Captain Scarlet

If it’s not a sunny day, I’ve used this method to roughly measure focal length. Carefully set the mirror up on on its side on, say, a kitchen surface. Obviously in such a way that it can’t fall flat or roll off 😱 Get a piece of board about the same height as the mirror, and drill a 2-3 mm hole approximately in its centre. Arrange the board vertically with a bright LED torch behind the hole. Adjust the distance of the board from the mirror until the reflection of the lit-up hole back onto the board is in best focus. Measure that distance, which is known as the centre of curvature, and halve it to get the approximate focal length. The beauty of it is too that any error you make in the measurement is halved as well. M

I’m not sure I’d have been able to get it from my place in London. I’d say it’s like a slightly dimmer version of what you can see as M31 from Middlesex. Perhaps like seeing M33 from say Berkshire skies.

You seem to be getting the hang of the Somerset way of speech it seems 🤣🤣

The Comet should appear as a smudge, not unlike the core of M31, rather than a star-like pinprick. I was still _just about_ able to detect it yesterday as dawn arrived with the sky-brightness at 19.70 .

Great read John. I currently have two 8” newts, neither of them here where I live! One for sale though. I hanker after my Orion, the ease of set up and the covering of all bases. Just need to get my house sold. A quick question: d’you reckon you’d be able for the Horsehead in an 8” under perfect conditions? And M35 stolen and added to my own next list, together with Comet C/2019 L3 Atlas.

Great report. Reading about your and others’ views of the LMC and 47 Tuc etc is almost unbearable. But I can relate to those who’ve never properly seen some of our objects, M31 and 42 in particular. And what’s a Sandgroper? Sounds rude 🙂 M

Those who’ve been following the Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) threads might have noticed my couple of posts describing my own observation of that comet this morning. But I did manage to see a little more. I got up at 6am and was outside with my Zeiss Conquest 15x56s by 6:15, sitting in the garden chair I keep permanently stationed in the small bocage-boreen behind the house with a good south-easterly aspect. The sky was startlingly clear: I measured 21.76 with my meter and the sky was ablaze. I’m an owl. I don’t easily do the getting up really early thing though I can if I need to (Christ I spent a whole career getting on my bike in the winter dark but that doesn’t count!). But getting up with total dark adaptation already fully-installed and walking out into a night like this morning was something else. Worth it for its own sake let alone a special event. Anyway, the whole point was to try to see the comet. I knew it was “just to the right” of Rho Bootis (one of the main Bootis stars) and as soon as I lifted my bins the comet smacked me in the face. And to crown it, at that moment a meteor flashed right past in the bins view! Almost congratulatory. The comet was not quite naked eye, perhaps just about with averted vision but it was slightly drowned by 12 Boo which this morning lay a bit “beneath” it. The comet was quite large with an obvious core and outward diffusion, and a prominent wide-fan tail. Somewhere between M31 and M33 in diffuse-brightness as I mentioned in my comet posts. I have no feel for extended-object magnitude numbers I’m afraid. I sort of feel it’s the wrong measure. The comet “bagged”, and with dawn about to start, I felt the need to see how some other normally difficult targets looked, particularly as they’d be near zenith at a time when literally everybody’s lights are off. I started with M101 the Pinwheel Galaxy. I’ve looked at this several times quite recently through bins with some success but only during the early evening when lately it’s been not very high up. It’s been a “is that faint patch it? Yes it is” type object. This dark morning, not far from zenith, it was readily noticeable, rather like M33 at astro-dark in the evenings. In hindsight, I should also have had a go for IC342 the Hidden Galaxy, a measure more difficult again in the series M33 => M101 => IC342. It was the perfect opportunity. Next time. I moved on to M51 the other side of the Plough asterism and it was extraordinary. Clearly a double-smudge (in bins remember). Encouraged, I thought why not try for M81/M82, though I was less sure exactly where they were. I vaguely recalled I should project linearly from Phecda through Dubhe the same distance again … and there they were! Bang! Really rather bright: one bright blob and one bright edge, both perfectly framed in the same field of view! Magical. And through just 56mm of aperture (79mm equivalent if you add the two up…). I have to say, the West of Ireland is the best equipment upgrade I could possibly have made. The plan had been to get up at 6am, grab the bins, tick off the comet, and go straight back to bed. In the event I added to my list of memorable views aside from the comet. As a final check, just before I finally caved in to head back to bed (for that is what I did), at just after 7am the sky was at 19.70 and I could just about still detect the comet. Cheers, Magnus

