lenscap

When I was star-hopping I used Cartes du Ciel because it is very easy to place multiple finder and /or eyepiece circles on a chart, and a legible black-on-white copy can be printed with just 2 clicks.

I think this is it;

Hi DarkLane, I suggest you sign up for the free monthly newsletter from http://binocularsky.com/ The monthly target lists are great for small scopes as well as binos. Having the priceless advantage of dark skies you will be able to see lots of DSO's even with a modest scope. Of course most will be "dim fuzzies". Most of the dimmer objects will not show up in your finder, so you will have to locate the "invisible" target by comparing the star pattern in the finder to a chart or an app like Skysafari. The target should then be visible in a low power eyepiece, (apart from M31, it will always look smaller & dimmer than you expect). Then experiment with magnification to get the best view. M57 Ring Nebula, M27 Dumbbell , & M81 Bode's Galaxy are good fuzzies to start with. All are fairly bright. I have seen all 3 with a 76mm scope from Bortle 8 light pollution so you should have no problem. Enjoy!

I managed to get some images of Jupiter with a webcam & my first scope which was similar to yours. As Peter says the webcam & eyepiece come to focus at different positions, so by the time you change from one to the other & try to refocus, the target has moved out of the tiny FOV. I suggest you leave the webcam in place & try to locate your targets using the finder scope only. Align the finder as accurately as possible in daylight using the tip of a distant church spire or electricity pylon & set the focus to produce a clear image on the screen, then leave the focus as it is. Now at night, when you find your target in should be in, or very close to focus. You will then need at least 2 pairs of hands to keep nudging the scope, tweaking the focus, and altering the sharpcap settings . 😀 The FOV is the ratio of the physical size of the sensor and the effective focal length of the scope. You could increase the FOV with a Focal Reducer but I'm not sure if it would be worth the outlay with your set-up. Have fun!

I put the scope out for the partial lunar eclipse on Tuesday evening more in hope than expectation. The weather apps said mostly cloudy. But when I looked out at 10.30 BST the sky was 90% clear & there was a big orange moon hanging low in the sky, with a big black bite taken out of it. I observed with the 200p & with 10x50 binos for about an hour watching the umbra grow & then start to recede. Wonderful shades of deep red, orange & salmon pink. I think the colours were "enhanced" by the murky urban atmosphere at around 12 degrees altitude. Surface features could be seen dimly in the fully eclipsed portion. The whole disk looked "soft" even at best focus. At about 11.20 BST through a 20mm Plossl (x50), what the hell was that? Something transited the full width of the disk in about 2 seconds! It was tiny, black, sharp edged, consisting, I think, of 3 rectangular sections, like a hull & two solar arrays. I didn't see a visible object leave the limb but a satellite in that position would probably have been in earth-shade. It wasn't a plane. I saw an aircraft cross the moon through the scope on Monday. The plane was easily recognisable, much, much bigger & I could see the jet-wash. A bird? Possibly, but the shape was wrong, too hard-edged, but it was a brief glimpse. Neither Heavens-above nor CalSky show a satellite crossing the moon from my location at that time, but they don't track every object. So I can't confirm that it was a satellite but I believe it probably was. So a probable satellite transit during a beautiful lunar eclipse. Despite the frustrations, this hobby just keeps finding ways to put a big smile on your face, doesn't it? 😀

I find the free monthly newsletter from http://binocularsky.com/ is very useful for telescopes as well, particularly from a light-polluted location.

Good news! My next door neighbour did me a similar favour 2 weeks ago. To paraphrase Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, "I love the sound of chainsaws in the morning. It's the sound of . . . . . visibility" 😀

And tonight, Wed 10th, at 9pm, BBC2 a drama-doc of the Apollo 11 mission, 8 Days: To The Moon And Back. The critics are giving this a thumbs-up

As shown above the Saturn Nebula transits at about 3am at the moment. Not dark enough. Say you want to observe it at transit at about midnight when it is as dark as possible, 3 hours earlier. 3 hours earth rotation is 45 degrees so you need the earth to move 45 degrees around its orbit to achieve this. Since the earth moves about 1 degree per day this will happen in 45 days which is 20th August. To demonstrate plug this date & time into SS6.

Being more or less surrounded by trees, I have barely had a glimpse of Jupiter or Saturn this year. Imagine my joy to be woken by the buzz of chainsaws on Thursday morning! My brand new next-door neighbours have cut down two of their trees to make room for a project. I now have a fairly clear horizon from the E to SSE. The planets are back on the agenda. Following a heads-up from @Stu about GRS visibility I put the 200p out at 9.30pm on Friday. Jupiter was already shining in the bright twilight. I reckoned I had about 30 minutes before it disappeared behind the remaining trees. No time for cool-down or alignment, I just pointed the scope manually & turned on the tracking. The seeing was better than I expected with such a low target. It was steady at x150. As well as the equatorial belts the North temperate zone was intermittently visible & the GRS and Io seemed to be in a race to be first to disappear behind the limb of the giant planet. I love to see the 4 moons hanging alongside the gas giant. I noticed six of my new neighbours & their friends at the bottom of their garden. Looked like University Students. Don't know what they were doing but I detected the aroma of "herbal" tobacco. I pointed out Jupiter & asked if anyone wanted to see it through a telescope. They all trooped round & queued up at the eyepiece. They seemed fascinated that what looked like a star was actually a planet, with moons. One was concerned that Io, which was just grazing the limb, might be about to collide with the planet. I don't know if any of them will take up the hobby, but given what they were probably smoking I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them woke up this morning believing that they had been to Jupiter, not just seen it through a telescope. 😀

