rockystar

a 6mm will give you x166, that should be ok, both for the skies and the scope. Don't have experience of the scope though.

are you sure that one left us?

that PDF came from here by the way: http://www.astronomylogs.com/pages/resource.html some good resources on this site, including finder charts for Messier and Herschel 400 objects

Thanks guys - my reports do tend to be a bit rambly, but I like to give an experience - you all know what the objects look like

We had a weekend away, camping in Beddgellert, Snowdonia, and I was given permission to take my telescope. The early evening started with a thunderstorm and massive downpour, it wasn’t looking promising that I’d get to see any stars, but it cleared up and then took an age to get dark. I took a trip to see our friends in the other field, with a couple of beers and some binoculars, just in case. At about 11ish, I headed out side and the sky was clear and starting to get dark, so I ended up giving a quick binocular tour of the sky, guiding them through Cygnus to show the number of stars that can be seen through simple binoculars. I spotted andromeda and so guided them to M31 – they were suitably impressed and after about 30-40 mins I left them to get some sleep; time to get back to my pitch and set up the telescope. After 12, the sky was magnificent – even though it wasn’t even properly dark – with the milky way looked really prominent, and constellations were visible that I’d only ever read about in books. It was almost certainly the best skies I’d ever experienced since getting a telescope. As I was setting up, I spotted something streaking across the sky, almost right over head: it was one of the best meteors I’d seen, super bright, really long tail and lasted a good couple of seconds. It turned out I was bit over-whelmed and under-prepared, and I spent most of my time just staring at the gorgeous sky, and the view from my pitch had a restricted view. After a failed attempt at the veil (I think I was on 41 Cyg instead of 52 Cyg) and wanting to make sure I actually saw something through my scope I settled for a few easy to find favourites: M57 (x185) – looking really bright, possibly a hint of red in the ring, it looked pretty cool; added a UHC filter, but found that it didn’t add anything to the view. M13 (x86 & x185) – this looked amazing, tons of stars, hints of the propeller, such a great object and fab view. M31 (x50 1.6° TFOV) – I could start to see the full extent of this object and the faint tendrils extending to the edge of the FOV, M110 was obvious and M32 was being its usual bright large stellar like object. It was well gone 1am by this time and with a great night of camping sleep ahead of me, and a likely early wake up from the kids, it was time to call it a night. Not a great haul of objects and nothing I hadn’t seen before, but I saw them in a whole new way and really enjoyed the experience. I took the binoculars for another sweep up through the milky way, from Sagittarius through Scutum, and spotted a couple of objects that I could have put the scope to (if I hadn’t already packed up). Maybe I’ll get lucky and the second night of our trip will prove just as great. Thanks for reading. Bring on Galloway with a bit more planning and some experienced hands. Lee 2nd Night Update – No luck, clouds; tired, early night! 1am Update – Still Cloudy, still tired!

I think he means the background sky. Because you are looking at it near/in twilight, if you put a camera on it and open up the shutter, it will expose the background too and that may wash out the image. well done though, Pleiades is one of my fave binocular objects, better visually than in my telescope, because of the wider field of view

I'm with Mr Niall about Venus - I think you've found a star managed to focus nicelly. Venus will be an obvious phased disk

don't suppose you've weighed them? I'm probably going to be looking soon

dark skies! I have a similar view as you described from home, but the first time i saw it in a dark sky I was blown away - this was with an 8" dob. well done in finding it - it took me a few goes too

I have an 8" too, my NELM is about 4.5 and I reckon i can see down to 13 for stars. not sure I'd drive to a dark site for some stars though. Maybe pick off a few of the faint ones when you are doing a dark site galaxy hunt

this is a guide that I've had for a while: 14 Seeing and Transparency.pdf seems that "seeing" is pretty well defined, but there are a couple of scales for transparency

you need a dark sky for this though - I tried it from my back garden once and just about managed to find one of the messier galaxies. I was expecting to be tripping over them

as above, but I suspect a top tilt won't open wide enough to get anything through - it'll need a low bracket for support. We have centre swivel and I occasional use my binoculars through them (the lip of the window provides a good rest), but far too restricted for a telescope, also too high.

what's that one that one called Vicky swears by?

We're tagging along with someone else who is already booked in, so not our choice of campsite.