I saw it this morning quite easily though I had a couple of advantages: 21.76 sky and 15x56 binoculars. I don’t have a feel for extended-object magnitudes but I’d put it between M31 (easily visible naked eye) and M33 (not quite naked eye). A medium-sized quite bright object with core and definite wide tail. It was still just about visible in the bins at 7am as dawn was happening, with the sky at 19.7. Magnus

I was up at 6am. Sky was lovely and clear 21.76. The Comet was easily visible in the 15x56 bins with its wide fan tail, and averted-vision borderline naked eye. I’d say as an extended object it was somewhere between M33 and M31 in brightness and extent. Something like M32.3 😃 by the time I packed up nearing 0700 the sky was 19.7 and it was still just about discernible through the bins. Cheers Magnus

Glad I saw this. It's due to be clear 6am tomorrrow morning so I'll leap out and have a go I think. M

SW’s Mak 127 needs no reviews really, it’s universally regarded as very good indeed. It’s what I started with 5-6 years ago. And the virtuoso mount though I’ve not tried it is bound to be good. However, in light of my experience, were I to start again i would go for the heritage 150 virtuoso combination. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/sky-watcher-heritage-150p-flextube-virtuoso-gti.html It’s a more accessible focal length allowing for reasonably high mag when necessary but also lovely wide-field views which the Mak 127 is less able at. within your budget you’d also be able to replace the stock eyepieces with say BST starguiders which are not expensive but much superior. Cheers Magnus

subject to S-1 of course

@Skipper Billy is selling a great camera on the classifieds section at the moment...

The contempt that oozes out of that last one is something else. Anyone who has a non-mainstream pastime is eccentric, and eccentric is of course contemptible. And it’s perfectly legitimate to “kick over the sandcastle” of such a person. The person who wrote that would’ve been a serious bully at school.

Very nice Doug. Those clusters do seem to the the objet-du-jour! So lovely. And I think I’ve seen it now but I must remember to specifically look for ngc 1907 as you suggested I should a few weeks ago. And I’ve realized that I might’ve inadvertently stolen your reporting style for my own reports, vis-à-vis coloured highlighting of the objects. Magnus

Well done! Mak 180 a very nice scope. Every time I take mine out I wonder why I don't do so more often. I need to get some rings for it though, I find it alarmingly slippery to hold. M

I thought that perhaps because it was all hand-held, things might even out slightly in that respect, what with 15x being more shaky, but actually I suspect you're right. I seem to cope with 15x quite easily, even for birding.

Thanks. The Smiley Face I can just-about sort of "get", but it's a bit of a stretch of imagination. Not like say the Coathanger or Kemble's Cascade or ET, which when you find them smack you in the face, rather like getting a crossword-clue.

Mira. Thank you. Duly stolen for my own next list. Looking it up, wow it looks like an unusual object. A variable whose range goes from mag 4 to mag 9 over a year or so. That’s amazing, or is that typical of variables? @JeremyS? Cheers, Magnus

Visual Astronomy of the Deep Sky, if you can get hold of it, is superb, by Richard N Clark. He was one of the imaging scientists on the Cassini mission and has a website, clarkvision.com . IIRC the first part of the book is essentially his PhD thesis on the abilities of the human eye and occupies perhaps 20% of the book. The rest is a catalogue of his detailed notes and sketches from his observations of a large range of DSOs. Mostly from his self-made 8" reflector in the 1980s. The beauty of it is you get a set of comments images and notes that do not appear in any website searches. Quite hard to get hold of though. Magnus Addendum: I’ve just looked it up on Amazon. Christ!! Tempted to sell my copy! (not)

Ouch @wookie1965 yes that's the sort of LP I've recently moved away from. I lived not far from @PeterW SW of London. When there, I did manage to see M51 through my 8" newt (a 200p). It wasn't spectacular, but definitely there. With a shroud or shield I'd expect you to be able to detect it from W Merseyside? Magnus

I have an AZ-EQ6, am also AZ-only, and like Stu's mine has carried some slightly crazy loads, without ever giving me problems. The SW blue-tube 300p newt shown came in at 27kgs! I would suggest that the tripod makes a difference too, I fairly quickly got myself a Berlebach Planet.

