royvanrijn

My home made light shield has increased contrast in certain directions due to having street lights so close to where I observe.

I've got the advantage of a (small) backyard which has fences that block most light (I only have to close the curtains and manually switch off the lights in the backyard). I don't think a shield will improve much.

The biggest problem I have is living near heavily iluminated greenhouses:

I had a 130p on a small eq mount a few years ago, went on to buy an EQ5 ( same reasons as you) and used the 130p on that until i then upgraded to a 200p. Did it step by step.

Which 200p did you get as new upgrade? A dobsonian mounted to the EQ5 again, or did you buy an OTA like this?

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-200p-ota.html

That does sound like a good upgrade path to follow, buying a EQ5 (or HEQ5) with dual motor drive for astrophotography, using that with the 130P first. Later I can buy a separate better OTA for the EQ and mount the Heritage back to the dobsonian for travel and my kids. Right?

Attaching my (kind of heavy) DSLR was a bit much for the Heritage 130p but it worked quite well. I did shift the dove tail attachment a bit to change the center of gravity of the tube.

I do wish now I had a mount with tracking instead of a dob, but hey, you can't argue with the Heritage Dob as beginner telescope looking at price/value. I might invest in a tracking EQ mount first and attach the 130P initially (step-wise improvements). This can be done right?

Anyway, I'm still unsure if my backyard allows me to look at much more than planets/moon with the light pollution, and I don't see myself driving hours into the less densely populated areas of Europe with my telescope. 

Hello everybody,

This is my first post on the forum!

After buying my first telescope in november (and having three weeks of overcast) I'm starting to get the hang of it. During the time I had the telescope but no way to use it I already created a modified Lifecam HD-3000. I used this for my first image (stacked using RegiStax):

(Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P, Microsoft Lifecam HD-3000 modified, stacked with Registax)

After playing around with this setup I decided to get a 2x Barlow. I settled on an Ostara 2x Barlow with EOS T-ring. This allowed me to hook up my Canon 550D/T2i to the telescope. After trying that I never attached the webcam again. Shooting with the Canon 550D in 640x480 cropped works much better for stacking.

I also noticed when viewing with the Barlow all the stars/planets had a smear to one side... this reminded me: Collimation!

This is something I'd read about, but hadn't tried (hey, the telescope just came from the factory). I quickly found out the collimation was very bad when I made my own collimation cap. After realigning the primary mirror it made a HUGE difference.

Yesterday I went out again, and between the clouds in the cold I was stunned by how clear Jupiter has become now:

(Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P, Ostara 2x Barlow with T-Ring, Canon 550D/T2i 640x480 cropped movie mode, stacked with Registax)

I live in one of the most light populated places in the world, so I haven't really tried to look for other things besides the moon and Jupiter. What other things would be interesting to look at with my beginner scope? I'm planning on taking the telescope out more away from cities when the cold months are gone.

Any comments/hints/tips are extremely welcome!