JOC

Rats! Mind you I was pleased with the overall look of the picture - it was just a pleasing picture to me. I was surprised at how easy it was to get a correct exposure with the smart phone, I have taken far more photos with a DSLR, but I think that particular shot was easier to take on the 'phone than it would have been on my DSLR which surprised me.

Eeek............that might explain the damp patch on the ceiling - note to self - don't get distracted by Jupiter! LOL

Thanks to iPeace for finding me the thread this is mine tracking Sirius

Luna and Jupiter taken with a Samsung Galaxy S7 from my bathroom window - no processing, no telescope - does this count for an entry?

Ah, so a Barlow prevents the light from converging by effectively lowering the angle that it approaches the eyepiece at so the point of convergence - that which determines the focal length becomes longer. This must also be why someone told me previously that a Barlow will increase the eye relief on the EP - the convergence point of the light becomes a greater distance from the plane of the EP lens because the angle starts off wider when it hits it due to the effect of the Barlow lens. Def. one of those occasions when pictures work!

Louis D and SilverAstro - looks like I shall spend the night on the internet finding the diagrams to make sense of what I am certain are actually fine explanations!

I didn't realise a Barlow would unscrew like that, but my cheap second Barlow does the same - I see a possibility which is going to work - I've just tried it. Half the variable polarising filter in the barlow, half on the bottom of the EP makes twisting the polariser to find a sweet spot/adjustment much easier! :-D So whilst we are on the subject of Barlows - how come if I hold the Barlow up to an object it appears to reduce the object size rather than increase it?

I think what has surprised me about astronomy is the importance of the eyepiece. What follows is a comment typical of someone that launched without a huge amount of research: Before I logged on to SGL I had no idea that a telescope required removable EP's, I just assumed that a telescope came as an object with an aperture that you looked through like a Captain Cook style device. I did know this could be at either end depending on telescope type, but nothing you learn at school or otherwise suggests that telescopes come with this removable and changeable object that directly affects what you see. You don't need to be on SGL (other websites exist! LOL) long before you find out about EP's, but I think what is astonishing is that they are so important that they can, in some instances, exceed the cost of the telescope that they are being used in. Something that seems totally counterintuitive. If you are not into astronomy you seem to grow up with this notion that aperture is everything in astronomy - the media goes on about the size of Hubble's mirror and you seem to encounter other references that indicate aperture is King, but no-one ever mentions the importance of EP's!

Louis D - I guess you are right and all things being equal I guess we are all lucky to have what we do regardless of the level that is at. I am sure there are many more worse off in the world than any one that posts on SGL.

timwetherall, def. ROTLF, but, put like that I can't fault the logic!!

Floater def. me I wince at the sheer investment! I'd be shot before my family let me spend that sort of cash. Thanks to the classifieds I've got one little bit of black and green a baby 11mm plossl, but I look some of these big Ethos EP's that come up, even in the classifieds where they are undoubtedly a better deal than new, and wince hard when I realise that they are nearly the cost of my telescope! Some of those cases would buy a small car! I wonder if some folks won the lottery before they invested. I read about these big EP's and a 100 degree view is certainly impressive technology, but I've already decided that I'll never be able to afford anything like them. I wonder how many folks just make do with slightly more mundane EP's like I'm going to.

Scott, yup I'd already zoned in on that option as about the only thing that I'll stand a chance of taking a photo of. :-D

I had a chance to visit Washington DC a couple of years ago for a holiday and it was either queue for all day to see a panda (which I could visit a zoo in other places to see one day), or take the once in a lifetime chance to see an actual space shuttle that had been up. No contest, the shuttle was as much a design classic as Concorde. She was at the Udvar Hazy air and space museum. They had loads of cool stuff there, not only the shuttle, but loads of satellites, bits of the ISS and skylab, demos of the mars landers, a blackbird (though not the first I'd seen), a Concorde (again not the first I'd seen), that capsule that Baumgartner jumped out of at the edge of space a few years ago (well cool!), an exhibit dedicated to my top film ever - Top Gun, the actual space craft prop from Close encounters of the third kind, and the one exhibit I wasn't expecting to see and had an unusual emotional reaction to - Enola Gay - I wasn't quite sure what to make of her, but she impacted me quite profoundly. The Space shuttle was the highlight though :-D

I'm sure they don't mean any image ;-) Well she did orbit around the earth!!

LOL - I don't want to derail this thread , so continuing over here:

alanjgreen that's sort of what I wondered, yes. So beyond a certain degree unless you have a top notch telescope and absolutely zoned in collimation there may not be any point in owning a £350 eyepiece? {Bank manager breathes huge sigh of relief at this end}

I continue to considerably astonished at the cost of some of these eyepieces. My folks would think I'd gone nuts if I had £4.5K of eyepieces just sitting in a box in fact I probably would have been talked out of buying them in the first place. I'm still keeping quiet about the second-hand job I bought from the buy and sell section here yesterday. It's amazing that such small chunks of glass cost that much. Mind you how much does the quality of the eyepieces rely on the quality of telescope to begin with? i.e. does the quality of the telescope have to be good enough to make the quality of these eyepieces worth having - sort of its no good having a TV deliver more pixels per square inch than you eye is capable of resolving?