Thanks yes the skies here are dark, last night I measured 21.45 pointing up at the MW. I have measured 22.05 a couple of Easters ago. But I went out again last night as it was very similar but with my 12x50s this time (the report above was with 15x56s). With the 50mm bins there was no hint of the Crab, and I looked really hard. Nor M101 though that was a bit lower than before as it was earlier. I got just the slightest hint of M51. I was very surprised that only 6mm extra aperture on 50mm would make such a difference both on those I couldn’t see and the M36/7/8 that I could, but then again it is 25% extra area. And both very high quality binocs.

Last night would have been wonderful for a full-on session with my 12” on its big mount. The Moon wasn’t due to rise until after 4am. The sky was mostly beautifully clear, a few cloud-bands came and went, but after a whole day and evening of driving rain and very strong wind, wind which persisted during this session, there was no chance I could manage anything other than a “bins” session. Some time after midnight it seemed the rain squalls were at an end, the sky cleared, I donned my Dryrobe, Uggs and gloves and dragged a garden-chair to the sheltered side of the house. I took my Zeiss 15x56s. The sky seemed unusually clear, but I forgot to arm myself with my SQM-L meter and wasn’t willing to go back in to run the cats-trying-to-get-out-at-night gauntlet when fully kitted up with stuff dangling from my neck. First was M101, a tricky target, which I’ve learned makes a nearly equilateral triangle with Alkaid and Mizar, the first two stars of Ursa Major’s saucepan-handle, on the opposite side from M51. M101 is a much fainter version of M33, a face-on spiral galaxy, one of those known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, though I believe M101 is the “official” Pinwheel. I found it pretty quickly, more easily than a couple of months ago when I first managed to find it through binoculars. From there I moved to M51, on the other side of the saucepan, forming a 3-4-5 triangle with the same pair of Uma’s stars. Again, M51 was more easily found than I recall before, though I couldn’t make out its twin cores. The Coma Star Cluster, aka Melotte 111, was starting to become evident naked-eye as it rose, though that direction is my worst LP direction (towards Skibbereen and Clonakilty, Bandon, Cork behind it all in line luckily all partly shielded by Lough Ine hill) and the Cluster was by then only 10 degrees up. Higher up, it’s generally an obvious patch, not unlike the Beehive. Oddly enough and annoyingly as I write this I didn’t check out M44 the Beehive. Next time. I turned towards Orion. M42 was as textured as I can ever remember seeing through bins. It really looked like a miniature version of some of the amazing pictures you see here on SGL. Also The “S” asterism through Orion’s Belt perfectly filled the 15x FoV. I moved up to Meissa, Orion’s head, one of my favourite open clusters. It has a characteristic shape which I struggle to put a name on, but distinctive nevertheless. Plus Meissa herself is a very nice double though this fact was obviously not evident through bins! I also noticed the Milky Way above and left of Orion, the “back end” of the MW, was much more prominent than I’ve seen before, really quite obvious. I’ve strained to detect it on previous occasions. I even made the mistake last night of thinking it was a band of cloud, but it persisted and was definitely the winter side of the MW. Next I moved to another “difficult” target, M1 the Crab Nebula. I found it straight away, an oval “not-a-star” patch that I did have to use SS to confirm though. These were 56mm bins, I’m going to have to reduce aperture from now on to see what’s the minimum I can detect it with, now I’m familiar with exactly where it is. I craned my head and tried to shift lower in my chair to look nearly vertically up at Auriga. The Ladder (as I call it, more commonly called the Leaping Minnow, but I don’t get that at all) was obvious to the naked eye, and beyond it and the so-called Smiley Face, I could detect M38 naked eye for the first time ever. When I raised the binoculars, Oh My God! M38 resolved into myriad individual stars and strongly resembled its unofficial name, the Starfish Cluster. It was utterly, utterly beautiful. I’ve looked through binoculars of various sizes at M38 (and M37 and M36) before, but they’d never looked like this, pristine. M36 and M37 were the same, lovely patches of obvious tiny tiny white dots, rather than the smudges I’ve always seen through bins before. Very globular-like. Those views will stay with me. M45 Pleaides Cluster was nice too, and I tried my hardest to discern whether the barely-visible halo-ish glows around some of the stars were their nebulosity, or simply a product of very thin cloud that was just then starting to impinge around then. I have to say the latter, I think. I finished off the session, 2am by this stage, with a quick look at M33, very nice, and a stare at M31 with M110 and M32 just by. My most rewarding binoculars session ever, I think. Cheers, Magnus

In that test you'd probably actually be testing more for spherical aberration,which has the effect of creating a larger region of "least-bad" focus, so my first suspicion would be that the longer-focal-range instrument is the worse-corrected scope of the two.