Stardaze

Awesome few nights John. Kind of following on from my report and getting yourself organised, do you put a list together and print off a couple of maps? Intrigued to know how you put all of these targets together.

Was thinking that you must have been out all night to bag al of that, super report and thanks for sharing.

The first is how it looked in my binoculars last night @Stu

Looks good here tonight but it’s a school night with an early start 😂 Tomorrow looks good too though so hopefully I’ll try then. I’ll grab half hour with the binos all the same.

If it hadn’t have been for all of the restrictions I would have taken mine out by now. There’s a spot not much more than 20 minutes from here that measures 20.98 on the pollution map. Certainly planning on doing that when I can. Just have to plan an evening when there’s no restrictions, cloud, dew, moon, work nights etc.. Simples 🙄

I've been using my new pair of these for a few weeks now and initial impressions are very positive. My 10 year old pair of 10x42 Bushnells weren't too shabby, though the right sided focus wheel won't quite focus, very close but not quite. So the first obvious things of improvement were the extra brightness and the extra degree of field. I wouldn't say that there's a massive step up from my Bushnells in terms of IQ . Getting used to the handling of porros has taken a little time, over the roof prisms, but although they are physically larger, the weight is very similar, the holding is slightly different to me. There's two elements that I am still getting used to though. The first being the roll up eye cups. I'm not a spectacle wearer and so I have them fully extended. They could do with clicking into position a little tighter, I find that they do seem to move down on occasion. My biggest gripe at the moment seems to be with marking the front elements. I can't seem to work out how this is happening. It must be the rubber caps, but I am being very careful and have recently resorted to putting them back on when back inside with good light. I have had to clean a small mark from a front element most evenings following some viewing, which is most odd. I'm quite careful with handling so something isn't quite right there. The caps are very secure however and do take a little pressure to insert them back in.

This has been a really helpful post for me, so thanks to everyone for their input. It was certainly time to review things and I'll give SkySafari more of a go. It's also good to see other experienced observers note that they too find one method easier than another. Some maps I have struggled with and that is largely down to the scaling I think, the app does look a little more like you see when zoomed in properly. I can't believe I hadn't noticed that the FOV element wasn't turned on!

Are you hatching any plans to head out to a dark site? I’m just over 20 mag here so not too bad but I do have to be careful with stray light from the neighbours usually. If things do improve this year I would like an autumn trip over to the Welsh countryside. We stayed somewhere in the lakes end of Aug last year and it was superb, the better end of a 3. Definitely somewhere I will go back to with a travel scope sometime.

That was my logic too John. If ain't broke for you and all that.. You have years of experience working in your favour, I need all the help I can get 😀 I think having the phone in red and turned down should negate my issues with it, so looking forward to giving it a go.

That's worth the upgrade for sure. I haven't been very organised of late and need to go back to making, or at least, sticking to a planned list. Being able to look at your history would be a benefit too. I'm envious of your drawing as I can really see how that would help too, but I am pretty useless with a pencil. I might even pinch the other half's iPad as I don't really fancy taking the MacBook out, I'm too clumsy. I'm sure I have seen SkySafari Plus for around £7.99, must be full price at the moment, I'll keep an eye out.

I was doing that a lot last year. Have just set my phone up as Stu mentions, works a treat. Here's a quick link to how for an iPhone: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204390 Click on the red pen and turn up the opacity fully.

Just noticed another quirk, the mag changes depending upon your FOV. So when zoomed into 5.5 degrees it's actually at 9.9 mag? Probably have to upgrade. What does pro offer over plus?

Was going to say that I've been using my pocket atlas all year John. I do love it's simplicity for basic hopping but have often found I need a more expanded view, up close at times. Certainly was that way with the recent Cass Nova, the atlas is too basic there.

Thanks Stu, some very useful tips there. I've been trying not to use SkySafari in the field thinking it will destroy my dark adaptation so I'll give it more of a go and I'll set my iPhone up as you suggest. I only have the basic version and hadn't activated the FOV or co-ordinates until just now. I don't think my version has the custom version but I can zoom in easy enough to around 5.5 degrees and set the mag to 8.8 and reckon that won't be far off my SW 9x50.

M53 was still small in the 8mm and a little underwhelming I thought at the time, but I've still got some of last summers globulars in my mind to draw comparison. It was probably a third smaller than M13. It took me a while to let it resolve, but I could clearly make out a couple of prominent orange stars. It's an easy one to find though and so I'll stop by sometime soon again no doubt.

Thanks @Pixiesthat's an interesting take. I've largely shunned away from using SkySafari at the EP because of the phones initial start up brightness. Even in night mode I find it a bit too dark and so keep the brightness up a little, maybe I should persevere. I normally use my pocket atlas, but didn't the other night at all. Great tip about tweaking the apps magnitude to match, it's only recently that I noticed you can do that, I've been using the default settings for a year! And I'm glad to hear that somebody else also turns things upside down at times too 😆 I have that book tagged for next month along with a couple more. I'll certainly have a little dabble at setting things up similarly and see how I find it, makes good sense.

Great report and sounded just good to get out. I haven’t taken mine out for a drive yet, put plan to soon enough. I like the sense of adventure and effort made with a large dob, bet the views are immense.