Calling a UK based weather app "Clear Outside" is just unrealistic. We should ask our transatlantic cousins if we can borrow their handle & rename the app "Cloudy Nights" At least the title would be correct most of the time even if the forecast was as unreliable as ever. 😀

I spotted this in today's Daily Mail; "ATTACHING THE TUBE RINGS TO MOUNT (Fig 7.) 1) Remove the tube rings from the telescope by releasing their thumb nuts and opening their hinges. 2) Place the tube rings on top of the tube ring mounting plate and bolt the tube rings to the mount using the wench provided. " Some suppliers just think of everything don't they? 😀

I think this is great news. Not only is S & T being saved, it will be run by Astronomers. https://fwmedia-mkt-prod2-m.adobe-campaign.com/nl/jsp/m.jsp?c=%40o20PZo6k1%2BjcoDv4O%2BuiG3ISBOWtDfcw3kFbC4cWMj8%3D&k=gbTdKGUwma57DFqUv%2BoSNVu9khATF6tgrmiTExrvk%2B8%3D&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emedia_blast&utm_campaign=sos-mya-hs-190618

Nice work Stephan. I performed similar surgery on the astronomically useless 20mm Celestron Erecting Eyepiece that came with my first scope. Having removed the prism set I noticed that although the eye lens was about 20mm diameter, the (fixed) field stop was only 12mm, presumably to match the optical path of the Amici prisms. I enlarged this as much as possible (using a small grindstone in a drill) which increased the AFOV from about 35 to a more respectable 50 degrees , producing a useable basic eyepiece with views similar to a Plossl.

A Dakota 62mm is a spotting scope; https://www.adorama.com/ont20606dz.html?discontinued=t

Hi msacco. You can do some useful testing indoors. When I started testing my diy Onstep Goto system the slews were way out, with the scope ( a 200p on an EQ3-2) sometimes pointing at the ground or threatening to collide with the tripod. Since it can sometimes be several weeks between clear nights in the UK I had to test the mount indoors to solve the problem. You will need a compass to estimate the Azimuth of the scope & some sort of angle gauge to estimate Altitude. I used a school protractor. You do not need to strive for great accuracy. If you can estimate the Alt & Az to plus or minus a few degrees you will be able to distinguish between slews that are probably correct & those that are obviously wrong. You do not even have to mount the scope. I used a cardboard tube that came in a roll of kitchen paper towels to represent the scope, attached to the saddle by two rubber bands. I marked one end as the aperture. This means you can let the Synscan slew wherever it wants without worrying about your scope hitting the tripod. Do some slews to different targets & estimate the Alt & Az pointing errors. You can also use the setting circles to estimate the RA & Dec errors directly. Hopefully you will discover some pattern in the errors which will point to the cause. In my case I found the RA was about 15 degrees out (I hour), which forced me to accept that there must be an error in the time settings. Of course I had checked these settings many times but eventually I realised that I had misunderstood the way Onstep handles GMT/Daylight Saving Time/Time Zone and had input the wrong information. Good luck!

As a keen observer, I have noticed that BBC science documentaries always include a lingering shot of the presenter driving an enormous SUV across picturesque parts of the southwestern USA. I propose that this should be known as Cox's Law.

Three times this week the weather app has promised (?) a couple of hours of clear sky around 12 midnight. Three times I have put the scope out. Three times I have been clouded out! Never even got the dustcaps off. On Thursday, Clear Outside was forecasting 2 or 3 hours of clear(ish) skies & the forecast was improving. I am a glutton for punishment so I set up the 200p at about 10pm. Noticing that the crescent Moon was about to disappear behind my neighbour's satellite dish I had a quick look without cooling the scope. At an altitude of about 15 degrees it looked very yellow in the twilight & displayed a nice low angle perspective of Mare Crisium. The image was shimmering slightly but even at low power Swift, Peirce & Picard craters were prominent with their western walls in deep shadow. At this low angle I find it easy to imagine what it must be like to fly towards the moon rather than just look down on it's surface from a distance. I went indoors to let the scope cool & watch the end of the England-Holland football match. (Don't ask ! ) Back out at 11.15 (still not very dark) and the sky is mostly high cloud some of it quite thick, but I am determined to observe some targets, if only to see how they look in poor conditions. Aligned on Rasalhague (Alpha Oph) & then Rasalgethi (Alpha Her) which splits easily (4.6") at x140 into a yellow primary with a faint blue companion. NGC 6633 a faint open cluster in Oph looked good in a 10mm Plossl. IC 4665 (Oph) The Summer Beehive is a sparse open cluster compared to it's more familiar cousin, M44 but is nicely framed in a 20mm EP. M13 (Her) proved unimpressive with such bright skies, just a fuzzy patch. Now the Goto had a brain fade. It was spot-on with M13 but the next target was way out- not even in the finder. It does this occasionally. Not sure if it's a bug or a wifi glitch. I should have re-opened the Onstep app & done another 2 star alignment but the clouds were thickening so I just loosened the clutches, manually pointed the scope at Vega and synched on it in Skysafari. This worked surprisingly well. Subsequent Goto's were not bang-on, but good enough. M57 Ring Nebula. This is brighter than you might think. Despite the sky glow it was not only visible, but recognisable at x31 (32mm) & the hole in the middle was very obvious in a 10mm Plossl. (x100) There is a pleasing group of stars, more or less centred on Delta2 Lyr (very orange). This is named as Stephenson 1 in Skysafari. I could see about 25 stars of mostly similar brightness framed in a 25mm EP. Cr 399 The Coathanger. I had previously only seen this asterism in Bino's or in the finder scope (in which it was almost invisible tonight) but it just fits in my recently acquired 32mm Plossl which also shows it the right way up! To finish I chose Beta Cyg, Albireo. This easy orange & blue double is so bright & colourful that it looks beautiful through any instrument in any conditions. I packed away with a smile on my face. 😀

