Waddensky

Had another look at the nova tonight with the 10x50s. The moonlight hindered a bit but the star was easily found with the help of some averted vision. I even spotted M52 as a ghostly glow. I got the feeling the nova was a tiny bit dimmer than yesterday. It's a lot of fun to follow the developments night after night. It reminds me of my observations of the naked-eye nova in Delphinus in 2013.

How fast is super fast? Most visible satellites are in LEO and roughly have the same speed.

Maybe you could catalogue them so you don't confuse them with comets anymore 🤔. Hmm, I wonder why no one else has thought of that before. Brilliant idea. 😋

Incredible! I'd put that on the wall instantly. What a detail!

Collimation is critical with these fast scopes, so make sure you have the right tools. You don't need fancy laser thingies per se, a good Chesire will do. A nice, stable seat is a necessity, preferably one that can be adjusted in height because observing with a dob varies from bending over to almost standing up. Some use drum thrones, although heavy they are very comfortable. I had one, but now I use a light-weight, cheap ironing chair. A zoom eyepiece is very convenient, but many observers like to supplement it with one widefield eyepiece, like the Panoptic 24 or a ES 24/68, because the Baader field of view is quite narrow at the longer focal lengths. But maybe the 'wisest' advice is to just go out and use the scope! You'll notice along the way what you miss and what you need. Have fun!

Had to drive around to chase a break in the clouds, but I finally succeeded in observing the nova again just now for the first time since Friday. To me, the nova looked about the same brightness as during my earlier observation. Not the brightest star in the field, but unmistakable in my binoculars.

Other than the excellent points Steve mentions, the field of view of the Hyperion Zoom is a bit narrow on the longer focal lengths. That's why some people supplement the zoom with a good widefield eyepiece, the ES 24/68 or the 24 Panoptic for example. Other than that, I find the zoom very convenient and it works great with my ES 2x focal extender. The combination gets me in the 300x region for double star or planetary work.

Haha yes, this exactly. It's not what you see, but what you see. Or something more eloquent 🤔.

Zarya ('dawn') was the first module of the ISS. I don't know why SkySafari still calls it that way (I noticed it too), but it's a nice reminder of the past of the famous space station 🙂. Under normal circumstances, ISS is the brightest satellite. If you manage to track it for a few seconds with a telescope, a moderate magnification will already reveal its solar panels.

That sounds about right, globulars are just fuzzy but perfectly round patches in small apertures. Resolving stars in the outskirts of the cluster is possible, but requires a lot of aperture and magnification. It also depends on the cluster. Messier 4 and 22 are known to be reasonably easy to resolve, but they don't rise very high from mid-northern latitudes. Messier 10, 12 and 71 are also nice targets to try to spot individual stars. Messier 3 and 13, although bright, are not so easy.

Although similar in colour and apparent brightness, I calculated that Aldebaran is currently 2.5 million times more distant than Mars! 🤔

Just compared a few galaxies in my intermediate B-C TriAtlas with SkySafari, but as far as I can see the U is the prefix for the UGC catalogue. I can't find labels with UGC on the TriAtlas charts.

What kind of finder do you have on your telescope? The finder is the 'link' between what you see with the naked eye and the view through the eyepiece. But locating objects manually also requires some skill in star hopping: recognising patterns of stars to navigate from a bright star to your destination. It takes some time to get the hang of, and you need a good atlas or app. Don't worry - it gets better in time! Still, if you are able to see the Pinwheel Galaxy (I assume you mean Messier 33) with your binoculars, both M41 and M78 should be very easily visible in your telescope. Also keep in mind that some extended objects - like Messier 31 and 33 - are often better observed with binoculars than a telescope, because they are so large. Practice with some objects that are easy to locate and bright: Messier 35, Messier 44 and Messier 13 for example. If you've found them, proceed to more elusive targets. This chart is very helpful in selecting objects:

My brilliant sketching skills came up with this. It shows 4 Cassiopeiae and M52, as well as some other field stars helpful in locating the nova at low magnifications.

Just went out with the 10x50 and I found the nova! It's easy to locate using the rhombus-shaped asterism including 4 Cas, its minor axis points roughly to Nova Cas 2021, close to HD 220819 (mag 6.6) and a bit farther from M52. I am no variable star observer by a long shot, but to my eyes, it looked brighter than HD 220770 (mag 7.8) but not as bright as HD 220167 (7.2).

It's half a degree south of open cluster M52. Quite easy to find when using the right side of Cassiopeia's W as pointers. Edit: here's a zoomable DSS map centered on the correct location.

The Field Edition of the Interstellarum Deep-Sky Atlas is weatherproof and optimised to use with a red torch. Highly recommended!

Very interesting! Bright and well-placed.

Wonderful, thanks for sharing! In a few days, the Moon joins the party. Not sure if that's easy to photograph, but a lovely sight visually.

OIII performs really well on most planetary nebulae, the Veil complex and Messier 8 and 17 for example. Here's an interesting comparison of the performance of OIII filters (and other filters) on several deep-sky objects.

Nothing is wasted, this is exactly what stargazing is about: enjoying the beautiful things in the night sky. Any way you do it. Oh, and wait until you see the summer Milky Way 🤗. (blown away by the amount of stars) x 10.

Ah, the interesting case of NGC 1746. What a wonderful image, you don't see that many photographs of this part of the sky. I love the star colours!

Wonderful, isn't it? 🙂 Great people over here. And it's not mentioned enough, but I agree: the theme of SGL is great and very easy to navigate. On mobile too. The last update made it even better.

Well that depends what you define as reference: the Earth around the Sun, the Sun around the centre of the Milky Way, or the Milky Way relative to other galaxies in the neighbourhood. The Sun travels about 210 km/s in its orbit around the Milky Way centre (source).

Great question! About 225 to 250 million years (source).