mdstuart

Here are my build components. Nice neighbour cut the board for me. The motor might need a different bracket to get the drive in the right place and I need a joiner between the 8mm rod and smaller eq1 shaft but I am getting there.

I managed a look through my 8 inch dob. Small semi circle of wonder just above the fence!

All my dealings with OO have been excellent. Before going down the court route surely try once more to resolve things maybe involving another third party with experience to try to find a solution that is acceptable to both parties. Mark

A lovely clear sky so I set up my 8 inch Orion dob in the back garden. Decided to tour the Virgo cluster using the map in the back of the pocket star atlas. I hopped around from galaxy to galaxy noting bright cores in M100, M91,M58. I managed to pick up some non messier objects including ngc 4394,4638,4526,4612 and the edge on ngc 4762. I particularly like the contrast when you get a galaxy next to a star/stars such as with M58 and ngc 4526. Inspired by Callum I had a look at the globular cluster which is in the area ngc 4147. I could start to see granularity with the 8 inch. Finally I had a look at the moon as this dob has excellent optics and the mountains and craters were amazing. Even the flat mares looked special somehow almost shiny. Here is my effort at a pic with my phone. My wife arrived home from her shift so I called it a night. Really enjoyed that. Mark Oh and there were a few lovely doubles amongst the galaxies as well!

You should all have a lovely clear night! Wish I was there. Mark

And no issues if it is cloudy! Fascinating read. Mark

Well done for giving it a go despite the poor transparency. It's the same here but I took my 8 inch out for a run and looked at m81 and m82. They were right overhead so that helped. I could see to mag 14.1 with the 8 inch which was impressive given the conditions. Mark

Poor transparency here near Bristol tonight. I could barely see the stars of ursa minor. However still had a look around and managed to find a few new galaxies to me. I spotted ngc 4957 in Coma. It is a mag 13 elliptical galaxy. I find this type of galaxy can be hard to spot as they fade gradually around the edge. This one is about 300 my away. Mark

The seeing seemed good tonight but the transparency here was not great. I realised CVN was still low so went for a few fuzzies in Leo. I just managed to see another markarian galaxy, Markarian 1230 but it was hard even with averted vision. Mark

We have one hour of astro darkness from 8.15 until the moonrise. I am going to look at galaxies in CVN. How are you going to use this precious hour? Mark

Lovely and clear sky tonight. My favorite view tonight was the double star 54 Leo. Fine close white dots, lovely in my 8 inch dob. Trying to get my 8 inch to balance at all dec angles. The small ssue is weight of the eyepiece and finder out from the tube. So I added a small counterweight and bingo it balances at any angle now. Yes it looks odd but hey it works.

Really enjoyed reading about your adventures. Loved the bit about looking at NGC 3227 as you keyed the numbers in wrong. I looked at Abel 1185 the other night with my 20 inch from home here north of Bristol and also found it hard. Just to endorse what another member said, get a 5mm ish eyepiece for the very faint end and tight galaxy clusters. I can see deeper with my ES 4.7mm eyepiece than with the 10mm BCO. What an amazing privilege we have to view these amazing things with our own eyes. Mark

Yes the whole thing was very good. Glad a few others managed to enjoy it as well. I think its going to be on you tube if you missed it. Mark

Just a heads up for you deep sky folk. BAA deep sky meeting on zoom today at 2pm UTC. No charge..listen to Owen talk about clusters of galaxies. You will be made welcome. https://britastro.org/event/deep-sky-section-annual-meeting-webinar-2 Mark

Oh well at least it solved the image? Anyway nice image by the way. I am off outside to observe. Mark

Yes I think so...Worth the wait. I might have a look for it with my 20 inch dob tonight! Mark

You can just upload your image to https://nova.astrometry.net/ and it will label the objects for you..try it. Mark

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%401110060&Name=UGC 4526&submit=submit

Ugc 4526 I think.

Just had a lovely 2hrs with my 8 inch Orion dob. Started with a few galaxies that I have not looked at for a while. Started just under the plough and looked at the pair ngc 4490/ngc 4485. Pleased to see ngc 4490 which is just about mag 12. Had a look at M106 and a few others in the area including the fine ngc 3675. A very transparent sky with stars down to mag 13.7 seen. Finished with a double in the melliote cluster stf1639. Equal pair about 1.9" apart. Just split in my 4.7mm eyepiece and even easier in a 3mm eyepiece but then the star whizzes out of view pretty quickly! Very relaxing session. Mark

Yes I think it needs an 6 inch. I could see it in my new Orion 8 inch from a town sky. Mark

Had a lovely view of the comet C/21019 L3 atlas tonight in my orion 8 inch scope. Fine blob in Gemini. This Orion scope continues to impress me. I had a look around various galaxies and I was even able to pick a few mag 12 ones like ngc 2832. The limiting magnitude on stars tonight at my site was 13.7. Mark

The bright core is typical of markarian galaxies. I think it's the manic star formation which results in the bright core of this one. Have a read of this link. https://sci.esa.int/web/hubble/-/42663-markarian-231

Lovely clear night with no moon yesterday. During the day I stumbled accross this Texas star party list of targets. tspcluba_p.pdf Owen B from the Webb Society kindly gave me the skytools file to add the targets to my star atlas software. My favorite observation from last night was Markarian 231. Even after years of observing and looking at over a 1000 galaxies sometimes something comes up that you have not seen before which is amazing and this was one of those. It is apparently the closest quasar pumping out matter towards us which makes it visible even at a distance of 581 million light years. My observation Here is the hubble picture of the galaxy. It's just under mag 14 and was visible with direct vision in my 20 inch dob but I think it would be possible in a 10 inch. So when you are next looking towards the plough have a look at Markarian 231 and think about the two black holes spinning around within this galaxy which one day will merge and send out a gravity wave. Here is a chart for you to use.

Just had a look at two Markarian galaxies. I have a thing for them at the moment. I tracked down Markarian 119. Very small and faint even in my 20 inch dob. Markarian 81 in Lynx was a bit easy to spot. Some Cirrus now but hoping it might clear. Here is a pic of Markarian 81 off the Internet. Reminds me of a faint andromeda galaxy.