DeanCJ

Thanks for your replies, In the big scheme of things I am not a very clever person, so I always find it satisfying when I find a solution to a problem or an answer to a question, but it is always much better when someone else can confirm my ideas and suspicions, which you both have and given me a little more to consider. JOC, I guess like me you’re grateful that mass stubble burning doesn’t happen anymore like it used to, when I was young it was terrible. Once again thanks for your replies.

I work away from home, in fact have done for more than twenty five years. My wife and I have a static caravan on the Lincolnshire coast so this is where most of our observing is done. last August we were trying to view Jupiter and Saturn l know that being low on the horizon they were not best placed, but we were really struggling to achieve decent focus and both planets had a strange yellow cast to them. In the end I was convinced that I had somehow damaged my scope (a 127 Mak) so we brought everything home to West Yorkshire and the views were almost perfect. My question for anyone who lives in the countryside is this- has anyone experienced poor seeing conditions during harvest time? as the only difference between Yorkshire and Lincolnshire was the harvest was finished in Yorkshire but in full swing in Lincolnshire. I am assuming it may have been dust in the air but not sure, if this is the case we will just have to plan our sessions carefully. Any comments or experiences would be appreciated. Dean.

I can believe that!! roughly two weeks ago I was out walking my dogs early evening when I saw what I thought was an aircraft with its landing lights on, as the closest airport to me is Doncaster, roughly ten miles away, I genuinely thought an airplane was going to crash on top of me, after two or three minutes of it not moving I really felt quite stupid. When I got home I immediately got SkySafari on my phone only to find it was Venus, as I still class myself as a beginner I quickly forgave myself for not knowing, although I did tell my wife and she found it somewhat amusing.

Hi everyone, After much time lurking in the background, I have finally decided to join the forum. I am old enough to remember the Apollo missions, Skylab, and, Voyager missions, these were truly exciting times and I believed we, as human beings, could reach for the stars and achieve anything, and I guess this interest in space has stayed with me all my life. When I was young my parents bought me if I remember correctly, a Prinz Astral? Refractor, then when my children were young I bought them a Skywatcher reflector. Last year my wife asked me to buy a telescope as she is very interested in astronomy, so not wanting to spend a fortune and after a bit of research, I bought a Skymax 127 GoTo, well how surprised was I, is it a planet killer? maybe not, does it punch above its weight? definitely!! some of the lunar views we have had have been almost emotional, truly stunning. As with all hobbies things have now progressed!! We now have a Meade lx65 dual saddle GoTo mount with a Startravel 102 alongside the Mak which for us is fantastic, great low power wide field, and high power at the same time! If anyone would be interested I could review each of these if someone could point me to the correct section to post in. This is a great forum for advice and information and I hope that eventually I will be able to contribute something useful. Clear sky’s to everyone. Dean.