davhei

I'll just throw in "The life and death of stars" by Kenneth R Lang as it was the course book for a class in stellar evolution for laymen that I took at uni. Thought it was great and had excellent structure and flow. Would highly recommend.

Hi Simon, a warm welcome to SGL from practically a next door neighbour.

After spending a number of nights winter observing in Sweden what made a big difference for me, apart from dew control (home made camping mat dew shield), was hand warmers. I regularly have to take my gloves off when changing EPs or doing finer stuff and after a while my hands were frozen. The pain when they started thawing later was awful. Putting air activated heater bags in the gloves were a life saver, kept me warm and snug in between taking off the gloves. They stay warm for a good number of hours, enough for my uses anyway. Big difference in how enjoyable the session was.

I also have a 10” dob and regularly observe close to the sea with high humidity. Never had the primary fog over but occasionally I’ve had to abort a session because of dew on the secondary, finder scope and sometimes eyepiece. What I did was cut up a camping mat and duct tape it together to make a dew shield. Around 50-55 cm long if I recall. Never had problems with the secondary fogging up since. For the finder scope I’ve made a habit of keeping the dust caps on whenever I am not using it. Has done the trick for me so far. EPs are less of an issue, but if I am not observing and it is humid I use a dust cap if it is in the scope. I usually put the EPs in a padded case with the caps on when not in the scope. Seems to keep them from fogging over most of the time. (tea towel was to avoid the sun shining into the OTA when I was waiting for the occultation of venus a while back)

Welcome to SGL!

When I observed Mars last week with my 10” dob it had gotten pretty dark and I struggled to make out details. Realized the night vision I had started to build up was working against me as the bright glare from Mars blotted out a lot of contrast. Shone my white light flashlight at the white painted OTA and stared at it for a while and when returning to the eyepiece it made a world of difference. The south polar cap popped out and also some albedo features on the red surface. After a while the features started becoming less obvious so I repeated the process and then they came back again. A powerful tool to try out. Not to mention simple.

Had a chance to try out this counterweight setup last night. Was doing mainly planetary observing at low altitudes that previously tended to cause the scope to slowly tilt downwards. This time the balance was excellent! Could loosen the handles on the dob almost fully and still it maintained position. What a joy! Tried some deep sky when it got dark enough and picked out M57, the double cluster and Albireo reaching altitudes of +60 degrees and still well balanced. What a difference counterweighting does. Very happy about it!

As long as you can comfortably lift it, throwing a 6” or a 10” into the car is a similar exercise and set up is also more or less the same, bar a bit more collimating with the larger one perhaps. Granted I’m saying that from the perspective of having an estate car. Would definitely recommend more aperture to increase the chance of long term enjoyment, unless storage space is at a premium and the weight is an issue. Choices, choices...

I second going for 10” as a first scope, if you think you can manage the heavier lifting. In my view it hits a sweet spot balancing portability and light grasp. 12” would be a bit too unwieldy for me and 8” would present a similar threshold in lugging it into and out of a car for instance, but with slightly less aperture. Wouldn’t be deterred by light pollution but if mainly dso’s are your thing I would certainly go to your darker site for observing as often as possible and save the home location for moon, planets and maybe double stars and bright clusters. I also spent a year stargazing with swaro el 42’s. Finest binos I have looked through and wonderful on the night sky. I really enjoy the flat field and pinpoint stars but also the steady view and large FOV of 8.5x42 binos compared to larger ”astro binos”. Observed 30-odd messier objects with them from a reasonably dark site, bortle 4 or there about. Great way to familiarize yourself with the sky before jumping at a scope. As you might have guessed I had first decided on an 8” but got talked into a 10” by a more experienced gazer at the local club. Haven’t regretted it. Welcome to the lounge!

Much better conditions today than my observation from two nights ago. I’m at a more southerly location and there is less cloud. Definitely a naked eye object now which is wasn’t two nights ago for me. Been sitting outside observing with binos for two hours now, time just flies by.. Image with mobile cam through binos. Pretty desperate I know...

