Marvin Jenkins

Please accept apologies for assuming you have access to a vehicle, that does make things more difficult. Don’t despair at not having Goto, at the beginning of your journey it can add many unwanted problems and distractions. The Club night is the best thing you could do, so many helpful people to show you how. With the kind help of your friend get somewhere a little darker and relax... let your vision adjust... with the help of Cassiopeia pointing the way move west about a hands width held out at arms length. Andromeda is much more faint than you think and under my Bortle 4 skies if I look directly at it, it disappears. Look a few degrees off... hold it and without moving eye position do you pick up a light area in your peripheral vision??? I will say right now, that what I am describing might seem very difficult. But once you know where it is and what it looks like you will know for the rest of your life. Just so you know my first attempt at M31 took a few attempts without light pollution. I found the Pinwheel galaxy instead by mistake. Next night got M31 then couldn’t find the Pinwheel for another year! It’s a long learning curve to be enjoyed, and I hope I see you on here enjoying it in the years to come. Good luck and happy M31 hunting, start with the 30mm ep. Marvin

M31 is a big beast but not bright all. If you are in a location with light pollution then this will not help. Trying lowering the magnification of the eye piece and do not use the Barlow. Less magnification is the key as in my 150 newt a short photo clearly shows the galaxy filling the whole frame. Half the battle with these dim objects is finding them in the first place. Once you find it, it will become much easier because you will know what you are looking for. If light pollution is a problem then stick the scope in your car and go somewhere dark. You will find it much easier and it will then give you a frame of reference for when viewing from your garden. Word of warning! Once you have gone dark sky site your back garden will no longer be good enough. Marvin

Hi Bryan One piece of advice which is not actually related to your PA question is to keep an eye on the section on this site titled ‘Celestial Events Heads Up’. My first few months of astronomy meant I missed quite a few things at opportune times simply because I didn’t know they were happening or what I was looking at. A prime example is a non Astro friend called me a couple of weeks ago in a very exited state of mind begging me to go outside and look at “The amazing star that has appeared”. My first thought Super Nova! Then, calm down.... where in the sky? I asked. South West right now in the dusk. He was amazed he was looking at Venus. I told him to continue looking lower to the horizon below Venus and he saw a faint star in the last light before night time. He had just bagged his first look at Mercury. I would not have had my first look a week before if it had not been for info posted on here. Marvin

Hope I didn’t steal any of your photons.

Just a beginner at the very beginning. I worked out that I was probably taking a single frame of the Sunflower at sometime in your marathon. Now I know what it is supposed to look like after a lot of effort. Great image. Marv

Hi Bryan Good to see you here and glad you are learning the night sky without jumping directly into tech. As long as you have some reasonably dark skies you are going to have a great time. I started with a 130 newt on an eq2 with no motors. Already star hopping! Good to hear. What are you hopping too? Do you have particular targets you are trying to see? Pankaj is right in answering your questions, but please understand that Polar Aligning an EQ1 accurately is not really possible. If you are not using an RA motor then PA is not really needed. Just get the mount pointing north and get into the night sky. The setting circles on much higher end mounts only get you in the general area. I find a really good sky atlas (laminated or it will go soggy) and Stellarium as a backup on a laptop if you have one. Stellarium is free and I say backup as I find laptop screens even turned to minimum brightness bad on the eyes when doing visual EP work. I don’t know how far along the Astro road you are, but M42 the middle ‘star’ in the scabbard hanging from Orion belt should be a good target. Anything Moon of course as the crater structures and Maria are fascinating. Sorry that the planetary highlights of Jupiter and Saturn are not with us at present but you have that incredible view coming your way in the future. Enjoy. Marvin

Now a lot of us need help with spelling on occasion. But sometimes it makes a fool of the user. Recently I have sent a few DSO pics to non Astro friends who have asked questions and shown interest in astronomy. I sent a pic of M3 the Globular cluster and it seemed missed the ‘l’. Spell check changed it to ‘Globular Custard’ without me noticing! With connectivity that did the rounds in two minutes and two days later the cooking jokes keep coming. Anyone else been undermined by spellcheck and intuitive typing. Is there a way to turn it off? Marv

Betelgeuse might be brighter as per my Feb 14th post. My wife said I was so romantic. Only just realized that was Valentine’s Day. Oops.😳 Marv

The cat or the book?

