KevinPSJ

Was camping in Dorset last weekend and caught a glimpse of Venus shining bright in the red sunset about 30 min after the sun had gone below horizon. It was only about 10 degrees above horizon so not easy to spot but once seen was very bright.

Venus is easier to spot when at greatest elongation (angular separation from the sun as seen from Earth) because it will be shining in darkness. However, greatest elongation needs to coincide with highest elevation of the ecliptic (the plane of the solar system in which all the planets move) for it to be really striking. So it's a combination of the Earth's seasonal tilting (which varies the altitude of the ecliptic) and the relative orbital position of Venus/Earth which together give the most favourable views. You won't see the same exact positioning of planets/moon/sun play out every 365 days. In fact, the venus cycle repeats every 584 days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Observability - which is not the same as our annual cycle.

That was a great account of your successes on Thursday night. I was out on Thursday too and also stayed up late as no work next morning. Glad I did - it was really clear and dark in my garden.

I was busy setting my telescope to take some photographs for the first hour or so but around 1am I had time to stop and just look up    In the east the summer constellations were on the rise but I struggled to recognise quite a few at first because there were so many more stars visible due to the pristine darkness. Hercules with his keystone body and wibbly wobbly arms (at least in my head) usually jumps out at me but it took a good 10 minutes of looking before I could see him clearly. Getting familiar with the shapes is especially useful for when you get really dark skies - otherwise you will be completely lost. As it was, I found Hercules and then corona borealis and then I was away ...

What was especially nice was seeing the milky way hovering above the trees in the east with the big cross of cygnus bang slap in the middle. Those familar shapes from summer reminded me there's something to look forward to in the coming months - even though the faint fuzzies of galaxy season will be almost impossible to find in the bright summer nights, there's always the spectacle of milky way from horizon to (almost) zenith to enjoy.

With still time to kill while my DSLR snapped away, next I went looking for Corvus - easy to locate below Virgo with it's sail shape and so with my binoculars (25 x 70 beasts) I tried to follow a star hop I had read about from the right hand star at top of sail (gamma Corvus) north and east to M104 - the Sombrero Galaxy. Low down in the south but it is still very bright in my binoculars and the line of stars from gamma Corvus lead me straight to it.  Really large, bright galaxy and certainly one I will revisit with the telescope again.

Love that chart from @Zermelo. I think combining that with the star hopping instructions from Turn Left at Orion will be a great combination to get me started.

Can't believe I managed M101 then. But it really was nothing more than a thin mist! And I think that gives me more appreciation for the Bortle 4 sky I have - but makes me itch to get to even darker skies when possible

I have very similar gear to you - skywatcher 150p with 10mm and 28mm eyepieces. I don't have a computerised goto, so rely on star hopping to find my targets. I live in a semirural village (bortle 4) but even here I struggle with being certain of identification.

I do a mix of visual and astrophotography so I have set my 28mm eyepiece up with something called a parfocal ring so I can use the eyepiece to find things and then if needed/desired I can swap to the camera.

I use the Stellarium app on my phone sometimes to confirm star hops. To help keep my dark adaption I set my phone up to use an app called twilight that can dim the screen really well no matter what I'm looking at. I also use Turn Left At Orion (a great book) reading by a red light headtorch. But getting really well dark adapted is key.

Given all that I thought it might help you if share a few of my experiences with galaxies. 

The other night I was looking for the Leo triplet - I was fairly certain I was in the right place and I could see 2 barely visible smudges that I felt were M65 and M66. I just wasn't convinced I was really seeing them though. So I checked against Stellarium app and it did look like the right stars in the right places. But the real clincher was a satellite that happened to pass through the field of view and that Stellarium confirmed!

Again, I went hunting the whirlpool galaxy in the big dipper.  I tried 3 times over different nights and finally on 3rd night felt I must be in the right place but could barely see more than a hint of something. I had to swap my eyepiece for my dslr to take a photo of M101 before I was sure I'd seen it - that one looked like nothing more than dark grey smoke on a black background! Not until I had 20s of exposure with the camera did I see an image showing a faint but wide spiral.

I've still failed to see triangulum galaxy even though I've tried 4 or 5 times - even successfully taken a few images without seeing anything in the eyepiece. 

In summary I'd say (1) galaxies seem to be the most challenging visual objects to find (2) more compact ones are much easier than wider ones and (3) I've yet to see any detail in any of the ones I've seen.

