Knighty2112

Nice shot Mandy. Glad the mount is a step up for you from what you were using before. Look forward to some more lunar and planetary shots when you get a chance to take some more. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

13 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Cool, glad I'm influencing people to buy things, lol. Only joking.

Wait a minute! Are you brainwashing me here to buy things!  

2 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Cool, I've got that too in my nostalgic collection, lol.

Yes, I saw that originally Nigella in a post of yours so ordered them up after seeing them there!  

Normally max magnification is twice the lens size, so x160 which is what they list too.

Got from fleabay arrived today after a little delay due to RM strike last week. Missed them at the time so happy to get one now.

55 minutes ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

I remember all the media hype about it back then (as an 11 Yr old kid), and my Dad telling me about it (He most likely didn't have a clue about astronomy). I had 5 yrs experience of observing the night sky with my first ever set of bins (10x50). 

I don't recall actually ever having seen it.

I do recall seeing a stunning naked eye comet which seemed to hang in the western sky for what seemed like months. I always confuse the name. Was it Hale-Bopp, or that other one (with a Japanese sounding name)?. 

Hyakutake?. It had 2 very distinct tails.

 

I have to admit that I missed Hale-Bopp as at that time a young family were keeping me busy, so at that time astronomy was well on the back burner. 

Wall to wall cloud here, but I’ll check before 10:30. Not holding out much hope, but you never know!

You know the worst people to ask over what noob telescope to buy are a bunch of astronomers!  

4 hours ago, Stephen_M said:

I had my first attempt at viewing planets from my back garden last night. I have a tall thin garden with high fences, but placing the dob next to the back door just about gave me enough space to observe Jupiter to the South East at about 9pm. I had a bit of a anxious wait to see if Jupiter would get high enough before the Moon also rose over the rooftops too. To pass the time, I looked a Alberio quickly, and tried to find Saturn but it was too low over the fence to be anything other than a small blurry dot. Alberio looked great using my William 32mm SWA. I must say I am super impressed with this EP with my dob, I also browsed around Aquila of a bit and just marvelled at the amount of stars in this area of the sky.

My main purchase over the summer was a Morpheus 4.5mm, which gives magnification of x270, and in combination with my 10" dob gave a great view of Jupiter and the moons. I was wondering if the dark spot was a trick of the light, or a shadow of one of the moons, so thank you for sharing that photo. I could just about make out the main equatorial zone, but it was difficult to make out any other details. Presumably this is due to the 10" capturing too much light, would I benefit from some sort of filter for this?

Here's a blurry smartphone pic.

An 80A filter can be used to filter Jupiter’s glare a little and also help tease out details better in the belts, GRS etc. They are quite cheap also, so won’t  break the bank unlike other kinds of filters. FLO do them for £9 (plus P&P) for a 1.25” sized one, but sadly out of stock at the moment. I am sure other vendors have similar ones though too.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/visual-oberving-rgb-filter-sets/astro-essentials-125-wratten-80a-medium-blue-filter.html

A brief 20 minute observation last night of Jupiter with the shadow transit of Ganymede starting at just gone 9pm last night. Jupiter was boiling away, but the shadow was easy to spot in my 80ED scope using x127 magnification. Later on in the morning I woke up early at just before 4:30am, so decided to have a look at Mars with the same scope and magnifiction combo. Could easily see the dark Y shaped expanse of the Syrtis Major Planum area with my Celestron Mars filter fitted to view it with, so looking forward to even better views of Mars closer to opposition. As Orion was on view also lower down and to the left of Mars I had a look at M42 also. As the moon was out also it wasn’t showing as good as in a nice dark sky, but nice to see it back once again ready for Autumnal and Winter skies. A UHC filter fitted to my Baader zoom EP made it pop out a little more.

Drones perhaps?

ED scopes are much better for visual over achromats, especially on lunar, planetary and double stars etc. I own two ED ‘fracs from Altair Astro (80ED & 110 ED) and they give very good visual views through them. 

Thanks. I am away for work on Monday/Tuesday down in South Wales, but should be back home for Tuesday night hopefully. 👍🏻 Although I could take a small ‘frac and tripod just in case I get stuck for getting back home. 😉

I remember getting an equally confusing board game once (not astro themed), that got played once and never again. Think it was called Colditz. Anyway, up in the loft it eventually went, never to be seen again. 

1 hour ago, Pete Presland said:

How special to have your notes from back then, such a privilege to witness this object that has been recorded for so long.