I like CN. As you say many great people, great people, good people.

But why is E and F reported the wrong way round alphabetically? Besides I have been to Melbourne, a huge light polluted city. Very nice though and I did enjoy the botanical gardens and war museum. I bet a two hour trip into the country side must give you some great skies. But we are deviating. Back to E and F in the northern hemisphere. M

You can’t blame people for great skies, but ‘I know just what you mean’ AHHHH. Barry-W-Fenner you are the astronomer! I think the term is you are the man but who knows who any one is on here and I don’t want to appear gender bias. If the B-W-F has cracked the trapezium wide open then ‘they’ get my applause. Marv just as a foot note the B to the W to the F said E star easy then F star! What’s going on!

Just wanted to ask an open question to all of the above. As yet I have not got past A to D. Halfway through this thread I notice that #chiltonstar said that a good night exposes the F star an excellent night the E star. This seems to be echoed by further posts. Don’t want to sound obvious but why is the alphabetical E star harder to see than F? Surely someone looked through a telescope back in the day and said “look a fifth star in the trapezium” the E star!!! Why are they out of order to the views recorded on this forum? Surely if it is A B C D star then the next easiest is E followed by F not the other way round. Marvin

Now I am going to throw this out there... it seems there was a companion. Now one cannot be be found. Betelgeuse has indigestion and is bloated like a python! Not scientific I know, but what a gutsy pig. Rennes anyone? Marvin

My first night out in a little while and got carried away with a cloudless vista. Halfway through trying to find T2 Panstarrs I suddenly thought ‘Betelgeuse’. Now it is probably my imagination but it seems to be the same magnitude as my last observation or may now be a touch brighter. The touch brighter may well be just observing conditions, but has it stabilised in the last week? Marvin

Why not put the mount on the wedding present list? Congrats by the way. Marv

Good call. I have recently finished reading Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. What an amazing read and hugely thought provoking. Not often I get all branches of Science and a tour of history all intertwined in one place. I am pretty sure I saw Prof Cox say that it was that book that really got him inspired to pursue science. Marvin

I am using a SW NEQ5 pro and the halfway house of your question the 150pds. I think it great, I have no complaints at all. Just started out doing a bit of DSO astrophotography (the basics M31 M42) and my only regret is that I didn’t shell out that bit more and get the HEQ5. Marv

Now. If I am not mistaken, the start of this thread said the following.... without further ado, can we just all say we are better off without nutters. What is the general position of all concerned ??? Marvin

Wow, first post! Sometimes I am amused, other times frustrated but your post warrants serious interrogation. Please... we’ll educated SGLrs provide some answers, as I am following this like a hawk. Marv

It’s either justification of a purchase or a salesman. Either way he did not do a good job. We are all entitled to our opinions, but just the amount of Astro images from happy HEQ5 owners says it all. Marv

Looks like someone over paid for an AVX and wished they had a belt modded HEQ5. 😂

Loved it, made me laugh out loud. The reason, When I first looked through a scope I thought M1 has got to be the first, surely. A year later I found it and used M Messier’s name in vain. How can that be the first M object? Then it dawned on me, it must have been amazing back in his day. After a couple of years can you believe what it will look like after the initial sn dies down? Going to make M42 look like an amateur water colour next to a Hockney. Marvin

Hey there. There is a whole alternative live and disagreeable thread about The Big B going pop, and I have already called dibs on calling it ‘going bang’ although that was a couple of weeks ago....... Seriously though, whatever your point of view, a very interesting subject and lots of information coming to the fore, which can only be a good thing.

I understand your comments, especially about mainstream media hype. But your comment “It’s not about to go Supernova” odd. I find that as odd, as you may have found my slightly tongue in cheek post about it going bang any minute. Do you know something the rest of the scientific world does not? Perhaps you have been given the heads up, in which case can you tell us how you know the future? I understand that it is variable and due to this thread I know so much more about it’s behaviour, but you cannot say for certain that we are are not going to wake up tomorrow with a small second sun. I will be happy to come back here in a million years and say to you ‘there you go, a DSO even harder to see than M1.✌️👍