Based on my experience of sharing this wonderful hobby with others and hearing the "Wow" reaction, I suggest as a really simple first step get yourself a pair of reasonable binoculars - 10x50s are always popular. Then point them at the moon, the 7 sisters (Pleiades), the Andromeda galaxy or even jupiter and it's moons (if you have a steady hand). I defy anyone who has not done it before to not have a "wow" reaction the first time they view something like the moon for themselves. 

The advantage of binoculars is that if you lose interest (hopefully not, but it does happen) you still have something that's portable and useful in lots of other situations/hobbies. On the other hand, if you keep going, then binoculars are a great way to experience some amazing sights and start to learn your way around without really needing much more than patience, interest and a warm coat. Telescopes allow you to achieve much more but they are like musical instruments - if you don't know what your doing they can be very frustrating and there's a bit of "tuning/learning scales" kind of stuff that you can't avoid.

The other really easy way to dip your toes in is naked eye star gazing: just go somewhere really dark near you in the summer time and if you stay up until midnight you'll witness the wonder of the milky way in all it's glory. There's nothing to beat that sense of wonder of being under a sky sprinkled from horizon to horizon with stars! With some patience and luck you can spot a galaxy (M31), a nebula (M42) and all the bright planets (I still recall the excitement the first time I spotted mercury with naked eye).

Clear skies are just the first step for a good night of star gazing.  As you get more familiar with the subject you'll hear about (a) the varying degrees of darkness - in summer time there are lots of nights without astronomical twilight when it never gets truly dark (b) seeing and transparency - aspects of atmospheric conditions that affect viewing and can limit how many dim stars are visible (c) dark adaption where your eyes need to adjust gradually to darkness before you start to be able to see the really faint stuff.

My son has recently started joining me in the garden to do some star gazing and while we do use my telescope the key thing I'm introducing him to at the moment is  basic familiarity with constellations and guidepost stars.

I'd strongly recommend learning the major constellation through the year so you can recognise the progress of the seasons, watch the moon move each night and spot the planets as the wanderers they are among the fixed star patters

My son has already observed the shift from the beginning of winter in November with Orion rising in the East after sunset to March with Orion in the west going down as the night begins. 

My recommendation would be even before binoculars, learn to recognise the key shapes - the big dipper, Orion, Leo, cassiopeia, hercules and others - and the bright stars like sirius, arcturus, capella, spica. That knowledge will allow you to search with confidence for the harder to find targets and will give you a sense of familiarity so scanning the night sky doesn't feel like being lost in a forest. Adding binoculars or a telescope into the mix just makes it harder at that stage (unless you've splashed out on a computerised mount)

And of course the main thing - take plenty of time to just soak in the wonder of it! No matter how long we've been doing this hobby I think none of us is tired of just enjoying the simple wonder of looking up at a sack sky full of stars!

Wow - very impressive. What did you use to find it - binoculars?

By the way, I'd love a clear western horizon like that. 

Bumping ISO up to max to find stars for a quick framing shot and then (pleased with the framing) immediately doing an hour of imaging that all needs to be thrown away due to wrong ISO setting.

I've found startools works really well - it's not free but would definitely fall in the "great value for money" bracket. I'm getting much better colours out of my data now ... using siril for calibration, registration and stacking and startools for stretching and colour balancing.

9 hours ago, Capt Slog said:

 I used to struggle to find these objects, but i recently purchased a RACI finder via Ebay.  What a difference.  After months of trying to peer up a normal finder, and trying to work out which star was which because the view was reversed, the sky suddenly makes sense. 

 

I was using my telescope the other evening for imaging with DSLR so switched to my Celestron binoculars (25×70) to have an initial browse around Auriga. I realised it's a great way to get familiar with the layout of the sky without all the frustration of inverted views and slewing. I found M36, M37 and M38 really quickly despite this being my first serious visit to this part of the sky. I don't know why I've not investigated this constellation before though - it really is glorious!

Having had great success with the binoculars on unfamiliar territory I turned to Leo to look for the triplet as I've always struggled to locate them and can sometimes spend 30min looking in the telescope. Located them in 5 min through the binoculars with averted vision - M65 and M66 at least. 

