Little Tiny Kev

If anyone gets any footage / photographs of this I would be massively interested in seeing them! Living in the UK it looks like I might miss out! I'm relying on my friends across the pond :-) Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

I went out to check the cloud cover before getting the scope out, looked towards Mars and there it was whizzing across the sky like a star that had decided to make a break for it Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Good morning all! I have put a couple of posts around the forum in the few days I have been a member. My name is Kev, I am a 'star gazer' from Co. Durham (England). The reason I say star gazer is because I have no real knowledge of what is where or how to recognise constellations and how to navigate the sky using them. my fiance Tammy has recently rekindled my interest in the nights sky when I dug out an old Argos scope my dad bought me for Christmas about 15 years ago with the intention of putting it on eBay. It was used maybe 3 times before I lost interest back when I was a young teenager,

It was fantastic! Thankfully my view finder has stayed zero's in so finding Jupiter was a piece of cake, got it with the 25mm and she was like "oh wow u can see the 4 moons!" Got it in the 12.5mm and we could make out the brown bands running diagonally across the center of Jupiter, it's the first time I've made it out myself so it was a nice moment to spend together. Tried to get Mars but alas I just simply can't get much more detail other than its a red dot in the view finder... so we moved on to the moon and she was blown away by the craters and the patches of dark grey amongst the white dus

I read your report kerry, sounds like you had a fantastic nights viewing! Andy thanks for the tip, I have my niece staying over tonight and I've promised to show her Jupiter so I might give your tip a trial tonight (weather depending! Fingers crossed)

So after searching through this forum I have seen a lot of good reviews of the Skywatcher Explorer 130p. I'm gonna stretch my budget slightly I think and grab one of these, and the rest of the kit i will accumulate with time meaning when I get tired of the standard eye pieces I can splash out a decent amount of cash on a single high quality piece of kit. I also saw the 130p flexitube but I don't want to have to carry a table around, and as this is going to be being used outside and away from home quite often I didn't think that would be the best option

Well I didn't manage to get up close with Mars tonight... but I got some pretty good detail on Jupiter, got 4 moons and decent focus! Didn't get any banding but I am using a Tasco Luminova 900x60 so I never even expected to get as focused as I did! But my god the mount is shocking lol!

Yeah lots of thin cloud has drifted over now, hoping it clears up

Mars is look particularly bright even though it is still not fully darkened yet! Got some pretty clear sky tonight in Durham so ill be trying to get it in my sights later, had a spy through my 12.5mm there whilst readjusting my spotting scope! Hoping for some clear sky later :-)

Thanks to everyone for the advice! at the end of the day this is to replace a 14 year old Tasco Luminova 900x60 refractor, so I've got a feeling anything would be better than this lol I still think for my budget the 130eq is a sound option, although I am going to stay clear of the motor drive and get at least 1 decent eye piece. I have been reading a thread by The Warthog in the general help section and it's helped me understand what the differences between eye pieces are and why different ones are best suited to different scopes.

Let's start with how I started to become interested on astronomy... My dad bought me a Tasco 60x1000 scope about 14 years ago from argos, I gave it a whirl but gave up pretty much instantly. 14 years later I'm clearing out my mum's loft and rediscover the scope, planning on putting it on eBay I took it home and discovered my fiance has always had a wondering about space so I set it up, pointed it at the moon and BOOM she was hooked! Now we have wet our whistle looking at the moon and managing to find Mars, Jupiter and Saturn we want something that's going to bring up a little more detail, I m