Geoff Barnes

Welcome Orion17, my mum lives on Bodmin Moor in a little village called Mount. Lovely dark skies waiting for you up there!

Indeed @Johnand @Stu With Orion being high in the sky here it's not really much of a challenge to see them. I'm very impressed you can see them at only 129x John, shows how good your equipment is !

Hi @MimasDeathStar, With a theoretical maximum magnification of 260x your Heritage should be more than capable of revealing E & F stars. You will need a night of good steady and transparent seeing, but any good eyepiece giving about 175x upwards should show them. Down here in Oz I see them both every time I look for them with my f4.9 12 inch Dob and any eyepiece from 8mm to 4mm.

Agree with @John and @Timebandit, all you need is a collimation cap or Cheshire followed by a star test. Simple and foolproof.

Only two nights ago I managed to split 32 abd 52 Orionis with my 4mm SW Planetary eyepiece. Now seeing conditions were superb but the SW was up to the task, I really rate the 4mm and 5mm Planetary's. @johninderbyI have been poised to press the buy button on the Morpheus 4.5mm for a while now, have the 6.5mm and love it. Your opinion on the 4.5mm would be welcome, thanks.

Would love to be able to see that one Stu, but alas Cassiopeia never rises above the horizon here, just a smidgen below most of the year. I wonder if most of the northern and southern skies are visible from the top of Kilimanjaro?

Hi @Brushman, have a look at this list of currently visible comets and see if any of them tally with where you observed yours... http://aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html

Well, mixed emotions really. Despite the warm sultry conditions the seeing was exceptional, rock steady and clear as a bell, so that was wonderful. The disappointment (if you could call it that) was that splitting both 32 and 52 Orionis proved a bit too easy. I had geared myself up for a bit of a challenge and they both exposed themselves a little too readily. My goodness they're both jolly tight doubles though, if it weren't for the incredible seeing I think I would have struggled. Started with my usual EP the Baader 8-24mm zoom up to 187x and moved up to the Morpheus 6.5mm for 230x. Could just about see the split with this but decided to go full bore with the SW Planetary 4mm for 375x and the splits were clear. Followed this triumph with some slightly easier splits E &F in the Trapezium, very clear even with the 8mm zoom. Rigel B was too easy, but surprisingly Sirius Pup proved problematic, I eventually found it hiding directly behind one of the diffraction spikes, but once located I could see it even through the spike! Put on the HB filter in the vain hope of spotting the Horsehead but no go, I don't think I'm going to see it with our skies here. Nonetheless, had a bit of a grand tour of some old favorites our southern skies, Carina Nebula, Pearl Cluster, Southern Pleiades, Wishing Well Cluster, Tarantula Nebula. If I only got one session as good as this a couple of times a year I think I would be content!

… and that's the challenge I'm setting myself tonight with the 12 inch Dob. Likewise our weather has been uncooperative of late but all bodes well this evening as the sun is sinking in a clear blue sky and the wind has dropped off. Very humid though, a bit tropical actually for us, so not sure if that will affect the seeing, especially for these two very tight doubles, time will tell. I'm thinking around 230x to 250x will be needed, any advice for the best powers for splitting them gratefully accepted, though I think it'll be a case of suck it and see.

Ha! Ha! I thought I'd mistakenly logged on to Cloudy Nights the way he was ranting on! I was about to suggest to him that he was liable to get banned and "poof" he was gone! I knew you were loitering behind the scenes @Stu.

Absolutely! I would encourage anyone who has the ability to keep their scopes outside and under cover to do so. Just set up and away you go, little if any cool down time needed. Here is my Dob out on the front lawn having come from the wooden house I built for it, visible on the left under the house roof overhang which keeps all the weather off...

They are a bit thin on the ground here, and I haven't been to any of them myself to my shame. The old Melbourne Observatory might interest you, they still have the original huge refractor being used but must suffer from terrible light pollution.... https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/visit-melbourne/attractions/melbourne-observatory If you look on the map I posted in the very bottom right corner is Mount Burnett which has club meetings and dark skies... https://mbo.org.au/ The Mornington Peninsula Astro Society would be the closest to visit... http://www.mpas.asn.au/

I have the same 12 inch Dob as you and I find that just about any decent eyepieces seem to work very well with it. I too like generous eye relief and a big eye lens for comfortable, relaxed viewing. I find I use my Baader Mk 1V zoom an awful lot of the time, it works so well with the scope. Also highly recommend the Baader Morpheus ep's, superb quality for the price, sharp, bright images with nice natural colour rendition. I'm on a fairly tight budget myself but find the Skywatcher Planetary ep's also work superbly well with the scope for high power viewing of the moon and planets for very little cost.

It's all here @Stu… https://www.spaceweather.com/

Here you go Marvin, the light pollution map of Melbourne, you can see Richmond just east of the city in Bortle 8-9 and our house about 50km east in Bortle 4 area. Once you get east of us the skies get progressively darker but over an hours drive from Richmond to get dark skies. Might be better to head north out past the airport on the motorway to get to good dark skies quicker. Just do some reading up on DSO's visible in the southern hemisphere, it's a rich treasure trove!

I hope this is what you're looking for @Nakedgun, it's a long thread to sift through but has all the details of the initial problems @John encountered...

Almost impossible to see Mercury from home here with no view to my west because of the trees, may be possible later in the year when it transits across to the northwest with the sun in winter (sun, moon and planets are in the northern sky in Oz). Interesting thing about Sirius is that it doesn't twinkle from here, certainly no colours shown other than pure white, mainly because it gets to 68 degrees altitude and is really steady to view on most nights. Vega from here is very low on my north horizon and it does twinkle with colours.

Thanks Steve, Melbourne does get crowned the world's most liveable city quite often, but like any city it has it's good and bad areas. Seeing conditions are generally more stable here without the jet stream being overhead so often as in the UK. Biggest problem for me is the light pollution from Melbourne which is now a huge city of 5 million people and growing fast. I think I will give the Plato craterlets a go with my Baader Morpheus 6.5mm for around 230x next time.

This is a target that I must put more effort into. I have tried a few times in the past and failed to see them but never really seriously spent time looking for them. What eyepiece(s) and magnification did you find the best @Alkaid?

I've been what you could call an amateur meteorologist since my teens @John and I too used to be amazed at how often ( in winter especially ) the full moon would coincide with clear frosty nights, where the frosty grass would sparkle in the moonlight. I never did any research into the phenomena as such, but it did seem to be a very regular coincidence. Interesting.

Got it! Had a bit of bother orienting myself with the Dob, the image you gave me was upside down in the viewfinder so I ended up searching southeast of the moon, not northeast. Nevertheless, with the SW 32mm Plossl I managed to find a tiny spec just where I thought it would be, swapped it with the Baader zoom and took it up to 187x which showed it as definitely not a pinpoint star. Then put in the SW 4mm Planetary for 375x and wow, a small roundish disc of a faint and pale yellowish orange! A good job I went out early and got it as cloud quickly moved in and my session was over, mission accomplished!

Right @Stu I'm going out, the sky is clear and the moon is moving into the perfect clearing between the trees, wish me luck!

Google... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hale–Bopp

Ta for that @Stu I won't be able to get them both in the same FOV but I'll get my SW 32mm onto it and maybe the Baader zoom as well for a closer look if weather permits. It will just about be dark enough by 9.40pm so worth a shot, moon glow might drown it out though.

Hi @John, I don't recall having split this one, Have you managed to split 52 Orionis and if so with what equipment?