I think the wide field and straight through view are great for getting to know the sky. I'll have a lot more confidence in my search next time I go hunting with the big guns if I've scouted first with binocs. 

Thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions. Since this is an experiment to see if I can get longer exposures on my mount using a borrowed lens I think I won't modify my finderscope - I'll be putting it back to it's intended use soon (bolted to the body of my 150P). In the meantime I will try the hot-shoe piggyback approach for now and just be extra careful not to snag the finderscope ... 

Longer term (based on my results so far) I will probably invest in a star tracker for my DSLR - at that point I will still want a finderscope side by side with the camera. I may come back to to the modification route at that point. 

Just using polarscope alignment I can currently easily get 1 min subs with DSLR and the telephoto lens at 200mm on my EQ3-2 unguided. I'm going to try some drift alignment next to see if I can improve that.

Put simply - how do I attach this finderscope to the plate? Ideally fixed to the plate so I can mount DSLR and finderscope side by side.

For a while now I've been using my Nikon D3200 at prime focus of my skywatcher 150P. I have a skywatcher EQ3-2 mount with RA drive but have struggled to get beyond 30s without trailing stars  despite very careful polar alignment. Recently I switched to imaging directly with the DSLR riding piggyback on the skywatcher 150P and using the 18-55mm kit lens instead of the main OTA. That allowed me to get wide field images with 2 min subs and pretty sharp stars. I think I can get more out of the EQ3-2 mount if remove the reflector and fit the DSLR directly to the dovetail bar so the payload weight is reduced.

To this end, I borrowed a Nikon 55-200mm telephoto zoom and using a ball head I've attached it as shown below. I tried that out last night but locating and framing targets was a nightmare! The problem is I can't figure out how to attach the finderscope to the dovetail bar. I have a standard 6x30 skywatcher finderscope - like this one - and I've already worked out that the mounting point for the finderscope that's screwed to the main tube doesn't attach to the same large mounting plate I'm attaching my DSLR to.

To be honest I'm struggling a little with the terminology which doesn't help with the googling  Is the black plate my camera is attached to in the pic below called a dovetail bar? Or a vixen plate? Or something else? 

From what I can work out I think I need something like this but I'm not certain and am trying to keep this as cheap as possible since it's all experimental at this stage. I don't mind spending under £10 quid on something speculative but over £30 pounds and I'd really like to be sure it's the right thing  

All help appreciated!

Kevin

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Skywatcher 150P on EQ3-2. RA drive.

Celestron 25x70 binoculars

Nikon D3200 with kit lens 

Great image - love the colours on M51 in the close crop! I've been thinking of switching from using my DSLR at prime focus of my skywatcher 150P to using a long focal length lens on the camera so I can get longer exposures (I'm shooting unguided). This image has convinced me!

Very impressive image. What focal length did you use on the zoom lens? And what F stop? I've tried imaging M101 recently using my Newtonian but plan to borrow a telephoto lens soon and try again - hoping a shorter focal length will allow me to do longer exposures (I don't have any guiding, just tracking motor).

Love the red colour of the image taken with SPC900NC - real 'Mars: Bringer of War' stuff!

Nice image. I was observing visually around the same time last night from UK with my son. We both commented on how clear was the shadow falling across the rings behind Saturn . Your photo brings that out really well. That bright cloud band just south of the equator was not so clear in my 150mm reflector but it looks magnificent in your image.  Just wish Saturn was 20 degrees higher in the sky!

I'm stuck with an old Nikon DSLR so can't do planetary imaging at the moment - saving up for an ASI 290MC in October so hoping I can catch great images like this next month! 

Hi Cammy. I'd suggest trying your dads first if it's at all possible: better to try with a telescope you have access to first and really be sure this is something you want to spend money on. What kind of telescope does your dad have?

Do you have access to a garden/yard/balcony at your home that you can use: if you have to drive somewhere to observe you won't progress as quickly as if you can step outside the door and get going straight away even if light pollution is bad. Being able to react quickly to clear skies is the key when you are learning (in my experience). That way you sustain the enthusiasm. You will be amazed at views of moon and planets even from city and many deep sky objects can be seen through a telescope in light polluted areas although finding them can be hard.

