Alfven

The position of that rocker power switch is gonna cause problems!

Surely it starts at Hadrian's Wall

At last the heavens have opened and the stars are burning bright in their lofty domains. I am unprepared so I will use my trusty little ETX70 and head out to the back garden. I will report my experience later....

A Vango 400 should be fine. I have a large twin axle 6 berth Bailey [ up for sale ] for camping with the family but when I head out on my own I take my trusty and quite heavy Vango Force 10. When I tell you that it's now over 30 years old and that the seams are as tight as the day it was sewn, you will realise how well made they are. They used to be made in Scotland but I'm not sure if this is still the case. You are also very lucky to live on the [big Island ] were you can get really good deals in the likes of GO Outdoors."Please Bring One To "Norn Iron" !"

Hi cloudwatcher, I checked out other sources and you seem to be right, but a strange and interesting anomaly nonetheless.

The longitude looks rather high to be one of it's moons.

The dumbing down of the modern media for our ever dumb society. It's quite worrying really! I did hear a report on BBC Radio 4 last night but no mention of "drilling". An expert from NASA was on, quite interesting. He was obliquely suggesting that Mercury was formed at a deeper position in the solar system, planetary drift? Perhaps Emmanuel Velikovsky was onto something.

lol .

Brilliant, well done for seeing the asteroid and well done to have found the only hole in the clouds of the British Isles last night. That was a bigger feat than seeing the asteroid.

I didn't know were to post this so I hope I have chosen the right forum for it. I was just going through some members images in the gallery section and came across this image of Jupiter posted by wowdg. At first I thought it must be an artefact of image processing but the more I have studied it the more convinced I am that wowdg has captured an impact event. There is no data supplied with the image. Have a look. What do you think? http://stargazerslounge.com/gallery/sizes/15542-wowdg/large/

Hi Alf, welcome back to your childhood hobby. The 25mm you have is just fine for deep sky viewing provided it's field of view is around the 60 +° mark. You could go for a wide field 40mm but steer clear of the ones you see on e-bay for £20.00. The Sky-Watcher Aero 40mm ED has a 68° fov and is a really good buy at @ £150.00.

Keep on trying, the rewards are well worth the effort. You got a bargain with that scope by the way! Good luck...

Nice capture, the moon is very well resolved, impressive.

The point is that rare inky black night with zero turbulence and perfect seeing that makes it all worthwhile.

A 8" Dob would be nice but I am virtually surrounded by the sea ​[i live on a Isthmus] and I don't think mirrors would hold up very well. I have nothing against reflectors but I love the rugged nature of refractors and one day if funds permit I would love to buy one of the below. PRICEY BUT NICEY!