ScouseSpaceCadet

No probs. Thanks. That night was one of the clearest I've experienced. Reminiscent of a couple of lockdown nights last year. It's a shame the sky wasn't darker and for longer. I even convinced myself I could see a slither of Milky Way arching between Cassieopia and Cygnus...

A memory you will treasure. Well done. 😀

Great Nick. I had fun cruising Cygnus last night with 10x50s. A constellation packed with clusters and a definite favourite.

That any good? The molle bag easily takes a Talentcell battery (there's an internal pocket the battery securely fits in), intervalometer and cables. It's secured to the tripod with velcro straps bought separately.

Last night after midnight was excellent here too. Looking forward to your report. 👍

102mm f7 apo/ed is a definite sweet spot. Portability, easy to mount, excellent contrast, nice round stars, super colour rendition and very little to no chromatic abberation. Decent at wide field and when conditions allow, upping the magnification while maintaining the quality view. Pretty much great at everything except really deep observing, requiring big apertures.

The ST120 was my first refractor and it didn't fail to hook. Like Mr. Spock, M42 was great through the Startravel and my first view of m81 and M82 from light polluted home was through it. The Startravel was imho much better for deep sky compared to my 130mm and 150mm newtonians. Wide field there was no contest. Adding a 2" diagonal and quality 30mm 68° eyepiece transformed even more the wide field capability. The excellent contrast and pin perfect stars across most of the field of view was a delight. Almost like binoculars. The ST120 also excels as a (rather large) day time spotter. It was only sold it due to a lack of storage space and feeling the scope was too heavy for the AZ-GTI. The saving grace of owning and then selling the ST120 was discovering how much I missed it and the journey lead me to my current Altair Starwave Ascent 102ED. An excellent (relatively) low cost instrument that is thoroughly enjoyed every time it's put out. Grumpy like you I'd love a 150mm. The mounting requirements put me off. If I had an observatory and pier with a hefty mount, a 150mm refractor would be on the list...

Probably 99% of lighting here is LED, but there are more lights than before. The A57 which I live 50m from is lit up like Christmas. Luckily those lights don't directly affect me too much due to various houses, fencing and trees. However, the increased lighting overall has also increased sky brightness over the last ten years or so. The most directly offensive LED street light in a cul de sac behind has, after a year of asking, a very effective shield in place which helps a lot. Badly installed and unnecessarily bright PIR LED security lighting is countered with a tarp shield. Weather forecasting is definitely hit and miss. Although hasn't that always been the case? At least up here in the wet north west. The long range forecast for my Scottish break last week and for home was totally wrong... Temperatures were lower and the rain clouds more abundant! Regarding targets. DSOs were given up on after the first year. From home I've managed one nebula besides Orion and five galaxies! Globulars are smudges of varying brightness. So to stay sane it's doubles, open clusters, lunar and planetary unless I'm away somehere bortle 4 or better.

Good luck with the Star Adventurer. There's plentiful advice here. Welcome.

Glad you dipped your toe in. You will find warm and calm waters here. Storms are very rare!

Hi Gonariu, Sardinian visualist!

A very enjoyable hour I've had sampling the delights of good seeing between 00:30 and 01:30 BST, despite the bright summer sky and the urban light pollution. Opting to leave the telescopes packed up, I grabbed the Opticron T WP 10x50 binoculars and settled down in a garden chair. After a scan around and realising the seeing was excellent it was time to get 'serious' and sample objects that really pop still under Bortle 8 skies, open clusters. Starting with Cr399 Coathanger in the south east and then a short hop to the east to constellation Lyra and little gem Stephenson 1. After which moving along to the north a touch and probably my favourite summer constellation, Cygnus. Cygnus is amazing under rural skies but it can hold the city binocular observer's attention for quite a while, being packed with clusters. Finding the central star mag 2.2 Sadr then moving the binoculars right a little revealed NG6883, Bi 2, NGC 6871, Bas 6, IC 4996 and M29. Not all of these clusters pop out at you straight away, but the longer you look, the more you see. Finally to finish off , a hop to Deneb and open cluster M39. Nothing too taxing but nonetheless, considering the city skies, the accomplishment is managing to even observe these wonders...

What's most annoying is they're undertaking a lighting survey after it's been built. It's hard to undestand that a very well paid planner/architect/team didn't consider the nuisance value. Or maybe they did and hoped complaints would be few. Baffling considering the extra cost to redesign and rectify the lighting.

Reads like you had a very pleasant familiarisation session. 👍 Magnus how is the EQM-35 mount for visual? I'm thinking of buying a heftier EQ goto mount but split between the EQM-35, EQ5 Pro and ES EXOS-2... 🙄

A used Celestron X-Cel LX 25mm saw a great deal of use over two years across several scopes including an 8" dob. Only just out of your budget new at around £73. I'm very happy with my 24mm 68° Altair UFF (£135), but my current scopes are f7 and f12 so I don't know how well it will perform in faster instruments.

You will be surprised how good it is. When I took my now sold ST120 to a dark site I was 'Oooohing' quite a bit. 😄

Thanks. 👍

Alan could you link the USB dew heater band you use please? Ta.

The Star Adventurer 1kg counter weight kit with an m8x15mm (m12 reduces to m8) thread reducer. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-star-adventurer/skywatcher-star-adventurer-counterweight-kit.html https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Thread-Reducer-Thread-Repair-Inserts-A4-Stainless-Steel-Blind-Ended-5-Pack-/224062432022?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286

Wonderful sketching. 👍

The sky was fantastic when the clouds cleared. Excellent transparency and little scintillation in my current Scots skies. After a warm up I'd stayed awake hoping for some binocular observing around 1am as the moon descends but... clouds. 🙄

Well the clouds cleared revealing a glassy sky with fantastic seeing, resulting in a very chilly but enjoyable hour of lunar observation. It's a shame I'm here in May and the sun is barely below the horizon. The estimated sky quality of 20.53 and Bortle 4 is astronomical heaven compared to home. 🙄

Clouds, but I'd prefer Gassendi, especially as I'm in East Lothian for a week with a Mak in the car boot...

Congrats 👍

Don't get me wrong, I love Cox. My impression is simply paying homage... Hopefully during his Liverpool arena visit I'll get the chance to ask what moisturiser he uses.