use the same eyepieces. That's probably the cheapest way to get more out of the Maksy, if it works. A decent camera tripod with a ball head is another idea. The "trick" is don't perch the scope on top like the Maksy 60's box shows, but instead put the ball head sideways in the notch.

I have a Skywatcher Heritage 76. The Orion Funscope, Meade Lightbridge Mini 82, and some but not all models of the Celestron Firstscope are similar. I find it easy to use and got a lot of enjoyment out of it, but it's a very cheap telescope and does have its limits. Great for the Moon, the Milky Way, and star clusters. Also good for hunting down faint fuzzies because it can give a wide angle view for easy star hopping, wide enough that you can get by without a finder. But very poor on planets, it'll show the major features - you'll see Saturn's rings - but little true detail because the cheap mirror limits the magnification to about 50x. (With the Firstscope models, watch out for the eyepieces. Most come with H and SR eyepieces which are bad. Some such as the "Cometron" variant come with much better Kellner eyepieces.) The two more expensive Dobsonians you linked in your most recent post are much better. Parabolic mirrors mean they can give sharp high-magnification views, and the aperture is bigger, and they still have much of the same ease of use. I advise against the Starsense Explorer 114 that you linked. It uses a "Bird-Jones" optical design that isn't very good. In a telescope costing 250 Euros you can do better.

You don't actually need a lot of power. 5 milliwatts is plenty. If you're pointing out a target, circle it rather than pointing the laser directly at it. That way if it is actually an aircraft you won't lase the pilot. Sometimes an aeroplane looks like a planet or the ISS. I wouldn't use one at all if I was close to an airport.

For me the old travel cliche applies: It's not the destination, it's the journey. Sure I'll look at the Moon and planets, but hunting fuzzies is my real calling. In a small scope they're not much to look at; the activity is in the process of locating and seeing them. (Edit: Well, most of them aren't much. The Pleiades and similar always look great.) That said, photons that have travelled across the vastness of space, a handful of the gazillions that were once emitted, and landing upon my own eye. There's something special about that.

Hope you get on well with it. I would have advised to skip the Barlow and the moon filter anyway. Moon filters are a matter of taste and you might be quite happy without one, and I've not found cheap Barlows all that useful.

I read this from beginners quite often. Personally I think viewing planets is more demanding on the telescope than viewing DSOs, since planetary viewing is done at high magnifications where flaws in the optics or mount are most apparent. DSOs are harder to find and affected by light pollution but more forgiving of flaws in the equipment. But £300 is plenty of money to get a telescope that's good all round. Anyway, the Heritage 150P and the Explorer 130P AZ5 are both good choices. Optically they're good all-rounders and the difference between 5 and 6 inch aperture isn't much. I say "It's the mount that counts" and I think they're both simple and stable. With the tabletop Dobsonian you probably want to put it on something though some people do use them on the ground. That's not much trouble at home, a wooden stool or small table does the job nicely, but it can be an issue if you're going somewhere to observing; lightweight camp tables or plastic garden furniture won't cut it. The tripod mount avoids that concern but you can see the price of a good mount like the AZ5 Deluxe. Either will easily fit in a car boot and won't be too hard to carry. Regarding the two 4 inch Maksutov-Cassegrains. I have an ETX 105 myself (same as Phillip R). It's compact enough to fit in a backpack or a bike basket and it gives very nice planetary views but it is a drop in aperture. I also find the long focal ratio makes star hopping to deep sky objects that bit harder because it limits the maximum true field of view. I can still view DSOs with practice, patience, and good star charts or a phone app, but I think a shorter focal ratio is more beginner friendly. My bigger reservation is the mounts and tripods - they are not as good as the AZ5 Deluxe. That said maybe some owners of those mounts can chime in. I don't like Newtonian reflectors on equatorial mounts, so I'd give the StarQuest 130P a miss. Don't let Bortle class stop you observing DSOs. True, they will look better from dark skies, but most DSOs are still observable in the city. What matters more is getting away from nearby lights and getting dark adapted. If you have streetlamps or insecurity lights shining into your garden that's a problem. I'm forced to find a park to have any hope of serious deep-sky observing, which then gives me concerns about personal safety.

Wed night it was I think I managed to spot Mercury at about 4 pm, just after sunset. Scanning the area with binoculars I spotted a point of light which I could then also make out naked-eye. Now either that was Mercury and Venus was behind the bank of cloud below it, or that was Venus and Mercury was invisible, but I don't think it was bright enough to be Venus. Jupiter was also visible and brighter than probably-Mercury. Solid cloud Thurs and tonight so I haven't been able to make another try.

Resolution is the term you are looking for. Because light is a wave, a telescope (or even our unaided eye) will focus a perfect point source to a small disc of light called the Airy disc. Therefore two point sources that are too close together can't be distinguished from a single source. The angular resolution of a telescope with perfect optics, in radians, is approximately equal to the wavelength of light divided by the diameter of the telescope's main mirror or lens. As a practical formula, Dawes' limit is: R = 116/D Where R is the resolution in arc seconds and D is the aperture in mm. (Sidenote. Put in 3 mm, for the typical size of our eyes' pupils in daylight, and you get R = 39 arc seconds. The actual resolution of healthy human vision is about 60 arc seconds. So our eyes are not far off the limits imposed by the laws of physics and their own size.) You then need sufficient magnification for your own eye to see the detail the telescope resolves. and furthermore you'd like the detail to be clear, not just barely visible. So the rule of thumb is that maximum useful magnification is 2x per mm of aperture. Too much magnification and the image becomes dim and obviously blurry. And you also need sufficient optical quality and precision. In reality no telescope has perfect optics. But a decent parabolic Newtonian reflector, Schmidt-Cassegrain, or apochromatic refractor will all come close in the centre of the view. The Newtonian reflector is the cheapest for a given aperture - remember, more aperture means better resolution. Here are simulated eyepiece views of Saturn at 200x in a 60 mm scope ("too much magnification") and at 200x in a 200 mm scope. You can see how the larger aperture scope gives a brighter and crisper image. (The simulation isn't perfect but it gets the idea right). https://imgur.com/a/uUGmbZA

That's a shame - but a great credit to a retailer who's involved in the community and can quickly respond to such things. Based on this discussion, https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/42362-parabolic-v-spherical-mirrors/ the 80 should be close to 1/4 wave accuracy anyway, although the 100 is worse affected. But I doubt it will significantly affect enjoyment of the telescope and you can always try an aperture mask.