I think sometimes scale throws me a little off still, thinking about it. The way I interpreted Turn Lefts map is a little too tight. I’ll need to familiarise myself with the area using the binos and get a better understanding of the background stars. It is the one very intriguing area of the sky that I haven’t studied out in the field yet, so I shall just have to put the ground work in.

I know, but it’s frustrating all the same. It is after all part of the chase though so that’s the catch. Looking south last night didn’t seem as good as I have had, but it’s still my basic star hoping in new areas that doesn’t always slot into place quickly for me. You certainly seem much more adept at getting around; I’ll get there..

Great nights viewing. I hadn’t thought about a nebula evening at this time of year just yet and haven’t used my OIII in the rosette either but have seen it in the binos in recent weeks. Another added to the list.

I haven't really had the dob out for a number of weeks now, for a number of reasons, but mostly I have been enjoying a new pair of binoculars. Each night as I pack away I've been watching Virgo slowly climbing above the house. The dob is a few weeks away from it's first birthday and so this time last year I was very new to observing galaxies and so really didn't manage to look at Virgo's treats at all, concentrating my efforts around Leo I recall. Last night I started out by zipping around a number of open clusters to help take in a lovely crisp, clear night and probably because many of them have been binocular targets these last few weeks. Perseus was falling in the north, and so the double cluster was a quick first stop, quickly followed by all 3 of Auriga's clusters. I couldn't see M38 in the finder but dropped on it at the first time of asking. The pinwheel cluster caught my gaze for a little longer and looked great at x96. Working anti-clockwise made sense and so M35 was next port of call. These 4 Messier objects seemed to evade my eye last year and are such a delightful sequence. I remember (really need to take notes!) looking up at the beehive cluster a lot last year, which has been a good test recently here trying to gauge how the seeing will be. I could just make it out and it looked great in the binos, but lazily I still had the 13 EP (x96) and stopped by, well over-gunned. Even with 100 deg viewing it was too tight, but I glanced around all the same. I dropped down to M67 quickly but was itching to see how a Leo fuzzy looked. But then I noted Hydra weaving over next doors roof and couldn't help myself grab the 8mm (156x) and set off ghost hunting. Jupiters Ghost was found very low down and quite tight to the roof but nevertheless, looked relatively crisp. Not as good a view as I have seen, but one of my first planetary nebs from last year. As the 8mm was still in the focuser I couldn't resist dropping onto Algeiba. Well split into the components but the colour separation didn't seem to pop to me, they both seemed quite pixelated too. Time to see how easy Leo would give up her treats this year, so once the 20mm (62x) was back in position I placed the Telrad's circles right between Chertan and lota Leo. Again, I remembered faffing around last year, not really knowing too much but it seemed quite simple using the Telrad and straight away I noted the two spiral galaxies looking quite bright and prominent but couldn't make out the Hamburger galaxy of the triplet. M95 and M96 were relatively easy to find but just as I was trying to get my eye into M105 I was cut short by a technical glitch 'the girls' had with the TV. It was time for a brew anyway before grabbing my copy of Turn Left... Maybe it's just me...well, of course it is, but for whatever reason I just don't find some of the maps that intuitive in the famous book. The section on the Virgo galaxy cluster is very good and so I set out a little table in front of the dob with torch and book close to hand feeling all, dare I say it, prepared. I was hoping the girls would head to bed soon as I could see a little too much light in the corner of my eye, but had to wait half hour. The batteries on my torch failed. So I scrambled in to turn all the lights off and refresh the batteries (note to self: the 6 P's!!) Finally ready, the finder was quickly placed on Vindemiatrix but realised from there that my star hopping needs work still. I just couldn't find 41 & 34 Vir, or be certain of the two.I find that frustrating, seemingly two simple stars... I ended up shelving the book and resorted to Sky Safari. I'm ashamed to say that I found a very bright, large fuzzy pretty quickly when I went solo; I think it may have been M59 looking at rough positioning now, but that one does seem slightly fainter than others. It could have been more that it seemed on it's own that it stood out? From there I found 3 in a row, which I'd love to think was Markarians famous chain, but, I can't substantiate that for certain. I was actually surprised that many more didn't just pop out at me, was kinda thinking that there would be a glut of fuzzy blobs all over the EP. I got a little frustrated at my ineptness, lame ability; sometimes I think I have learnt quite a bit and get around relatively well, then it's times like tonight that make me realise there's still plenty to improve. My toes had started to disappear now and there was a little frost forming on the grass, so I decided to head towards the zenith and drop onto an old fascination of mine from last year, M51. Again, I didn't need the 9x50 for fine tuning, I had this one firmly implanted in my head and dropped straight on her. The seeing wasn't as crisp as I have witnessed before but I could make out a little structure. She's definitely my first fuzzy love and so aptly I spent 10 minutes observing before packing up around 1am relatively satisfied and yet a little frustrated all the same. Edit: and this is maybe why I should takes notes... I also took in M53 for the first time too. Was a lot smaller than I’d imagined and needed this 8mm to resolve some detail, but another first all the same.

I think I might treat myself, my little stool gets in the way. Was looking at the berlebach ones but that’s about half the price.

I like the look of that. Is the drummers stool being retired? Easy to store.

Monday does look promising (except the moon) at the moment. If it doesn't change I’ll probably get the dob out just to be sure.

Another good tip someone said at the time, was to level up your primary best you can to give you a good starting point there too. I took a steel rule to the base I think from memory. I got very frustrated with it all at the time, but it came together in one of those eureka moments.