I have a skywatcher 150P with RA motor drive. It's a great aperture size - performing well for both planetary and deep sky observing visually and not too heavy to quickly setup and put away. I never get tired of looking at the moon; have recently seen the south polar ice cap on Mars and have been amazed to see hints of banding on saturns globe and the enke gap.  Just checked and FLO are selling them for £320. You would definitely benefit from an RA motor (£70) but only essential for astrophotography so maybe you could delay that purchase? Finally a polar scope (£30) will make a big difference for getting accurate tracking although you can also use the drift method so not essential. 

But that's not all - combined with the RA motor, a polar scope and a Nikon DSLR I have used this scope to take 30s exposures with no star trails and using stacking software to produce images of galaxies, nebula and globular clusters that have really got me hooked on astrophotography. It's true from astrophotography perspective that there are lots of limitations in the mount, that I can't use my DSLR to image planets (except for tiny, low detail images) and that it's hard work to get things set up right even to achieve 30s. But I don't have £1000 or even £500 spare to get to the "minimum entry level" that many people talk of for astrophotography - and I'm learning lots about all the same pieces of the puzzle that will apply when I do eventually move on to more expensive gear.

In short - I'd recommend something with as big an aperture as you can afford because you will (hopefully) get hooked quickly on the joy of visual observing. Just pick a scope that will allow you to move into astrophotography gradually so you can judge if it's for you without spending way over your budget.

Kevin

Fabulous results using unguided 45s subs. Inspires me to keep going on my unguided EQ3-2. You did a great job removing the noise that must have been present at ISO3200 - how many darks did you take?!

You have a nice bright image of Vega even if it's very out of focus. You should have no trouble finding decent focus if that's what you are starting with. With my Nikon D3200 I need to be pretty close to focus before I see anything on the live view.

I definitely recommend sticking down the focus ring with tape - it's the one thing that has wasted more time for me than anything else when imaging using the DSLR with kit lens. Focus on bright star, slew to the target, take a test shot only to discover it's out of focus. Trying to focus on a nebula or galaxy with a 55mm lens is almost impossible - far too dim. If only my focus ring had a locking screw like my telescope does

Of course, that's not to mention the dreaded D word ... dew!

Hi. I was out looking at Jupiter and Saturn last night too but in my case they were skimming the rooftops rather than high overhead and my worry wasn't collimation but turbulence above my neighbours house. Oh well.

If you are still interested in learning more about collimating your scope, have a read of https://garyseronik.com/a-beginners-guide-to-collimation/  - it's really clear, detailed and helpful. I'd guess you only need to worry about collimating your primary unless you are really unlucky so initially I'd concentrate on using the collimation cap to get your primary aligned.

Have a read of https://garyseronik.com/no-tools-telescope-collimation/ once you think you have understood the first link - it shows a fairly simple way to check your collimation using real stars and fine tune things once the stars come out.

I'd advise also looking at Mars by the way - it's a real treat at the moment as it's getting closer to earth by the week with maximum brightness peaking in Oct. Don't miss out!

> The 150p photos are amazing @KevinPSJ ! Definitely worth the effort!

Thanks Astrid. Sounds like with your budget you can go for a sturdier mount. That makes all the difference.  If I could start again I'd probably spend 2/3 of budget on mount and 1/3 on scope.

Do you have a camera already? You've not mentioned one and even an entry level DSLR like mine will certainly make a dent in your budget.

Kevin

Hi Astrid.

You will definitely be working at the edge of what's possible and certainly not using a recommend set of kit if you want to do deep sky stuff like nebula and galaxies. But it's not impossible - just harder!

I have a skywatcher 150p on an EQ3-2 mount with RA motor and I can usually manage 30s exposures with no trailing after 10 minutes of careful polar alignment with a polarscope. 30s exposures with my Nikon D3200 let's me image quite well enough to impress family and friends  Have a look at my image gallery to see what's possible:

Just be prepared for a lots of frustration as well - currently I'm struggling to image beyond 15s without trailing and still not sure what's changed. Like I said I'm working at the edge of what's possible with the equipment I have. I've spent a good few long hours in the dark with nothing to show for it in the morning but smudges and noise. But my thinking is (a) when it works it's really satisfying to have achieved "the impossible" and (b) when I do eventually upgrade I'll have an awful lot of experience under my belt!

Kevin

Thanks to all for the advice. I'll try with 50mm lens piggyback on my mount. Also will experiment with various ISO settings. Looks like I'll have to wait until Sunday though- all clouds in the forecast until then.