Maybe I need to develop a little OCD! I think a little of my problem is still learning to find my away around my box in the dark. In time I will probably find that I can tell them all apart by touch, but at the moment I am quite often removing ends for ones I have wrongly picked up. Then the ends disappear into the black hole where all the odd socks reside as I put them back into the case, and then I find I've muddled up the order of the lenses anyway and need to sort them out when I'm done. However, even if they are out of order, at least they now have a soft spongy pocket to slide them into between uses. This is a good thing I think.

So these cases full of eye-pieces. Are you all disciplined when you use them on a dark night and methodically put one away properly when you swap it for a different one. Or do you end up like me with plastic tops and bottoms all rolling around loose. An eyepiece in almost every pocket trying to keep them warm, the camera lens cover in the depths of your inside pocket probably not to be found for a week until I put on the same coat again. All the lens sizes out of order if they have miraculously made it back into the case, and basically neededing best part of an hour the next day matching all the tops and bottoms up the next day so you can put it all neatly away again!

So this is my beginner case. Yes, I know some of the sizes are unsuitable, but I'm experimenting and learning in the process - also trying out terrestrial targets. NB. also no black and green here. The big case is one I got from a charity shop on Thursday - it contained an electronic executive golf set - I had to pay £12 for it, but told the shop they could keep the contents as I only wanted the case. The little one was £10 new from ebay. I've toyed with the idea of replacing the foam in the golf case - and got the foam to do so, but at the moment the existing holes are hanging onto what is in there quite nicely and I don't know whether to fiddle further.

Hi Moonshane, I'm sure that would be the case, but I don't have any friends and certainly haven't an inkling of anyone with telescope knowledge. In terms of not dropping anything (in partic. that secondary mirror) is there anything on a telescope with are likely to be very shallowly screw threaded?

I got given a laser collimator for Crimbo and have read the guide in the OP as the instructions with the collimating device seemed a bit frightening. The instructions in the OP are well written and understandable, but I still don't like the sound of shift screws around and potentially remove mirrors etc. that every set of instructions seems to come with. Things like checking the distance on the vanes I can probably cope with, but anything that refers to doing any job with mirrors etc. fills me with dread that I could never get them back into place again.

I got my telescope a couple of weeks before Christmas and before shopping asked for advice on SGL. As a result I got the cracking telescope in my signature. Since then I have read plenty of threads and looked at other beginners' enquiries (many of which have also helped me) and compared this to that received myself and I honestly cannot fault the recommendations received before I bought my telescope or the support received since from all those people who contribute to this community. In addition I would like to say how 'slick' I find the whole experience of posting onto SGL - the mechanics of the forum are first class and the experience here far surpasses other forums I have used - I esp. like the way you can view a posting made whilst typing a reply without losing all the text you have already typed, and the notifications 'bell'. Well done everyone and thank-you.

Ditto. At the moment I've had a couple of sessions and have ended up finding the objects myself and then allowed the tracking to work. I guess when it functions the goto will be nice, but as with yourself it is really the tracking abilty that I wanted

Hi Dan I reasoned the same thing with the two alignment stars - the problem the second time out was that I couldn't remember what I'd used the night before - I've now got a notebook and have drawn where I found the stars relative to what few things up there I do know. As you have discovered the two star alignment seems the most satisfactory solution, but it does rely on knowing what I am pointing it at. By the sounds of it most beginners seem to um and ahh before buying. I posted a thread and got lots of advice posted which helped my decision making process - I was miles from any shops or clubs to go and see things. I did only want to spend £500 if I could have got away with it, but as I got more advice I knew that I wasn't going to be content with a 6", I also found out how big these things can get (huge! was the answer), I also knew that my knowledge of the night sky was very much lacking and when I found out about computerised finding and tracking I decided that sounded very useful to me esp. as I had tried my ex's ancient telescope many years ago and didn't like the 'nudge' scenario esp. when wanting to share the views with family members. Computerised finding would also help with finding my way around. So at that point I looked to see what I could find that would be a minimum 8", have a computerised mount, and be portable/shiftable by just me. The 8" skywatcher flextube seemed to meet all those criteria - yes, it did blow my £500 budget, but that starting point did mean that I wouldn't persuade myself into your set-up much though I might have liked it - storage of it might also have been problematical - I don't have much space to store my telescope and collapsible nature of the flextube has a lot going for it in terms of storing it and allowing me to move it. So, all in all, I guess I am lucky to have what I have. At the moment I don't know how 'into' it I might actually get and already it is a lot to spend on a 'hope I like it' gadget, so although bigger might be nicer I think what I have is probably as nice as I need at the moment (and reading the beginners section it seems many folks are not as fortunate as I am so I should really think myself lucky to have what I do) and maybe if find I do get really into things some smarter viewing lenses might keep me going.