Hi, I assume your scope has a red dot finder which makes it difficult to hop to faint objects so I have looked at hops using your 20mm eyepiece. First centre on Antares . Now centre on the 9th Mag star near NGC6144 Now move to another 9th Mag, HIP80493 And with a bit of luck M4 should be in the FOV. It will look small & faint. These screen shots are from Stellarium which is a free download from here; http://stellarium.org/ Good luck!

Not necessarily. If this part of your EQ3 Pro is the same as my EQ3-2 those grub screws are much shorter than the holes they occupy. Try fishing for them with a rounded-end Allen key of the right size if you have one. No need to remove them just loosen a couple of turns - they are very easy to mislay. If you had removed them you would remember having put them somewhere for safe keeping wouldn't you? 😀

It won't be much fun for visual observers either. Apparently this project will involve 12,000 satellites! So from my light-polluted backyard I will be able to see maybe 100 naked-eye stars & several thousand satellites! No. Please No!

Hi nejat & welcome to SGL, You can download the TAL manual from here; https://www.manualslib.com/manual/826110/Npz-Tal-1.html?page=6#manual

Thanks Stu, I was surprised that, for doubles within it's grasp, the 3 inch Newt produced more stable, more pleasing views than the 200p. Perhaps the smaller aperture cannot resolve some of the small-scale turbulence that may become visible as wobbly stars in an 8 inch scope. I suppose this is what is meant by "cutting through the seeing"

My first scope, which was a gift, was a Celestron 76mm F/9 Reflector. You can see identical-looking scopes under a dozen brand names. They come on a wobbly fork mount atop a lightweight, bouncy tripod. I wouldn't recommend this setup. The main challenge at higher powers is keeping a target in view long enough for the vibrations to stop. 😀 The kit did it's job in my case though. Once I'd observed the Moon, the Pleiades & Jupiter I was hooked on the hobby ! I soon acquired a 200p F/5 and I haven't looked through the Celestron since. But I wondered how the little Newt might perform on a better mount. I retrieved it from the loft , made a pair of tube rings & mounting plate from some scrap timber and bolted the scope to my EQ3-2 diy GoTo. With just a 3 inch aperture and city light pollution, double stars were the obvious targets. ( 21st May, from 11pm BST ) Zeta2 Corona Borealis, 6.5", a pair of white stars, like headlights in the distance, split at x70 but better at x140 (10mm Plossl & SW 2x deluxe Barlow.) Nu1 CoBo, 355", a wide, matching 5th Mag orange pair of cat's eyes in a 32mm Plossl (x22) with an unrelated third yellowish 7th Mag neighbour, forming a sharp triangle. Sigma CoBo, 7.2", a 5th & 6th Mag yellow pair split at x70 Xi Bootis, 5.3", yellow primary with faint white secondary to the NW, good at x140 Pi1 Boo, 5.5", a blue/yellow dumbbell at x70, clear split at x140 Izar(Epsilon Boo), 2.9", with the magnitude difference this was more of a challenge for the little scope but the secondary was visible as a lump on the first diffraction ring to the N of the primary at x140. The secondary looks grey to my eye in the 200p but here any colour was lost in the primary's orange glare. STF 1639 (Coma), 1.9, couldn't split this one, too tight for this scope I think. And to finish what else but the Double Double (Epsilon Lyr), 2.2", always fascinating & clearly split at x140 with a satisfying black line between each pair. The little F/9 reflector produced smaller, tighter stars which seemed more stable in poor seeing compared to the 200p, with fainter diffraction spikes. Great fun ! So once you seperate the OTA from the awful accessories that it comes with & put it on a steady mount the 76mm Newt is a handy little grab & go scope. I'm glad I rescued it from the spiders.

The second pair of bolts are vertical. One is above the 10 degree & the other above the 60 degree marks on the DEC scale in your photo.