Waddensky

Cartes du Ciel is able to show double stars from the WDS (Menu > Settings > Catalogs). Stelle Doppie is a nice web interface to query the WDS and generate lists you can export to SkySafari, Cartes du Ciel or Excel. Have fun, doubles are great observing targets.

Wonderful, that's a great amounf of research you already did! Zermelo has some good questions that will help us trying to figure out what you saw. Like John, my first guess would be the ISS or another bright satellite, but although they're bright, they are not as bright as Venus (also visible right now in the evening) and don't leave a trail. Comets move way slower, their movement is only visible from day to day but not within a few minutes. Another possibility is a bolide or fireball (a very bright meteor). If that is the case, based on the brightness you described there must have been other sightings of this event. Here in The Netherlands is a central contact point to report these kind of meteors, I'm not sure where you live, but maybe you can check for other sightings on a local bolide reporting website.

Hi and welcome! For starters, it would be very useful for us to know what kind of objects you'd like to see (planets, deep-sky objects, double stars, etc), what your budget is and if you're able to observe from your own place or you need to drive somewhere.

My dob is many years old, and still has a distinct smell when I take off the dust cap. I've come to associate it with a night under the stars. A kind of pavlovian conditioning, I guess. Not that I start to drool, but you get the point 😉.

Very interesting, thanks for the heads-up!

Alcor is around magnitude 4.0 and should be visible even from incredibly light-polluted areas. But my comment earlier about the easy naked eye split was based on separation, not brightness.

Great, Mizar is a very nice pair! Maybe you can try Algieba (Gamma Leonis) next time, a bit tougher but a lovely golden couple. One of my favourite double stars.

The position of Jupiter and Saturn is not favourable this year unfortunately. But you can always try to take a peek: they are late night/early morning objects in early June.

Hm Bortle 5. Well, the link to the list I posted contains some good info. The current season has some bright globulars (M13, M3, M5, M92) that should all be well within reach of your scope. Lots of bright Messiers more south (M4, M6, M7, M8) but they may be more difficult than their brightness suggests due to the low altitude above the horizon. Later this summer: M57 is bright and easy, M27 can be tough under light pollution but worth a try, M29, M39, M11 and well, maybe M16 and M17. Good luck and have fun! Let us know how things work out.

Not sure what your light pollution levels are, but from a reasonably dark site you'll be able to detect most if not all Messier objects with your gear (remember that Charles Messier used a 100 mm scope with optics way inferior to what we use today). I'd suggest to find a Messier list that includes surface brightness, because that value will give you a rough idea of the easy objects and the harder ones. Remember, it's a magnitude value, so smaller numbers are brighter objects. Edit: here's one listing surface brightness (SBRT).

Exactly what I suggested in another topic recently. I've been using one for years and they're a lot cheaper than astro-designed gear. I also used a drum throne for a while. Man, that was comfortable.

In that case, take a close look at Mizar next time with the eyepieces you mentioned ☺️. There's another nice surprise waiting for you there.

Deep-sky, double stars, planets. That sounds like a great night to me 😊. Lovely report, thanks!

Wonderful report, thanks for sharing! Must have been a great night. Is it safe to assume you observed Mizar A & B? Mizar and Alcor are an easy naked eye pair, Mizar AB requires a telescope at 14" separation. It was the first double star discovered in the 17th century.

Yes, een strijkstoel. Good luck!

Wonderful, thanks for sharing. Great to relate those light-year distances to things happening here on Earth. I guess 3C 273 is next? 😁

I'm not really sure how they're called in English, but in Dutch we call them 'ironing chairs'. They offer the same functionality as observing chairs but they are usually much cheaper. I've been using one for years. It's remarkable how expensive things can get when they're 'astronomy' branded. Just a suggestion 🙃.

There are two mechanisms taking place when magnifying with a telescope: the image becomes darker (for object and background sky equally, the contrast doesn't change). This makes the object harder to observe, because our eyes tend to detect the same contrast better on a light background than on a dark background. the image of the object becomes larger. This makes the object easier to observe because our eyes detect larger objects with the same contrast better than smaller objects As you can see, these two effects lead to an optimum, in which darkening and object size are 'in balance'. This is sometimes called Optimum Detection Magnification (ODM). If the brightness of an object is such that the contrast of the object and the background sky is larger than the threshold contrast (the minimum contrast the eye is able to detect given the circumstances), you are in theory able to see the object. The reason you can't see a faint fuzzy with the naked eye is because the object is too small, the reason you can't see a faint fuzzy at high magnifications is (among other factors) because the image is too dark.

I'm pretty sure we're on the same track but I'm struggling with terminology too 😄. Doesn't help that I'm not a native speaker of English 😅. What I meant is, when the exit pupil is the same, the image produced by a telescope has the same brightness no matter what the aperture is. It's just that larger apertures allow for higher magnifications and therefore the projected image of the same surface brightness is larger, activating more light receptors. Our eyes detect larger objects more easily than smaller objects with the same surface brightness.

Not trying to make matters more complicated, but a larger telescope shows dimmer objects not by increasing the surface brightness, but by allowing more magnification. In fact, the surface brightness of a deep-sky object is slightly less in a telescope than compared to the naked eye due to light loss in the optical path.

A torch can be very useful, but make sure you get one that can be dimmed to almost zero. Normal red lights, like bicycle LEDs are way too bright. Most astronomy apps have a night mode that will colour all UI elements with a red or orange tint to preserve your night vision. Still, be sure to set your screen brightness to the lowest possible value and preferably use a device with AMOLED screen, other screen types leak light even when the pixels are black. You can also use red screen wrap.

Welkom Rob! Have a lot of fun around here.

Yes, that's the Pocket Sky Atlas, it's available from Teleskop Express for example. It's an excellent atlas for beginners. Deeper atlases with more objects are the Sky Atlas 2000.0, the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas and Uranometria 2000.0, for example.

What do you know, there's a whole Wikipedia page about it. I read somewhere that there is a reasonable bright star that most people see as being slightly greenish, but I can't remember what star it was.

Colour perception varies from person to person, and although I am very sensitive to slight differences in colour, Castor A & B appear white to me. Sometimes colour contrast also plays a part. Antares B is often described as 'greenish' in colour although the star actually is blue-white (spectral type B2.5V). Must have something to do with the striking red colour of the primary.