That was fun typing in December 1985, i have no surviving records of the event unfortunately.  I do remember spending quite few nights scan Aquarius, around the "Water Jar" asterism looking for Halley.   And there it is in Stellarium, whizzing past in late Nov-early Dec, thank you for bringing back that special memory 😀

Yes, a very special thing it was, even though it wasn’t the best showing of the comet. Not sure if I’ll be around for the next 2061 return, but if so I’ll try my best to log it down again.  

40 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

Stellarium in a recent update improved the accuracy of solar system objects, a year ago some asteroids positions were a bit off. Glad to hear your observations matched up!

Thanks Nik. Was not a big user of Stellarium before always using Skysafari for most things, but will use it more often now. 

After just getting some RM stamps (off fleabay) that were produced for the last return of Halley’s comet back in 1985/6, I dug out my old copy of Nortons star atlas as back in the day when the comet returned last I noted its position (as best as I could) in the charts in the star atlas of the comets position when I observed it from late November 1985, until my last observation of it in early January of 1986. I was curious as to how close I actually had noted it down back in the day, so I set Skysafari Pro 7 on my ipad back to the dates and times I observed it to see how close I was with this. I was initially disappointed as my observations I logged in Nortons seemed to be quite a way off from what Skysafari was showing me for the positions I noted down in the charts. As I also have Skysafari Pro 6 on my ipad I tried the same dates in that & got the same results back. Surely I was not that bad as an observer back in my early 20’s to not be able to read the sky that well, and chart it? Time to get my laptop out and check this out also on Stellarium. Putting the dates and times in there I was pleased to see that there the observations I noted matched up pretty close to what Stellarium was showing me. As a final check I also have Starry Night Pro 8 on my laptop, so I checked it with that also. This gave me results similar to what I had got with earlier with both my version of Skysafari Pro, so maybe it goes to show that sometimes you can’t always trust tech to tell you the truth. Luckly I was there back then to note it down pretty well in the charts. Thumbs up for Stellarium for matching what I actually saw on the day and noted down pretty accurately. Big minus for Skysafari and Starry Night Pro in this area. Makes me wonder how well we can trust things with tech especially when going back in time for certain things to be shown accurately? 🤔
 

View off Stellarium below for November 17th 1985 at 1am which matches close to what I noted down on the day.

View from below from Skysafari Pro 6 for the same date and time, but showing the comet further to the left and well below the Pleides.

55 minutes ago, Gonzo0 said:

I tried for m13 last night. I think I was getting the stars within Hercules confused. I just couldn't pinpoint m13. I found the finder scope that came with the 200p to be quite awkward to use but that's probably just me 

Yeah, with LP identifying the right area in Hercules can be an issue. Once you identify the main part highlighted below (the main body I guess) then find the top right hand shoulder star of the body you should just be able to move the fov down a little and to the left slightly and there it will be. Hope you see it soon when skies allow. Always a nice sight in most scopes, but should sparkle in the 200 well.

Try for globular cluster M13 in Hercules. Should be relatively easy to see with a 20mm EP or more. M31 galaxy in Andromeda should show up nicely too, but not so much when the moon is out and about though. 200p should scoop them up nicely. Just move the 200 slowly around the area where they are and you will eventually spot them in the field of view eventually. Once you seen then once you can then normally find them easier again next etc.

A great, rare night. Well done in spotting this double. Can’t remember if I’ve tried for this taget, but I’ll add to my list of doubles and see which one of my ‘fracs manage to crack it if seeing allows. 

I always find that the views in my C8 are rather soft too even when seeing is good, so when observe now I tend to use one of my 4 ‘fracs now, mostly the AA 80ED which is easy to carry out and set up either on my alt-az manual mount, or my Celestron 6/8SE goto mount.

5 hours ago, Batman26 said:

Yea I got it plugged into the aux and everything it just refuses to connect to sky safari 6 pro and im almost positive I have the right set up on the app

Did you check out the help page on Skysafari?

Might be some other pointers on there you could try to get Skyfi to work. I assume that you have connected the wifi connection to you device first before you try to get Skysafari to connect to the mount too? 

Not sure what connectors come with the Skyfi, but the Celestron  wifi adapter you can get plugs into the AUX socket on the Celestron 6SE mount.

Did you plug the Skyfi in the AUX socket OK on the mount? Does it appear in your devices wifi devices it can connect too?

On my synscan controller which I believe will be the same key steps for you also do the following;

Switch on the mount. Wait approx 20 seconds whilst it initialises.

Press Enter key slowly 12 times (12x)

Press key 2 (Rate) 1x

Press Enter key 1x

Press White triangle key 3x (key to the right of the Info button)

Press Enter key 1x

Press Right direction arrow control key (black triangle pointing right) repeatedly until the contrast darkens on the display so you can see the text again.

Hope that helps get it back for you. 😀