BeerMe

Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll hold off for the 9x50 RACI.  It'll be my next purchase anyway so it'll be Christmas or earlier, and my Rigel and 9x50 are perfectly fine for now.

I realised also that the views through finders in my books are always illustrated using a 9x50, so it makes sense to not step down as it'd only confuse me ;-)

At the moment I'm using the stock 9x50 straight through finder on my 250px.  I've been wanting to upgrade to the 9x50 RACI, but yesterday I came across these Seben 6x30 RA finders for £13.99 (!!!!) brand new from Seben themselves.  Has anyone got any experience of these?  Would a 6x30 RA be better to use than a 9x50 straight through? 

Also, forgive my ignorance, but does an RA finder always show a corrected image or would it be identified as RACI rather than RA?

40 minutes ago, daz said:

@BeerMe

You can indeed book a pitch and sleep in your car - please see our dedicated web info site at http://sglsp.com/

But as Michael says, we certainly wouldn't recommend running the engine all night!

 

Thanks Daz, ideally we could book a glamping pod for a few nights - I've emailed FLO to see how we go about this.  If that isn't an option, it'll probably have to be the car as my wife wouldn't survive a night in a tent never mind a few.

11 hours ago, michaelmorris said:

To the best of my recollection this question comes up every year and (to the best of my recollection) the answer is theoretically yes, as long you book your own separate pitch.  However, I can tell you that, being essentially a metal box that will radiate heat like there is no tomorrow, a car is likely to get significantly colder than a tent.  

I suspect that running a car engine on a camp site for any period of more than a few minutes (day or night) is going to be make you deeply unpopular.  Also, I would have thought that running an engine for any period or more than a couple of minutes close to a tent is potentially very dangerous for the occupants of the tent.

Have you checked out whether there are still camping pods available?

 

Thanks Michael, I wasn't aware of the glamping pods and beach huts that are available for hire, but I'd guess we'd be more or less on our own and away from the main field(s) if we booked one of those?  It's definitely a better option than the car, regardless. 

Would that have to be booked through Lucksall direct?

Anyone know if there would be an issue if me and the missus came down and slept in the car?  We have a thing that extends the back seat of the car to make it in to a bed, and my missus wouldn't be able to sleep in a tent at that time of year due to her health.

Needless to say, we would be taking all the normal precautions re stray light, not running the engine late at night, etc.

Thanks for the info both of you.  Great that you both pointed out the same thing!

Mrbloke...do you mean find a clear patch of sky outside my home, then adjust the light pollution settings on Stellarium until it matches my actual view of the sky?  That sounds like good advice...now if only we had a clear patch of sky right now lol.

Thanks again

This is how it shows at the moment using 12.5x on the Ocular view.  Clearly I am using the software wrong or reading something wrong as that is clearly visible.

What settings would I need to use to give me a true representation of what would be seen in a clear sky?

Very interesting post and it has definitely opened my eyes somewhat.

How accurate is Stellarium in showing the relative brightness of objects in the sky?  I was messing around with the Ocular view on it last night while M31 was directly in the Western sky, and it needed only x37.5 mag on the Ocular view to clearly make out the shape of the galaxy and x75 showed a fair amount of detail, which got me quite excited.  I realise now that this is not the case, so should Stellarium only be used as a guide to the positions of objects in the sky?  Or was I somehow reading the Ocular view wrongly?