Nadine2704

Thanks for the ideas, everyone - will get planning!!

They'd just have to be patient haha! I didn't even consider binoculars - good shout. Definitely going to get them learning the constellations and navigating the night sky, sketching is a great idea too. Thanks for the link, will check it out!

This looks great, will definitely think about giving this a go and will let you know how we get on! Thank you!

Hi everyone! I'm starting a lunchtime astronomy club at my school and I'm trying to think of fun activities for the kids. As an English teacher, I have no science credentials and I'm having to rely on my self-taught knowledge, so I'm a little worried that this has the potential to go completely pear shaped, but there's just nothing in school for pupils to encourage them to take an interest in astronomy, so I want to provide that for them! Members will be aged between 13-17, so I need to make sure that whatever I do is accessible for a variety of ages. I've sorted out topics to look at each week and I have a whole heap of ideas, but I'm wanting them to get quite hands on with activities as well, so that it doesn't just feel like classwork, and this is where I'm struggling! Does anyone have any ideas for fun things we can do/make during meetings? Thanks! Nadine P.S Unfortunately nighttime observing is currently out of the question due to pupils needing to get busses home straight after school, as the school is slightly out of the way (not out of the way enough for there to be little light pollution though!!). I also live in Scotland, so the weather is usually against us. I might consider taking my telescope in for daytime viewing of the moon etc, but we can't do this every week haha

Excellent, I'm all out of questions now thankfully haha! Thanks so much everyone for your help, I'm fairly confident that I know what I'm doing now and I'm not going to break his new telescope

Thank you! Going round tonight to get it all set up, so will let you how it goes! Another silly question but as it's a GoTo scope, should I still lock everything off before programming in the target, or do the locks need to be loose for the scope to move to find the target? (I suppose all these questions now will help me when I finally upgrade my own scope!!)

Forgive my stupidity, but if we balance the declination, lock it, then balance the right ascension, would we then lock the right ascension as well? Or do we just leave it unlocked? Or unlock them both?

Brilliant, I'm so grateful for your help... at least now I can go round and work through the balancing process with him tomorrow, rather than looking like a clueless numpty! I felt terrible. as I had recommended the setup to his wife to buy for his birthday, and wondered if I had made a huge mistake

Excellent, thank you both! That video is incredibly helpful - I'm popping round to his house tomorrow to have a look at the scope, so I'll just follow the steps in the video. Much appreciated!!

Hi there, Asking on behalf of my neighbour, as I feel useless not being able to help him! He recently got a Skywatcher 200P on an HEQ5 mount and says that he can't get it to balance. The weights are right at the end of the bar and he hasn't attached a camera or anything. Having not yet upgraded to a motorised scope, I had no clue, so I'm hoping someone will know what the issue is! My only suggestions would be to add an extra weight or get a longer bar, but surely the setup couldn't be sold together if it was unable to be used as is? He mentioned something about not having locked it... do the locks need to be secured before it can maintain its balance when the motor is on? Apologies if these are stupid questions, as I say, I only have a manual scope so I don't know all the ins and outs of setting up a motorised one! Any advice much appreciated!

Thanks, both! Louise - I used brand new batteries and do have a ballhead atop the Skytracker Ronin - I just levelled it by using the compass on the skytracker - I assumed when the compass lay flat (as opposed to tilting at an angle) it was accurately levelled. Am I doing it wrong? Haha The latitude 56 setting does look as though it points in the right direction. Glad to know that I wasn't doing anything drastically wrong and it was probably a case of just being slightly out with all my measurements etc. Will definitely take more care when setting up next time (if I ever get a clear night, that is!)

Hiya, I recently treated myself to the iOptron SkyTracker and tried it out for the first the the other night. I kept getting star trails (which I later realised may have been due to the fact that I had it set to half speed! Silly me!) But I also had a lot of trouble with the polar alignment and I feel that, even if I had had it set to the correct speed, I still would have been getting star trails... These are the steps I went through, can anyone tell me if I am doing something wrong? I levelled my tripod and faced the tracker towards North I set my latitude to around 56 for the UK (Perth)... am I right in thinking that Polaris should then be within the field of view if I just pan my tripod around? This is where I think I messed up, as I couldn't find Polaris anywhere and had to significantly increase the latitude to find (what I thought) was Polaris. Did I maybe not level my tripod properly at the beginning? I was in such a rush to start imaging, that I probably didn't pay enough attention when I was setting it up! I used a polar alignment app and placed 'Polaris' (in hindsight I think it might have just been a random star that I thought looked decent enough ) where it was meant to be... but I just got rubbish pictures... So if anyone has any advice, I'd be very grateful!! Also, if anyone has any images taken with the iOptron SkyTracker and wouldn't mind sharing them, I'd love to have a look! I live in a fairly light polluted area and my first target was Andromeda... not the best combination, but is it still possible to get a semi-decent picture? Thanks!

As we've had a summer full of clouds here in Scotland, opportunities to get the scope out have been few and far between! Luckily, there are a lot of lovely people out there who are happy to share their data so that others can practise their post-processing. This is my attempt at processing Saturn (original video taken by Abhijit Juvekar, so the credit must go to him! I can't find a website to link, but he posts some fantastic images here https://www.facebook.com/groups/astrophotographers/ ) It was a lot of fun to actually get the chance to work with good data. As I have a dobsonian, astrophotography is very frustrating to say the least! 1 frame from 1 min video vs processed image ETA - oops, not sure why the second image is huge!