Away at a small rural retreat with the family a good way up north at close to 61 degrees latitude. Decided to set my alarm to go out and have a peek at the sky at its darkest. Beautiful noctilucent clouds in the northern sky and Jupiter and Saturn shining prominently in the south. Moon rising bright yellow above the treeline and Mars following it with a distinct red hue. Tried to locate comet NEOWISE with the naked eye using Capella as a reference but couldn’t make anything out. Northern sky bright and plenty of thin cloud. Tried using my small 8x25 binos and found it! Core clearly visible and the wispy tail stretching out a fair bit. Lovely. Still no luck seeing it naked eye even knowing where to look. My wife had asked me to wake her if I found it so I did. Bleary eyed and wrapped in a blanket she joined me on the lawn. Handed her the binos and showed her where to look. Saw her straining for a while: ”That was a tiny little thing wasn’t it?!” 😀 Guess I had gotten her hopes up a bit too much talking about a naked eye comet and all. Well, noctilucent clouds, rising moon and planets made her happy all in all. Snapped a picture of the clouds. Can’t see the comet in it though.

Here’s yet another solution I slapped together. Got a number of metal plates with M5 holes from the hardware store. Had two neodymium rubber clad magnets with M5 threads that I fastened to a stack of plates using two bolts. Finally put some duct tape around the arrangement to soften out the edges. Perhaps not that elegant but seems to balance the scope nicely. Counterweight weighs around 2,2 kg which seems enough for balancing my moonlite focuser with spacers and my heaviest eyepiece which is in fact not that heavy at just below 0.5 kg.

CentaurZ, I sent you a DM with some details on timing to confirm your model. Thanks again!

Snapped this with mobile phone through the eyepiece, surprisingly good I thought considering. Was fairly easy to locate the pair in binos when I set up two hours before. When I tried again an hour or so later, I couldn’t find them. Luckily i kept tracking in my dob, nudging it every five minutes. Magnificent event!

Clear skies and all set up!

Welcome Nicolas and thank your for that fascinating introduction.

Brilliant, thanks Centaur!

In one of those rare occurances it seems Sweden will have a sunny midsummer's eve (Friday). Any swede will tell you this is almost the stuff of legend and myth, not sure it has ever happened before to be honest. Well, there is still time for unforecasted rain clouds to roll in though so I shall not get my hopes up.

That is some great info. I would be very grateful if I could receive data for the start of immersion and emersion for my location: Lat: 59 deg 20' N Long: 18 deg 5' E Elev: 10 meters Time zone: UTC+2 Many thanks in advance!

As it looks now there will be clear skies and a decent direction and altitude for the moon from my home. Will set up on my driveway and give it a go for sure.

Welcome Monty! Lots of things to discover in the skies, enjoy.

For the normal everyday (night) collimation I use a long cheshire/combo tool. It really is all that I need. Noticed however that I find it more difficult to align the primary (centering the dot) than the secondary (centering the donut) due to the crosshairs obstructing in the middle. Not so much a problem when done in daylight but in the dark it is more difficult. Because of this I sometimes use a cheap laser with the barlowed laser method to confirm primary alignment. Easy as pie. For the rare collimation of moving the secondary up and down the tube and larger adjustments to the secondary mirror angle I also have a cheap collimation cap. Can’t see the mirror clips in the cheshire/combo tool but the cap works fine. Sometimes I have snapped a picture with my phone camera through the cap (in daylight) and measured with a ruler on the camera screen to confirm equal distances on each side of the secondary mirror outline. Pretty rough method but if I take care to center the camera decently when taking the picture I think given the tolerances the results are ok. Again this is done very rarely. All in all pretty cheap methods that give good results. Would highly recommend replacing the allen screws on the secondary mirror holder with bob’s knobs and adding milk jug washers (lots of info available on the forum). Helps a lot. Really does.

Agree. I don't go through the whole process of cleaning with fluid very often, but after each session I do give the eyepieces a good puff with the bulb blower to get rid of loose particles. Usually give the outer casings a wipe with tissue paper at the same time before putting them in storage. That's obviously not really necessary from an optics perspective though.

The foam I have is pick n’ pluck, i.e. pre-cut in cubes that you can simply take apart cleanly with your fingers. No need for knives and results in nice cleanly cut sections. It’s fairly common I think.

It really is a lovely Messier. Barely reaches above the treeline from my dark site in Sweden but I did get a few sessions with it this spring. Lots of resolved stars, beautiful. Thanks for sharing.